These 'privacy statements' sound like the requirement that the EU's Directive on Data Protection (enacted under UK law as the Data Protection Act) imposes on organisations, governmental, corporate or otherwise, to have a publically available privacy statement (amongst other items, such as rapid access to all information held by an organisation on request for a 'reasonable' handling fee, and so on).
aren't a lot of audiofiles still totally in love with vinyl?
Indeed - this 'love' of vinyl is due to the arguably more pleasent mid-range response and smoothness in the sound produced (same reason as using valve-based amps). It may sound 'warmer', but it's not right, and, IMHO, it's all a load of crock. I'll stick with my lust for Linn, or, better, Merridian kit...;-)
I just wash my keyboard every month or so - unscrew it (or unclip, depending on the case), remove electronics and membrane, place in bath tub or shower cubical, switch water supply to hot and leave for a few minutes. Then shake it about a bit whilst wrapped in a towel, and reassemble. It's worked for me for the last 4 years or so...
Ah, yes, but there's a whole world of difference psychologically between paying the television licence fee (approx 120UKP/170USD p.a., IIRC) and a 'top up' fee to recieve extra channels (i.e., the 5 free-to-air analogue, and about 15 extra free-to-air digital terrestrial broadcasts). About 40% (according to The Economist) of the UK's population gets pay-for (digital) TV, through satellite (Sky), cable (NTL and Telewest) or terrestrial (ITV/OnDigital); the government is going to auction the analogue TV bandwidth in 2006, so is hoping everyone will move off analogue reception quickly, or it will have to pay for everyone to get a digital set-top-box or television.
Oh, and the licence fee money isn't collected by the government, but by people contracted out by the BBC (currently Consignia/the Post Office/what-ever-name-change-they've-had-this-week ).
... that this is an overblown response over a mistake, thinking that the crash reports might be sending spyware-like data - e.g. which windows are open right now and their URIs, etc? And, umm, the IPs would be part of that TCP/IP connection.
Well, it's worth considering. But then, I use Mozilla nightlies, so I'm submitting pretty often...
Indeed - the RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) of 2000 has sections under which one can be imprisoned on failing to 'hand over' keys to the authorities on request; the burden of proof of lack of ability to hand over said keys lies with the defendent; to quote:
53 (1) A person to whom a section 49 notice has been given is guilty of an offence if he knowingly fails, in accordance with the notice, to make the disclosure required by virtue of the giving of the notice. (2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.[emphasis mine]
The act also makes it an offence to give notice that one has been given notice to divulge a key.
However, it should be noted that although this act came in to force in 2000, the code of conduct has yet to be released by the HO (presumably because they're having difficulty working out when to release it so as to best avoid a fuss in the media; maybe they should consider hiring Jo Moore), so no-one will have been prosecuted under this act yet (assumedly).
Oh, BTW, IANAL and all that #include stddsclmr etc...
Umm, yes. Actually, there was a great big huge flaw in this - the lamps had harmonics at 60Hx (well, duh), and apparently the random genereation was based on the change in the picture at a particular point and another a time after it... Oh well, never mind, back to the this-mainframe-has-a-cosmic-ray-detector ideas...
From what I can remeber of the reporting at the time this was 'uncovered', (i.e. under the 30 year rule of the FOIA it was de-classified), the people who came up with the idea were ordered to stop playing around with such off-topic ideas and get back to 'serious' work (presumably breaking the Russian's latest code, or whatever).ICBR, though.
I was under the impression that it was the commonly held theory among anthropologists et al. that the advent of civilisation in a species would bring about the halting of evolution for said species, as the society acts to defend all members thereof, not just the 'fittest' (note how eugenics is regarded as a most disgusting topic for many/most, for example). Or is this something that I'm just completely wrong on?:-)
The populations of most 'Western' countries, including all of North-West Europe and, IIRC, Australia, are either shrinking, or will do very soon. Indeed, Germany's population has been shrinking at a rate of about 0.3% for the past decade, after immigration is taken in to account. Combined with the aging of the population, the tax burden upon the workers of the elderly and infirm (pensions, etc.) is going to rise at a very high rate. Thus there is, and will contine to be, an increase in the demand for workers. Economic migrants can and do fill this gap well, and often work harder than those around them, determined to be sucessful in their new country of origin - 2nd generation immigrants make up a (proportionally) large number of the students at university in the UK, for example. This gives rise to a high level of xenophobia in the (ignorant) people who feel that 'their' jobs (which they would not have taken anyway) are being 'stolen' from them. Thus, if anything, those that complain should be exiled from their country, as they do less for their country than immigrants would for their intended new home. Economic immigration, far from being the scourge of modern government, is a great way of increasing the overall quality of life, and increasing GDP/capita, etc.
All this is, of course, completely off-topic - the Australian government is breaking international law by not allowing potential refugees into their country (and, incidentally, violating the human rights[1] of those claiming asylum, in their treatment of them), whether Australia is the 'first port of call' or not.
Just ask any UK citizen which system they think is better, Australia's or their own.
Well, as a UK citizen, I would say that my country's system is superior, both morally and economically as well as legally, but that it is still not particularly 'good'. Australia has an average population density of about 2 people per square kilometre; the UK has an average of about 260, and the Netherlands has an average of approximately 370. Who would you think has the greatest ability to 'absorb' immigrants? Who would you think had the best immigration system?
[1] - Human rights, such as the right to life, are unwaivable under any circumstances (yes, this means that the US, along with Iraq, Iran, China and Korea, etc., breaks international law by executing people for their civilian crimes[2][3]). [2] - Yes, I am aware that other 'Western' countries violate these laws, such as the UK (trespassing on the royal docks, defacing the image of the current Monarch, and other acts of High Treason are potentially punnishable by death), and do submit that it is somewhat [3] - The term 'civilian crimes' means any crime that has not (individually) been decided by an international, impartial court to be an act of war.
IDG article is apparently original source
on
No Solaris 9 for x86
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Found here. But is this good, encouraging the curious to move to free OSes when exploring beyond Windows, or bad, removing a great way of finding out about an OS that is easier to convince your boss to have installed?
... is that the site is no longer an internal government one (i.e., one handled by the CCTA), but has been contracted out to the combined developers (such is said in the FAQ in the site, wherever that is), and is now hosted on the UK branch of PIPEX, sorry, UUNET. This can be seen on this ppage. All CCTA sites are still hosted on *NIX systems, as you can see.
Indeed, B&O and Bose are more 'life-style'-ed than engineered (that's not to say they're not good, just that they also have lots of marketing and branding attached to them), though I'm sure quite a few would object to B&O being placed at 'only' parity to Bose:-). And, W.R.T. Meridian, they're very, or at least quite , cheap, for the quality you get from them. Mind you, when I can afford 0.12MUKP for a set of speakers (OK, OK, and amplifiers, as they're powered), I'll be happy...
Quite honestly, the quality of Bose speakers are truly overated; the sound is good, but it's not that good. Mind you, I do have a Bose CD-Wave-Radio:-)
... when you can get the B&O BeoSound Century, which is far nicer? Of course, if you want a good stereo, rather than an aethetically pleasing one, you wouldn't get one that was wall-mounted (perhaps one from these people?), but B&O's products are quite good in terms of audio quality, given their form factor.
IANAL, but, AFAIAA, there is no such thing as the phrase 'in confidence' in the U.K. legal system WRT childen; if a child tells someone something, they are legally bound to tell the police if it is of a certain type of severity (abuse, etc.) and they cannot technically offer to withhold information from the police without infringing the law (even if they don't, as it would then be misleading...). I'm not entirely sure, but priests of the (Anglican) Church may be exempt from this.
IIRC, airships are much cheaper per kilo than other aircraft, so surely they would be more suitable for slinging great big pneumatic guns on if you're going for the ultimate cheap solution? Of course, airships are quite slow, but they can carry heavy loads - e.g. the CargoLifter, mentioned here.
Of course, a space-lift would be both much cooler, and much cheaper (ISTR figures of $210 per human for an up-trip, or $40 for a round trip, as on the way down your delta-GPE could be converted back into electricity; presumably this is ignoring R&D and build costs). NASA was mumbling about this about a year ago, but surely such a project would cost billions (and with the US governmental system, it probably won't happen unless a forthcoming, insightful (gasp!) President decides it's important for the future of the US, and can convert/convince a whole lot of people...
Oh dear. Evidently some people couldn't see that I was joking; for the record, I find the idea of Open Source laudable, and thoroughly approve of RMS' overall stance, though I think at times his hard-line views are somewhat, unfortunately, unworkable in the world arround us (a failing of the world, not RMS' views, indeed). Sorry for any confusion.
As stated earlier (search is down right now...), RMS would probably think this is a subvertion of the GNOME project - perhaps, that if it works, GNOME is failing (?). Something to consider...:-).
... well, sort-of - MyNapster is a Win32 combined gnutella client plus extra services, and does this (non-real time); indeed, IIRC, it uses graphing software licenced from AT&T labs or somesuch.
As an aside, unlike the US, the rest of the world has a-political civil servants...
and, as a result, far more bureaucracy since the civil service is immune from political control.
Nonsense; the civil service is there to objectively review all options, and present them to ministers. The ministers choose which option conflicts least with their outwards policy, and that they like most (or dislike least), and then the civil servants are sent off to implement it. Well, that's how it works in the UK and the EU, at least.
The Data Protection directive (which is law in all EU states, AFAIAA) already makes it illegal to store any identifying information about any citizen of a country of the EU outside the EU's borders, as well as requiring all companies to surrender all information they hold, with catagorisation, proper sourcing, and defense of ownership, about a person within a short time period for minimal charge; see The Register's coverage here and here for more info.
As an aside, unlike the US, the rest of the world has a-political civil servants; the European Commision is the civil service of the EU, as it were, and they form laws, not pass them (that is done by the proportional-representation-wise-elected European Parliment).
Slashdot Mirror
... published on Thursday is this one. Not much more information, though.
These 'privacy statements' sound like the requirement that the EU's Directive on Data Protection (enacted under UK law as the Data Protection Act) imposes on organisations, governmental, corporate or otherwise, to have a publically available privacy statement (amongst other items, such as rapid access to all information held by an organisation on request for a 'reasonable' handling fee, and so on).
aren't a lot of audiofiles still totally in love with vinyl?
Indeed - this 'love' of vinyl is due to the arguably more pleasent mid-range response and smoothness in the sound produced (same reason as using valve-based amps). It may sound 'warmer', but it's not right, and, IMHO, it's all a load of crock. I'll stick with my lust for Linn, or, better, Merridian kit... ;-)
I just wash my keyboard every month or so - unscrew it (or unclip, depending on the case), remove electronics and membrane, place in bath tub or shower cubical, switch water supply to hot and leave for a few minutes. Then shake it about a bit whilst wrapped in a towel, and reassemble. It's worked for me for the last 4 years or so...
Ah, yes, but there's a whole world of difference psychologically between paying the television licence fee (approx 120UKP/170USD p.a., IIRC) and a 'top up' fee to recieve extra channels (i.e., the 5 free-to-air analogue, and about 15 extra free-to-air digital terrestrial broadcasts). About 40% (according to The Economist) of the UK's population gets pay-for (digital) TV, through satellite (Sky), cable (NTL and Telewest) or terrestrial (ITV/OnDigital); the government is going to auction the analogue TV bandwidth in 2006, so is hoping everyone will move off analogue reception quickly, or it will have to pay for everyone to get a digital set-top-box or television.
Oh, and the licence fee money isn't collected by the government, but by people contracted out by the BBC (currently Consignia/the Post Office/what-ever-name-change-they've-had-this-week ).
... that this is an overblown response over a mistake, thinking that the crash reports might be sending spyware-like data - e.g. which windows are open right now and their URIs, etc? And, umm, the IPs would be part of that TCP/IP connection.
Well, it's worth considering. But then, I use Mozilla nightlies, so I'm submitting pretty often...
Indeed - the RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) of 2000 has sections under which one can be imprisoned on failing to 'hand over' keys to the authorities on request; the burden of proof of lack of ability to hand over said keys lies with the defendent; to quote:
53
(1) A person to whom a section 49 notice has been given is guilty of an offence if he knowingly fails, in accordance with the notice, to make the disclosure required by virtue of the giving of the notice.
(2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.[emphasis mine]
The act also makes it an offence to give notice that one has been given notice to divulge a key.
However, it should be noted that although this act came in to force in 2000, the code of conduct has yet to be released by the HO (presumably because they're having difficulty working out when to release it so as to best avoid a fuss in the media; maybe they should consider hiring Jo Moore), so no-one will have been prosecuted under this act yet (assumedly).
Oh, BTW, IANAL and all that #include stddsclmr etc...
Umm, yes. Actually, there was a great big huge flaw in this - the lamps had harmonics at 60Hx (well, duh), and apparently the random genereation was based on the change in the picture at a particular point and another a time after it... Oh well, never mind, back to the this-mainframe-has-a-cosmic-ray-detector ideas...
From what I can remeber of the reporting at the time this was 'uncovered', (i.e. under the 30 year rule of the FOIA it was de-classified), the people who came up with the idea were ordered to stop playing around with such off-topic ideas and get back to 'serious' work (presumably breaking the Russian's latest code, or whatever).ICBR, though.
I was under the impression that it was the commonly held theory among anthropologists et al. that the advent of civilisation in a species would bring about the halting of evolution for said species, as the society acts to defend all members thereof, not just the 'fittest' (note how eugenics is regarded as a most disgusting topic for many/most, for example). Or is this something that I'm just completely wrong on? :-)
The populations of most 'Western' countries, including all of North-West Europe and, IIRC, Australia, are either shrinking, or will do very soon. Indeed, Germany's population has been shrinking at a rate of about 0.3% for the past decade, after immigration is taken in to account. Combined with the aging of the population, the tax burden upon the workers of the elderly and infirm (pensions, etc.) is going to rise at a very high rate. Thus there is, and will contine to be, an increase in the demand for workers. Economic migrants can and do fill this gap well, and often work harder than those around them, determined to be sucessful in their new country of origin - 2nd generation immigrants make up a (proportionally) large number of the students at university in the UK, for example. This gives rise to a high level of xenophobia in the (ignorant) people who feel that 'their' jobs (which they would not have taken anyway) are being 'stolen' from them. Thus, if anything, those that complain should be exiled from their country, as they do less for their country than immigrants would for their intended new home. Economic immigration, far from being the scourge of modern government, is a great way of increasing the overall quality of life, and increasing GDP/capita, etc.
All this is, of course, completely off-topic - the Australian government is breaking international law by not allowing potential refugees into their country (and, incidentally, violating the human rights[1] of those claiming asylum, in their treatment of them), whether Australia is the 'first port of call' or not.
Just ask any UK citizen which system they think is better, Australia's or their own.
Well, as a UK citizen, I would say that my country's system is superior, both morally and economically as well as legally, but that it is still not particularly 'good'. Australia has an average population density of about 2 people per square kilometre; the UK has an average of about 260, and the Netherlands has an average of approximately 370. Who would you think has the greatest ability to 'absorb' immigrants? Who would you think had the best immigration system?
[1] - Human rights, such as the right to life, are unwaivable under any circumstances (yes, this means that the US, along with Iraq, Iran, China and Korea, etc., breaks international law by executing people for their civilian crimes[2][3]).
[2] - Yes, I am aware that other 'Western' countries violate these laws, such as the UK (trespassing on the royal docks, defacing the image of the current Monarch, and other acts of High Treason are potentially punnishable by death), and do submit that it is somewhat
[3] - The term 'civilian crimes' means any crime that has not (individually) been decided by an international, impartial court to be an act of war.
Found here. But is this good, encouraging the curious to move to free OSes when exploring beyond Windows, or bad, removing a great way of finding out about an OS that is easier to convince your boss to have installed?
... is that the site is no longer an internal government one (i.e., one handled by the CCTA), but has been contracted out to the combined developers (such is said in the FAQ in the site, wherever that is), and is now hosted on the UK branch of PIPEX, sorry, UUNET. This can be seen on this ppage. All CCTA sites are still hosted on *NIX systems, as you can see.
Indeed, B&O and Bose are more 'life-style'-ed than engineered (that's not to say they're not good, just that they also have lots of marketing and branding attached to them), though I'm sure quite a few would object to B&O being placed at 'only' parity to Bose :-). And, W.R.T. Meridian, they're very, or at least quite , cheap, for the quality you get from them. Mind you, when I can afford 0.12MUKP for a set of speakers (OK, OK, and amplifiers, as they're powered), I'll be happy...
Quite honestly, the quality of Bose speakers are truly overated; the sound is good, but it's not that good. Mind you, I do have a Bose CD-Wave-Radio :-)
... when you can get the B&O BeoSound Century, which is far nicer? Of course, if you want a good stereo, rather than an aethetically pleasing one, you wouldn't get one that was wall-mounted (perhaps one from these people?), but B&O's products are quite good in terms of audio quality, given their form factor.
IANAL, but, AFAIAA, there is no such thing as the phrase 'in confidence' in the U.K. legal system WRT childen; if a child tells someone something, they are legally bound to tell the police if it is of a certain type of severity (abuse, etc.) and they cannot technically offer to withhold information from the police without infringing the law (even if they don't, as it would then be misleading...). I'm not entirely sure, but priests of the (Anglican) Church may be exempt from this.
Yes, sorry, I meant English billions (i.e. units of 1e12 dollars).
IIRC, airships are much cheaper per kilo than other aircraft, so surely they would be more suitable for slinging great big pneumatic guns on if you're going for the ultimate cheap solution? Of course, airships are quite slow, but they can carry heavy loads - e.g. the CargoLifter, mentioned here.
Of course, a space-lift would be both much cooler, and much cheaper (ISTR figures of $210 per human for an up-trip, or $40 for a round trip, as on the way down your delta-GPE could be converted back into electricity; presumably this is ignoring R&D and build costs). NASA was mumbling about this about a year ago, but surely such a project would cost billions (and with the US governmental system, it probably won't happen unless a forthcoming, insightful (gasp!) President decides it's important for the future of the US, and can convert/convince a whole lot of people...
Oh dear. Evidently some people couldn't see that I was joking; for the record, I find the idea of Open Source laudable, and thoroughly approve of RMS' overall stance, though I think at times his hard-line views are somewhat, unfortunately, unworkable in the world arround us (a failing of the world, not RMS' views, indeed). Sorry for any confusion.
Can I have my karma back now? ;-)
GNOME ported to cygwin as well
As stated earlier (search is down right now...), RMS would probably think this is a subvertion of the GNOME project - perhaps, that if it works, GNOME is failing (?). Something to consider... :-).
... avaliable from here and here.
... well, sort-of - MyNapster is a Win32 combined gnutella client plus extra services, and does this (non-real time); indeed, IIRC, it uses graphing software licenced from AT&T labs or somesuch.
As an aside, unlike the US, the rest of the world has a-political civil servants...
and, as a result, far more bureaucracy since the civil service is immune from political control.
Nonsense; the civil service is there to objectively review all options, and present them to ministers. The ministers choose which option conflicts least with their outwards policy, and that they like most (or dislike least), and then the civil servants are sent off to implement it. Well, that's how it works in the UK and the EU, at least.
The Data Protection directive (which is law in all EU states, AFAIAA) already makes it illegal to store any identifying information about any citizen of a country of the EU outside the EU's borders, as well as requiring all companies to surrender all information they hold, with catagorisation, proper sourcing, and defense of ownership, about a person within a short time period for minimal charge; see The Register's coverage here and here for more info.
As an aside, unlike the US, the rest of the world has a-political civil servants; the European Commision is the civil service of the EU, as it were, and they form laws, not pass them (that is done by the proportional-representation-wise-elected European Parliment).
HTH.