Surely, only small users make use of Spamhaus via DNS? I always assumed that big ISPs and corporate customers will use their Datafeed service. If spamhaus.org goes offline, then surely all that would happen is that users' databases would stop being updated. I agree that this would cause an increase in spam, but only slowly as the data aged, not in one sudden spludge as would happen to those using the DNS service?
My current rate here in the UK is the equivalent of 18.5 c/kWh for the first 728 kWh in each quarter and 17.5 c/kWh thereafter. In addition, there is a standing charge of 29.8 c/day.
A few months ago I tried to attach my Mother-in-law (who lives overseas) to my Asterisk server. I bought a SIP analogue telephone adapter and went to visit. I spent at least 2 hours a day for 8 days trying to get it to work. I fiddled with every setting on the ATA and (via an SSH tunnel) loads of settings on my router and I never got the ATA or any SIP softphones to work. Finally, I tried an IAX2 softphone and it worked first time.
So, when I returned to the UK I bought an IAX2 phone for the same price as the ATA and sent it to Estonia. My Mother-in-law plugged it in and it worked first time. Now she and my wife chat for hours without it costing me a penny.
Conclusion: SIP works fine on a LAN (where I now use the above ATA), but if you have any NAT anywhere in the link then the pain of making SIP work isn't worth it when you can get IAX2 kit for the same price and it "Just Works".
I am sure that we are all most grateful for your efforts to expand on your original answers, but as always, each answer just raises more questions:
1) Does this rule also apply in the physical world? Example: I walk into a small record store and buy what I genuinely believe is an original audio CD, but which is actually, unknown to me, a pirated copy. Have I committed a copyright infringement, and if not, why is it different from the download case?
2) What steps would a judge expect me to have taken to ensure that what appears to be a legal paid download is realy so? Would I have to have written to each artist, or their agent and enquired if the relevant site was providing legitimate downloads? Clearly, this is not a big problem whilst there are a small number of big download sites run by large corporations, but imagine if the industry expanded into hundreds of small companies, perhaps offering music from specialised genres (e.g. www.mandolin-mp3s.com). It would become a complete legal minefield. BTW, I do realise that the legal system doesn't care how completely inconvenient and impractical complying with the law becomes.
3) Suppose that I was sued for purchasing MP3s from what I believed was an entirely genuine site. Could I, assuming I had enough money, then attempt to recover the damaged by sueing the download site for fraud? false advertising? something else?
As before, I don't expect you to know what the answers would be here in the UK, but if you would care to comment on the US case then I am sure that many people would be most interested.
Now we are getting somewhere. So, if I purchase some MP3s from allofmp3.com, download them to my computer and don't make them available to anyone else at all by any means whatsoever, then I am in the clear, yes?
The reason that we are all asking these apparently dumb-ass questions is that we have heard to the contrary. Specifically, here in the UK, where the local equivalent of the RIAA the BPI are suing allofmp3.com and their chief council said in evidence to parliament "AllofMP3.com is illegal under UK law and it is illegal to download from it". Now, she did go on to say that they wouldn't be prosecuting users, but of course that could always change.
Now, you are a US lawyer and can't be expected to understand UK law, but you might be able to speculate whether it would be illegal to download from allofmp3.com in the US.
I see lots of discussion about whether HP and/or their security subcontractors acted illegaly in obtaining personal phone records, but what about AT&T? It would appear that they handed over personal information to a third party posing as a customer without conducting any sort of rigorous check to ensure that they realy were talking to the right person. For example, they could have;
(i) Offered to call the "customer" back on the number in question.
(ii) Offered to post the information to the customer's home address.
I am reasonable sure that their actions would be illegal under UK data protection laws, although there is of course the usual question of whether anyone could afford to sue them. We do have a commissioner who is in principle responsible for enforcing data protection laws, but they are a toothless tiger who seem primarily interested in educating organisations in the hope that they won't do it again!
Perhaps I misunderstood the PDF, but it appears that although the actual Apollo 11 tapes are missing, the National Archives have hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar tapes (i.e. same size and format) mostly labelled "Magnetic Tape". Presumably, they can also only be read by this one machine at Goddard? So, if that one remaining lab is closed, will the archive keep all the other tapes (which may or may not be interesting) and if so why? What would be the point if there is nothing to read them on?
I have to agree that aaisp are fantastic. They are noticably more expensive than other UK ISPs, but their level of technical support is excellent. Being able to phone up with some complex problem about DNS and not being asked "What's DNS? Have you tried rebooting?" is worth every penny.
Check their newsgroup at uk.net.providers.aaisp for an idea of the level of technical discussion you can get from their support people.
As I see it, it is not ATI and Nvidea who have finished off SGI, but rather all those companies making Beowulf clusters. Most people still seem to think that SGI is a computer graphics company, but so far as I can see, that is quite a small part of their business these days.
From where I sit, SGI are primarily a high performance computing company, hence their Altix range. The problem is that 95% of HPC problems run just fine on a cluster, and there just isn't enough business in the 5% of us who's problems realy need a single-system-image machine.
In the UK, for at least a year or so... it's been illegal to operate any phone while driving
True, but has it had any effect? I admit to not having done a scientific test, but I still see plenty of people driving with a cellphone clamped to one ear. I haven't noticed any reduction since the ban came into force.
I suspect that it is much like other popular driving offences such as speeding, not wearing a seat belt or covering up your rear number plate with bicycles. Its clearly illegal and very easy to spot people doing it, but most of the time the police can't be bothered. Folks figure out that the chances of being caught are practically zero and the law has very little effect.
Soon after the ban came into force, my father saw a chap using a mobile phone as he drove a refuse truck past a police station. He went in and reported it and the officer behind the desk expressed very little interest. His basic position was, I didn't see him do it, so what am I supposed to do. Clearly, he could have gone and stopped the vehicle. The driver might still have been on the phone, and if not he could have asked for a check on the records for that phone. But, he couldn't be bothered. Do I deduce from the Slashdot fuss that cops in the USA are more efficient than this?
Similarly, all the plans and prototypes for the TSR-2 were destroyed.
There are two prototypes of the TSR-2 at museums in the UK. I saw the one at Duxford before it was put into temporary storage, and it realy is most impressive.
Fossil Frank Gehry Watch - I saw that, but it doesn't do what I want (perhaps nothing does). I want "Half past eleven", not "half past 11" and "Eight to ten", not "8 til 10".
Mr.Gadget 1GB USB 2.0 Executive Watch - How could I have made it clearer in my comment that I am looking for a DIGITAL watch, not an ANALOGUE one?
I accept that I am probably asking for things for which there is no market other than me. If so, then fair enough. I am just checking that I haven't missed my dream watch.
A USB drive digital watch? Note, I don't want a watch that lets me upload my address book via USB, I want a 256MB (or similar) USB drive inside a digital watch. Lots of people make this sort of thing with an analogue display, but I can't find a digital one.
Alternatively, how about a "Fuzzy Watch". I always have my KDE clock set to fuzzy mode where it displays the time in words (e.g. "Quarter past eleven"). Can I get the same thing in a watch? I have seen some which display numbers as words (e.g. "Eleven Fifteen"), but I would prefer one which uses words like "past", "quarter" etc.
Where can I get a projector or monitor with 8MP resolution to match one of these 8MP digital SLRs that folks keep trying to sell me, and how much will it cost?
Folks keep telling me how great digital SLRs are, and they show me 8x10 prints from their 8MP cameras and I say "That's very nice, but how much does an 8 mega pixel projector cost?". Then they go a bit quiet and mutter about prints being more convenient. Well, maybe they are, but I shoot Kodachrome 64 on my Contax SLR and project it via a slide projector with a top quality lens in it. I don't get it all set up in the living room very often, but when I do the results are spectacular. Well, I suppose I could replace my screen with a HDTV telly, but I would still only get 2MP and it wouldn't be as big as my projector screen. I see that Apple will sell me a monitor with a resolution of about 4MP (still only half way there) for a mere $2500 (ouch!).
If I sit around and wait for a while, is someone going to offer me a way of seeing at least 8MP images on a big screen at an affordable price or have the manufacturers concluded that people only want prints these days?
A hybrid can provide heat to the passengers without an electric heater which might be too much strain on a vehicle's battery?
I believe that most battery powered vehicles include a small petrol powered heater. Certainly back when I looked at the feasability of converting an old car to electric it was one of the components which I would need to buy. It's not a big environmental hit to have such a thing, since if you convert petrol directly to heat you get an awful lot of warmth per gallon and anyway you only need it on in the Winter.
Excuse my ignorance of US law, but if the RIAA tries again against a child represented by a Guardian Ad Litem and it wins then who pays the damages? Is the parent then liable anyway? Presumably the child has no significant assets? Can a child be declared bankrupt and what would it mean if they were? Do they have to pay the damages once they are old enough to do so? Have there been any cases before the advent of the internet where minors have been sued by corporate entities and if so, what happened?
Surely the costs of running this consultation exercise are going to be greater than the extra costs of checking their web site against a couple of other browsers. Presumably they will already test it against more than one version of IE.
Perhaps I am missing something, but I gather that the proposed web site will be a simple form allowing you to enter details of copyrighted works. That sounds much simpler than my bank's online banking system and that works just fine on Firefox, Konqueror and Opera. In summary, the whole exercise seems entirely pointless.
but do they really offer anything new or different?
Yes! They are the only people offering realy huge machines with a flat memory space. Where I work, we have problems which need several terrabytes of RAM (no, we can't use swap space) and dozens of processors. For most people that means a large cluster. Sadly, there are a small number of algorithms, like mine, which can't be efficiently manipulated onto a cluster because even with something like myrinet the communications latency is too great. For problems of that sort, SGI are pretty much the only game in town.
Finally, please stop associating SGI with 3D graphics. These days that it only a small part of their business.
Here in the UK this whole "Let's switch off an entire television service" thing has happened once before, but practically no-one remembers. Why? Because at the time no-one noticed.
About 20 years ago, the government switched off the old 405 line, VHF B&W only TV service here in the UK (it used those antennas shaped like a big 'H'). But, unlike this time, outside of the specialist press there was no mention of it at all. This was because there was a lot less rush. By the time of the switchoff, it had not been possible to buy a VHF television for perhaps 20 years and it was estimated that there were less than 1000 sets still in use in the entire country.
There is nothing stopping them doing the same thing again. They could mandate that only digital TV's can be sold from now on and then just wait, but they are too gready for the cash from the sale of the frequencies.
Canadian courts have no jurisdiction outside of Canada's borders
Probably true.
Just as US courts have no pull inside of Canada's borders.
Are you sure about this? If circumstances were reversed and the USA asked the Canadian government to hand the blogger over, what would happen?
If the blogger was in the UK it would be simple. We have a shiny new extradition treaty with the US under which all the US government has to do is fill the forms in properly and turn up in court to say what a bad boy the defendant has been. They do not have to produce any evidence at all! Of course, if the UK wants to extradite an American then things are rather different. We have to produce convincing evidence that there is a case to answer. Why would the British government sign a treaty giving Americans significantly more rights than its own citizens? Search me!
Now, I seem to recall a recent Slashdot article about an Australian being deported to the USA with a similar lack of proper procedure. Has the Canadian government managed to hold out against signing its citizens rights away in this fashion?
Also, a range of 100 miles is still very small. 200 miles is really the sweet spot
Perhaps it is different in America, but here in the UK many families have two cars and I would contend that most of those could manage just fine if one of them was an electric vehicle with a range of 100 miles and the other was a conventional petrol one.
It would be a rare day that both adults would want to drive more than 100 miles. I accept that it would happen, but if it was sufficiently unusual one could either rent a car for the day or take the train.
Well, what is wrong with that? Most people could exist quite happily with a 1 GHz P3, but because their machines are crammed with Adware, they have to keep buying new very fast machines. This means that the 3 GHz P4s that we sad geeks want are cheaper because more of them are made.
I am convinced that having plenty of stupid people on the internet is a "Good Thing"(tm). Ok, there are down sides, such as their machines being taken over as spam relays, but look at some of the upsides:
(i) Cheaper computers (as discussed above).
(ii) So long as there are plenty of machines with little or no security, the crackers are kept busy and there is little incentive for them to try to break into tougher systems like mine.
(iii) If people were clever enough to block ads and popups then ad and popup merchants would have to invest energy in counter-measures and then I would have to upgrade my ad and popup blocking systems.
you *never* have to give fingerprints in the UK unless you've been caught breaking the law
Not strictly true. In the UK you can be made to give your fingerprints if you are arrested. That is not the same as being caught breaking the law, since plenty of innocent people get arrested. Now, once upon a time this didn't matter a great deal, since the police could only keep your prints if you were subsequently convicted and since most innocent people who are arrested are not convicted the odds were that your prints would be destroyed.
However, all that changed when Blair and his cronies got into power. First, (a few years ago) the law was changed so that your prints were kept if you were charged. Yes, that's right. You go to court, the jury says "Not guilty" and the police still keep your prints on file! When I was a lad, if you were found not guilty it meant that you hadn't done the crime. Now the government assumes that you did commit the crime, but they just can't prove it.
Many of us thought it couldn't get worse, but we didn't count on jackboot Blunket who has now allowed the police to keep the prints of anyone who is arrested. Since the police can arrest anyone they want for practically anything, they can now get and keep the prints of anyone they don't like the look of.
Of course, this is all a moot point since Blunket's proposed compulsary ID card scheme will use fingerprints. Now, when I first heard about this I assumed that they would record perhaps two or three fingers from each person like we do for the readers on some of the secure computers at work, but no, apparently the trials currently being run involve taking all ten prints. Funny that!
I see no reason why the drivers cannot be binary just like on Windows.
Well, for a start, when you say 'binary' I presume that you mean x86 binary. Not a lot of use on my Alpha. Yes, I know that practically all Linux desktops run on x86, but if you believe that it is OK to only support the majority then you can't complain about companies who only support Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely, only small users make use of Spamhaus via DNS? I always assumed that big ISPs and corporate customers will use their Datafeed service. If spamhaus.org goes offline, then surely all that would happen is that users' databases would stop being updated. I agree that this would cause an increase in spam, but only slowly as the data aged, not in one sudden spludge as would happen to those using the DNS service?
My current rate here in the UK is the equivalent of 18.5 c/kWh for the first 728 kWh in each quarter and 17.5 c/kWh thereafter. In addition, there is a standing charge of 29.8 c/day.
A few months ago I tried to attach my Mother-in-law (who lives overseas) to my Asterisk server. I bought a SIP analogue telephone adapter and went to visit. I spent at least 2 hours a day for 8 days trying to get it to work. I fiddled with every setting on the ATA and (via an SSH tunnel) loads of settings on my router and I never got the ATA or any SIP softphones to work. Finally, I tried an IAX2 softphone and it worked first time.
So, when I returned to the UK I bought an IAX2 phone for the same price as the ATA and sent it to Estonia. My Mother-in-law plugged it in and it worked first time. Now she and my wife chat for hours without it costing me a penny.
Conclusion: SIP works fine on a LAN (where I now use the above ATA), but if you have any NAT anywhere in the link then the pain of making SIP work isn't worth it when you can get IAX2 kit for the same price and it "Just Works".
1) Does this rule also apply in the physical world? Example: I walk into a small record store and buy what I genuinely believe is an original audio CD, but which is actually, unknown to me, a pirated copy. Have I committed a copyright infringement, and if not, why is it different from the download case?
2) What steps would a judge expect me to have taken to ensure that what appears to be a legal paid download is realy so? Would I have to have written to each artist, or their agent and enquired if the relevant site was providing legitimate downloads? Clearly, this is not a big problem whilst there are a small number of big download sites run by large corporations, but imagine if the industry expanded into hundreds of small companies, perhaps offering music from specialised genres (e.g. www.mandolin-mp3s.com). It would become a complete legal minefield. BTW, I do realise that the legal system doesn't care how completely inconvenient and impractical complying with the law becomes.
3) Suppose that I was sued for purchasing MP3s from what I believed was an entirely genuine site. Could I, assuming I had enough money, then attempt to recover the damaged by sueing the download site for fraud? false advertising? something else?
As before, I don't expect you to know what the answers would be here in the UK, but if you would care to comment on the US case then I am sure that many people would be most interested.
Thank you,
The reason that we are all asking these apparently dumb-ass questions is that we have heard to the contrary. Specifically, here in the UK, where the local equivalent of the RIAA the BPI are suing allofmp3.com and their chief council said in evidence to parliament "AllofMP3.com is illegal under UK law and it is illegal to download from it". Now, she did go on to say that they wouldn't be prosecuting users, but of course that could always change.
Now, you are a US lawyer and can't be expected to understand UK law, but you might be able to speculate whether it would be illegal to download from allofmp3.com in the US.
(i) Offered to call the "customer" back on the number in question.
(ii) Offered to post the information to the customer's home address.
I am reasonable sure that their actions would be illegal under UK data protection laws, although there is of course the usual question of whether anyone could afford to sue them. We do have a commissioner who is in principle responsible for enforcing data protection laws, but they are a toothless tiger who seem primarily interested in educating organisations in the hope that they won't do it again!
Perhaps I misunderstood the PDF, but it appears that although the actual Apollo 11 tapes are missing, the National Archives have hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar tapes (i.e. same size and format) mostly labelled "Magnetic Tape". Presumably, they can also only be read by this one machine at Goddard? So, if that one remaining lab is closed, will the archive keep all the other tapes (which may or may not be interesting) and if so why? What would be the point if there is nothing to read them on?
Check their newsgroup at uk.net.providers.aaisp for an idea of the level of technical discussion you can get from their support people.
Anyway, I am a happy customer (YMMV)
From where I sit, SGI are primarily a high performance computing company, hence their Altix range. The problem is that 95% of HPC problems run just fine on a cluster, and there just isn't enough business in the 5% of us who's problems realy need a single-system-image machine.
True, but has it had any effect? I admit to not having done a scientific test, but I still see plenty of people driving with a cellphone clamped to one ear. I haven't noticed any reduction since the ban came into force.
I suspect that it is much like other popular driving offences such as speeding, not wearing a seat belt or covering up your rear number plate with bicycles. Its clearly illegal and very easy to spot people doing it, but most of the time the police can't be bothered. Folks figure out that the chances of being caught are practically zero and the law has very little effect.
Soon after the ban came into force, my father saw a chap using a mobile phone as he drove a refuse truck past a police station. He went in and reported it and the officer behind the desk expressed very little interest. His basic position was, I didn't see him do it, so what am I supposed to do. Clearly, he could have gone and stopped the vehicle. The driver might still have been on the phone, and if not he could have asked for a check on the records for that phone. But, he couldn't be bothered. Do I deduce from the Slashdot fuss that cops in the USA are more efficient than this?
There are two prototypes of the TSR-2 at museums in the UK. I saw the one at Duxford before it was put into temporary storage, and it realy is most impressive.
Fossil Frank Gehry Watch - I saw that, but it doesn't do what I want (perhaps nothing does). I want "Half past eleven", not "half past 11" and "Eight to ten", not "8 til 10".
Mr.Gadget 1GB USB 2.0 Executive Watch - How could I have made it clearer in my comment that I am looking for a DIGITAL watch, not an ANALOGUE one?
I accept that I am probably asking for things for which there is no market other than me. If so, then fair enough. I am just checking that I haven't missed my dream watch.
Alternatively, how about a "Fuzzy Watch". I always have my KDE clock set to fuzzy mode where it displays the time in words (e.g. "Quarter past eleven"). Can I get the same thing in a watch? I have seen some which display numbers as words (e.g. "Eleven Fifteen"), but I would prefer one which uses words like "past", "quarter" etc.
Folks keep telling me how great digital SLRs are, and they show me 8x10 prints from their 8MP cameras and I say "That's very nice, but how much does an 8 mega pixel projector cost?". Then they go a bit quiet and mutter about prints being more convenient. Well, maybe they are, but I shoot Kodachrome 64 on my Contax SLR and project it via a slide projector with a top quality lens in it. I don't get it all set up in the living room very often, but when I do the results are spectacular. Well, I suppose I could replace my screen with a HDTV telly, but I would still only get 2MP and it wouldn't be as big as my projector screen. I see that Apple will sell me a monitor with a resolution of about 4MP (still only half way there) for a mere $2500 (ouch!).
If I sit around and wait for a while, is someone going to offer me a way of seeing at least 8MP images on a big screen at an affordable price or have the manufacturers concluded that people only want prints these days?
I believe that most battery powered vehicles include a small petrol powered heater. Certainly back when I looked at the feasability of converting an old car to electric it was one of the components which I would need to buy. It's not a big environmental hit to have such a thing, since if you convert petrol directly to heat you get an awful lot of warmth per gallon and anyway you only need it on in the Winter.
Excuse my ignorance of US law, but if the RIAA tries again against a child represented by a Guardian Ad Litem and it wins then who pays the damages? Is the parent then liable anyway? Presumably the child has no significant assets? Can a child be declared bankrupt and what would it mean if they were? Do they have to pay the damages once they are old enough to do so? Have there been any cases before the advent of the internet where minors have been sued by corporate entities and if so, what happened?
Perhaps I am missing something, but I gather that the proposed web site will be a simple form allowing you to enter details of copyrighted works. That sounds much simpler than my bank's online banking system and that works just fine on Firefox, Konqueror and Opera. In summary, the whole exercise seems entirely pointless.
Yes! They are the only people offering realy huge machines with a flat memory space. Where I work, we have problems which need several terrabytes of RAM (no, we can't use swap space) and dozens of processors. For most people that means a large cluster. Sadly, there are a small number of algorithms, like mine, which can't be efficiently manipulated onto a cluster because even with something like myrinet the communications latency is too great. For problems of that sort, SGI are pretty much the only game in town.
Finally, please stop associating SGI with 3D graphics. These days that it only a small part of their business.
Well, that was a quick approximation. I am fairly sure that I was at University at the time, so it was between 1984 and 1988.
About 20 years ago, the government switched off the old 405 line, VHF B&W only TV service here in the UK (it used those antennas shaped like a big 'H'). But, unlike this time, outside of the specialist press there was no mention of it at all. This was because there was a lot less rush. By the time of the switchoff, it had not been possible to buy a VHF television for perhaps 20 years and it was estimated that there were less than 1000 sets still in use in the entire country.
There is nothing stopping them doing the same thing again. They could mandate that only digital TV's can be sold from now on and then just wait, but they are too gready for the cash from the sale of the frequencies.
Probably true.
Just as US courts have no pull inside of Canada's borders.
Are you sure about this? If circumstances were reversed and the USA asked the Canadian government to hand the blogger over, what would happen?
If the blogger was in the UK it would be simple. We have a shiny new extradition treaty with the US under which all the US government has to do is fill the forms in properly and turn up in court to say what a bad boy the defendant has been. They do not have to produce any evidence at all! Of course, if the UK wants to extradite an American then things are rather different. We have to produce convincing evidence that there is a case to answer. Why would the British government sign a treaty giving Americans significantly more rights than its own citizens? Search me!
Now, I seem to recall a recent Slashdot article about an Australian being deported to the USA with a similar lack of proper procedure. Has the Canadian government managed to hold out against signing its citizens rights away in this fashion?
Perhaps it is different in America, but here in the UK many families have two cars and I would contend that most of those could manage just fine if one of them was an electric vehicle with a range of 100 miles and the other was a conventional petrol one.
It would be a rare day that both adults would want to drive more than 100 miles. I accept that it would happen, but if it was sufficiently unusual one could either rent a car for the day or take the train.
Well, what is wrong with that? Most people could exist quite happily with a 1 GHz P3, but because their machines are crammed with Adware, they have to keep buying new very fast machines. This means that the 3 GHz P4s that we sad geeks want are cheaper because more of them are made.
I am convinced that having plenty of stupid people on the internet is a "Good Thing"(tm). Ok, there are down sides, such as their machines being taken over as spam relays, but look at some of the upsides:
(i) Cheaper computers (as discussed above).
(ii) So long as there are plenty of machines with little or no security, the crackers are kept busy and there is little incentive for them to try to break into tougher systems like mine.
(iii) If people were clever enough to block ads and popups then ad and popup merchants would have to invest energy in counter-measures and then I would have to upgrade my ad and popup blocking systems.
Not strictly true. In the UK you can be made to give your fingerprints if you are arrested. That is not the same as being caught breaking the law, since plenty of innocent people get arrested. Now, once upon a time this didn't matter a great deal, since the police could only keep your prints if you were subsequently convicted and since most innocent people who are arrested are not convicted the odds were that your prints would be destroyed.
However, all that changed when Blair and his cronies got into power. First, (a few years ago) the law was changed so that your prints were kept if you were charged. Yes, that's right. You go to court, the jury says "Not guilty" and the police still keep your prints on file! When I was a lad, if you were found not guilty it meant that you hadn't done the crime. Now the government assumes that you did commit the crime, but they just can't prove it.
Many of us thought it couldn't get worse, but we didn't count on jackboot Blunket who has now allowed the police to keep the prints of anyone who is arrested. Since the police can arrest anyone they want for practically anything, they can now get and keep the prints of anyone they don't like the look of.
Of course, this is all a moot point since Blunket's proposed compulsary ID card scheme will use fingerprints. Now, when I first heard about this I assumed that they would record perhaps two or three fingers from each person like we do for the readers on some of the secure computers at work, but no, apparently the trials currently being run involve taking all ten prints. Funny that!
Well, for a start, when you say 'binary' I presume that you mean x86 binary. Not a lot of use on my Alpha. Yes, I know that practically all Linux desktops run on x86, but if you believe that it is OK to only support the majority then you can't complain about companies who only support Windows.