SCO get bought by Google just to avoid the hassle... SCO Unix goes to meet the OS/2 and BeOS in the great corrupted disc in the sky.
Google produce "Google-Linux" placing Google search links EVERYWHERE that is sensible... Undercut MS by 50% or more and advertise it on their own web page.
Perhaps eventually turn all the GoogleLinux machines into part of their distributed search cluster.
I'm a huge fan of Wiki. It's just good. A bit like google is good.
Perhaps Wiki could enter a symbiotic relationship with the search firms such as Google. Wiki would be run as a non profit organisation and would "sell" it's meta-data to firms such as Google who, out of the goodness of their own hearts, donate to Wiki.
Or perhaps user subscription is the way forward. I would EASILY donate 5 pounds a year for Wiki... Now... how many more will join in. I can set up a direct debit for it and forget.
Once someone has signed up they are pretty unlikely to ever cancel the thing.
DAMN RIGHT!!!! I reckon this is going to be one of the most exciting chrimbos EVER! I think I need a large bottle of Rum, a big TV and a decent net connection then I'm set for chrimbo day!
Let's hope it doesn't just smash into Mars! GOOD LUCK COLIN PILLINGER AND EVERYONE ELSE INVOLVED IN BEAGLE!!!!
Yeah - I sound like a rabid cheerleader but I'm excited too!!
Re:When does this quote get old...
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why not spin the disk differently? Instead of spinning it from the middle place a "chain" of metal beads around the outside (and maybe in the middle). This forms part of the motor mechanism - the other part is a circular disc of electro-magnets in the drive itself AND use a stronger disc surface if possible.
Jeez mate do _YOU_ actually live here? I live in Zone 2 in London (about 10 minutes from Kings-X).... there are cameras EVERYWHERE. These are NOT part of the underground system they are "law enforcement cameras" and have been put up over the last 5 years or so usually on the grounds of traffic control although this simply isn't the truth. Most are used to watch the streets for known muggers and drug dealers. Of course the police can't actually get to any of these crimes whilst they are happening but the victim gets a really nice snapshot of their face being smashed in for their records....
They are on ruddy huge pillars that stand on many junctions and road confluences. They ARE part of a London wide monitoring system (run by the met police).... There are at least 6 of these within a few hundred yards of my house and I am filmed from the second I leave my front door (on Seven Sisters Road) until I reach the tube station at which point I am picked up on LU CCTV which is run by both the station management staff (to prevent overcrowding usually) and the London Transport Police (who have real policing powers).
Output from these cameras IS recorded. You CAN track people with them. It isn't often done because it requires manual effor but technology (ala the Congestion Charge network) is being perfected to allow computers with face recognition software to track individuals....
Hmmm... I'd prefer a reciporacal instruction ala 3DNOW!* instead of a divide. Really useful instruction. A nice big multiplier to return the upper bits of the multiply and away you go.
You can play F0X for 8 hours.... I've done it several times! I have a friend who is as addicted to it as I am. Several times we have played all the way up to 999 points (yup - that's a lot of racing)....
I felt very strange afterwards and couldn't stop dreaming about F0X for several weeks!
Ah! But the beauty of the GBA is being able to hack your code! 3D renderer would be nice but if the clock speed when from 2^24 to 2^28 (~262Mhz) then you have a silly number of clocks per pixel (over a hundred).... BEAUT!!!
If they really wanted to go far out they could put 2 or more ARM7 cores on board!
Maybe they'll go for the ARM9 with vector ops and floating point next time around. I think I'd rather see the clock speed ramped....
There is one reason - the environmental impact of producing and then purchasing multiple boxes is clearly higher than using a single box.... It's more landfill and more resources....
However - it still doesn't fix the problem of what happens when I want to play F-Zero X and the other half wants to watch Pride and Prejudice AGAIN!!!
Add some extra OAM/BG ram so that the 15 bit video mode can be properly double (or even triple) buffered.... nice.. If they really wanted to they could ramp the speed by 16 times and just down clock for compatibility....
Here... http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=124 92 Also details and possible specs here.... http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=1160 9
Looks quite nice! Let's see what the prices are like.... If they're good (compared to nV & ATi) then SiS/Xabre will likely have a volume seller. Nice. This graphics war has got boring. 2 "competitors" and the prices and features are more or less the same.... Mind you, that was garaunteed! It's a tech race which seem to based on who falls first....
I'm really NOT trying to start a fight but there is still a problem here! Unfortuantley everybody said "Oh... don't worry about it" back then too! I'd rather hope this data will be around after 2101 not just 2001. What about 2201? 2801? 3001?. Then you DO have a problem.
I mean, I'll probably be long since dead but I hope the astronomers then can rely on us recording good data now! Next thing you know someone has "sorted" the data with 2 digit years, it's completely garbled screwing up centuries - maybe millenia of data...
It's probably my old P120 (OC'd to 133 cos' I'm not that worried if I fry it!)
HOWEVER! The oldest piece of kit in the machine is an ISA Sound Galaxy NXPro/16 sound card (about 8 feet long) which has an OPL3 FM chipset on it for fiddling with old sequencers and demos. This used to live in my 386SX/33 but the monitor on that machine is toast.
Other than that it has 80Meg of RAM (free - pinched from work dead work machines). An ISA Nic (3C905 - also recycled). A PCI FM radio card (found in a skip). An SB128PCI which came with my newest machine but quickly found a new home after I got an SW1000XG). S3 8 Meg graphics card (another skip job). 33.6K PnP ISA modem - I actually paid for that. The monitor is a bog standard old SVGA monitor a mate of mine grab from the reserve/junk pile at his company. A 20Gig harddrive of which only 8 can be seen but it's a damn sight faster and quieter than the 1.3 that was in there. PLUS an ancient keyboard and mouse but it all still works beautifully.
So the oldest bit is the Sound Galaxy card and I've forgotten when I bought that!
I like this box - mostly cos' I can abuse it and not worry too much about the consequences! It's run BeOS, QNX, Debian, 95, 98, 98SE, NewOS all sorts of stuff!
I doubt it scares them that much!! Probably not as much as PS2 (and PS3). There are going to be several serious advantages Nintendo have.
1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there
2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans
3 - The price of the PSP is going to be set far higher than the GBA.
4 - Battery life - a full 3D game running off mechanical optical media is going to eat batteries. Nintendo have always pushed battery life as a key feature and indeed it is.
5 - Nintendo are not asleep at the wheel. I wonder what they are conjuring up with 1T SRAMs and ATi graphics etc.... Hmmm...
However Sony have time and money on their side. The Big N aren't going to release anything new in a hurry.
Have you tried to use an N-Gage? I played about a dozen or so games at ECTS and IT SUCKS!!!
I mean... I had high(ish) hopes for the thing and REALLY can't see them battling the Big N on their own territory but this is a terribly designed system and the press keep trying to put a good spin on it but as a games I flat out wouldn't buy one.
1 - The screen is tiny and vertically mounted - it just doesn't work for games. Sonic was damn annoying as the width of the play area is too wide for the screen. It's clear enough but WAY too small.
2 - The keypad SUCKS!! It's useless for gaming although it could be useful for strategy games. You hit just about every other button on the keypad before you hit the onw you want and the surface is so smooth you really have to concentrate on where your fingers are - and thus not the game. The D-Pad is said to be excellent but I found it too smooth and flat - too easy for a thumb to slip off - too hard to detect any response...
3 - There are no L and R buttons even though that's exactly where your fingers are.
4 - There are lots of other buttons on the keypad such as "phone/sms etc" if you accidently push on of these whilst playing a game your gaming experience seems to just stop....
5 - YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE DAMN THING APART TO CHANGE GAMES!!
6 - Nokia's marketing monkies are spewing BS everyday talking about the GBA being a "kiddies toy" (they're trying to make there product look "cool" in a PS sort of way. However most people I see playing GBA are 20/30/40 somethings on tubes and trains playing stuff like Advance Wars. IMNSHO Nokia's marketing line is BS.
7 - THERE ARE LOADING SCREENS!! WTF!! I played a coupla games (some pseudo 3D platformer and a motorbike racer) and there were HUGE (30seconds to a minute) loading screens. DAMN IT! I want to play this on a 10 minute tube journey!!
8 - WHY DO YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT APART TO CHANGE GAMES!!!
9 - The frame rates on a lot of the games are just NOT very good at all. Sonic plays at about 10 to 15 and seemed to have some SERIOUS slow down. As did a lot of the other games (esp. the pseudo 3D stuff)
10 - And this is the one that will kill the N-Gage. People upgrade phones like they change underwear. This thing is going to last 2 years MAX and at that point Nokia have to release an upgrade OR incorporate this functionality into all their phones.
11 - Don't ever believe the Big N is asleep. The games on the Nokia system just feel unfinished and unpolished - frame rate skipping - cheesey loading screens - by contrast when Nintendo launched the GBA a whole chunk of polished gaming came with it.
The wireless adapter isn't a bad plan from Nintendo but it is just a peripheral - not everyone will buy it (in fact few will) but it will give Nintendo a little bit more knowledge to prepare for the onslaught of PSP (which I reckon is going to get screwed because any graphically decent games will drain the battery in about 30 minutes.... but we'll see about that!)
Internalised because it picked up very little in the way of foreign thoughts and ideas. Sure it stole (ok - mostly bought) others art, culture, architecture etc but the politics remained "British".
Strangely it would probably have remained an unowned empire of trading and exploration if the French Empire hadn't made moves on India the way it did...
Britain is a fairly populous and rich country that has NO neighbours at all. At the time of the empire all propoganda was internal. The Irish were not to be trusted. A highly "internalised" country if ever there was one.
Now our media comes from 2 places. Ourselves and the US! Great! That's a healthy balanced view of the world.....
It's AMAZING! I can complete the entire benchmark in under 1 frame!!!!
I optimised the benchmark in a very straight forward way! After starting the benchmark I realised that it performed a huge amount of calculations. ENORMOUS number. However I noticed that after the application had terminated the only difference in the state of my computer was a coupla registry values and I have this text file....
Well the text file is a load of gibberish numbers so I will discard that (don't need to run that part of the program)... The registry seems to change organically anyway. So I'll call that nature.
Sooo... it appears that the net result of the benchmark (discarding gibberish numbers) is to do nothing. So I had an idea (took a millisecond or so). I figure.... don't run the benchmark.... hey presto... problem solved..
Now... DOES MY PROGRAM RUN ON THIS THING???? Hmmm.
Efficient is a highly subjective term! Whilst it may be more efficient in terms of heat removal it may not be more efficient in terms of price/performance or indeed in terms of maintenance. Any mechanical system can break down but there is far less chance that a purely passive heat pumping system will break. This seriously hits price/performance if the failure of the pump causes your CPU to melt!
And it's been proven to reduce crime, and help crime detection, high profile cases like the murder of Jamie Bulger show how CCTV can be extremely helpful
This is simply untrue. CCTV lowers crime in the areas in which it is applied although street crime rises in surrounding areas not covered. I suppose the logical extrapolation is that everywhere "needs" to be covered by CCTV. Secondly, although it may have lead to a succesful trial and prosecution of the Bulger murderers (both children themselves it should be added). It did NOTHING to stop the murder to start with.
How is being asked to hand over your key, any different to being asked to open your safe on production of a warrant ? Do search warrants mean locks and safes "are partially criminal "?
I don't think the original poster expressed the point very well. The trouble with much of the current RIP legislation is not the issue of handing over the key but who is allowed to make you to hand over a key. I think the bill (act) simply states that any "official" can ask for private data. You should need a court order to get this kind of stuff.
Yet again we see the true colours of the collective English psyche (remember that Scotland has its own system of law and the Welsh simply get told what to do). The classic English way of viewing any problem is to persecute criminals with little or no regard to WHY people commit crime or indeed whether a crime has been committed (e.g. pot smoking).
To top it all off I think that secret surveilance of individuals (e.g. phone taps, mail interception etc) should be BANNED! This does not mean that it isn't done! Instead the unwarey criminal is informed that they are being watched. You may not catch them in the act after that but you will probably make them stop what they are doing which has the same net effect on society.
It is important that not even the government (and esp. the police) appear to be above the law. All people should be treated equally under the law.
As to ID cards.... If it was actually going to be useful I'd probably have one but the "entitlement" card is bullshit. It's a little too poll tax for my liking (that was a laugh - pay up or you can't vote - which means you can't complain about it). More importantly I really don't want to pay for this crap! I fork out enough in travel, tax, local taxation and sales tax as it is.
I think what they might mean is "bring this to us and we'll make this technology available to our members or perhaps let IBM do it for us".
More importantly - if by using a trademark such as PCI(TM) on a website means that you are going to get this sort of attention from lawyers what are you going to do when decides they don't like your MegaDelux Graphics Drivers for on yer website?. Bitch about the use of their trademarked name? For example - S3. What if they got pissy about data for their chips being all over the web? I mean - it's helped them. I still use a PCI(TM) S3(TM) VIRGE(TM) graphics card (probably TM) because there are bucket loads of drivers for them. Linux, All windows, OS/2, BeOS etc, etc, etc.
Further, would PCI-SIG complain that other non SIG members are using PCI(TM) or the PCI(TM) logo? How many websites use PCI(TM) but aren't SIG members?? How about... errr millions of sites. That's a lotta people to screw!
Even more importantly.... it is souless and sad and stupid and pointless and they are getting paid for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I now call to order the first meeting of the ancient mystic society of... No SCO United..... ;-)
SCO get bought by Google just to avoid the hassle... SCO Unix goes to meet the OS/2 and BeOS in the great corrupted disc in the sky.
Google produce "Google-Linux" placing Google search links EVERYWHERE that is sensible... Undercut MS by 50% or more and advertise it on their own web page.
Perhaps eventually turn all the GoogleLinux machines into part of their distributed search cluster.
I'm a huge fan of Wiki. It's just good. A bit like google is good.
Perhaps Wiki could enter a symbiotic relationship with the search firms such as Google. Wiki would be run as a non profit organisation and would "sell" it's meta-data to firms such as Google who, out of the goodness of their own hearts, donate to Wiki.
Or perhaps user subscription is the way forward. I would EASILY donate 5 pounds a year for Wiki... Now... how many more will join in. I can set up a direct debit for it and forget.
Once someone has signed up they are pretty unlikely to ever cancel the thing.
DAMN RIGHT!!!! I reckon this is going to be one of the most exciting chrimbos EVER! I think I need a large bottle of Rum, a big TV and a decent net connection then I'm set for chrimbo day!
Let's hope it doesn't just smash into Mars! GOOD LUCK COLIN PILLINGER AND EVERYONE ELSE INVOLVED IN BEAGLE!!!!
Yeah - I sound like a rabid cheerleader but I'm excited too!!
Why not spin the disk differently? Instead of spinning it from the middle place a "chain" of metal beads around the outside (and maybe in the middle). This forms part of the motor mechanism - the other part is a circular disc of electro-magnets in the drive itself AND use a stronger disc surface if possible.
Dunno! Just a coupla pence.
Jeez mate do _YOU_ actually live here? I live in Zone 2 in London (about 10 minutes from Kings-X).... there are cameras EVERYWHERE. These are NOT part of the underground system they are "law enforcement cameras" and have been put up over the last 5 years or so usually on the grounds of traffic control although this simply isn't the truth. Most are used to watch the streets for known muggers and drug dealers. Of course the police can't actually get to any of these crimes whilst they are happening but the victim gets a really nice snapshot of their face being smashed in for their records....
They are on ruddy huge pillars that stand on many junctions and road confluences. They ARE part of a London wide monitoring system (run by the met police).... There are at least 6 of these within a few hundred yards of my house and I am filmed from the second I leave my front door (on Seven Sisters Road) until I reach the tube station at which point I am picked up on LU CCTV which is run by both the station management staff (to prevent overcrowding usually) and the London Transport Police (who have real policing powers).
Output from these cameras IS recorded. You CAN track people with them. It isn't often done because it requires manual effor but technology (ala the Congestion Charge network) is being perfected to allow computers with face recognition software to track individuals....
Please talk about reality next time.
Hmmm... I'd prefer a reciporacal instruction ala 3DNOW!* instead of a divide. Really useful instruction. A nice big multiplier to return the upper bits of the multiply and away you go.
*I! hate! that! exclamation! mark! though!!!!!
You can play F0X for 8 hours.... I've done it several times! I have a friend who is as addicted to it as I am. Several times we have played all the way up to 999 points (yup - that's a lot of racing)....
I felt very strange afterwards and couldn't stop dreaming about F0X for several weeks!
Ah! But the beauty of the GBA is being able to hack your code! 3D renderer would be nice but if the clock speed when from 2^24 to 2^28 (~262Mhz) then you have a silly number of clocks per pixel (over a hundred).... BEAUT!!!
If they really wanted to go far out they could put 2 or more ARM7 cores on board!
Maybe they'll go for the ARM9 with vector ops and floating point next time around. I think I'd rather see the clock speed ramped....
A 32bit bus would REALLY help though.
There is one reason - the environmental impact of producing and then purchasing multiple boxes is clearly higher than using a single box.... It's more landfill and more resources....
However - it still doesn't fix the problem of what happens when I want to play F-Zero X and the other half wants to watch Pride and Prejudice AGAIN!!!
Add some extra OAM/BG ram so that the 15 bit video mode can be properly double (or even triple) buffered.... nice.. If they really wanted to they could ramp the speed by 16 times and just down clock for compatibility....
Some cheeky people managed to run a benchmark...
4 920 9
Here...
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12
Also details and possible specs here....
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=116
Looks quite nice! Let's see what the prices are like.... If they're good (compared to nV & ATi) then SiS/Xabre will likely have a volume seller. Nice. This graphics war has got boring. 2 "competitors" and the prices and features are more or less the same.... Mind you, that was garaunteed! It's a tech race which seem to based on who falls first....
I'm really NOT trying to start a fight but there is still a problem here! Unfortuantley everybody said "Oh... don't worry about it" back then too! I'd rather hope this data will be around after 2101 not just 2001. What about 2201? 2801? 3001?. Then you DO have a problem.
I mean, I'll probably be long since dead but I hope the astronomers then can rely on us recording good data now! Next thing you know someone has "sorted" the data with 2 digit years, it's completely garbled screwing up centuries - maybe millenia of data...
Maybe....
see...pee...you??
OH!!! You mean the brain of the computer!! I see!!!
How many megahertz does it have?
teehee!
Simply stunning pic!
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12145
That's more like it!
It's probably my old P120 (OC'd to 133 cos' I'm not that worried if I fry it!)
HOWEVER! The oldest piece of kit in the machine is an ISA Sound Galaxy NXPro/16 sound card (about 8 feet long) which has an OPL3 FM chipset on it for fiddling with old sequencers and demos. This used to live in my 386SX/33 but the monitor on that machine is toast.
Other than that it has 80Meg of RAM (free - pinched from work dead work machines). An ISA Nic (3C905 - also recycled). A PCI FM radio card (found in a skip). An SB128PCI which came with my newest machine but quickly found a new home after I got an SW1000XG). S3 8 Meg graphics card (another skip job). 33.6K PnP ISA modem - I actually paid for that. The monitor is a bog standard old SVGA monitor a mate of mine grab from the reserve/junk pile at his company. A 20Gig harddrive of which only 8 can be seen but it's a damn sight faster and quieter than the 1.3 that was in there. PLUS an ancient keyboard and mouse but it all still works beautifully.
So the oldest bit is the Sound Galaxy card and I've forgotten when I bought that!
I like this box - mostly cos' I can abuse it and not worry too much about the consequences! It's run BeOS, QNX, Debian, 95, 98, 98SE, NewOS all sorts of stuff!
I doubt it scares them that much!! Probably not as much as PS2 (and PS3). There are going to be several serious advantages Nintendo have.
1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there
2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans
3 - The price of the PSP is going to be set far higher than the GBA.
4 - Battery life - a full 3D game running off mechanical optical media is going to eat batteries. Nintendo have always pushed battery life as a key feature and indeed it is.
5 - Nintendo are not asleep at the wheel. I wonder what they are conjuring up with 1T SRAMs and ATi graphics etc.... Hmmm...
However Sony have time and money on their side. The Big N aren't going to release anything new in a hurry.
Matthew.
Have you tried to use an N-Gage? I played about a dozen or so games at ECTS and IT SUCKS!!!
I mean... I had high(ish) hopes for the thing and REALLY can't see them battling the Big N on their own territory but this is a terribly designed system and the press keep trying to put a good spin on it but as a games I flat out wouldn't buy one.
1 - The screen is tiny and vertically mounted - it just doesn't work for games. Sonic was damn annoying as the width of the play area is too wide for the screen. It's clear enough but WAY too small.
2 - The keypad SUCKS!! It's useless for gaming although it could be useful for strategy games. You hit just about every other button on the keypad before you hit the onw you want and the surface is so smooth you really have to concentrate on where your fingers are - and thus not the game. The D-Pad is said to be excellent but I found it too smooth and flat - too easy for a thumb to slip off - too hard to detect any response...
3 - There are no L and R buttons even though that's exactly where your fingers are.
4 - There are lots of other buttons on the keypad such as "phone/sms etc" if you accidently push on of these whilst playing a game your gaming experience seems to just stop....
5 - YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE DAMN THING APART TO CHANGE GAMES!!
6 - Nokia's marketing monkies are spewing BS everyday talking about the GBA being a "kiddies toy" (they're trying to make there product look "cool" in a PS sort of way. However most people I see playing GBA are 20/30/40 somethings on tubes and trains playing stuff like Advance Wars. IMNSHO Nokia's marketing line is BS.
7 - THERE ARE LOADING SCREENS!! WTF!! I played a coupla games (some pseudo 3D platformer and a motorbike racer) and there were HUGE (30seconds to a minute) loading screens. DAMN IT! I want to play this on a 10 minute tube journey!!
8 - WHY DO YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT APART TO CHANGE GAMES!!!
9 - The frame rates on a lot of the games are just NOT very good at all. Sonic plays at about 10 to 15 and seemed to have some SERIOUS slow down. As did a lot of the other games (esp. the pseudo 3D stuff)
10 - And this is the one that will kill the N-Gage. People upgrade phones like they change underwear. This thing is going to last 2 years MAX and at that point Nokia have to release an upgrade OR incorporate this functionality into all their phones.
11 - Don't ever believe the Big N is asleep. The games on the Nokia system just feel unfinished and unpolished - frame rate skipping - cheesey loading screens - by contrast when Nintendo launched the GBA a whole chunk of polished gaming came with it.
The wireless adapter isn't a bad plan from Nintendo but it is just a peripheral - not everyone will buy it (in fact few will) but it will give Nintendo a little bit more knowledge to prepare for the onslaught of PSP (which I reckon is going to get screwed because any graphically decent games will drain the battery in about 30 minutes.... but we'll see about that!)
Matthew.
Internalised because it picked up very little in the way of foreign thoughts and ideas. Sure it stole (ok - mostly bought) others art, culture, architecture etc but the politics remained "British".
Strangely it would probably have remained an unowned empire of trading and exploration if the French Empire hadn't made moves on India the way it did...
Britain is a fairly populous and rich country that has NO neighbours at all. At the time of the empire all propoganda was internal. The Irish were not to be trusted. A highly "internalised" country if ever there was one.
Now our media comes from 2 places. Ourselves and the US! Great! That's a healthy balanced view of the world.....
I suggest you do some reading before describing them as Satanic!! Try "The Satanic Bible" (Anton Lavey) or "The Book of Law" (Crowley).
After this you will _truely_ see that these people are not Satanic at all.
"Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law"
It's AMAZING! I can complete the entire benchmark in under 1 frame!!!!
I optimised the benchmark in a very straight forward way! After starting the benchmark I realised that it performed a huge amount of calculations. ENORMOUS number. However I noticed that after the application had terminated the only difference in the state of my computer was a coupla registry values and I have this text file....
Well the text file is a load of gibberish numbers so I will discard that (don't need to run that part of the program)... The registry seems to change organically anyway. So I'll call that nature.
Sooo... it appears that the net result of the benchmark (discarding gibberish numbers) is to do nothing. So I had an idea (took a millisecond or so). I figure.... don't run the benchmark.... hey presto... problem solved..
Now... DOES MY PROGRAM RUN ON THIS THING???? Hmmm.
Yuup... almost.
Efficient is a highly subjective term! Whilst it may be more efficient in terms of heat removal it may not be more efficient in terms of price/performance or indeed in terms of maintenance. Any mechanical system can break down but there is far less chance that a purely passive heat pumping system will break. This seriously hits price/performance if the failure of the pump causes your CPU to melt!
And it's been proven to reduce crime, and help crime detection, high profile cases like the murder of Jamie Bulger show how CCTV can be extremely helpful
This is simply untrue. CCTV lowers crime in the areas in which it is applied although street crime rises in surrounding areas not covered. I suppose the logical extrapolation is that everywhere "needs" to be covered by CCTV. Secondly, although it may have lead to a succesful trial and prosecution of the Bulger murderers (both children themselves it should be added). It did NOTHING to stop the murder to start with.
How is being asked to hand over your key, any different to being asked to open your safe on production of a warrant ? Do search warrants mean locks and safes "are partially criminal "?
I don't think the original poster expressed the point very well. The trouble with much of the current RIP legislation is not the issue of handing over the key but who is allowed to make you to hand over a key. I think the bill (act) simply states that any "official" can ask for private data. You should need a court order to get this kind of stuff.
Yet again we see the true colours of the collective English psyche (remember that Scotland has its own system of law and the Welsh simply get told what to do). The classic English way of viewing any problem is to persecute criminals with little or no regard to WHY people commit crime or indeed whether a crime has been committed (e.g. pot smoking).
To top it all off I think that secret surveilance of individuals (e.g. phone taps, mail interception etc) should be BANNED! This does not mean that it isn't done! Instead the unwarey criminal is informed that they are being watched. You may not catch them in the act after that but you will probably make them stop what they are doing which has the same net effect on society.
It is important that not even the government (and esp. the police) appear to be above the law. All people should be treated equally under the law.
As to ID cards.... If it was actually going to be useful I'd probably have one but the "entitlement" card is bullshit. It's a little too poll tax for my liking (that was a laugh - pay up or you can't vote - which means you can't complain about it). More importantly I really don't want to pay for this crap! I fork out enough in travel, tax, local taxation and sales tax as it is.
I think what they might mean is "bring this to us and we'll make this technology available to our members or perhaps let IBM do it for us".
More importantly - if by using a trademark such as PCI(TM) on a website means that you are going to get this sort of attention from lawyers what are you going to do when decides they don't like your MegaDelux Graphics Drivers for on yer website?. Bitch about the use of their trademarked name? For example - S3. What if they got pissy about data for their chips being all over the web? I mean - it's helped them. I still use a PCI(TM) S3(TM) VIRGE(TM) graphics card (probably TM) because there are bucket loads of drivers for them. Linux, All windows, OS/2, BeOS etc, etc, etc.
Further, would PCI-SIG complain that other non SIG members are using PCI(TM) or the PCI(TM) logo? How many websites use PCI(TM) but aren't SIG members?? How about... errr millions of sites. That's a lotta people to screw!
Even more importantly.... it is souless and sad and stupid and pointless and they are getting paid for it.
(TM) PCI is a trademark of PCI-SIG.