so you advocate that we accept a rationing system? how about the power companies increase capability?
No - not rationing, you will get to use the power a little later so that your washing machine competes its wash cycle. What I am saying is that you delay your use slightly, in a way that does not really inconvenience. Why ? to make best use of the available resources.
The power companies could increase capacity - but most of that extra capacity would lie idle most of the time, this is not efficient use of resources. We have been profligate with our energy use, we need to take care of the limited resources that this planet has; climate change is just one of the problems that will increasingly face us.
A well written & informative comment - to which I thought that I would reply rather than mod up.
The big thing to note is that we are not talking about the white meter system that we have had in the UK for decades, this gives you cheaper electricity at night for powering storage heaters and the like — although I have known people also run washing machines, etc, off them.
The big new innovation is getting appliances to switch off for short periods, eg when the adverts come on in a popular TV programme many kettles are switched on. Also when a major generator trips out it can take time to bring something else big on-line, the smaller quick-start generators are costly. Currently this is done by bringing in more expensive generators for short periods, also large industrial users (eg Aluminium smelters) will get cut at very short notice.
So the idea is to switch off your freezer/washing-machine for 5-30 minutes so that other more important appliances do not need to be switched off. Thus we all gain at little inconvenience.
However it is something that is to the benefit of everyone if we work together. Those freetards who do not cooperate get the benefits without the cost or inconvenience, but this happens elsewhere, eg: vaccination, if most of the population is vaccinated against mumps then the best strategy for an individual is to not get vaccinated and thus avoid the small risk of vaccination side effect; however if everyone does this then mumps becomes endemic again.
Come on guys - we are civilised and know how to act in the common good!
Which does not matter, as the museum is in the UK and threatening a lawsuit under UK law.
However: when the USA increased the length of copyright, again, such that when Steamboat Willie was just about to come into public domain in the USA it became protected world wide.
Copyright restrictions/lengths in one country seem to be applicable world wide. Thus if these pictures are in copyright in the UK (which is where the governance of these pictures resides) then they are in copyright world wide.
I agree that pictures this old should have free to all photos available, however that does not appear to be the law - like it or not.
If this is not enforced in the USA then it will be, another, case of the USA exporting its laws and not respecting the laws of other countries.
They are thus preserving their value/investment in these pictures. If there are not any legitimate copies then people need to visit. Note that entrance is free, but I assume that funding of the NPG is, partly, dependent on the number of visitors.
I suspect that if these pictures are loaned out (to some other gallery) a condition of the loan will be 'no public domain pictures'.
The only legitimate way that we have of getting these 'free' is to wait until the photos in dispute fall out of copyright.
well yeah, but i dont do anything illegal so i am not attracting the attention of the authorities
What if:
You get divorced, your ex's brother/new-beau/... is a mountie. No warrant is now needed for them to indulge in a little ''fishing trip'' to see if they can find anything to hit you with...
Your business rival has a brother/... who is a mountie. Repeat as above...
You piss someone off at the golf club who has a brother/...
Do you get the idea? You don't need to do anything wrong for people to come sniffing.
If someone looks hard enough they will probably find something that is embarassing, it doesn't need to be illegal for you to not want the world to know... would your employer like to know that you have been visiting the jobs web sites; your pastor that you visited, well, all manner of innocent things that he might not like; your spouse that you exchanged email with an old flame (quite innocently);...
I do not like censorship because it can, eg, harm many people by hiding the misdeeds of a government.
What was harmed here ? His kidnappers were not able to extract as much publicity (or perhaps cash) from their actions.
If we assume that the kidnappers are a ''bad organisation'' that may do ''bad things'' (ie kill the journalist) then we can agree that temporarily suppressing this information is a good thing; a life is potentially saved (+1), the kidnappers don't achieve an aim (+1), a story suppressed (-1): overall +1.
Will everyone agree with my assessment ? No: Taliban sympathisers will see that their fight against Western imperialism (or whatever) has been harmed by this. There are probably no absolute write/wrongs in this but adopting the ''all censorship is bad'' mantra is too simplistic.
I started to write this thinking that it was an easy point to make... but I found it more complicated as I wrote. Programming is easier that philosophy!
to see our own governments & leaders criticising the Iranian government over this -- just as they are strengthening the very same systems that they have put in place to monitor us.
Of course our governments say that they have put these systems in for the best of reasons: stop terrorists; but how long before we are told that people who disagree with the government are against us and thus terrorists ?
It doesn't say what operating system these applications are going to work under. The immediate assumption is that it will be some kind of Linux based system -- in which case it would be more natural for them to have said RedHat/Suse/Debian/... -- but no, just ''open source applications''.
I suspect that it could be Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, OpenOffice under MS Windows.
Given the close relationship between Dell & MS (read: Dell accepting MS money to decide what software it pushes on its hardware) I would not be surprised if the ''open source applications'' were things that did not really compete with MS offerings, eg: Gimp, pidgin, games,... and avoid competing with the MS cash cows that make up MS Office & things like MS IE & Outlook.
Why is the parent moderated funny ? It is a true comment. Fedora is only supported for 18 months or so, do you want to reinstall your server in 18 months time ?
Lower power usage (== longer battery life) is what will make me buy these things. As a side advantage MS will not be able to claim that people put pirate copies of MS XP on them.
I would not be surprised to see ARM a player in the data center in 10 years time - power consumption there is becoming increasingly important. Once people use ARM in a laptop, it will migrate up.
OK: I have be benefit of not knowing exactly what the tender was for, but it appears to include ''support and maintenance''. Assuming that MS s/ware is provided could not this support be provided by a local Swiss company rather than directly with MS ?
''Applications'' is horribly vague.
Part of the problem with this sort of thing is that the people who write the specifications tend to think in terms of solutions, thus ''Word Processing'' is ''MS Word''.
These people need to think in terms of what they are trying to achieve and to draft the specifications in those terms. This will allow different/innovative tenders.
I just looked at the sites registration details and it looks even more sus. Microsoft and Asus register a domain name with godaddy to an individual and not a company?
Also, and more importantly, look at the whois record:
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Under Nominet rules a registrant's address cannot be withheld if any commercial use is made of the domain name. I have reported this to Nominet.
There has to be some base time, so what do we use ? Might as well base it on what we use already - GMT. A couple of things to sort out:
Gweenwich Mean Time is subject to Leap seconds - what about Galactic Mean Time ?
This is not just fanciful - do we want the two time references to slowly fall out of sync ?
According to relativity things that occur at the same time to one observer, may not for another observer, see: Relativity of simultaneity, so how meaningful is a Galactic Mean Time ?
If people are really going to download a spreadsheet that attempts to tell you how secure your password is, I suspect that they will flock to my site that does even better checks.
You enter your password into a web form. Because the checks take a lot of CPU time I will do it off line and email the results back to you (so give me your email address). In addition I will do checks that are specific to your bank, so please tell me that so that I can better assess and help you....
OK: I jest - but I suspect that a few people would be suckered by that!
I was thinking along those lines, but it is even easier than that - you just need to make a complaint to the Data Protection Registrar and get him to do it. I don't even know if you really need to know of the exact facts -- get the DPR to investigate.
What could they be got on:
Using data for purposes other than for which it was obtained -- and told the Data Subject (ie you & me) what it was being collected for
Copying personal data overseas. Last.fm is a UK organisation, CBS is in the USA
It would be interesting to view the Data Protection Act application, in that they need to state what they will do with data
It might be worth doing even if Last.fm is innocent - it may be high profile enough to make other organisations think twice before doing this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
... our new remote controlled president!
You are a few years late in saying that ... you already had the prototype automaton president, but they didn't get it quite right with Bush.
so you advocate that we accept a rationing system? how about the power companies increase capability?
No - not rationing, you will get to use the power a little later so that your washing machine competes its wash cycle. What I am saying is that you delay your use slightly, in a way that does not really inconvenience. Why ? to make best use of the available resources.
The power companies could increase capacity - but most of that extra capacity would lie idle most of the time, this is not efficient use of resources. We have been profligate with our energy use, we need to take care of the limited resources that this planet has; climate change is just one of the problems that will increasingly face us.
The big thing to note is that we are not talking about the white meter system that we have had in the UK for decades, this gives you cheaper electricity at night for powering storage heaters and the like — although I have known people also run washing machines, etc, off them.
The big new innovation is getting appliances to switch off for short periods, eg when the adverts come on in a popular TV programme many kettles are switched on. Also when a major generator trips out it can take time to bring something else big on-line, the smaller quick-start generators are costly. Currently this is done by bringing in more expensive generators for short periods, also large industrial users (eg Aluminium smelters) will get cut at very short notice.
So the idea is to switch off your freezer/washing-machine for 5-30 minutes so that other more important appliances do not need to be switched off. Thus we all gain at little inconvenience.
However it is something that is to the benefit of everyone if we work together. Those freetards who do not cooperate get the benefits without the cost or inconvenience, but this happens elsewhere, eg: vaccination, if most of the population is vaccinated against mumps then the best strategy for an individual is to not get vaccinated and thus avoid the small risk of vaccination side effect; however if everyone does this then mumps becomes endemic again.
Come on guys - we are civilised and know how to act in the common good!
Which does not matter, as the museum is in the UK and threatening a lawsuit under UK law.
However: when the USA increased the length of copyright, again, such that when Steamboat Willie was just about to come into public domain in the USA it became protected world wide.
Copyright restrictions/lengths in one country seem to be applicable world wide. Thus if these pictures are in copyright in the UK (which is where the governance of these pictures resides) then they are in copyright world wide.
I agree that pictures this old should have free to all photos available, however that does not appear to be the law - like it or not.
If this is not enforced in the USA then it will be, another, case of the USA exporting its laws and not respecting the laws of other countries.
Kolodziej is unlikely to win - judges tend to protect their own and is likely to side with the lawyer.
They are thus preserving their value/investment in these pictures. If there are not any legitimate copies then people need to visit. Note that entrance is free, but I assume that funding of the NPG is, partly, dependent on the number of visitors.
I suspect that if these pictures are loaned out (to some other gallery) a condition of the loan will be 'no public domain pictures'.
The only legitimate way that we have of getting these 'free' is to wait until the photos in dispute fall out of copyright.
300 miles will take some 4 hours to drive, you could prob do with at least a 45 min rest ... so this is finally acceptable range for an electric car.
It is not diving into the sea, so marine is not right. Subpiss or subturd might be a better name for the craft.
well yeah, but i dont do anything illegal so i am not attracting the attention of the authorities
What if:
Do you get the idea? You don't need to do anything wrong for people to come sniffing.
If someone looks hard enough they will probably find something that is embarassing, it doesn't need to be illegal for you to not want the world to know... would your employer like to know that you have been visiting the jobs web sites; your pastor that you visited, well, all manner of innocent things that he might not like; your spouse that you exchanged email with an old flame (quite innocently); ...
What was harmed here ? His kidnappers were not able to extract as much publicity (or perhaps cash) from their actions.
If we assume that the kidnappers are a ''bad organisation'' that may do ''bad things'' (ie kill the journalist) then we can agree that temporarily suppressing this information is a good thing; a life is potentially saved (+1), the kidnappers don't achieve an aim (+1), a story suppressed (-1): overall +1.
Will everyone agree with my assessment ? No: Taliban sympathisers will see that their fight against Western imperialism (or whatever) has been harmed by this. There are probably no absolute write/wrongs in this but adopting the ''all censorship is bad'' mantra is too simplistic.
I started to write this thinking that it was an easy point to make ... but I found it more complicated as I wrote. Programming is easier that philosophy!
seem to act like water: my kids seem to want to spend my money that way :-(
Double-think is alive and well in the UK and USA.
Nice to see that at least one slashdot reader really is a rocket scientist!
How far do we need to follow the money to find Microsoft ?
I suspect that it could be Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, OpenOffice under MS Windows.
Given the close relationship between Dell & MS (read: Dell accepting MS money to decide what software it pushes on its hardware) I would not be surprised if the ''open source applications'' were things that did not really compete with MS offerings, eg: Gimp, pidgin, games, ... and avoid competing with the MS cash cows that make up MS Office & things like MS IE & Outlook.
Last week Wikipedia banned IP addresses associated with the Scientology, maybe they ought to ban IP addresses associated with Microsoft.
I am fed up with all these people who think that all the world is Intel compatible -- when there are better CPUs out there.
Why is the parent moderated funny ? It is a true comment. Fedora is only supported for 18 months or so, do you want to reinstall your server in 18 months time ?
I would not be surprised to see ARM a player in the data center in 10 years time - power consumption there is becoming increasingly important. Once people use ARM in a laptop, it will migrate up.
If not, then are they guilty of breach of contract -- especially for those who have bought it recently. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick ?
''Applications'' is horribly vague.
Part of the problem with this sort of thing is that the people who write the specifications tend to think in terms of solutions, thus ''Word Processing'' is ''MS Word''. These people need to think in terms of what they are trying to achieve and to draft the specifications in those terms. This will allow different/innovative tenders.
I just looked at the sites registration details and it looks even more sus. Microsoft and Asus register a domain name with godaddy to an individual and not a company?
Also, and more importantly, look at the whois record:
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Under Nominet rules a registrant's address cannot be withheld if any commercial use is made of the domain name. I have reported this to Nominet.
This is not just fanciful - do we want the two time references to slowly fall out of sync ?
You enter your password into a web form. Because the checks take a lot of CPU time I will do it off line and email the results back to you (so give me your email address). In addition I will do checks that are specific to your bank, so please tell me that so that I can better assess and help you ....
OK: I jest - but I suspect that a few people would be suckered by that!
What could they be got on:
It might be worth doing even if Last.fm is innocent - it may be high profile enough to make other organisations think twice before doing this sort of thing.