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User: Richard_at_work

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Comments · 7,308

  1. Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe on UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook · · Score: 1

    Yup, you've just helped make your case alright, an unrelated legal construct (which has already been shown to be ineffective) and the "threat" of being "disappeared"...

    Seriously, get out more.

    A case for me and against you is the long, strung out legal battle the City of London had to remove protestors from a strip of grass outside Parliament - it took the city a decade of court battles to finally get rid of them, and return that small park to something resembling a grassed area.

    Changes in the law, court hearings and lots of other things were used to try and remove Brian Haw from outside of Parliament, and yet he remained legitimately protesting there until he voluntarily left in late 2010 in order to have his cancer treated. No ASBO in sight...

  2. Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe on UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook · · Score: 1

    Because I see a difference between an actual protest, designed to change the current governments way of doing things, and an assembly designed to remove the current government through whatever means possible.

    The media are portraying the Syrian events as the former, while friends (non-political) I have in Syria are saying its largely the latter - gatherings of armed supporters organised by Syrian political activists with the intent to provoke a response, and the only thing being reported in the western media is the response.

  3. Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe on UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook · · Score: 1

    The info coming out of Syria from normal people isn't gelling with what is being reported in the international media - the Syrian 'protests' are well organised and armed, and most definitely not peaceful. But all you hear in the media is how the Syrian military is brutally putting these 'protests' down.

  4. Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe on UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a British Subject, I'd love to see actual examples of an ASBO being issued for criticism of the government...

    Because it's something I've never heard of.

  5. Re:Don't Listen! on Interview With GNOME 3 Designer Jon McCann · · Score: 2

    Why do you have to get rid of him? Isn't that part of the point of open source free software, that you can disagree with the project maintainers enough to fork it yourself and take it in your own direction?

    So why do you need to get rid of the person you disagree with? There's little stopping someone from coming up with a fork based on Gnome2 and running with it...

  6. Re:Why? Bitcoin and Slashdot? on GPGPU Bitcoin Mining Trojan · · Score: 1

    Modern currencies are backed by fiat and an existing economy - you won't find one example of a modern currency which was not backed by a gold, silver or some other standard before it became fiat (including the Euro), and that is because economies earn the right to move their currencies to a fiat standard.

    BitCoin is neither backed by fiat nor by an existing economy - it really is accepted on the basis of "just because we want it to be".

  7. Re:effect on the world is a company disappeared on Which Company Is the Largest? · · Score: 1

    And nothing of value would be lost...

  8. Re:Hmm.... let's see... on Copycat "hiPhone 5" Surfaces In China · · Score: 1

    Certainly, yes - bring that bet on. The US military budget is far in excess of that of China's.

  9. Re:Reality check on UK Police Arrest 12 Over Facebook Use Inciting Riots · · Score: 1

    Regardless of what "they" did (and "they" have been very open in the media about what happened - yes, they thought they were being shot at, yes they returned fire, yes they got it wrong. No, he shouldn't have been killed, but yes he was the right suspect and yes they were still going to arrest him), rioting and looting isn't the right behaviour and cannot be justified in any way.

  10. Re:Time for Vendetta on UK Police Arrest 12 Over Facebook Use Inciting Riots · · Score: 4, Informative

    V for Vendetta had a point - and that point wasn't mindless looting and rioting, which is what is going on at the moment.

    There is nothing politically orientated about the UK riots, its literally just idiots doing whatever they think they can get away with. So yeah, take these ten, and the ten after that, and the next ten - until they get the message that this kind of behaviour in the UK is not acceptable. We are already a democracy, we already have a say in our governance - think rioting is going to improve anything...?

  11. Re:Hmm.... let's see... on Copycat "hiPhone 5" Surfaces In China · · Score: 1

    Nowhere near as much as bring spent in the US on military projects...

  12. Re:Oh the irony... on DARPA Set To Blast Falcon Mach 20 Test Flight · · Score: 1

    To all three of you who replied with essentially the same comment - "that we know of"...

    I can find detailed information on basically any SR-71 and U-2 deployment in public records, including the Taiwanese exchange program in both aircraft (the U-2 exchange was a mild success, the SR-71 was cancelled very very quickly when it turned out that the Taiwanese pilots didn't have the aptitude to fly the aircraft).

    I can find plenty of reports on "skirting" flights, where the SR-71 flew at operation altitude on the edge of Soviet airspace, "seeing" several hundred miles into their territory.

    I can see a lot of information on missions that were denied at the time, but now released, like the SR-71s involvement in the 1980s Libya campaign.

    But I have not once come across a hint of any U-2 or SR-71 activity over the Soviet Union after the ban on overflights.

    Want to know why? Because they never happened. And for two very very good reasons.

    Firstly, satellite camera technology improved massively during the 1960s and 1970s - for strategic information, you didn't need the abilities of the U-2 or the SR-71.

    Secondly, the US had already been shown up on the public stage with their U-2 overflights - they are illegal and can be construed as an act of war. The USSR knew they had been happening, they just couldn't prove it to the world until they shot down Gary Powers. And yes, the USSR was improving its SAM capabilities every year (they were already ahead of the US), it was just a matter of time before the SR-71 became vulnerable so why risk it?

    So, no hints of any SR-71 overflights taking place - not even in the ramblings of past SR-71 and A-12 pilots - and no reason for the overflights to take place. Simply put, they didn't happen.

  13. Re:End of an era? on Samba 3.6 Released With SMB2 Support · · Score: 2

    So you don't use it, does that make it an end of an era?

    Like it or not, but there are millions of small offices out there with Windows clients hanging off a Linux file server, so it's anything but the end of an era, especially as SMB2 is actually a much nicer protocol than SMB1.

  14. Re:13,000mph? on DARPA Set To Blast Falcon Mach 20 Test Flight · · Score: 1

    The SR-71 never conducted even a single overflight of the USSR, as overflights were banned after the U-2 shoot down. The Blackbird was relegated to China, North Korea and other theaters, but it never conducted a mission in Soviet airspace.

  15. Re:Having to jail break your own freaking phone on Guide To Building a Cable That Improves iOS Exploits · · Score: 3, Informative

    What is it that "we geeks" get?

    I had both an iPhone and an iPhone 3G, before getting pissed off with iOS 4 on the 3G enough to decide to try out the Android side of the story.

    I acquired a new HTC Desire in February, and merrily set about using it as my main phone. Today is the 8th of August, so I have been using my HTC for around 6 months as my main phone - and the conclusion I have come to is that I absolutely hate it.

    I have to dig around in subscreens to get to the apps I want - on the iPhone I just scroll left or right on the home screen, but on Android I only have six homescreen slots for apps, the other home screens are taken up with applets, mail and other shite, so I have to open the apps screen specifically, and then dig around in there.

    The back button on the HTC is unbelievably broken - it entirely depends on what you were doing before as to what action it has. Does it return you to the home screen or to the previous page in the app? It depends! For example, I get a text message while my phone is locked - I unlock the phone and the message is displayed. I now want to refer to another message I have received previously, and since I am in the SMS app (as that is what is loaded), I click the back button to get to the message list. And I get dumped to the phones home screen instead. If I open the SMS app myself, the back button works as expected! Lots of examples such as that.

    The Android Market Place is a terribly poor user experience, I utterly hate using it - its hard to find apps, its hard to search, its hard to preview apps. The AppStore just seems so much better put together, especially when browsing from the device itself!

    I have had far far more interface issues with the HTC than I did with either of my iPhones - for example, the other day I was on the phone to a colleague, and the call dropped - but the HTC wouldn't let me hang up! It was sat there on the call screen, with the "End Call" button active but nothing on the line - and each time I clicked "End Call" it would briefly blank everything and then the call screen would reappear. This has happened to me several times.

    The screen locking is poor - I cant count the numerous number of times I have taken my HTC out of my pocket to find my penis or keys had randomly dialled someone, or started to write an email. And yes, I am sure the phone was locked (prime example of this happened to me earlier today - I ended a call, locked the phone, put the phone in my pocket - 5 minutes later, I take the phone out to make another call and the phone is unlocked and halfway through a gibberish email).

    The HTCs touch sensitivity seems to wildly vary depending on what you are doing, and buttons can be hard to actually get a press confirmed on - plus the onscreen keypad isn't anywhere near as good as the iOS one.

    Thats just some of the issues I, as a "geek", have with my Android phone - I desperately want to go back to an iPhone...

  16. Re:Java and .NET falling by the wayside? on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 1

    Lets see just how much of your post is FUD..

    Dynamics CRM is .Net based.

    SharePoint 2007 onward is .Net based.

    SQL Server 2005 onward has large amounts of .Net components.

    Reporting Services is .Net based.

    Azure loves .Net code.

    BizTalk is largely .Net based.

    Exchange 2007 onward has a lot of .Net components.

    The System Center group of products all require .Net.

    Thats just a quick list of things that Microsoft have released that are .Net based. Your credibility just went south for the winter.

  17. Re:Why the Hatred for Mono? on Xamarin's First Mono Release - Proof of Life! · · Score: 1

    Thankyou for proving the GPs point...

  18. Re:Java and .NET falling by the wayside? on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 1

    Java runs on lots of things, but thats not my point. Will every Java application run on all JVMs? No.

    Take Azureus for example - built in Java, but separate downloads for OSX and Windows. And thats all too common in the Java world...

    Java is only a migration path away from Windows if all your applications run seamlessly on the other platforms, and that only happens if you are actually careful during development.

  19. Re:Java and .NET falling by the wayside? on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 1

    Given how well the "write once run anywhere" marketing aspect of Java has basically failed, its no more a migration path than .Net is these days.

  20. Re:Java and .NET falling by the wayside? on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Its amazing how far a single article of FUD goes these days - Microsoft is not "going soft" on .Net, they just weren't willing to discuss it during a talk about something else entirely, while in Windows 8, .Net is still there and stronger than ever.

    As I recall the Sun/Microsoft suit prohibited Microsoft from having their own Java implementation, is Microsoft now going to license Java from Oracle as the .NET replacement

    Microsoft already have a licensing deal with Sun/Oracle in place for .Net - it was pursued years ago, at the very birth of .Net. And besides, what would Microsoft gain from going to Java? Functionality wise, .Net is better featured so what would Microsoft gain from switching ecosystems? Not a whole lot.

    Microsoft don't want Java, they already made their version of it and are quite happy with it.

  21. Re:Round 1. Fight. on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 1

    Only if you claim its not Java...

  22. Re:Round 1. Fight. on Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community · · Score: 1

    Is it? I haven't heard much from LibreOffice since they finished merging in the pre-existing patches that Sun weren't willing to accept for OpenOffice.org. Have they actually done much more since then?

  23. Re: Stallman link on Is Free Software Ready For E-publishing? · · Score: 1

    I don't think anonymity is dead, I think its quite alive and kicking.

    What did die was the expectation that others should protect your anonymity for you.

  24. Re:There was a time when... on UK Health Service Fears Huge Legal Fight Over Unwanted Contracts · · Score: 1

    In the UK a GP is a specialisation - a non-specialised doctor remains a Senior House Officer, or FY2, and can be employed by a hospital as such (they can make great money doing locum work as an FY2). To become a GP after your FY2 year, you have to go through a 3 year training course to specialise in that area, and GPs get paid quite well in the UK, all things considered.

  25. Re:Needs an Act of Parliament on UK Health Service Fears Huge Legal Fight Over Unwanted Contracts · · Score: 1

    No, you just need to set realistic contracts - here are some restrictions that I have been discussing with others around the military contracts debacle, where entire programmes can go through development only to be cancelled prior to the purchasing phase, meaning the development is wasted money that has still been spent.

    1. Set a fixed ceiling for contractor-driven budget overruns, something like 115% of original budget. Anything else after that must be covered by the contractor.

    2. Require every change to the original contract to be set under its own budget, with no change to the original contract. This budget has the same cost ceilings as set out in point 1, with the budget being that of how much it would cost over the original budget to implement.

    3. Require every contract entered into to have a multi-year operating budget included, with that operating budget ring fenced and planned for in each fiscal year. Any operating cost overruns are subject to the same ceiling as set out in point 1. This stops projects going to term during development, only to be cancelled to save operating costs.

    4. Require any contract cancellation to be confirmed by a vote in parliament. This stops partisan cancellations.

    How does that sound?