There are already devices which just monitor the volume of noise, rather than the actual sounds. EHOs in Portsmouth have been deploying these for years on the back of noise nuisance complaints, simply to gather evidence. All they log is the noise levels, so there's no privacy concern.
What a coincidence then that one of the finest blends of Earl Grey on the planet in general and in the UK in particular is Harrods' Earl Grey, Blend No.... 42.
Well, that just confirms my theory that HHGTTG is merely a pleasant story of one Englishman's quest to find a good cup of tea.
As an English student of German with a fascination for linguistics in general, I hate having to use English words in foreign languages. It just doesn't sound or feel right to me to talk about what one did during le week-end. Don't they have their own word for that? And for heaven's sake, do they really go for lunch at le fast-food?
Fortunately, English is immune to such assimilation - it's a melting pot of foreign vocabulary as it is.
Blatantly offtopic:
One has to add some kind of ending to make it work, which gives for example un voile, voiler for "a veil, to veil" (but note that "a sail, to sail" is une voile, naviguer).
One of the reasons I prefer German to French is that, while you still have to add an ending to make a verb, the ending is always -en or -ln, depending on whether there is a vowel at the end (I might be wrong about this), and they conjugate the same way (notwithstanding irregulars).
I have heard that the Bible gets distributed on these networks. Apart from the fact that we can all get that from the motel we most recently visited, there are plenty of legitimate sites that distribute the Bible online.
Here we can see that Oppenheimer has completely missed the point. Someone in a Muslim theocracy might not be able to order a Bible online, if the government has set up a national firewall that blocks that site. Freenet is designed so that people can get a copy of the Bible even in a country where the Bible is illegal.
You could say pretty much the same thing about the FA Cup Final. Fortunately it's broadcast on BBC1 so there are no ads, and the actual game is uninterrupted (except by half-time which is about 30 mins).
Anyway, nobody's forcing you to watch it all. Just work out when it starts and do something else the rest of the time.
BTW, Eric Idle is on Channel Five's coverage for some reason.
Piracy is probably the reason nobody offers PC games for rental.
Anyway, instead of buying games from big shops like Virgin and Woolworths, you could use smaller shops like my local Ross Records. They sell new and second-hand games. If you don't like a game you can sell it back to them. It probably costs more than a rental, but the range of games is bigger than a rental store, and you don't need to be a member.
In any case, you can still return games that prove to be actually defective. For example, I bought Sim City 3000 UK Edition, and the CD key turned out to be invalid (it had been handwritten on the slip for the docs CD), so I got a full refund. The law requires them to do this (in Britain, under the Sale of Goods Act, I believe). But I'm not sure the courts would allow return of, say, Army Men because it was crap.
I have an A3000 (originally released in 1989; ARM2, 2MB RAM, no hard drive) in my loft. If the monitor would work (don't know if it's the monitor or the video port that's bust, but it's not worth the money to get it fixed), I would have it in my bedroom and I would be hacking it, learning all sorts of interesting stuff (albeit out of date) about low-level programming instead of lazing about playing Counter-Strike all day.
The real point is that Intel don't guarantee future supplies of old-style 26-bit StrongARM processors, since their only market would be in RISC OS machines, which wouldn't be profitable. And XScale is not binary compatible with them.
So, hardware developers have been toiling to design 32-bit XScale-based RISC OS-compatible systems, while RISCOS Ltd. created a 32-bit version of the OS and software authors are using their tools to port their programs to XScale. The
Microdigital Omega has a dual processor design, incorporating a 26-bit StrongARM and a slot for an XScale.
The law expressly prohibits any modification, redistribution, or reproduction of the software, and such actions could result in severe civil and criminal penalties.
I have a copy of your home page in my web cache. So sue me.
If you don't use your car much during the day, perhaps you could plug your car into a recharge point in the car park.
For the average 8 hour working day, 300 MJ could be transferred at about 10.5 KW.
At 230 V (standard British mains voltage) that is 45 A -- not too handy.
Increase it to 1 KV (would that be reasonable? Assume the plug and socket have good safety features) and you have 10 A, which could be carried by an ordinary mains flex (rated at 13 A IIRC).
In any case, if you did this every day, you wouldn't need to charge anywhere near as much energy as that in one go. And if you do use your car during the day -- well, you could use a second car which recharges at night.
The major problem would be how to pay for the energy... a credit/debit card should suffice, swiped when the car is plugged in, and charged (no pun intended) when the car is unplugged.
If you opt for the exchange method, the guy who recharges the batteries would still need his special power supply to charge all those batteries by the time his customer needs them. So, the problem of energy transfer is still with us. All an exchange would do is transfer the inconvenience of charging into the dealer's hands. Admittedly, the inconvenience would be less for someone who does it a *lot* -- perhaps using a "battery dispenser", which accepts your old battery, and schedules recharging to distribute the power load over time, to avoid overloading the grid.
A thought on the exchange method from the motorist's point of view: A monolithic battery which could store 300 MJ would be too heavy to lift; but you could use a trolley to remove and transport it. It would probably take a long time to change such a battery built in sections, though a low-capacity top-up would be quicker. I presume this is what you meant by the energy storage problem.
Anyway, any sort of electric car wouldn't solve the problem of pollution generated at the power station. That takes clean energy sources: another problem entirely.
In the UK, under the Data Protection Act 1998, it is illegal to retain data for longer than necessary. 12-24 months may well be considered to be longer than necessary for many types of data.
So, my question is: Would this European Directive (or whatever) override the Data Protection Act?
I've often proposed that the entire legal code an individual be subjected to be readable and roughly memorizable by "the average non-college educated person".
Slashdot Mirror
There are already devices which just monitor the volume of noise, rather than the actual sounds. EHOs in Portsmouth have been deploying these for years on the back of noise nuisance complaints, simply to gather evidence. All they log is the noise levels, so there's no privacy concern.
> Queens English is so dead. Is that really Queens English or *the* Queen's English?
Fortunately, English is immune to such assimilation - it's a melting pot of foreign vocabulary as it is.
Blatantly offtopic:
One of the reasons I prefer German to French is that, while you still have to add an ending to make a verb, the ending is always -en or -ln, depending on whether there is a vowel at the end (I might be wrong about this), and they conjugate the same way (notwithstanding irregulars).Not to mention university students, who typically graduate with debts of £8000.
"Well, what you got?"
"Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam..."
Anyway, nobody's forcing you to watch it all. Just work out when it starts and do something else the rest of the time.
BTW, Eric Idle is on Channel Five's coverage for some reason.
Hehe... I bought this card. What a cheapskate I am.
Since when was the North Pole under US jurisdiction? ;-)
The East Coast? What, Hull? Shanghai? Mombasa? Nova Scotia?
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a massively important precedent against the DMCA. But doesn't this wording overturn a basic tenet of criminal law?
Also, the fact that there was a verdict at all seems to suggest that the USA really did have jurisdiction in this case. Is that a good thing?
Anyway, instead of buying games from big shops like Virgin and Woolworths, you could use smaller shops like my local Ross Records. They sell new and second-hand games. If you don't like a game you can sell it back to them. It probably costs more than a rental, but the range of games is bigger than a rental store, and you don't need to be a member.
In any case, you can still return games that prove to be actually defective. For example, I bought Sim City 3000 UK Edition, and the CD key turned out to be invalid (it had been handwritten on the slip for the docs CD), so I got a full refund. The law requires them to do this (in Britain, under the Sale of Goods Act, I believe). But I'm not sure the courts would allow return of, say, Army Men because it was crap.
I have an A3000 (originally released in 1989; ARM2, 2MB RAM, no hard drive) in my loft. If the monitor would work (don't know if it's the monitor or the video port that's bust, but it's not worth the money to get it fixed), I would have it in my bedroom and I would be hacking it, learning all sorts of interesting stuff (albeit out of date) about low-level programming instead of lazing about playing Counter-Strike all day.
So, hardware developers have been toiling to design 32-bit XScale-based RISC OS-compatible systems, while RISCOS Ltd. created a 32-bit version of the OS and software authors are using their tools to port their programs to XScale. The Microdigital Omega has a dual processor design, incorporating a 26-bit StrongARM and a slot for an XScale.
The Iyonix is the first pure XScale machine.
oops, misread that, sorry.
Er, Java came first. How the heck can it build on C#?
If you don't use your car much during the day, perhaps you could plug your car into a recharge point in the car park.
For the average 8 hour working day, 300 MJ could be transferred at about 10.5 KW.
At 230 V (standard British mains voltage) that is 45 A -- not too handy.
Increase it to 1 KV (would that be reasonable? Assume the plug and socket have good safety features) and you have 10 A, which could be carried by an ordinary mains flex (rated at 13 A IIRC).
In any case, if you did this every day, you wouldn't need to charge anywhere near as much energy as that in one go. And if you do use your car during the day -- well, you could use a second car which recharges at night.
The major problem would be how to pay for the energy... a credit/debit card should suffice, swiped when the car is plugged in, and charged (no pun intended) when the car is unplugged.
If you opt for the exchange method, the guy who recharges the batteries would still need his special power supply to charge all those batteries by the time his customer needs them. So, the problem of energy transfer is still with us. All an exchange would do is transfer the inconvenience of charging into the dealer's hands. Admittedly, the inconvenience would be less for someone who does it a *lot* -- perhaps using a "battery dispenser", which accepts your old battery, and schedules recharging to distribute the power load over time, to avoid overloading the grid.
A thought on the exchange method from the motorist's point of view: A monolithic battery which could store 300 MJ would be too heavy to lift; but you could use a trolley to remove and transport it. It would probably take a long time to change such a battery built in sections, though a low-capacity top-up would be quicker. I presume this is what you meant by the energy storage problem.
Anyway, any sort of electric car wouldn't solve the problem of pollution generated at the power station. That takes clean energy sources: another problem entirely.
So, my question is: Would this European Directive (or whatever) override the Data Protection Act?