According to RFC2606, the following TLDs are reserved for testing and specifying invalid addresses. The will never be used for routable sites on the internet:.test.example.invalid.localhost
I tend to use the.invalid suffix when posting to usenet, as do a lot of other people it seems...
It's a pity that Firefox's software update function doesn't seem to actually do anything though. As I was running 0.9.1 on my Windows box, with the security problem I'd have expected it to install the 0.9.2 update, or offer it as an option when I pressed the update button. I've never seen it actually work on anyone's machine - is it just a piece of cruft left over from Mozilla? If not, why not hide the control until it's actually wired up to do something?!
I'd be interested to see what speed improvements would be found if say a Gentoo system was built using the Intel compiler (with an intel CPU, obviously;-) instead of GCC. Anyone tried created RPMs or a whole distro using another compiler?
It's interesting that we keep cutting NASA's budget, saying there's nothing possibly interesting out there...
I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that none of Bush's family work for NASA... Maybe if they were discovering new and interesting ways to blow planets up they might be in with a shot at extra funding...
I'm a long time Linux user, and did try Cygwin out a few months back, but the installer is horrible, and the default install unusable for X. This was following the docs on the download site, which are badly outdated/just plain wrong. Following the instructions leaves you with various missing executables , no window manager etc. The best I managed was starting X apps on the default X server, which,due to the lack of a WM, couldn't be moved around. Pretty useless... Yes, I could have gone back, and fished through the installer to check each and every package required to bring up KDE/twm or something, but why isn't it there in the first place?!
Luckily I don't need it myself, having a Linux workstation next to me here at home, and one at work; but I was trying it out with a view to installing it on a guys machine at work so he could use the gui config tools on our HPUX servers. As it stands though, I'll be recommending a commercial X server.
It's simple and cheap: Let the red-faced, screaming asshole pull up along side you, and start shaking up you can of Coke. As soon as s/he opens the side window to start yelling at you, pull the ring and throw it through into their car. I've found they find it difficult to follow you with a windscreen splattered with foam and a spinning can erupting all over the interior of their car;-)))
Funnily enough, I often get rendering errors on slashdot using Firefox 0.8 on Windows! The left column is stretched across the browser canvas, so the comments disappear off the right side. Sometime there's scrollbars, sometimes not. A reload usually cures it though. I've never seen it with Linux (that I can remember).
It may be due to me having some DNS entries on my local server that block some well-known banner sites, but I haven't investigated further...
In other news, Benson and Hedges plan to open their own crematorium franchise; "You go out smokin'!". Rumours also spread of plans by Mc Donalds to open a gymnasium adjacent to each grease restaurant, and Darl Mc Bride, Steve Balmer and Steve Jobs to co-author book entitled "Altruism: The secret to success!! (subtitled: Empowering your workforce with kindness)"...
Version 0.9 appears to have a bug with the location.replace function. It does not work with (for example) phpmyadmin, nor anything else that needs to use this function across frames.
I think the "man" command, and it's horrific interface (only "bettered" by the even worse "info" command) is a major stumbling block for newbies. It'd be cool to have a gui app that could merge all the man pages together into one help application, or even a better command-line app. Let's face it, "man" really *is* crap, isn't it?
Finally! We'll be able to scan through these ancient texts to find the original source of the hilarious "Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" comments, used in every single thread on Slashdot! How I laugh as I read it for the 14 millionth time!
Actually should be interesting material there: Jack the Ripper, John Christie, Mary Ann Cotton etc... Yep, 1800-1900 was a good century for the UK's mass murderers.
Isn't that in the same league as "placebo chemist" or "linux licence"?
Really, I'd only be impressed if they subsequently managed to burn through a few million dollars and go out of business within 24 hours - like most other dotcoms in the '90s;-)
If I'm driving along at 80mph on a near empty motorway at night, no danger to anyone, then why should I suddenly find myself compelled to fund the UK police force?
Because our government has decided that certain speeds shouldn't be exceeded in a public place for safety reasons. What if there's somebody crossing? After all, if it's "near empty", it's not too unreasonable to expect it to be safe to cross. What if [x], [y] or [z] happens? It's too easy to come up with examples of how going too fast can be unsafe, even if you think otherwise.
Where to start? First off, I can tell you don't actually drive, or if you do then you yourself are ignorant of the highway code. Any pedestrian wandering about on a motorway is probably insane, and (if they're lucky) will be hauled off by the police as soon as one of the motorway cameras spots them (it's illegal you know). Any pedestrian wandering around on a motorway at night is suicidal. Whether I hit them at 80, or a 44 tonne truck hits them at 56, they're going to end up as a bonnet mascot. My car can stop in a much shorter chunk of tarmac from 80, 90, even 100mph than the truck could from 56mph too.
And before you come back with "well, people could be on the motorway!!!"; yes, I'm sure there are nutcases strolling our trunk-roads. The only way we could keep everyone safe would be for nobody to drive, and everyone to walk about wrapped up in cotton wool like mummies on a bad bandage day.
What a boring life it would be if everyone though like you... No offence...
No, my argument is that people shouldn't wander through life blindly obeying every little whim our masters down in Whitehall come up with, when it's perfectly clear that it requires changes. It's funny that the same people sternly admonishing people in this thread are playing DVDs on Linux boxes (hey, I do too), which is another legal grey area. Maybe the same people who burn their own compilation CDs, or encode MP3s for their iPods. Maybe they should wag their fingers at themselves.
My point in the speed camera fiasco is that speed is rarely the cause of accidents. It's incompetent drivers, drunks, mothers arguing with their kids, fighting couples, boy racers, joyriders and other lowlife that are involved in the vast majority of accidents and deaths. If I'm driving along at 80mph on a near empty motorway at night, no danger to anyone, then why should I suddenly find myself compelled to fund the UK police force?
Nice halo you're wearing there, buddy. You sound like some sandle-wearing, tree-hugging, cardigan clad "walker" taking an opportunity to vent his frustrations. What you don't seem to understand as you trot through the bogs is that virtually everybody exceeds the speed limit at some time. Hell, a recent survey concluded that the *majority* of drivers actually exceed the motorway speed limit for prolonged periods. Rightly so; why should a car built in the 21st century, with ABS, ASR, high-performance suspension systems and braking systems driving along a road surface engineered in the las decade still have its speed governed by a law decided back in 196*, when it was all drum brakes, rack and pinion stearing, leaf springs and cracked concrete motorways?
Hell, I've managed almost 140mph along the motorway in my car and it handled great! That's twice our speed limit. I was fully in control, the engine, tyres and brakes didn't suffer and nobody was killed.
Now if you want to stomp about on the moors eating lentils and worrying the wildlife, then that's up to you; just don't lecture those of us who need to get from A to B without harrassment....
I'm really glad this new technology will soon be available to our brave boys in blue, valiantly battling crime on the streets of the UK.
</Sarcasm>
Honestly, aren't the motorists here persecuted enough? We have speed cameras popping up in every lucrative "accident blackspot" in the UK (I have a number near me that appeared on roads where I can honestly never recall hearing of any accidents, but the local school curiously has none outside the gates), we're getting taxed off of the roads despite the fact the public transport system would be ridiculed by any visitor from afghanistan. So what does our "brilliant" government do? Find a new way to bring in the much needed revenue from those crazy car drivers....
I can't see this going live until after the next election though - it would be political suicide after everything else Blair and co have done.
Yes, I'm aware of MS Office apps having parts preloaded after startup, but I was really taking about the time taken to reload an app that's already been opened (I admit I wasn't very clear though).
You speak of this preloading as though it's a bad thing; the thing is, no matter how it's achieved, the result is a better user experience. I generally go make a coffee while my machine is booting, or after I log in, so don't really care if the disk takes 2 minutes extra to stop spinning - it's worth it for a bit of snappiness.
I can't remember the number of times I've wondered if I actually didn't double-click the OO icon correctly as I wait for it to load (with the default FC2 Gnome GUI, there's no feedback that anything is happening).
What I propose is an extension of the idea of adding extra links for the most recently used apps to the start menu. Why not have the system preload the apps you use most frequently (the system itself tracking usage). I guess the apps might need extra code for this, so they could be loaded in a "faceless" mode, with a flag on the memory they were using so it could be freed if it was required for something else? For instance, I use the terminal, putty, Firefox, gedit, OO and a few other apps almost daily - I don't actually want them all open when I log in, but I DO want them to start up quickly when required.
I use FC2 on my desktop at work and I'm often irritated by the long startup times for many apps. Although the machine there isn't anything special (P4 2.8Ghz, 384MB Intel onboard video, 40GB HD) it's a bit much to wait around 15-20 seconds for OpenOffice to load (yes, I do increase the memory settings), or 8 seconds for Ethereal (gui). Once things are cached it's not too bad, but still nowhere close to say MS Word's sub-second load time on the same hardware. I was under the impression that FC2 prelinked newly installed apps too, which should help to avoid these long load times.
It doesn't seem confined to Linux either; I use w2k as my main desktop at home (also have an FC2 desktop and Gentoo on my server/router) and opensource apps seem to have the same long load times. I won't compare Firefox to Explorer for obvious reasons, but the delay is noticable. I use Agent (a closed source usenet client) and it loads in 2-3 seconds for me, in contrast to Thunderbird email client which easily takes 3 times as long. This is strange since Agent has much more data to load (subscribed to 15 newsgroups, some very busy and so have thousands of messages - including bodies on disk).
Once apps are loaded in Linux or Windows, they perform well; It's just a shame that the initial startup times are the first experience you have of an app, and if you're drumming your fingers, it's not creating a good first impression.
Steve fucking Balmer: a man whose wobbling, flabby, sweating body is a testament to corporate greed. A stomping, ignorant, braying ogre, his mind a gelatenous mass of scams and ploys to kill any project dead that could possibly take a few cents out of his yearly multi-million dollar paypacket, bulging with the gonads of the PC manufacturers that Balmer and co have castrated and fettered. No matter that other companies are striving to produce something they believe in; something to give people choice, something they love, enjoy, advance and improve. No, mr fucking Blobby Balmer and his toad army are there, all puffed throats and poisonous flesh, yellow eyes swivelling toward their neighbours; whipping out their tongues to lash the hearts right out of anything like competition.
Rob Enderle/Brown/other 15 minute blunder: The snivelling, penny-a-word grubs thrown tit-bits by MS, SCO and anyone else with more cash than concience. These drive-by gutter-dwellers grinding their axes embossed with the "Made in Seattle" logos down the handles, the blades dripping reason, logic and fact as they slash their route through the increasingly "thick" jungle of online journalism. These congealed sacks of walking puss write to generate violent reactions and advertising rewards - they deserve real violence and lawsuits. Each day for an Enderle is just another opportunity to burp up another stream of carefully targetted bile, hoping it'll be lapped up by all the wrong people.
I'm not all that surprised by this, after all as every schoolboy who's played "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" knows, Hitler's merry men came up with staggering advances in technology: Robotics, tesler weaponry, zombies and nubile female assassins in skin-tight leather catsuits. It's amazing that a single American soldier made out of pixels managed to single-handedly wipe out the entire German army really. I wouldn't have known about all of this without access to that game; it seems as though someone has managed to conceal these details about agent Blazkowitz's amazing adventures behind enemy lines until now. I certainly cannot find any mention of it in the library, and the old man in my local pub who's always telling us "youngans" about his own endevours seems very tight lipped/violent when the subject is raised...
Just a quick thanks for taking the time to give me some good pointers. I will be getting something second-hand at first, as I agree I'll no doubt end up on my arse a few times;-) Cheers...
I don't understand why the US legal system doesn't adopt one of our better ideas here in the UK: Make these "patent trolls" and other leeches pay the defendant's legal fees if they lose their cases in court instead of slithering off to drag someone else in front of a Judge. This would kill an industry built around threatening people with huge fees stone dead.
It would no longer matter if "Shithead inc." with their newly acquired patent on "sitting the right way around on a toilet" threatened a shelter for blind puppies with legal action, since Fido and pals could count on a less than gallant army of equally unscrupulous lawfims would work on no-win no-fee no-payout basis to defend them.
Mom and Pop stump-jumper could simply ignore the SCO's of the World and go about their business as the legal vultures and patent maggots preyed upon each-other.
Why the hell should any company (even Microsoft) have to pay out to defend themselves against these parasites?
Thanks, they're all useful things to consider. Just a few facts though, I'm over 30, have been driving for over 15 years (no claims) and currently drive a BMW, which isn't too cheap to run now;-) I get about 35mpg our of the BM, but I thought a bike would manage more than 35-40mpg (I don't intend to launch myself from every junction at mach 10;-)
You're bang on with the insurance, I have looked into it, and 1250 seems about the best I can get after passing the test. I live out in the country, so my commute is from the city of Norwich out to another town on a mostly straight, flat A-road. I do have about a 10 minute journey our of the city though.
I lived right next to Snetterton racetrack for 6 years, so I'm aware of the results of riding like a nutter on the country roads! I've seen plenty of riders in hedges, ditches and so on after they tried to emulate the action on the track...
Slashdot Mirror
According to RFC2606, the following TLDs are reserved for testing and specifying invalid addresses. The will never be used for routable sites on the internet: .test .example .invalid .localhost
.invalid suffix when posting to usenet, as do a lot of other people it seems...
I tend to use the
Erm, actually I did manage to find that all by myself some time ago - that is the feature I was talking about... ;-)
It's a pity that Firefox's software update function doesn't seem to actually do anything though. As I was running 0.9.1 on my Windows box, with the security problem I'd have expected it to install the 0.9.2 update, or offer it as an option when I pressed the update button. I've never seen it actually work on anyone's machine - is it just a piece of cruft left over from Mozilla? If not, why not hide the control until it's actually wired up to do something?!
I'd be interested to see what speed improvements would be found if say a Gentoo system was built using the Intel compiler (with an intel CPU, obviously ;-) instead of GCC. Anyone tried created RPMs or a whole distro using another compiler?
It's interesting that we keep cutting NASA's budget, saying there's nothing possibly interesting out there...
I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that none of Bush's family work for NASA... Maybe if they were discovering new and interesting ways to blow planets up they might be in with a shot at extra funding...
I'm a long time Linux user, and did try Cygwin out a few months back, but the installer is horrible, and the default install unusable for X. This was following the docs on the download site, which are badly outdated/just plain wrong. Following the instructions leaves you with various missing executables , no window manager etc. The best I managed was starting X apps on the default X server, which ,due to the lack of a WM, couldn't be moved around. Pretty useless... Yes, I could have gone back, and fished through the installer to check each and every package required to bring up KDE/twm or something, but why isn't it there in the first place?!
Luckily I don't need it myself, having a Linux workstation next to me here at home, and one at work; but I was trying it out with a view to installing it on a guys machine at work so he could use the gui config tools on our HPUX servers. As it stands though, I'll be recommending a commercial X server.
It's simple and cheap: Let the red-faced, screaming asshole pull up along side you, and start shaking up you can of Coke. As soon as s/he opens the side window to start yelling at you, pull the ring and throw it through into their car. I've found they find it difficult to follow you with a windscreen splattered with foam and a spinning can erupting all over the interior of their car ;-)))
Funnily enough, I often get rendering errors on slashdot using Firefox 0.8 on Windows! The left column is stretched across the browser canvas, so the comments disappear off the right side. Sometime there's scrollbars, sometimes not. A reload usually cures it though. I've never seen it with Linux (that I can remember).
It may be due to me having some DNS entries on my local server that block some well-known banner sites, but I haven't investigated further...
Car wash babes direct from the Ministry of Sound ;-)
(If it stops after the title screen, hit the "Next"/"FF" button in WMP)...
In other news, Benson and Hedges plan to open their own crematorium franchise; "You go out smokin'!". Rumours also spread of plans by Mc Donalds to open a gymnasium adjacent to each grease restaurant, and Darl Mc Bride, Steve Balmer and Steve Jobs to co-author book entitled "Altruism: The secret to success!! (subtitled: Empowering your workforce with kindness)"...
Version 0.9 appears to have a bug with the location.replace function. It does not work with (for example) phpmyadmin, nor anything else that needs to use this function across frames.
No good for me - rolling back to 0.8...
I think the "man" command, and it's horrific interface (only "bettered" by the even worse "info" command) is a major stumbling block for newbies. It'd be cool to have a gui app that could merge all the man pages together into one help application, or even a better command-line app. Let's face it, "man" really *is* crap, isn't it?
Finally! We'll be able to scan through these ancient texts to find the original source of the hilarious "Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" comments, used in every single thread on Slashdot! How I laugh as I read it for the 14 millionth time!
Actually should be interesting material there: Jack the Ripper, John Christie, Mary Ann Cotton etc... Yep, 1800-1900 was a good century for the UK's mass murderers.
Isn't that in the same league as "placebo chemist" or "linux licence"?
;-)
Really, I'd only be impressed if they subsequently managed to burn through a few million dollars and go out of business within 24 hours - like most other dotcoms in the '90s
If I'm driving along at 80mph on a near empty motorway at night, no danger to anyone, then why should I suddenly find myself compelled to fund the UK police force?
Because our government has decided that certain speeds shouldn't be exceeded in a public place for safety reasons. What if there's somebody crossing? After all, if it's "near empty", it's not too unreasonable to expect it to be safe to cross. What if [x], [y] or [z] happens? It's too easy to come up with examples of how going too fast can be unsafe, even if you think otherwise.
Where to start? First off, I can tell you don't actually drive, or if you do then you yourself are ignorant of the highway code. Any pedestrian wandering about on a motorway is probably insane, and (if they're lucky) will be hauled off by the police as soon as one of the motorway cameras spots them (it's illegal you know). Any pedestrian wandering around on a motorway at night is suicidal. Whether I hit them at 80, or a 44 tonne truck hits them at 56, they're going to end up as a bonnet mascot. My car can stop in a much shorter chunk of tarmac from 80, 90, even 100mph than the truck could from 56mph too.
And before you come back with "well, people could be on the motorway!!!"; yes, I'm sure there are nutcases strolling our trunk-roads. The only way we could keep everyone safe would be for nobody to drive, and everyone to walk about wrapped up in cotton wool like mummies on a bad bandage day.
What a boring life it would be if everyone though like you... No offence...
No, my argument is that people shouldn't wander through life blindly obeying every little whim our masters down in Whitehall come up with, when it's perfectly clear that it requires changes. It's funny that the same people sternly admonishing people in this thread are playing DVDs on Linux boxes (hey, I do too), which is another legal grey area. Maybe the same people who burn their own compilation CDs, or encode MP3s for their iPods. Maybe they should wag their fingers at themselves.
My point in the speed camera fiasco is that speed is rarely the cause of accidents. It's incompetent drivers, drunks, mothers arguing with their kids, fighting couples, boy racers, joyriders and other lowlife that are involved in the vast majority of accidents and deaths. If I'm driving along at 80mph on a near empty motorway at night, no danger to anyone, then why should I suddenly find myself compelled to fund the UK police force?
Nice halo you're wearing there, buddy. You sound like some sandle-wearing, tree-hugging, cardigan clad "walker" taking an opportunity to vent his frustrations. What you don't seem to understand as you trot through the bogs is that virtually everybody exceeds the speed limit at some time. Hell, a recent survey concluded that the *majority* of drivers actually exceed the motorway speed limit for prolonged periods. Rightly so; why should a car built in the 21st century, with ABS, ASR, high-performance suspension systems and braking systems driving along a road surface engineered in the las decade still have its speed governed by a law decided back in 196*, when it was all drum brakes, rack and pinion stearing, leaf springs and cracked concrete motorways?
Hell, I've managed almost 140mph along the motorway in my car and it handled great! That's twice our speed limit. I was fully in control, the engine, tyres and brakes didn't suffer and nobody was killed.
Now if you want to stomp about on the moors eating lentils and worrying the wildlife, then that's up to you; just don't lecture those of us who need to get from A to B without harrassment....
I'm really glad this new technology will soon be available to our brave boys in blue, valiantly battling crime on the streets of the UK.
</Sarcasm>
Honestly, aren't the motorists here persecuted enough? We have speed cameras popping up in every lucrative "accident blackspot" in the UK (I have a number near me that appeared on roads where I can honestly never recall hearing of any accidents, but the local school curiously has none outside the gates), we're getting taxed off of the roads despite the fact the public transport system would be ridiculed by any visitor from afghanistan. So what does our "brilliant" government do? Find a new way to bring in the much needed revenue from those crazy car drivers....
I can't see this going live until after the next election though - it would be political suicide after everything else Blair and co have done.
Yes, I'm aware of MS Office apps having parts preloaded after startup, but I was really taking about the time taken to reload an app that's already been opened (I admit I wasn't very clear though).
You speak of this preloading as though it's a bad thing; the thing is, no matter how it's achieved, the result is a better user experience. I generally go make a coffee while my machine is booting, or after I log in, so don't really care if the disk takes 2 minutes extra to stop spinning - it's worth it for a bit of snappiness.
I can't remember the number of times I've wondered if I actually didn't double-click the OO icon correctly as I wait for it to load (with the default FC2 Gnome GUI, there's no feedback that anything is happening).
What I propose is an extension of the idea of adding extra links for the most recently used apps to the start menu. Why not have the system preload the apps you use most frequently (the system itself tracking usage). I guess the apps might need extra code for this, so they could be loaded in a "faceless" mode, with a flag on the memory they were using so it could be freed if it was required for something else? For instance, I use the terminal, putty, Firefox, gedit, OO and a few other apps almost daily - I don't actually want them all open when I log in, but I DO want them to start up quickly when required.
I use FC2 on my desktop at work and I'm often irritated by the long startup times for many apps. Although the machine there isn't anything special (P4 2.8Ghz, 384MB Intel onboard video, 40GB HD) it's a bit much to wait around 15-20 seconds for OpenOffice to load (yes, I do increase the memory settings), or 8 seconds for Ethereal (gui). Once things are cached it's not too bad, but still nowhere close to say MS Word's sub-second load time on the same hardware. I was under the impression that FC2 prelinked newly installed apps too, which should help to avoid these long load times.
;-)
It doesn't seem confined to Linux either; I use w2k as my main desktop at home (also have an FC2 desktop and Gentoo on my server/router) and opensource apps seem to have the same long load times. I won't compare Firefox to Explorer for obvious reasons, but the delay is noticable. I use Agent (a closed source usenet client) and it loads in 2-3 seconds for me, in contrast to Thunderbird email client which easily takes 3 times as long. This is strange since Agent has much more data to load (subscribed to 15 newsgroups, some very busy and so have thousands of messages - including bodies on disk).
Once apps are loaded in Linux or Windows, they perform well; It's just a shame that the initial startup times are the first experience you have of an app, and if you're drumming your fingers, it's not creating a good first impression.
That said, I still prefer Linux
What keeps me off Windows?
Steve fucking Balmer: a man whose wobbling, flabby, sweating body is a testament to corporate greed. A stomping, ignorant, braying ogre, his mind a gelatenous mass of scams and ploys to kill any project dead that could possibly take a few cents out of his yearly multi-million dollar paypacket, bulging with the gonads of the PC manufacturers that Balmer and co have castrated and fettered. No matter that other companies are striving to produce something they believe in; something to give people choice, something they love, enjoy, advance and improve. No, mr fucking Blobby Balmer and his toad army are there, all puffed throats and poisonous flesh, yellow eyes swivelling toward their neighbours; whipping out their tongues to lash the hearts right out of anything like competition.
Rob Enderle/Brown/other 15 minute blunder: The snivelling, penny-a-word grubs thrown tit-bits by MS, SCO and anyone else with more cash than concience. These drive-by gutter-dwellers grinding their axes embossed with the "Made in Seattle" logos down the handles, the blades dripping reason, logic and fact as they slash their route through the increasingly "thick" jungle of online journalism. These congealed sacks of walking puss write to generate violent reactions and advertising rewards - they deserve real violence and lawsuits. Each day for an Enderle is just another opportunity to burp up another stream of carefully targetted bile, hoping it'll be lapped up by all the wrong people.
Clippy.
I'm not all that surprised by this, after all as every schoolboy who's played "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" knows, Hitler's merry men came up with staggering advances in technology: Robotics, tesler weaponry, zombies and nubile female assassins in skin-tight leather catsuits. It's amazing that a single American soldier made out of pixels managed to single-handedly wipe out the entire German army really. I wouldn't have known about all of this without access to that game; it seems as though someone has managed to conceal these details about agent Blazkowitz's amazing adventures behind enemy lines until now. I certainly cannot find any mention of it in the library, and the old man in my local pub who's always telling us "youngans" about his own endevours seems very tight lipped/violent when the subject is raised...
Just a quick thanks for taking the time to give me some good pointers. I will be getting something second-hand at first, as I agree I'll no doubt end up on my arse a few times ;-) Cheers...
I don't understand why the US legal system doesn't adopt one of our better ideas here in the UK: Make these "patent trolls" and other leeches pay the defendant's legal fees if they lose their cases in
court instead of slithering off to drag someone else in front of a Judge. This would kill an industry built around threatening people
with huge fees stone dead.
It would no longer matter if "Shithead inc."
with their newly acquired patent on "sitting the right way around on a toilet" threatened a shelter for blind puppies with legal action, since Fido and pals could count on a less than gallant army of equally unscrupulous lawfims would work on no-win no-fee no-payout basis to defend them.
Mom and Pop stump-jumper could simply ignore the SCO's of the World and go about their business as the legal vultures and patent maggots preyed upon each-other.
Why the hell should any company (even Microsoft) have to pay out to defend themselves against these parasites?
Thanks, they're all useful things to consider. Just a few facts though, I'm over 30, have been driving for over 15 years (no claims) and currently drive a BMW, which isn't too cheap to run now ;-) I get about 35mpg our of the BM, but I thought a bike would manage more than 35-40mpg (I don't intend to launch myself from every junction at mach 10 ;-)
You're bang on with the insurance, I have looked into it, and 1250 seems about the best I can get after passing the test. I live out in the country, so my commute is from the city of Norwich out to another town on a mostly straight, flat A-road. I do have about a 10 minute journey our of the city though.
I lived right next to Snetterton racetrack for 6 years, so I'm aware of the results of riding like a nutter on the country roads! I've seen plenty of riders in hedges, ditches and so on after they tried to emulate the action on the track...