Yeah, I skimmed it too. The last paragraph was relevant, but the rest was junk.
MPs speaking in the house of commons are allowed 10 minutes to talk on pretty much whatever they like; it's traditional for an MP making his first speech to say a little about the debate at hand and then fill the rest of the time talking about his constituency. Most others don't fill their 10 minutes, although it looks like Ian Paisley went pretty close to his limit just afterwards. And got heckled by another MP suggesting he would go to hell...
Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion.
Actually, he supports it. Read the last paragraph of his speech, just before he gets cut off for exceeding his time limit.
His joke doesn't fit with his position, but since when do we expect MPs to be consistent?
What about white muslims? I can still make fun of Cat Stevens, right?
Of course you can. But what you shouldn't be able to do is make statements that incite violence towards him because of his religion. Of course you can't do that anyway, because there are other laws that cover incitement to violence, so those who are stopping to think about this are wondering what the point of any new legislation is.
While I initially believed your interpretation was correct, I've now read more of the debate and think you're wrong. He was just trying to be funny without considering the implications that could be drawn from his joke. After waffling about how great his constituency is, he went on to say:
Legislation such as this Bill is required to ensure that Britain not only safeguards but improves its record on protecting civil rights and liberties. It will also further cultural understanding and social integration. Against a backdrop of rising race-related crime in some areas--Northern Ireland in particular, if the figures published yesterday are to be believed--and the growth of far-right parties in the UK, it is difficult to present a coherent objection to the Bill. I am satisfied that, provided it is undertaken in a sensible, sensitive and effective manner, the implementation of the law envisaged by the Bill would not result in critics' fears being realised. Instead, it would complement existing legislation while assisting in the development of a culture of mutual respect and acceptance among all our many faiths and--
You miss the point. He's commenting on a proposed law that offers protection from religious hatred, but doesn't clearly define what can be considered a religion and what can't.
I like Java, but hate to keep all my eggs in the basket controlled by Sun Microsystem.
But Java isn't controlled by Sun, not really. There are plenty of open source implementations. As long as you don't mind working with what's essentially a slightly older, slightly incomplete version, you're fine.
are all butt-ugly with sluggish, slow and buggy interfaces. The promise of Java on the desktop is long since over. People realized that it just didn't deliver.
Many of us have realised that Java isn't the problem. AWT doesn't deliver. SWING, being based on AWT, also doesn't deliver. SWT, however, seems to be pretty good. My company has its own internal class library, similar in many ways to SWT, which also works well.
AWT is just too abstract -- the double layers of abstraction involved in every operation slow it down too far. Use Java without it, and you'll see a big difference.
The freedom problem is not a serious one in this case. There are free implementations of Java, the only problem is that they are not complete implementations of the latest version. It is likely that the BluRay spec will standardise on a single version of Java in a cut-down profile. As long as there isn't a constantly moving target to aim at it will be possible for free implementors to reach it.
Then there's the fact that it is slow when compared to most other languages which are used for designing large scale systems (C, C++, etc.).
The slowness (which, to be honest, is mostly associated with startup and is rarely a problem on embedded systems) is largely due to the fact that it is designed for cross-platform portability. This attribute is required by the application.
However, java is slow because of object allocation and deallocation
OK, Java can't allocate objects on the stack. Most applications these days don't do very much of that anyway -- stack based allocation is dangerous in many situations and is discouraged because of the danger that a pointer to an object may accidentally last beyond its lifetime.
The vast majority of applications written today also use either mark & sweep garbage collection (like Java) or reference counting (which is simpler but, according to most benchmarks, slower).
Frankly, I'm pretty confident that Java's approach is the right way in about 90% of all situations.
and arguably because of the immutability of objects.
Only Strings and Numbers are immutable. For applications that do a lot of work changing the contents of strings, StringBuffer is a perfectly acceptable alternative. And Numbers aren't used much at all.
Will this allow media companies that put flash intros on their websites to put them on DVD's? Yes? Then its a good bet that they'll do it.
They already can. OK, so the capability of DVD players' interactive menus isn't quite up to the same standard as flash, but it can do everything that 99% of flash intros on web sites can do: play an animation and then put a button up that you have to press before you can get to the content.
This is a totally different case that exposes an operative, that would be like publishing undercover cops names and pictures while they are undercover.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that *exactly* what got Indymedia's servers confiscated the first time around?
Last I checked it was a penny for your thoughts, at most just two cents, now you're telling me you want to charge a DOLLAR!?
Well, yes, but you'll understand that we haven't raised the price of thoughts for nearly 200 years now (2c is the price of a thought at the moment, a penny is merely their redemption value after use -- thought recycling is important for the environment). This rise is merely in line with inflation, and you've benefited from cheap thoughts in the meantime.
99.9% of blogs are crap by people who can't bother to code an web page.
Well, yes. But Sturgeon's Law is that 99% of everything is crap, so blogs are only a tenth as likely to be any good. And given how many of them there are, that means that probably most of the useful information on the internet is on one...
Seriously, though, there are good blogs and bad blogs. Find the right blogs and you've got a lot of very interesting reading ahead of you.
I'm not sure what causes the difference, but some blogs get lots of comment spam, others get next to none. One that I read seems to get about 5 or 10 per week; another, like yours, almost none. No idea what the difference is (except perhaps that the former is what I'd call a "better known" blog: not one of the really well known ones like, say, boing-boing, but one that a large proportion of blog readers familiar with its specialist subject matter would have heard of).
From what I've worked out myself, what you have there is a pretty good summary, except:
# Later on the 21st, BIM inform police via their solicitor that they will not voluntarily hand over and information. (NB: for non-Brits, a solicitor is a type of lawyer.) BIM also inform Indymedia UK at this point, and contact Liberty
My understanding is that at this point they informed the police that they *didn't have the information*, so couldn't hand it over.
Yesterday, 27th June, police visit the home of the BIM member who hosted the server with a search warrant, and seize the BIM server and the individual's own computer, and arrest the BIM member.
There's also some doubt over whether or not he was arrested -- the account I saw said he was simply "helping with enquiries" (which probably means he *would* be arrested if he refused to help, but hasn't been yet).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but just read this one. They couldn't make this shit up.
Yeah, I skimmed it too. The last paragraph was relevant, but the rest was junk.
MPs speaking in the house of commons are allowed 10 minutes to talk on pretty much whatever they like; it's traditional for an MP making his first speech to say a little about the debate at hand and then fill the rest of the time talking about his constituency. Most others don't fill their 10 minutes, although it looks like Ian Paisley went pretty close to his limit just afterwards. And got heckled by another MP suggesting he would go to hell...
Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion.
Actually, he supports it. Read the last paragraph of his speech, just before he gets cut off for exceeding his time limit.
His joke doesn't fit with his position, but since when do we expect MPs to be consistent?
What about white muslims? I can still make fun of Cat Stevens, right?
Of course you can. But what you shouldn't be able to do is make statements that incite violence towards him because of his religion. Of course you can't do that anyway, because there are other laws that cover incitement to violence, so those who are stopping to think about this are wondering what the point of any new legislation is.
No, and no. His constituency is Cumbrian, and Cambrian predates dinosaurs by quite a bit.
While I initially believed your interpretation was correct, I've now read more of the debate and think you're wrong. He was just trying to be funny without considering the implications that could be drawn from his joke. After waffling about how great his constituency is, he went on to say:
Legislation such as this Bill is required to ensure that Britain not only safeguards but improves its record on protecting civil rights and liberties. It will also further cultural understanding and social integration. Against a backdrop of rising race-related crime in some areas--Northern Ireland in particular, if the figures published yesterday are to be believed--and the growth of far-right parties in the UK, it is difficult to present a coherent objection to the Bill. I am satisfied that, provided it is undertaken in a sensible, sensitive and effective manner, the implementation of the law envisaged by the Bill would not result in critics' fears being realised. Instead, it would complement existing legislation while assisting in the development of a culture of mutual respect and acceptance among all our many faiths and--
But was interrupted at that point.
You miss the point. He's commenting on a proposed law that offers protection from religious hatred, but doesn't clearly define what can be considered a religion and what can't.
Informative?
What?? You really think the poster is a congressman?
So maybe our Jedi friend in parliament is really a Sith, and bush is...
...
Darth Ane?
Darth Sipid?
Darth Ept?
Darth Crediblystupid?
Darth Stitutionalizable?
Darth Natemoron?
Darth Cestuous?
Darth Fantile?
Darth Humane?
Darth Dictable?
How about switching it off and back on immediately after loading the disc? :)
You're looking for slashslash ...
Isn't slash slash stories where Hemos and CmdrTaco... well, I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
I like Java, but hate to keep all my eggs in the basket controlled by Sun Microsystem.
But Java isn't controlled by Sun, not really. There are plenty of open source implementations. As long as you don't mind working with what's essentially a slightly older, slightly incomplete version, you're fine.
I can run Eclipse on my Blu-Ray player!
Unfortunately, Eclipse isn't a "Pure" Java app, so probably not. Azureus, however...
Infact, it would be possible right now to modify Jython to emit Java bytecode, which then could be compiled by the JIT.
I think you'll find it already does.
Does your player start playing immediately when you put a disc in? What happens if you press Menu before it starts playing?
Azureus,
LimeWire,
Neo Office
are all butt-ugly with sluggish, slow and buggy interfaces. The promise of Java on the desktop is long since over. People realized that it just didn't deliver.
Many of us have realised that Java isn't the problem. AWT doesn't deliver. SWING, being based on AWT, also doesn't deliver. SWT, however, seems to be pretty good. My company has its own internal class library, similar in many ways to SWT, which also works well.
AWT is just too abstract -- the double layers of abstraction involved in every operation slow it down too far. Use Java without it, and you'll see a big difference.
The freedom problem is not a serious one in this case. There are free implementations of Java, the only problem is that they are not complete implementations of the latest version. It is likely that the BluRay spec will standardise on a single version of Java in a cut-down profile. As long as there isn't a constantly moving target to aim at it will be possible for free implementors to reach it.
Then there's the fact that it is slow when compared to most other languages which are used for designing large scale systems (C, C++, etc.).
The slowness (which, to be honest, is mostly associated with startup and is rarely a problem on embedded systems) is largely due to the fact that it is designed for cross-platform portability. This attribute is required by the application.
However, java is slow because of object allocation and deallocation
OK, Java can't allocate objects on the stack. Most applications these days don't do very much of that anyway -- stack based allocation is dangerous in many situations and is discouraged because of the danger that a pointer to an object may accidentally last beyond its lifetime.
The vast majority of applications written today also use either mark & sweep garbage collection (like Java) or reference counting (which is simpler but, according to most benchmarks, slower).
Frankly, I'm pretty confident that Java's approach is the right way in about 90% of all situations.
and arguably because of the immutability of objects.
Only Strings and Numbers are immutable. For applications that do a lot of work changing the contents of strings, StringBuffer is a perfectly acceptable alternative. And Numbers aren't used much at all.
Will this allow media companies that put flash intros on their websites to put them on DVD's? Yes? Then its a good bet that they'll do it.
They already can. OK, so the capability of DVD players' interactive menus isn't quite up to the same standard as flash, but it can do everything that 99% of flash intros on web sites can do: play an animation and then put a button up that you have to press before you can get to the content.
This is a totally different case that exposes an operative, that would be like publishing undercover cops names and pictures while they are undercover.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that *exactly* what got Indymedia's servers confiscated the first time around?
Last I checked it was a penny for your thoughts, at most just two cents, now you're telling me you want to charge a DOLLAR!?
Well, yes, but you'll understand that we haven't raised the price of thoughts for nearly 200 years now (2c is the price of a thought at the moment, a penny is merely their redemption value after use -- thought recycling is important for the environment). This rise is merely in line with inflation, and you've benefited from cheap thoughts in the meantime.
99.9% of blogs are crap by people who can't bother to code an web page.
Well, yes. But Sturgeon's Law is that 99% of everything is crap, so blogs are only a tenth as likely to be any good. And given how many of them there are, that means that probably most of the useful information on the internet is on one...
Seriously, though, there are good blogs and bad blogs. Find the right blogs and you've got a lot of very interesting reading ahead of you.
I'm not sure what causes the difference, but some blogs get lots of comment spam, others get next to none. One that I read seems to get about 5 or 10 per week; another, like yours, almost none. No idea what the difference is (except perhaps that the former is what I'd call a "better known" blog: not one of the really well known ones like, say, boing-boing, but one that a large proportion of blog readers familiar with its specialist subject matter would have heard of).
From what I've worked out myself, what you have there is a pretty good summary, except:
# Later on the 21st, BIM inform police via their solicitor that they will not voluntarily hand over and information. (NB: for non-Brits, a solicitor is a type of lawyer.) BIM also inform Indymedia UK at this point, and contact Liberty
My understanding is that at this point they informed the police that they *didn't have the information*, so couldn't hand it over.
Yesterday, 27th June, police visit the home of the BIM member who hosted the server with a search warrant, and seize the BIM server and the individual's own computer, and arrest the BIM member.
There's also some doubt over whether or not he was arrested -- the account I saw said he was simply "helping with enquiries" (which probably means he *would* be arrested if he refused to help, but hasn't been yet).
Wouldn't it be simpler to just put the logs on a RAM file system?
It'd be simpler just to not keep logs at all, or not to log an address as part of them. Which is what they claim they do anyway.