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User: Priestess

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Comments · 44

  1. I am on ePaper To Be Used For Newspapers and Magazines · · Score: 1

    Immediately in fact, I've been wanted to cover my walls with computer monitor for years. That's a pretty big screen though, might have to get a better video card if my four wall monitors are all 10mx4m.

    Movies on a 10m screen would be good, and games. Get a properly positioned webcam window up over most of the wall and video-conference. It'd be like having 'em in the room with you.

    30quid per meter. That's what, 1 grand or two per wall?

    *plots*

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  2. Weird on Security Flaws May Be Microsoft's Undoing · · Score: 2
    Here in the UK the Queen owns all the roads so if there's a crack in the pavement we have to call up the Palace and get her to come out with her cement truck and shovel and fix it for us. If we trip on the cracks in the pavement we sue the queen in the queens court and if she's found liable she has to go to prison and be held at her own pleasure.

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  3. PI on Good Software Takes 10 Years? · · Score: 2
    You want to find the number 10 in the world you will be able to find it everywhere. 10 steps from your street corner to your front door, 10 seconds you spend in the elevator? When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere. 350, 420, 22, whatever. You have chosen 10, and you will find it everywhere in nature. But as soon as you discard scientific rigor you are no longer a mathematician. You are a numerologist.

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  4. Re:Missing the point slightly.. on UK Schools to Indoctrinate Respect for IP Laws? · · Score: 2
    To shroud yourself in the moral mantle of civil disobedience, your violation of the law must be public (and, IMHO, actually punished).
    I see. Robin Hood never got caught, indeed he expanded quite a bit of energy to avoid being caught but he's still the hero in the old myths.

    Gandhi's point if view isn't the only game in town.

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  5. Re:Code == Speech? on Report From The 2600 Appeal Hearing · · Score: 2
    something as simple as moving a mouse, perhaps)
    Well, if you buy the argument that Shakespere's plays are protected speech then you have to argue that every phoneme in the English Language is protected speech (the OO sound to "To Be" perhaps) and I'm not sure that there are a lot of judges willing to stretch the First Ammendment that far.
  6. EVERYTHING is numbers on Report From The 2600 Appeal Hearing · · Score: 2
    That DVD you're protecting is a long number, the code that decrypts it is a long number, the person doing watching's genes are a long number. This Comment is a long number, chemistry, biology, physics is mostly mathematics. If the world isn't a great big Maths engine, it's a damn good aproximation to one.

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  7. Source code is for HUMANS to read. on Report From The 2600 Appeal Hearing · · Score: 2
    Just as much to the point is that my computer is MUCH happier working with object code or an actual executable than it is working on C. Heck, we have to write programs to get computers to even understand C. Your average Windows machine has no use for a C file at all until you install a compiler.

    We write SOURCE code for HUMANS, not computers so this source must be expressing something extra to a person which the raw binary file does not encode, otherwise what is the point?

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  8. Re:Semantic Web and knowledge representation on Berners-Lee On The Semantic Web · · Score: 1
    I doubt it will be able to find my father's brother's
    Fathers brother, that's your uncle...
    nephew's
    Uncle's nephew. Probably this is just YOU, but it could be any of your siblings I guess, or cousins.
    cousin's
    Cousin here gains you nothing, all the uncle's nephews are each others cousin.
    former room-mate
    We're just looking for someone who shared a room with you, your siblings or your cousins then. Hope that makes things at least a bit simpler.
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  9. Re:Revolutionary? on Linus Torvalds Announces Autobiography · · Score: 3
    Thompson and Richtie are more like visionarys than revolutionaries
    Exactly. Re-inventing a thirty year old OS is precisely revolutionary, it's history comming around again, revolving back to where it used to be.

    Raising a people's army and overthrowing the government isn't new, it's been done thousands of times before, but that doesn't stop it being revolutionary.

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  10. Re:Let's DO something! on When Worlds Collide: The New Dot-Biz And The Old · · Score: 1

    Agreed! That's enough mucking about talking about things on some stupid weblog, the time has come for IMMEDIATE action!

    I propose a motion to table a discussion, after the proper formalities have been passed, at the earliest possible window, circumstances permiting.

  11. Re:Telecommuting...good point...Whoops on Is Technology Killing Leisure Time? · · Score: 1
    Now I work 24 over four days
    Whoops, mistype. 34 hours a week over four days.
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  12. Re:Telecommuting...good point on Is Technology Killing Leisure Time? · · Score: 2
    Did it for a while Jon. Telecommute that is, well, work at home and drive the whole machine into work once a week anyway.

    Why? We were late being paid again and I hadn't got enough cash to buy petrol to drive into work everyday so the boss said to just stay at home and work until his latest cheque cleared or something. That took weeks. Oh yes, I don't miss the computer games business one bit.

    Anyway, I ended up working less hours but more efficently and later in the day. I'd get MORE stuff done in less time becasuse
    • I slept late in the mornings rather than feel like a zombie at work, wasting a couple of hours
    • Nobody looking over your shoulder
    • Felt more pressure to prove I was working by doing stuff rather than just being there.
    In the end, after we finally got paid, I was forced back to the office every day because, at the end of the day, very few of us are paid to do our jobs. We're paid to sit in a chair and look busy, that's all they really want from us. That particular boss was more worried about impressing the VC's who visited the office with a roomful of busy looking people than trying to impress them with actual stuff.

    I'm much happier now, I used to work about 60 to 80 hours a week over six or sometimes seven days. Now I work 24 over four days. I still have to come into some stupid office to do the work, and I had to take a pay cut (which has now worked itself back to way OVER the previous wage thanks to a few raises etc.) but I'm not exactly loaded down with responsibilities, I don't need much cash. Why would I sell more of my time than I have to?
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  13. Re:Where ARE the genes? on Frankenstein Time · · Score: 1
    Scott@b wrote:
    I think the larger issue is How do we wake more people up?

    Exactly, obviously if someone wanted to educate themselves about the actual issues involved in ANY of the more complicated debates they'd have more to say but the problem is that most people don't seem to even WANT to learn about things, they'd sooner go on their "Gut instinct", which usually seems to ammount to little more than fear of the unknown.

    The debate on whether or not people should have to learn about how their computer works in order to use it to GET THINGS DONE is a well worn one here, but I'm sure that nobody would argue that the hood-welded-shut fans who simply don't want to learn how a computer works should be deeeply involved in deciding which algos programmers are allowed to use. If you want a say in the debate then SURELY you should have to learn the issues, at the very least to a basic level.

    But I'm living in lala land. My mom will continue to say "I don't agree with that, your playing god" to my Post-Doc Geneticist friend whenever they're together and he still won't even be able to explain why she's wrong becasue she won't even learn exactly what he does. It seems Bible study is easier than science.
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  14. Where ARE the genes? on Frankenstein Time · · Score: 1
    Katz may be talking like a luddite and he may be as guilty as any taboid of sensationalism but when he mentions the average persons ignorance of what exactly the genome project IS, he's spot on. A friend of mine, at a party once, tried to prove just that point by walking up to a few of the nearby folk and asking them a simple question:
    Where in the body ARE the genes exactly

    Most simply confessed not to know. A few guessed things like "Um, in the blood?" or "In the sperm/eggs?". I was shocked and stunned. How can these people, most of whom were against GM foods becasue "it's playing god", have ANY input to an ethical debate on the rights and wrongs of manipulating genes when they have not the slightest idea what a gene even is?

    I guess in a democracy even the idiots think they deserve a say.
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  15. Re:Thomas Jefferson on IP on The Death Of Intellectual Property · · Score: 2
    Apparently Jefferson wrote:
    That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point

    Which brings an interesting idea indeed. If I'm at a gig and somone asks me for a light from my cigarette I've never known anyone even TRY to impose the restriction that I can't use that cigarette to then light another in turn. Perhaps if we make second-line relighting illegal and allow people (me!) to charge for First Generation lighting up we could build up a whole industry, protect it by laws, and this industry could then fund political sellouts to keep these laws for them! We'd make MILLIONS for the country.

    It's genius I tell you, I'm off to meet with my local MP and bribe^h^h^h^h^h^h convince him to get such a law passed immediately. I'll be in control of ALL the cigarette lighting in this country before anyone even knows what's going on. Bahahahaha.

    Don't forget, Pirate Lighting up is KILLING cigarretes, phone the Federation Against Cigarette Light Theft today!

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  16. Re:Why bother. on MP3Player/Cell Phone in One · · Score: 1
    Surely the point of integration is so your devices can SHARE their resources. You don't have seperate computers for word-processing and checking email and doing the accounts and what have you.

    Does the MP3 player use the same memory for storing it's songs as the phone does for storing numbers? Can I dump a song if I need a bigger address book? They both need power so I'm happier with one battery rather than carrying two around.

    I mean, if you're worried about missing a phone call when your battery runs out then TURN OFF YOUR MP3's when it gets half way worn.

    I won't be bothering with this becasue They haven't gone far enough I need a pocketPC, not some dumbed down thing that can only make calls and play tunes. Gawd.

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  17. Re:ABCNews "Tips" on Arrest In The ILOVEYOU Case · · Score: 1
    Guran wrote:
    Nobody gives Joe User good instructions how to shut off scripting in LookOut and Internet Exploiter.
    Well obviously not! If the media did that then the next time someone released a virus they wouldn't be able to scare people with how much damage was done. I mean they exagerate as it is.
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  18. Re:This is absurd, but also a better solution (?) on Metallica Wants To Ban 335,435 Napster Users · · Score: 1
    ardran wrote:
    i still haven't seen an answer to why you can't just run out and buy certain CDs after the fact, though i may have missed it
    Because even if you own the CD it's still illegal to put it up on a webserver/ftp-site/napster-share and let other people download (copy) it. Even if that wasn't clear before it's obvious after the recent my.mp3.com case.

    These names are people who have done just that, made the file available for others to share.

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  19. Re:What about genetic engenering? on Genome · · Score: 1
    Just think about what would happen if China (for instance) decided that its citizens had the right to choose whether their children could be male or female.
    Well, they'd solve their overpopulation problem in one fairly nasty and probably bloody in the end generation. Quite possibly turn all those stupid inequalities around too. You know, it might not be all that bad an idea.
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  20. List of UK MP's on UK Decryption Law Pushed Through · · Score: 1
    If you're not sure who to write to then a list of all the MP's in the UK, along with Email addresses for some (though you should consider a hand written letter which is more likely to be read) can be obtained at This site

    Perhaps, if your MP doesn't have an email address, you can consider asking how they can assume they know enough to vote on an issue involving technical issues like this when they're apparently not informed enough to register a hotmail account. Actually don't, it'll just rile them.

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  21. Zone Encoding on DVD Cases: Help by Commenting to Feds on DMCA · · Score: 2
    What I wanna know is, have they zone encoded this court case so that I have to wait the usual six fsking months to a year before I get the fun of watching it in the UK?
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  22. Re:Jon Katz, you're so full of ***, no offence! on Please Die3: The Abuse of Freedom · · Score: 1
    Paladeen wrote:
    Katz, please keep in mind that your fancy, overly dramatic phrases and your excellent use of the English language
    Excelent use of the English language? You mean like this:
    The Internet was never conceived as the sole preserve anyone as a the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men.
    Come on, Katz doesn't even proof read let alone make "excelent use of the English language"

    Those of you who are complaining about Grits or whatever all that stuff is should maybe try reading with a different threshold. I have yet to even see one of those things and only even know they exist thanks to people wondering how to stop them.

    I just find it really odd that there can be three lengthy threads attached to the same story told three times by Katz (You know he'd already written all three at the start of the week too. Open Source Journalism? That'd require feedback, surely) which is placed in the one forum on the net that actually DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

    If (and I don't really believe this) women and newbies and frail old ladies and sensible middle aged men really are too scared to post here, in the one place where the most stupid inane flames WILL be made practically invisible by the moderators, then how come they're able to even leave the house? How come they can walk the NY streets but they can't post in case someone calls them on their bullshit?

    It just doesn't make sense.

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    [Sticks and stones can break my bones but only words can really destroy a mans soul. Heh.]
  23. Re:Very level headed on "I Would Strongly Advocate Full Disclosure" · · Score: 1
    LizardKing wrote:
    Here in the UK, it is only in the last year that newspaper articles have started to shift their empasis towards a pro-Internet view. Prior to that, newspapers like The Sun and Daily Mail as a great opportunity for shrill editorials about Internet porn, etc.

    Ha. Hardly surprising that these newspapers have changed their minds about porn on the internet when at least one of them has their own bland dumbed down "family" version of exactly that bringing in that advert money. I know for a fact that this at least used to be one of the most popular sections on their entire website (after astrology I believe).

    While people are reading this stuff and believing the "news" in general, there is no hope.

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  24. Good thing on Live or Memorex? · · Score: 2
    Living in an age where people know they can't believe anything they see might finally get people to realise just how much the media has been lying to them for years.

    Perhaps not outright lying but subtle truth bending has been going on for as long as newspapers then radio then newsreels then television existed. Yet people still blindly assume that these things are reported "as fact" or that they're unbiased renderings of "the truth".

    Maybe once everyone can see that the pictures on their telly in the corner don't even match up with the view they get when they drive to walk down the same street they'll start to seek other points of view on a story. Maybe people will start to WAKE UP.

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  25. BBC Article on viewing in the UK on Leonid Meteor Shower Tonight · · Score: 2
    The BBC is running a feature on this.

    They also have a story saying the viewing prospects are good.

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