I give them money, they give me a copy of a song. Looks like a sale, smells like a sale, courts would probably view it as a sale. Customers certainly *think* it's a sale. Until it bites them on the arse. This is the same problem as with windows EULAs. Yes there's a contract, but you can't put anything in a contract and get away with it; as an extreme example, you can't sell yourself into slavery in a contract. There also has to be some consideration, i.e. you get something in return for the extra restrictions. But this is niggling over the details.
Ultimately, we disagree. You think that companies can do what they like, customers be damned. I think that companies should be regulated, especially when they are monopolies. Like it or not, apple have a near monopoly in both mp3 players and online music sold. Tying the two together, and refusing either their customers to move, or their competitors to work with their products is quite possibly against anti-trust law in much of europe.
When microsoft lock out their customers and competition with media player codecs, governments get involved. When apple lock out their customers and competition with 'fairplay', governments step in again. I think that's a good thing. You don't.
I fully understand the contract, which is why I haven't signed up with iTMS.
People who didn't read the full legalese, or didn't fully understand the implications of the DRM - which is most of them - are in for a rude awakening if they decide to use their purchased music on something other than an ipod. Or how about playing the music outside of itunes - such as on linux. Or finding you've run out of machine licences.
That's the anticompetitive nature; once you've bought the music through iTMS, it turns out you don't own it after all; you only 'own' a heavily restricted file that's tied to one company's brand of hardware player and software player. It doesn't matter that it might be available in another form from another store; apple's customers are prevented from using their paid for music with competititors hardware and software.
Glad you like the analogy. Companies abuse the environment if we let them; they also abuse everything else, such as the right to freely use your purchased items if we let them. Regulation stops them. Regulation is not automatically a bad thing. Following now?
SlashDot - a study in cognitive dissonance. "Government bad. Government intrusion in our lives bad. Government attack on sales of operating systems of music between consenting adults, GOOD!".
I am not slashdot. I challenge you to find a single comment I've ever made where I advocate a laissez faire approach. Far as I'm concerned, government is generally a good thing, and government regulation is almost always a good thing. Companies scare me a lot more than governments; at least I get to vote for my politicians. Maybe if I lived in the US where elections are stolen by diebold I'd feel differently.
As you point out yourself, Norway is not the US. Like much of europe, they feel that companies should not be allowed an unlimited ability to screw over stupid people, especially when they are a monopoly or near monopoly. Free markets require regulation to stay free.
Most people accept that say, manufacturing companies shouldn't be able to freely dump toxic chemicals into the town drinking water. Regulation is a necessity to keep companies fair, as they have no other incentive or reason to do so. Apple is using its market dominance to enforce a situation where if you switch hardware, you lose your music. No the burn/rip method doesn't count, as transcoding produces an inferior copy.
I've often wondered how people would react and criticise if microsoft ran itunes, and microsoft made ipods, with all the success and the restrictions in place. Would people who give apple slack now, nail microsoft for such restrictive and anti-competitive practises?
CNR's free service will supposedly include the same ubuntu package repositories that ubuntu itself uses with apt-get. So as long as you don't start manually mixing versions (half edgy, half feisty sort of thing) you'll be able to run CNR and synaptic alternatively, whichever front-end you like. Obviously, CNR also has commercial packages available which you can pay for and download, but the free service largely re-uses the existing ubuntu binaries (plus a few extra non-Free, like ubuntu restricted). No point re-inventing the wheel, after all.
For what it's worth, microsoft consider OEM copies of windows non-transferable, which is why they're half the price of a retail licence which can be transferred. A motherboard change is the 'key' component in their world view, so replacing a faulty motherboard counts as replacing the computer; and that means the OEM copy of windows is no longer valid, and a new copy needs to be bought. Sounds like your hassle with the motherboard swap could be down to this limitation - they did consider your valid OEM licence to no longer be valid.
Similarly, OEM licence codes that ship on name-brand desktops and laptops usually won't activate online anymore; you're supposed to use the pre-activated restore disks that will only install on that hardware; the OEM licence on the side isn't easily usable on its own, and certainly not on another PC with different hardware.
These limitations are by design, and will only get worse with the many versions of vista - OEM, retail, upgrade, VLK and PAK versions of each of the 7 types.
You realise the companies being pumped hardly ever have any relation to the spammer, yes? They're just poorly traded low-value stocks that spammers pick to promote via spam, then sell quickly after suckers buy the stock. The company who's stock is being pumped is usually innocent - in a way, they're being joe-jobbed by the spammers.
I have disdain for any group, person or industry that uses copyright infringement lawsuits to shut down a general service because they don't like what users post. The copyright holder has the moral duty to search for infringement and issue take-down notices in valid cases - NOT the service provider. Rapidshare is very useful, and I've used it plenty of times to get hold of perfectly legal files such as game patches, obsolete drivers and screenshots.
I'm sure some users are posting copyright infringing material. Go after those files, go after those users. Go after the service itself? There, you have my disdain.
Re:Can Linux Virtualization Get Any More Fragmente
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Virtualbox Goes OSS
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· Score: 3, Interesting
From the perspective of running windows virtualised in linux;
Xen is a pain to setup and manage for a desktop, it's server-orientated. QEMU without KQEMU is dead slow (full virtualisation has its price!), with KQEMU is closed source. KVM is quick with VT processors, but suffers from poor USB support (locks up on my machine), and network performance is slow in both due to lack of paravirtualised network drivers in qemu. UML obviously doesn't run windows. Win4Lin I haven't tried, it isn't free in either sense. Bochs is for much more hardcore situations than running Windows on x86. VMWare on linux - for me - has been awkward to get working fully (USB again) and rather flakey on both gentoo and ubuntu.
Currently KVM shows promise, but it needs a bit more work for me, especially for USB, vesa-resolutions and networking. No doubt in another 6 months, it will be awesome. Indidivual user VMWare software just seems happier running with windows as the host OS.
So far, my testing of virtualbox looks very promising - very fast, VERY nice front end on linux, quick to setup, and the closed source version has some clever RDP features. I think I may finally have found a virtualisation software that lets me sync my PDA to outlook via USB, when running linux as my main OS - my holy grail.
There are lots of different virtualisation projects from total emulators like bochs, to paravirtualised-optimised systems like virtualbox and vmware, to full virtualisation such as qemu and kvm (strictly speaking, kvm is a replacement for kqemu, not qemu itself). I've not heard of virtualbox before, but I'm certainly going to look further into it.
For what it's worth, I did write to my MP explaining my opposition to ID cards. I've since moved, so maybe I'll get more traction this time round (pretty much the same objections as last time) with my new MP. The tabloid newspaper angle is an interesting one which I'll use to support the 'who do you trust to access so much data?' argument, thanks.
As far as the heaksink sig goes, it's historical. The ATX design means there's not guaranteed clearance on the 'back' side for any kind of heatsink; my motherboard has the end of the RAM slots and the northbridge cooler very close that side for example. ATX was designed back in 1995, before the advent of big graphics cards or thermal issues at all really. This is one flaw addressed by the BTX design, so that the heatsinks are the right way up. You can get BTX-style cases to fit ATX boards if it bothers you a lot. Just a shame intel effectively made BTX intel-cpu only with the bus layout, or it'd be a lot more popular.
I have a WM5 pocket pc, clamshell phone, 5gig flash drive and sometimes a flash mp3 player in my coat pockets. Its a pain to carry all that around and keep charged, and the interfaces on all of them are a pain to use. I certainly didn't want to get a WM5 smartphone, though I do connect my pda to the 'net via wifi and bluetooth to the phone.
I was a perfect customer for the iPhone when it came to the UK, so I could replace the lot with one slick interface and a lovely form factor. But no extra software on the iPhone? No ssh, vnc, voip or custom little apps like my exercise program? Screw THAT. I need this as a PDA first, phone 2nd, and music player third. If it is only going to have the glorified calendar and contact lists you get on phones, I'm sorry but that's utterly useless to me. Even my existing bloody phone can have extra java apps on it. What IS the point of having a full-ish OS on a smartphone if you can't install any extra software?
Needless to say, Jobs just lost me and a couple of of other people I know who were going to get one. Guess those people saying it's just going to be a pretty, very overpriced phone were right.
It's somewhat of a self-selecting group though; in order to sustain being a vegetarian, you need a better overall knowledge of nutrition that your average person. It's perfectly possible to eat a balanced proper diet including meat, in fact it's probably easier to get the right amount of protein that way - but it's also a lot easier to have a fat-filled life of lard, burger and sausages than as a vegetarian. Bad nutrition does indeed lead to a shorter lifespan.
Still, as you say, there's other good reasons to be a vegetarian and i've no doubt that veggies do have much better nutrition than average.
Did you install the binary video drivers? Licence issues prevent these being distributed as part of the default install on most linux distros. The default X drivers are very like the default windows XP video drivers - slow. That may be what caused your video playback issues, as I playback video all the time in gentoo and ubuntu, and both run fine in any player.
I agree it's annoying, and they should fix that. One workaround I use (apart from IMAP servers where possible) is to copy the profile to another partition with my other data that stays between reinstalls, and then modify the thunderbird shortcut to run
"c:\program files\mozilla thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -profile d:\mythunderbirdprofile Beats risking forgetting to back it up!
I modify the my documents folder location also (right click on it on the start menu) - saves a hell of a lot of effort on reinstalls.
Thing is, as a layman, this ruling doesn't strike me as radically different to the concepts of vicarious and contributory infringement already common in US courts. If the big US hosting companies, search engines and content aggregators are prepared to cope with vicarious copyright infringement threats (which is what took down the original napster) why not this?
CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
The standard definition for contributory copyright infringement is when the defendant, "with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another." [2] In other words, the record labels must not only show ownership of a valid copyright and unlawful copying but must show that the P2P company 1) had knowledge of the infringing activity and 2) materially contributed to the infringing conduct. Again, this is for the purpose of holding someone other than the infringer liable for copyright infringement.
VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
Vicarious liability is another means of holding someone liable for copyright infringement even when that person or party is not the one who did the infringing. In order to find a defendant liable under the theory of vicarious liability for the actions of an infringer, it must be shown that the defendant 1) has the right and ability to control the infringer's acts, and 2) receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement.[3] Unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. However, courts have determined that the combination of the right and ability to control the infringer's acts and the receipt of a direct financial benefit from the infringement suffices to hold a defendant vicariously liable for copyright infringement, even if the defendant had no knowledge of the particular infringement.[4]
The only way Windows will ever be displaced is if another competitor offers something significantly better, which is unlikely. Operating systems are now a commodity, so the possibility that one could be significantly better than another on the same hardware is remote.
Given linux AND OSX run on the same hardware platform windows does (assuming you've got apple's TPM chip onboard) - you can even triple boot all three on the same computer - I beg to differ that OS choice can't make a significant difference in terms of usability. OSX and linux both offer significant advantages over windows in different areas, while windows is better in a few others. OS choice hasn't been so good since the early 90's.
Imaginary numbers are a perfectly valid construct, but yes, it's a bad name. Once you start dealing with electrical engineering, imaginary/complex numbers become very useful. The best way to think of them is a number system perpendicular to the one based on 'real' numbers. This allows you to simplify the maths (or even make possible maths that wasn't possible before) when dealing with things like AC waves and phases. Engineers do similar tricks where they substitute a symbol in for a specific function.
It's sort of the mathematical version of using arrays, or variables, it's simply a way of representing 'the real world' in a simpler, more manageable way.
You missed one - bandwidth. Some of us out in the sticks have to pay a lot of money for high speed access; we've got 2MB SDSL atm, and can't afford faster. It's already saturated with our number of users, and you want me to put one of our most heavily used apps on the outside of it?
Google apps for my domain on a box in my server cabinet? Then we'd be talking.
They did suspect radiation before his death, given the symptoms (there's been coverage in the news for about the last week; he was poisoned about 3 weeks ago).
The problem was detecting what the precise source of the radiation was, given it was only present in trace amounts and was an alpha source so not detectable outside the body; they thought he'd ingested radioactive thallium (thallium-201) on monday. Thing is, we don't know for certain what the medical staff knew and when they knew it, as the media coverage has been speculating based on what little concrete information that's been released. There's quite a big information lockdown due to the ongoing investigation (standard procedure here, so that later jury trials aren't prejudiced because all the info is in the public domain before the trial - it comes out at the trial itself, as evidence)
Good points about the FM transmitters. As far as TV goes, there are a couple of reasons they're forcing the migration to digital. At the moment, the analog TV (and a little more from analog radio) takes up a LOT of the most useful frequency spectrum, plus its very vulnerable to interference. Most digital TV transmitters are broadcasting at very low power (around 4%) so they don't swamp the 5 analog channels. Digital can give better broadcast quality, can fit in many more channels in the same bandwidth, and much more resistant to interference. The fact that it works at all, given the tiny power budget and spectrum its squeezed in round the analog channels is pretty impressive.
DAB radio is in much the same boat. The complaints about getting a signal and low quality would go away if DAB could crank it up, spread out a bit and not worry about overriding FM transmitters.
With the analog channels off, the digital transmitters can boost the power (i.e. better range) and use some of the huge amount of freed bandwidth so they don't have to compress so much (i.e. less blocky artifacts). Even better, they can start broadcasting the free-to-air HD channels over freeview, which they just don't have the free bandwidth to do now. Regions are switching over to digital TV only from 2008 to 2012. I for one can't wait. TV signal with good reception, lots of channels and HD to boot? Given I live in the wilds of Dorset, my analog signal is barely watchable, and I only get about 2/3 the multiplexes. Improving that has got to be good.
Oh, one last thing. The public owns the airwaves, thus the government gets to allocate their use on the public's behalf. Given digital TV is so much better, and they can't really coexist, its a choice between digital or analog. It's not one the market can decide, as you'll just end up with a bunch of legacy equipment that won't go away for 30 years and stops the new equipment working properly, while private companies profit excessively at the cost of the public. Just look at the huge mess having two systems of weights and measurement has caused.
If it's part of the countrywide APNR network, it's 2 years in a central database, or up to 6 years if part of a log thats used in evidence in a court case - even if you're not the person in court,
It's probably just referring to something Johnny 5 says in 'Short Circuit' - he's imitating a grasshopper and accidentally squashes it. "Reassemble Stephanie?" is where he asks for it to be brought back to life; when it's explained that it can't be, that death is permanent, Johnny links 'his' being disassembled to a permanent end, thus leading to his resistance throughout the film to being disassembled by Nova. Johnny 5 is alive, after all!
You've missed option 3. EU governments cancel copyrights on Microsoft software. They become perfectly legal to download, share and modify to remove IP region-based windows update crippleware inside the EU. Thus leaving Microsoft having given up all income in an economic area with a higher GDP than the US.
The government gives copyright protection, and they can and have taken it away in individual cases in the past. Microsoft might be wealthy and powerful, but they don't get to write their own laws in the EU.
And the EU courts and governments say "That'll be a billion euro a day fine, we're confiscating all your european assets to pay for it and oh, we're cancelling your copyright on Windows and Office. Anyone want to host the website where people can download free copies and get copies of the updates?"
Remember, Microsoft only exist because of government-backed copyrights. They can and have nullified copyrights, or extended it to perpetuity, in individual cases in the EU....
There are lots of viruses, and we call a bunch of them 'flu'. Each year, there are different strains that spread around and kill people (mostly the young and the elderly) which is why there's a different vaccine every year. They already research many, many strains to try and predict which will be the annual or even the next 'big' one.
There have been a number of flu pandemics. Millions died in 1918. Smaller pandemics happened in 1957 and 1968. Flu is one of the hardest viruses to prevent infection, because of the large number of variations and it's ability to mutate. A pandemic can start when three conditions have been met: 1)a new influenza virus subtype emerges; 2)it infects humans, causing serious illness; 3)and it spreads easily and sustainably among humans. The H5N1 virus meets the first two conditions and it is likely that nobody will have immunity should an H5N1-like pandemic virus emerge.
H5N1 already spreads easily amongst birds, and can cross to humans where it is very deadly. If a variant emerges - which has happened before in asian close human & bird groups - that combines both, and becomes a H5N1 variant, the death-toll would likely be huge, given how quickly air-travel can spread diseases. Even if a vaccine is developed quickly and produced quickly, disruption would be large. Scientists are worried because it's happened repeatedly before, we know the reasons, and the circumstances are ripe for it to happen again. And yes, they're not just keep an eye on H5N1, that's just the one the media focus on.
England has had a constitution since magna carta. It's just not written down in one big book with carefully written rules about how you alter it. That's what happens when you let politicians, royalty and lawyers poke at something for nearly 800 years. As you say, every act of parliament is part of the constitution. The US executive can amend the US constitution, it just takes time or a large army. If George Bush decided to serve a third term, and the army backed him, how on earth would having the supreme court or a fixed constitution help?
George Bush has killed habeas corpus, given himself broad powers to declare martial law, pissed on free speech (in zones) along with various other offences. The constitution hasn't stopped him, the supreme court hasn't stopped him. Hell, they even pretty much destroyed the right of private property.
Technically speaking, the Human Rights Act 1998 could be regarded as a US-style constitution, as it cedes power to a higher court - that of the European Court of Human Rights. That said, the UK parliament could withdraw from the convention. It would likely cause a conflict within the EU, eventual sanctions against the UK (which we'd just refuse to pay, like the Italian or French government) and possibly might have the UK kicked out of the EU altogether. The UK parliament is still sovereign, it just chooses not to exert that sovereignty in certain ways as it perceives being part of the EU to be more valuable - for the moment.
Some people want a bill of rights, some of us like not having all our laws held up to the moral standards of some 200-odd year old dead guys. Imagine if the British had written a binding constitution that enforced the morals from 800 years ago! Our constitution is a living document, written by politicians with the consent of the (alas still often underinformed) populace. As long as we have elections, we have the power to remove politicians, and replace them with ones that will reverse the legislation of the last lot - something that happens about every 10-15 years. It means that the law is flexible and quickly can adapt to new situations and problems, instead of trying to work round a badly worded sentence (hello, well-armed militias) 220 years later. And if the government tried to remove elections? Well parliament would likely stop them (they're not that stupid, and there's a strong tradition of even the government's own party disagreeing with them when they try something too objectionable) and even if not then, the Queen wouldn't given royal assent. And we're back to which side the army follows again.
In the end of the day, a constitution is only of value if everyone in the chain accepts the artificial rules around it. In those circumstances it doesn't matter if the constitution is something hand-written 220 years ago, or built up mostly as tradition over 800 years - it comes down to the people consenting to be governed (even passive protests can bring down governments) and the army going along with it.
off-topic: Oh, I'm also not sure what you mean about the 'right to remain silent' bit. There's the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, pre Tony, where police now say when arresting you "'You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'" You can remain silent, but if you choose to give up that silence only in court, inference can be made from that. That's up to the jury. Perhaps I'm missing something about a right to silence.
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I give them money, they give me a copy of a song. Looks like a sale, smells like a sale, courts would probably view it as a sale. Customers certainly *think* it's a sale. Until it bites them on the arse. This is the same problem as with windows EULAs. Yes there's a contract, but you can't put anything in a contract and get away with it; as an extreme example, you can't sell yourself into slavery in a contract. There also has to be some consideration, i.e. you get something in return for the extra restrictions. But this is niggling over the details.
Ultimately, we disagree. You think that companies can do what they like, customers be damned. I think that companies should be regulated, especially when they are monopolies. Like it or not, apple have a near monopoly in both mp3 players and online music sold. Tying the two together, and refusing either their customers to move, or their competitors to work with their products is quite possibly against anti-trust law in much of europe.
When microsoft lock out their customers and competition with media player codecs, governments get involved. When apple lock out their customers and competition with 'fairplay', governments step in again. I think that's a good thing. You don't.
I fully understand the contract, which is why I haven't signed up with iTMS.
People who didn't read the full legalese, or didn't fully understand the implications of the DRM - which is most of them - are in for a rude awakening if they decide to use their purchased music on something other than an ipod. Or how about playing the music outside of itunes - such as on linux. Or finding you've run out of machine licences.
That's the anticompetitive nature; once you've bought the music through iTMS, it turns out you don't own it after all; you only 'own' a heavily restricted file that's tied to one company's brand of hardware player and software player. It doesn't matter that it might be available in another form from another store; apple's customers are prevented from using their paid for music with competititors hardware and software.
Glad you like the analogy. Companies abuse the environment if we let them; they also abuse everything else, such as the right to freely use your purchased items if we let them. Regulation stops them. Regulation is not automatically a bad thing. Following now?
SlashDot - a study in cognitive dissonance. "Government bad. Government intrusion in our lives bad. Government attack on sales of operating systems of music between consenting adults, GOOD!".
I am not slashdot. I challenge you to find a single comment I've ever made where I advocate a laissez faire approach. Far as I'm concerned, government is generally a good thing, and government regulation is almost always a good thing. Companies scare me a lot more than governments; at least I get to vote for my politicians. Maybe if I lived in the US where elections are stolen by diebold I'd feel differently.
As you point out yourself, Norway is not the US. Like much of europe, they feel that companies should not be allowed an unlimited ability to screw over stupid people, especially when they are a monopoly or near monopoly. Free markets require regulation to stay free.
Most people accept that say, manufacturing companies shouldn't be able to freely dump toxic chemicals into the town drinking water. Regulation is a necessity to keep companies fair, as they have no other incentive or reason to do so. Apple is using its market dominance to enforce a situation where if you switch hardware, you lose your music. No the burn/rip method doesn't count, as transcoding produces an inferior copy.
I've often wondered how people would react and criticise if microsoft ran itunes, and microsoft made ipods, with all the success and the restrictions in place. Would people who give apple slack now, nail microsoft for such restrictive and anti-competitive practises?
CNR's free service will supposedly include the same ubuntu package repositories that ubuntu itself uses with apt-get. So as long as you don't start manually mixing versions (half edgy, half feisty sort of thing) you'll be able to run CNR and synaptic alternatively, whichever front-end you like. Obviously, CNR also has commercial packages available which you can pay for and download, but the free service largely re-uses the existing ubuntu binaries (plus a few extra non-Free, like ubuntu restricted). No point re-inventing the wheel, after all.
For what it's worth, microsoft consider OEM copies of windows non-transferable, which is why they're half the price of a retail licence which can be transferred. A motherboard change is the 'key' component in their world view, so replacing a faulty motherboard counts as replacing the computer; and that means the OEM copy of windows is no longer valid, and a new copy needs to be bought. Sounds like your hassle with the motherboard swap could be down to this limitation - they did consider your valid OEM licence to no longer be valid.
Similarly, OEM licence codes that ship on name-brand desktops and laptops usually won't activate online anymore; you're supposed to use the pre-activated restore disks that will only install on that hardware; the OEM licence on the side isn't easily usable on its own, and certainly not on another PC with different hardware.
These limitations are by design, and will only get worse with the many versions of vista - OEM, retail, upgrade, VLK and PAK versions of each of the 7 types.
You realise the companies being pumped hardly ever have any relation to the spammer, yes? They're just poorly traded low-value stocks that spammers pick to promote via spam, then sell quickly after suckers buy the stock. The company who's stock is being pumped is usually innocent - in a way, they're being joe-jobbed by the spammers.
I have disdain for any group, person or industry that uses copyright infringement lawsuits to shut down a general service because they don't like what users post. The copyright holder has the moral duty to search for infringement and issue take-down notices in valid cases - NOT the service provider. Rapidshare is very useful, and I've used it plenty of times to get hold of perfectly legal files such as game patches, obsolete drivers and screenshots.
I'm sure some users are posting copyright infringing material. Go after those files, go after those users. Go after the service itself? There, you have my disdain.
From the perspective of running windows virtualised in linux;
Xen is a pain to setup and manage for a desktop, it's server-orientated. QEMU without KQEMU is dead slow (full virtualisation has its price!), with KQEMU is closed source. KVM is quick with VT processors, but suffers from poor USB support (locks up on my machine), and network performance is slow in both due to lack of paravirtualised network drivers in qemu. UML obviously doesn't run windows. Win4Lin I haven't tried, it isn't free in either sense. Bochs is for much more hardcore situations than running Windows on x86. VMWare on linux - for me - has been awkward to get working fully (USB again) and rather flakey on both gentoo and ubuntu.
Currently KVM shows promise, but it needs a bit more work for me, especially for USB, vesa-resolutions and networking. No doubt in another 6 months, it will be awesome. Indidivual user VMWare software just seems happier running with windows as the host OS.
So far, my testing of virtualbox looks very promising - very fast, VERY nice front end on linux, quick to setup, and the closed source version has some clever RDP features. I think I may finally have found a virtualisation software that lets me sync my PDA to outlook via USB, when running linux as my main OS - my holy grail.
There are lots of different virtualisation projects from total emulators like bochs, to paravirtualised-optimised systems like virtualbox and vmware, to full virtualisation such as qemu and kvm (strictly speaking, kvm is a replacement for kqemu, not qemu itself). I've not heard of virtualbox before, but I'm certainly going to look further into it.
For what it's worth, I did write to my MP explaining my opposition to ID cards. I've since moved, so maybe I'll get more traction this time round (pretty much the same objections as last time) with my new MP. The tabloid newspaper angle is an interesting one which I'll use to support the 'who do you trust to access so much data?' argument, thanks.
As far as the heaksink sig goes, it's historical. The ATX design means there's not guaranteed clearance on the 'back' side for any kind of heatsink; my motherboard has the end of the RAM slots and the northbridge cooler very close that side for example. ATX was designed back in 1995, before the advent of big graphics cards or thermal issues at all really. This is one flaw addressed by the BTX design, so that the heatsinks are the right way up. You can get BTX-style cases to fit ATX boards if it bothers you a lot. Just a shame intel effectively made BTX intel-cpu only with the bus layout, or it'd be a lot more popular.
I have a WM5 pocket pc, clamshell phone, 5gig flash drive and sometimes a flash mp3 player in my coat pockets. Its a pain to carry all that around and keep charged, and the interfaces on all of them are a pain to use. I certainly didn't want to get a WM5 smartphone, though I do connect my pda to the 'net via wifi and bluetooth to the phone.
I was a perfect customer for the iPhone when it came to the UK, so I could replace the lot with one slick interface and a lovely form factor. But no extra software on the iPhone? No ssh, vnc, voip or custom little apps like my exercise program? Screw THAT. I need this as a PDA first, phone 2nd, and music player third. If it is only going to have the glorified calendar and contact lists you get on phones, I'm sorry but that's utterly useless to me. Even my existing bloody phone can have extra java apps on it. What IS the point of having a full-ish OS on a smartphone if you can't install any extra software?
Needless to say, Jobs just lost me and a couple of of other people I know who were going to get one. Guess those people saying it's just going to be a pretty, very overpriced phone were right.
It's somewhat of a self-selecting group though; in order to sustain being a vegetarian, you need a better overall knowledge of nutrition that your average person. It's perfectly possible to eat a balanced proper diet including meat, in fact it's probably easier to get the right amount of protein that way - but it's also a lot easier to have a fat-filled life of lard, burger and sausages than as a vegetarian. Bad nutrition does indeed lead to a shorter lifespan.
Still, as you say, there's other good reasons to be a vegetarian and i've no doubt that veggies do have much better nutrition than average.
Did you install the binary video drivers? Licence issues prevent these being distributed as part of the default install on most linux distros. The default X drivers are very like the default windows XP video drivers - slow. That may be what caused your video playback issues, as I playback video all the time in gentoo and ubuntu, and both run fine in any player.
t o is a good place to start, assuming you didn't already. http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ is another good place to go to get the binary-only and non-free packages that make life easier, which can't be distributed with the main distro for legal reasons. Did I mention software patents suck?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHow
I modify the my documents folder location also (right click on it on the start menu) - saves a hell of a lot of effort on reinstalls.
Thing is, as a layman, this ruling doesn't strike me as radically different to the concepts of vicarious and contributory infringement already common in US courts. If the big US hosting companies, search engines and content aggregators are prepared to cope with vicarious copyright infringement threats (which is what took down the original napster) why not this?
Contributory infringement
CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
The standard definition for contributory copyright infringement is when the defendant, "with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another." [2] In other words, the record labels must not only show ownership of a valid copyright and unlawful copying but must show that the P2P company 1) had knowledge of the infringing activity and 2) materially contributed to the infringing conduct. Again, this is for the purpose of holding someone other than the infringer liable for copyright infringement.
VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
Vicarious liability is another means of holding someone liable for copyright infringement even when that person or party is not the one who did the infringing. In order to find a defendant liable under the theory of vicarious liability for the actions of an infringer, it must be shown that the defendant 1) has the right and ability to control the infringer's acts, and 2) receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement.[3] Unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. However, courts have determined that the combination of the right and ability to control the infringer's acts and the receipt of a direct financial benefit from the infringement suffices to hold a defendant vicariously liable for copyright infringement, even if the defendant had no knowledge of the particular infringement.[4]
The only way Windows will ever be displaced is if another competitor offers something significantly better, which is unlikely. Operating systems are now a commodity, so the possibility that one could be significantly better than another on the same hardware is remote.
Given linux AND OSX run on the same hardware platform windows does (assuming you've got apple's TPM chip onboard) - you can even triple boot all three on the same computer - I beg to differ that OS choice can't make a significant difference in terms of usability. OSX and linux both offer significant advantages over windows in different areas, while windows is better in a few others. OS choice hasn't been so good since the early 90's.
Imaginary numbers are a perfectly valid construct, but yes, it's a bad name. Once you start dealing with electrical engineering, imaginary/complex numbers become very useful.
The best way to think of them is a number system perpendicular to the one based on 'real' numbers. This allows you to simplify the maths (or even make possible maths that wasn't possible before) when dealing with things like AC waves and phases. Engineers do similar tricks where they substitute a symbol in for a specific function.
It's sort of the mathematical version of using arrays, or variables, it's simply a way of representing 'the real world' in a simpler, more manageable way.
You missed one - bandwidth. Some of us out in the sticks have to pay a lot of money for high speed access; we've got 2MB SDSL atm, and can't afford faster. It's already saturated with our number of users, and you want me to put one of our most heavily used apps on the outside of it?
Google apps for my domain on a box in my server cabinet? Then we'd be talking.
They did suspect radiation before his death, given the symptoms (there's been coverage in the news for about the last week; he was poisoned about 3 weeks ago).
The problem was detecting what the precise source of the radiation was, given it was only present in trace amounts and was an alpha source so not detectable outside the body; they thought he'd ingested radioactive thallium (thallium-201) on monday. Thing is, we don't know for certain what the medical staff knew and when they knew it, as the media coverage has been speculating based on what little concrete information that's been released. There's quite a big information lockdown due to the ongoing investigation (standard procedure here, so that later jury trials aren't prejudiced because all the info is in the public domain before the trial - it comes out at the trial itself, as evidence)
Good points about the FM transmitters. As far as TV goes, there are a couple of reasons they're forcing the migration to digital. At the moment, the analog TV (and a little more from analog radio) takes up a LOT of the most useful frequency spectrum, plus its very vulnerable to interference. Most digital TV transmitters are broadcasting at very low power (around 4%) so they don't swamp the 5 analog channels. Digital can give better broadcast quality, can fit in many more channels in the same bandwidth, and much more resistant to interference. The fact that it works at all, given the tiny power budget and spectrum its squeezed in round the analog channels is pretty impressive.
DAB radio is in much the same boat. The complaints about getting a signal and low quality would go away if DAB could crank it up, spread out a bit and not worry about overriding FM transmitters.
With the analog channels off, the digital transmitters can boost the power (i.e. better range) and use some of the huge amount of freed bandwidth so they don't have to compress so much (i.e. less blocky artifacts). Even better, they can start broadcasting the free-to-air HD channels over freeview, which they just don't have the free bandwidth to do now. Regions are switching over to digital TV only from 2008 to 2012. I for one can't wait. TV signal with good reception, lots of channels and HD to boot? Given I live in the wilds of Dorset, my analog signal is barely watchable, and I only get about 2/3 the multiplexes. Improving that has got to be good.
Oh, one last thing. The public owns the airwaves, thus the government gets to allocate their use on the public's behalf. Given digital TV is so much better, and they can't really coexist, its a choice between digital or analog. It's not one the market can decide, as you'll just end up with a bunch of legacy equipment that won't go away for 30 years and stops the new equipment working properly, while private companies profit excessively at the cost of the public. Just look at the huge mess having two systems of weights and measurement has caused.
If it's part of the countrywide APNR network, it's 2 years in a central database, or up to 6 years if part of a log thats used in evidence in a court case - even if you're not the person in court,
It's probably just referring to something Johnny 5 says in 'Short Circuit' - he's imitating a grasshopper and accidentally squashes it.
:)
"Reassemble Stephanie?" is where he asks for it to be brought back to life; when it's explained that it can't be, that death is permanent, Johnny links 'his' being disassembled to a permanent end, thus leading to his resistance throughout the film to being disassembled by Nova. Johnny 5 is alive, after all!
I'll go shut up now
You've missed option 3. EU governments cancel copyrights on Microsoft software. They become perfectly legal to download, share and modify to remove IP region-based windows update crippleware inside the EU. Thus leaving Microsoft having given up all income in an economic area with a higher GDP than the US.
The government gives copyright protection, and they can and have taken it away in individual cases in the past. Microsoft might be wealthy and powerful, but they don't get to write their own laws in the EU.
And the EU courts and governments say "That'll be a billion euro a day fine, we're confiscating all your european assets to pay for it and oh, we're cancelling your copyright on Windows and Office. Anyone want to host the website where people can download free copies and get copies of the updates?"
Remember, Microsoft only exist because of government-backed copyrights. They can and have nullified copyrights, or extended it to perpetuity, in individual cases in the EU....
There are lots of viruses, and we call a bunch of them 'flu'. Each year, there are different strains that spread around and kill people (mostly the young and the elderly) which is why there's a different vaccine every year. They already research many, many strains to try and predict which will be the annual or even the next 'big' one.
There have been a number of flu pandemics. Millions died in 1918. Smaller pandemics happened in 1957 and 1968. Flu is one of the hardest viruses to prevent infection, because of the large number of variations and it's ability to mutate.
A pandemic can start when three conditions have been met: 1)a new influenza virus subtype emerges; 2)it infects humans, causing serious illness; 3)and it spreads easily and sustainably among humans. The H5N1 virus meets the first two conditions and it is likely that nobody will have immunity should an H5N1-like pandemic virus emerge.
H5N1 already spreads easily amongst birds, and can cross to humans where it is very deadly. If a variant emerges - which has happened before in asian close human & bird groups - that combines both, and becomes a H5N1 variant, the death-toll would likely be huge, given how quickly air-travel can spread diseases. Even if a vaccine is developed quickly and produced quickly, disruption would be large. Scientists are worried because it's happened repeatedly before, we know the reasons, and the circumstances are ripe for it to happen again. And yes, they're not just keep an eye on H5N1, that's just the one the media focus on.
England has had a constitution since magna carta. It's just not written down in one big book with carefully written rules about how you alter it. That's what happens when you let politicians, royalty and lawyers poke at something for nearly 800 years. As you say, every act of parliament is part of the constitution. The US executive can amend the US constitution, it just takes time or a large army. If George Bush decided to serve a third term, and the army backed him, how on earth would having the supreme court or a fixed constitution help?
George Bush has killed habeas corpus, given himself broad powers to declare martial law, pissed on free speech (in zones) along with various other offences. The constitution hasn't stopped him, the supreme court hasn't stopped him. Hell, they even pretty much destroyed the right of private property.
Technically speaking, the Human Rights Act 1998 could be regarded as a US-style constitution, as it cedes power to a higher court - that of the European Court of Human Rights. That said, the UK parliament could withdraw from the convention. It would likely cause a conflict within the EU, eventual sanctions against the UK (which we'd just refuse to pay, like the Italian or French government) and possibly might have the UK kicked out of the EU altogether. The UK parliament is still sovereign, it just chooses not to exert that sovereignty in certain ways as it perceives being part of the EU to be more valuable - for the moment.
Some people want a bill of rights, some of us like not having all our laws held up to the moral standards of some 200-odd year old dead guys. Imagine if the British had written a binding constitution that enforced the morals from 800 years ago! Our constitution is a living document, written by politicians with the consent of the (alas still often underinformed) populace. As long as we have elections, we have the power to remove politicians, and replace them with ones that will reverse the legislation of the last lot - something that happens about every 10-15 years. It means that the law is flexible and quickly can adapt to new situations and problems, instead of trying to work round a badly worded sentence (hello, well-armed militias) 220 years later. And if the government tried to remove elections? Well parliament would likely stop them (they're not that stupid, and there's a strong tradition of even the government's own party disagreeing with them when they try something too objectionable) and even if not then, the Queen wouldn't given royal assent. And we're back to which side the army follows again.
In the end of the day, a constitution is only of value if everyone in the chain accepts the artificial rules around it. In those circumstances it doesn't matter if the constitution is something hand-written 220 years ago, or built up mostly as tradition over 800 years - it comes down to the people consenting to be governed (even passive protests can bring down governments) and the army going along with it.
off-topic:
Oh, I'm also not sure what you mean about the 'right to remain silent' bit. There's the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, pre Tony, where police now say when arresting you "'You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'" You can remain silent, but if you choose to give up that silence only in court, inference can be made from that. That's up to the jury. Perhaps I'm missing something about a right to silence.