"Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?"
It's you.
"the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator"
Which means that the sea level is rising. You don't consider this interesting?
"This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate"."
Of course by the time you consider it alarming or frightening, it's probably going to be too late to do something. I'd consider for the moment the change in albedo produced by the sea level rising, or the fact that this is going to destabilise land structures to the point where erosion can cause tsunamai from land slippage, not to mention the effect on active volcanos, or the increase in tides.
Then there's the quasi-stable structure of things like the ice-tongue that channels the gulfstream around the UK, and which have an impact on sea life, both shallow and deep. Not evolutionary scale, but within a couple of decades.
While I'm not suggesting that reporters get it wrong, I _really_ hate the implication that we should just sit on the information until we're sure, simply because it's hard to prove.
"It's just that the reasoning isn't easy for most of the rest of us to understand."
Apart from the stray apostrophe, this paragraph betrays a complete lack of knowledge about the underlying technology of viruses, such as the desire to open email relays and collect passwords through the use of keyloggers.
"If anyones anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source)."
Again, 'open source' is about having the source code available to compile, modify and/or extend rather than it being 'free', although this has been the aim of the FOSS rather than promoting insecure, closed source operating systems.
"So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge."
They are Russian spammers trying to create a number of spam relays. The other payload, and the B-variant payload that produce a 'http get DDOS' (Essentially the same as hitting 'refresh' on the browser over and over) were a blind, and something particularly easy to circumvent using DNS. Microsoft lost no service. SCO lost service three days _BEFORE_ the trigger date that looks highly suspicious. www.groklaw.net has more information.
"SCO is the big, bad company that violates one of their sacred principles, as they would see it."
I wouldn't speak for the community unless you speak to the community and sort out some of these really silly ideas. SCO is suing IBM; the Linux question is thrown out to journalists to strengthen their position, which is currently one of not showing any evidence. IBM is also a big bad company, along with Novell (Go look up their net worth, please) that have so far failed to engage in a slanderous low-level warfare that saw SCO fined by a German court. Please, go look at the evidence for SCOs case before actually pointing a finger at that being the basis for a worm outbreak on the _WINDOWS_ platform.
"Despite the law-suits against users by SCO"
There are no lawsuits. Everyone has been waiting for the lawsuits because they would be fraudulent without a ruling from the courts.
"It represents a new degree of viciousness in internet warfare: a wickedly ingenious programme persuades thousands of computers to bombard a single website on a particular date."
Only if you'd not seen anything on the subject for the last ten years. DDOS is fairly old. However, logging all the keystrokes on the target machine is relatively new, and ignored by the press that prefer the idea of a new war to cover.
"It's hard to see how any website could withstand that kind of clever evil."
Change your DNS entries from the targeted IP address to a new IP address, and shift it sideways. It's extremely easy, and was undertaken by SCO (although fluffed slightly) according to the reports which you can see on Netcraft. You might want to have a word with them, because I'm fairly sure that they would put this into perspective for you.
Quite frankly I'm dismayed that Stephen Evans appears to have been pulled from childrens TV to cover this, and as North American Business Desk, I would have thought that he'd be following the SCO story rather than sensationalising a virus outbreak.
"It is about malice not money."
Actually it's about money. If Evans had been reading anything recently on technology, he might have noticed recently that gangs are targetting vulnerable businesses with threats to expose or destroy their data. You need access for this. Keylogging is the fastest way to do it, and having some open email relays is a mild bonus as your spam (rapidly becoming illegal) can be sent with any traceback ending with some poor dufus who thinks that anti-virus software is something you install once.
And can you believe that nobody has factored out the savings you can make by banning blinking and toilet breaks? Honestly, the states must be insane if they haven't considered this wholesale liberty being taken by employees.
You really should factor in the gross profit margin per head at a 'large' company with tens of thousands of warm seats with access to email before the big talk about the losses.
"english make fun of americans for using imperial units."
It's not so much, just the insistence on calling them 'English' units, much the same as 'English' muffins. This is why the French have been so uptight about McDonalds...calling them 'French' fries had more to do with trying to tap into the idea of haute cuisine coming in small, medium and large rather than any inherent frenchness to the humble potato-based fast food.
And it's not the only thing we make fun of Americans about, but it's all fairly good natured, and has been for quite a long time, which is one of the reasons we tend to grin a lot and headscratch when someone starts talking about something or someone being 'anti-american', like it's an ideology rather than a geographic anomaly.
Sometime you ought to visit the Statue of Liberty, just to check out where it came from. Then go lookup General Lafayette.
*I* have thousands of years of ancestral claims towards taking the piss out of the French, while you lot got a bit miffed because they wouldn't join a fairly recent bomb-fest, and they've been your staunch allies since the word go.
"Maybe they're called "English" units simply because they *came* from England, irrespective of what you are using now?"
Does this mean that you're actually claiming that you're European because you probably came from here?
"In a museum with 16th Century English weapons, would you also complain that "no one is using those anymore, so call them imperial weapons"?"
With a debating style this good, you should really be in politics. Congress wouldn't know what hit them, and would possibly introduce random drug-testing just to make sure. No wonder you're anonymous.
'Imperial' is the term we use for 'Imperial measurements'. Note that imperial measurements weren't limited to the UK, mainly because they were used in the empire. You can see how this is shaping up already. It's not down to the fact that nobody uses them anymore that they're called imperial, but the fact that they came from the empire.
"I just spent a year in england doing study abroad"
You have my condolences. Hopefully it wasn't London. Was it London?
"Ok, distance is in miles and miles per hour."
The second one is a speed measurement. Velocity, if you prefer.
"Liquid measurements are liters except when talking about beer, then it's a pint."
In the UK, the legal measurement is engraved on the sides of the glass. That's a lot of glasses to replace, and the relevant difficulties connected with flattening the prices, not to mention the changes to the taxation rules, but I suspect that it'll change eventually. Did you notice what was written on the side of cans and bottles?
"Weight is in *stones* for christsake"
Not anywhere official, but that's fighting a level of social inertia. I personally have no clue what a stone is (Yes, I could look it up) except I possibly have too many of them.
"a person's height is talked about in feet"
That one is an oddity, but again, officially, you'll see centimetres used.
"building/mountain height is usually in meters."
You'll see feet used there as well...again, social inertia.
"A football field is yards though."
Tradition, although the FA has regulation sizes in metres.
"Tempature is in celsius I suppose"
Both, usually, although I have no sense of fahrenheit. Kelvins would be just nit-picking.
"while you can be a self-righteous snob to us"
Ah, that's genetic, but usually called something along the lines of 'trying to smack down stereotypes of the British'.;o)
"I thought the Brits moved glacially since the UK has been metric since 1971... officially (except for beers. I don't know how long road measure will remain Imperial)."
Until they pry miles and pints from our cold, dead hands.
Seriously, I was never taught any imperial measures, and had to work out a lot of conversions myself, particularly as we have a hybrid system in place that mixes different units according to application. I'm long since out of the school system, but I was born in 1972.
The odd thing is that America still refers to them as 'English' units despite us not really using them.
Milk has moved over to metric without much fuss, but I think there was a bit of hoohar regarding licensing regulations in moving to the litre/demi-litre for beer measurement. So we haven't, although all glasses currently display the measuring line...glasses without a measuring line are sorta illegal if I can remember back to my barwork days.
Very quickly, and I'll never lose the memory of those laughing, happy immigration staff, especially when I told them the purpose of my visit was to steal their jobs and women.*
However Slough is much smaller than 'Noo Joisey' and Pittsburgh might have been closer, but it's the fundamental 'greyness' of Slough (and Swindon) that provide much of the comedy.
"I must say that all of the games not mentioned in the article look mediocre to terrible."
I remember buying a Hewson game called '3d tanx' for the spectrum back in the day. 5.00 for the tape. It was bloody awful, but it was a commercial game. Back then your average software company was a couple of guys hacking (if you were lucky) assembly.
So personally I would be a little forgiving to the people that try to create for the GP32. I feel that the game you pointed out wasn't really much cop and I'd not put money on it to win, but I think it's heartening to see something of that sort happening.
Run by health authorities who bring in the majority of cash through the PFI and private medical insurance rather than public funding which *contributes*.
"Public Transport"
Only in the cities. Outside of the M25 orbital you'd be hard pressed to find a rural or semi-rural route that operates. These have been privately operated for years, BTW.
"State Pension"
Disappearing by the time you retire, if you're in the 20-30 demographic. Pension funds have been performing extremely badly for the past decade or so.
"Rubbish collection"
About to be charged for directly in some boroughs because they can't afford it. I shit ye not.
"Subsidies to farmers"
They're actually falling quite a bit too, but they aren't to keep prices down, they're to keep prices up. Subsidised crop is pulped or otherwise destroyed. Note that the average farmer cannot sell goods through supermarkets because of the stringent requirements of conformity and 'quality' that mean that foodstuffs grown and delivered can be turned away.
"Social secruity"
50/week to be patronised by a civil servant. woohoo. I've signed on once. I'll sell a kidney before I give some partially skilled, braindead coprolite the satisfaction of asking if 'I've been actively seeking work'. No, fifty pounds a week is all I need.
"Police"
Violent crime is up 18%. They're doing a grand job, as you can tell from the gun crime statistics which have _slowed_ from last years 34% increase. If I'm ever being robbed, they're at least third or fourth on my list of alternatives, the first being a big hammer.
"Courts"
The CPS or legal aid? In the case of the CPS there was a judicial review saying they were jailing too many petty crooks. Go figure.
"Sports facilities"
CF. Private Finance Initiative.
"Just wasted all that money isn't it?"
You'd be surprised. In the nineties, several million pounds was spend refitting trident submarines a couple of weeks before they were scrapped, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest amount goes on maintaining one of the largest standing armies in the world, and you'll find those spending levels haven't changed from the end of the cold war. Likewise with intelligence gathering.
The thing is that tax is not spent well, simply because of the complexity of the system. Local council tax is spent alarmingly badly, as I've just started running oversight on my local council to find out why they feel it necessary to raise council tax by ~20% to provide a _lower_ level of service.
PS, you may have noticed the MoD whistleblower recently talking about there being no need for the Royal Navy to have new frigates...go check how much they cost, then compare it with social services the like of which you've mentioned.
"Sorry about my tone, people start getting like this when they're talking to complete idiots who cannot think on their own, and want everything to be their way."
Despite the tagline of slashdot, not everyone wants to be hip-deep in the registry to transfer obscure keys across...
As for wanting things his own way, that's the basis of a consumer society...he bought the games, and they should have records pertaining to that. Given that the average copy protection scheme is broken and distributed within a couple of weeks, it seems highly churlish that they couldn't check and make a pretence of being customer oriented.
The over-billing was ludicrous, too. Consider that for the moment.
Dunno, 'Aenima' by tool makes a pretty good ring tone in that it's only the opening chords you hear and it's polyphonic. Although now I have to admit that 'etude' makes me want to kill something.
"Although we have no way of knowing whether or not they have forwarded the information on to Paramount or not."
That would be a 'bad thing(tm)' from a number of different avenues, not the least of which is the fairly strict procedures in place to counter the kind of information passing that some airlines did recently.
The weird thing is that the ISPs _know_ that the killer app for broadband is the download speeds...
Of course, it's quite unusual that the C&D was identified back to Paramount. I have it from a reliable source that some request that their identity being kept a secret in sending out such things.
You have my apologies, it seems that what knowledge I had of Mars has been completely overturned by the Odyssey data, and I was probably distracted by something shiny, however, one small point...
If the deposits are as large as claimed, I would still expect some water vapour to be detected as humidity simply because the boiling point of liquids drops as pressure drops...this is going to form a tenuous atmosphere around the poles during the 'melts', I would have thought...What are your thoughts?
"There is a lot of hydrogen down there, and it;s pretty much got to be in water (Methane or Ammonia are too volatile at those temperatures). that would mean ice, or possibly sandy brines."
Yeah, I remember the sulfate analysis from Viking that would have indicated some evaporative action, but that was more geared to 'prehistoric' water that could have been from the impact of a largish comet; indeed that was my favourite theory for the slippage between the highlands and lowlands.
"It doesn' appear that the soil cohesion is purely elecrostatic"
I think that one of the original ideas was that it was 'duricrust' produced by salt-cementing, but that doesn't explain the perceived flexibility of the skin.
Of course, there could be a complete upset and we find that Mars is covered in custard.
Not entirely. Spirit and Beagle were intended to confirm the existence of permafrosts all over the planet, and from first glances it does actually look like there may have one that has retreated, although the definitive tests (penetrators) were on the polar lander. The definitive answer by the Viking life experiment leader...
("Levin said that the formation of liquid water can happen under the environmental conditions of Mars. Indeed, that water can even exist in liquid form on the surface of the red planet.
Furthermore, the detection by NASA's Mars Odyssey of the widespread presence of near-surface ice means liquid water is on the martian surface, Levin told SPACE.com via email.")
...misses out one fundamamental point about the presence of liquid water on the surface, and that's that complex chemical reactions would be able to take place near or on the surface, and you'd have measurable humidity in the atmosphere, especially given the atmospheric pressure. You'd also have to raise the question as to why they didn't find anything with the Viking experiments.
Any ice that exists (excluding the poles, which can be sublimated gases and ice) is going to be deep - a couple of metres wouldn't be unreasonable.
BTW, one interesting thing that nobodies really looked at is the behaviour of superfine particles in high windows to try and explain some of the bizarre behaviour of the soil around spirit; cohesion can be produced through electrostatics and there's enough high wind to produce quite a bit of electron removal.
"But if it always comes down on the side of money, how is that different from just accepting whatever they choose to offer. "Here's two cents, because we're feeling generous.""
Gotta love the fact that the merchants hijacked democracy.
Just heard that Microsoft have backed down because of the terrible PR (I mean, who the hell authorises these domain grabs anyway?), but the register seems to think that it's just waiting for the dust to settle.
Some UK supermarkets do the same thing; they apply for an extension, the local groups oppose them, the application folds, they wait a few months and start it again. It's intended to wear people down, especially those that are best placed to give negative publicity (ie the media).
"Somehow, there is something that seems wrong with all this."
Not at all. It's a much maligned marketing technique, but suing your customers often works at creating short term gains.
"I have always thought that if one get aware of, or suspect, illegal activities, that one should contact and report it to the police (or other authorities)."
That's criminal law, and the crown prosecution service (District Attorney?) has to make the decision on whether to prosecute. The RIAA is undertaking a civil action, and those, notoriously, require a name on the paperwork rather than an IP address.
"they tracked him down with the help of his ISP and sent a cease and desist letter with a threat of legal action if he doesn't cooperate."
Okay, be careful with this one. If the ISP forwarded the cease and desist to him, then that's okay. He needs to be circumspect and keep an eye out, but the C&Ds don't mean much currently.
If they didn't, then they just gave out personally identifiable information in contravention with the data protection act. He needs to clarify what actually happened with the ISP. Then he needs to shift ISPs.
"Is it within his rights to have privacy on the Internet, or does he forfeit those rights when he breaks the law."
The latter, but if the law has been broken in the first instance (ie to obtain the information) then that information should be considered null & void. I am not a lawyer, though, but he doesn't need to worry too much when threatened with American laws.
I've received the same cease and desist notice twice about a file I don't have, and I've been in talks with my ISP about it. They have a condition where they can't tell me who the notice is from, which kinda closes down my avenues for correcting the error on the part of the sender of the C&D. My ISP is telling me not to worry.
"Is it legal or moral to "steal" this music? No, not really;"
The moral issues have become a vast aside for me, simply because They started it. Before the peer-to-peer networks even started up, they were operating cartels and using musicians in the most cynical ways possible. Nothing was too low for them; chart manipulation, price-fixing, breaking contracts, making up 'standard' clauses, charging for everything all the way down the line.
So unfortunately most of these companies have as much standing as the mob in my eyes. Fuck 'em. I _want_ to see Tommy Mattola starving on a street corner for the cynical way they've manipulated the market/consumers (yes, that's me included) and are continuing to pull things out of their ass.
Just heard that the BPI has won a case against CD Wow who were importing CDs from abroad to sell in the UK, mainly due to the pricing differential in Asia. So what was globalisation all about? Cheap labour?
Slashdot Mirror
"Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?"
It's you.
"the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator"
Which means that the sea level is rising. You don't consider this interesting?
"This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate"."
Of course by the time you consider it alarming or frightening, it's probably going to be too late to do something. I'd consider for the moment the change in albedo produced by the sea level rising, or the fact that this is going to destabilise land structures to the point where erosion can cause tsunamai from land slippage, not to mention the effect on active volcanos, or the increase in tides.
Then there's the quasi-stable structure of things like the ice-tongue that channels the gulfstream around the UK, and which have an impact on sea life, both shallow and deep. Not evolutionary scale, but within a couple of decades.
While I'm not suggesting that reporters get it wrong, I _really_ hate the implication that we should just sit on the information until we're sure, simply because it's hard to prove.
We've gone to war on less evidence.
My Feedback to the Beeb
"It's just that the reasoning isn't easy for most of the rest of us to understand."
Apart from the stray apostrophe, this paragraph betrays a complete lack of knowledge about the underlying technology of viruses, such as the desire to open email relays and collect passwords through the use of keyloggers.
"If anyones anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source)."
Again, 'open source' is about having the source code available to compile, modify and/or extend rather than it being 'free', although this has been the aim of the FOSS rather than promoting insecure, closed source operating systems.
"So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge."
They are Russian spammers trying to create a number of spam relays. The other payload, and the B-variant payload that produce a 'http get DDOS' (Essentially the same as hitting 'refresh' on the browser over and over) were a blind, and something particularly easy to circumvent using DNS. Microsoft lost no service. SCO lost service three days _BEFORE_ the trigger date that looks highly suspicious. www.groklaw.net has more information.
"SCO is the big, bad company that violates one of their sacred principles, as they would see it."
I wouldn't speak for the community unless you speak to the community and sort out some of these really silly ideas. SCO is suing IBM; the Linux question is thrown out to journalists to strengthen their position, which is currently one of not showing any evidence. IBM is also a big bad company, along with Novell (Go look up their net worth, please) that have so far failed to engage in a slanderous low-level warfare that saw SCO fined by a German court. Please, go look at the evidence for SCOs case before actually pointing a finger at that being the basis for a worm outbreak on the _WINDOWS_ platform.
"Despite the law-suits against users by SCO"
There are no lawsuits. Everyone has been waiting for the lawsuits because they would be fraudulent without a ruling from the courts.
"It represents a new degree of viciousness in internet warfare: a wickedly ingenious programme persuades thousands of computers to bombard a single website on a particular date."
Only if you'd not seen anything on the subject for the last ten years. DDOS is fairly old. However, logging all the keystrokes on the target machine is relatively new, and ignored by the press that prefer the idea of a new war to cover.
"It's hard to see how any website could withstand that kind of clever evil."
Change your DNS entries from the targeted IP address to a new IP address, and shift it sideways. It's extremely easy, and was undertaken by SCO (although fluffed slightly) according to the reports which you can see on Netcraft. You might want to have a word with them, because I'm fairly sure that they would put this into perspective for you.
Quite frankly I'm dismayed that Stephen Evans appears to have been pulled from childrens TV to cover this, and as North American Business Desk, I would have thought that he'd be following the SCO story rather than sensationalising a virus outbreak.
"It is about malice not money."
Actually it's about money. If Evans had been reading anything recently on technology, he might have noticed recently that gangs are targetting vulnerable businesses with threats to expose or destroy their data. You need access for this. Keylogging is the fastest way to do it, and having some open email relays is a mild bonus as your spam (rapidly becoming illegal) can be sent with any traceback ending with some poor dufus who thinks that anti-virus software is something you install once.
I couldn't be civil all the way through.
"They are called french fries because the potatoes are Frenched(cut into lengthwise strips) before they are fried."
Yeah, Europeans call this 'julianne', dude.
Go find out where it was coined, because it isn't used over here.
Oh, does this mean that carving things into thin strips is now called 'freedoming'?
"The real cost is factored more like this:"
And can you believe that nobody has factored out the savings you can make by banning blinking and toilet breaks? Honestly, the states must be insane if they haven't considered this wholesale liberty being taken by employees.
You really should factor in the gross profit margin per head at a 'large' company with tens of thousands of warm seats with access to email before the big talk about the losses.
"I work for a well-known mail filtering company"
Ahhh. Business brisk, is it?
"somewhat hypocritical"
Again, mostly genetic.
"english make fun of americans for using imperial units."
It's not so much, just the insistence on calling them 'English' units, much the same as 'English' muffins. This is why the French have been so uptight about McDonalds...calling them 'French' fries had more to do with trying to tap into the idea of haute cuisine coming in small, medium and large rather than any inherent frenchness to the humble potato-based fast food.
And it's not the only thing we make fun of Americans about, but it's all fairly good natured, and has been for quite a long time, which is one of the reasons we tend to grin a lot and headscratch when someone starts talking about something or someone being 'anti-american', like it's an ideology rather than a geographic anomaly.
"Let the French establish engineering standards."
Sometime you ought to visit the Statue of Liberty, just to check out where it came from. Then go lookup General Lafayette.
*I* have thousands of years of ancestral claims towards taking the piss out of the French, while you lot got a bit miffed because they wouldn't join a fairly recent bomb-fest, and they've been your staunch allies since the word go.
"Maybe they're called "English" units simply because they *came* from England, irrespective of what you are using now?"
Does this mean that you're actually claiming that you're European because you probably came from here?
"In a museum with 16th Century English weapons, would you also complain that "no one is using those anymore, so call them imperial weapons"?"
With a debating style this good, you should really be in politics. Congress wouldn't know what hit them, and would possibly introduce random drug-testing just to make sure. No wonder you're anonymous.
'Imperial' is the term we use for 'Imperial measurements'. Note that imperial measurements weren't limited to the UK, mainly because they were used in the empire. You can see how this is shaping up already. It's not down to the fact that nobody uses them anymore that they're called imperial, but the fact that they came from the empire.
Cunning, eh?
"I just spent a year in england doing study abroad"
;o)
You have my condolences. Hopefully it wasn't London. Was it London?
"Ok, distance is in miles and miles per hour."
The second one is a speed measurement. Velocity, if you prefer.
"Liquid measurements are liters except when talking about beer, then it's a pint."
In the UK, the legal measurement is engraved on the sides of the glass. That's a lot of glasses to replace, and the relevant difficulties connected with flattening the prices, not to mention the changes to the taxation rules, but I suspect that it'll change eventually. Did you notice what was written on the side of cans and bottles?
"Weight is in *stones* for christsake"
Not anywhere official, but that's fighting a level of social inertia. I personally have no clue what a stone is (Yes, I could look it up) except I possibly have too many of them.
"a person's height is talked about in feet"
That one is an oddity, but again, officially, you'll see centimetres used.
"building/mountain height is usually in meters."
You'll see feet used there as well...again, social inertia.
"A football field is yards though."
Tradition, although the FA has regulation sizes in metres.
"Tempature is in celsius I suppose"
Both, usually, although I have no sense of fahrenheit. Kelvins would be just nit-picking.
"while you can be a self-righteous snob to us"
Ah, that's genetic, but usually called something along the lines of 'trying to smack down stereotypes of the British'.
"I thought the Brits moved glacially since the UK has been metric since 1971... officially (except for beers. I don't know how long road measure will remain Imperial)."
Until they pry miles and pints from our cold, dead hands.
Seriously, I was never taught any imperial measures, and had to work out a lot of conversions myself, particularly as we have a hybrid system in place that mixes different units according to application. I'm long since out of the school system, but I was born in 1972.
The odd thing is that America still refers to them as 'English' units despite us not really using them.
Milk has moved over to metric without much fuss, but I think there was a bit of hoohar regarding licensing regulations in moving to the litre/demi-litre for beer measurement. So we haven't, although all glasses currently display the measuring line...glasses without a measuring line are sorta illegal if I can remember back to my barwork days.
"Have you never been to New Jersey?"
Very quickly, and I'll never lose the memory of those laughing, happy immigration staff, especially when I told them the purpose of my visit was to steal their jobs and women.*
However Slough is much smaller than 'Noo Joisey' and Pittsburgh might have been closer, but it's the fundamental 'greyness' of Slough (and Swindon) that provide much of the comedy.
* Score so far: Women 1, Jobs 0
"I must say that all of the games not mentioned in the article look mediocre to terrible."
I remember buying a Hewson game called '3d tanx' for the spectrum back in the day. 5.00 for the tape. It was bloody awful, but it was a commercial game. Back then your average software company was a couple of guys hacking (if you were lucky) assembly.
So personally I would be a little forgiving to the people that try to create for the GP32. I feel that the game you pointed out wasn't really much cop and I'd not put money on it to win, but I think it's heartening to see something of that sort happening.
"Hope the USA remake doesn't suck too much."
Remake? They're remaking 'The Office'? What's the point?
For one thing, the US has nothing like Slough, and petty office politics have been done to death in numerous sitcoms
Come to think of it, I can't think of a TV series that has ever made it across the Atlantic intact.
"Hospitals"
Run by health authorities who bring in the majority of cash through the PFI and private medical insurance rather than public funding which *contributes*.
"Public Transport"
Only in the cities. Outside of the M25 orbital you'd be hard pressed to find a rural or semi-rural route that operates. These have been privately operated for years, BTW.
"State Pension"
Disappearing by the time you retire, if you're in the 20-30 demographic. Pension funds have been performing extremely badly for the past decade or so.
"Rubbish collection"
About to be charged for directly in some boroughs because they can't afford it. I shit ye not.
"Subsidies to farmers"
They're actually falling quite a bit too, but they aren't to keep prices down, they're to keep prices up. Subsidised crop is pulped or otherwise destroyed. Note that the average farmer cannot sell goods through supermarkets because of the stringent requirements of conformity and 'quality' that mean that foodstuffs grown and delivered can be turned away.
"Social secruity"
50/week to be patronised by a civil servant. woohoo. I've signed on once. I'll sell a kidney before I give some partially skilled, braindead coprolite the satisfaction of asking if 'I've been actively seeking work'. No, fifty pounds a week is all I need.
"Police"
Violent crime is up 18%. They're doing a grand job, as you can tell from the gun crime statistics which have _slowed_ from last years 34% increase. If I'm ever being robbed, they're at least third or fourth on my list of alternatives, the first being a big hammer.
"Courts"
The CPS or legal aid? In the case of the CPS there was a judicial review saying they were jailing too many petty crooks. Go figure.
"Sports facilities"
CF. Private Finance Initiative.
"Just wasted all that money isn't it?"
You'd be surprised. In the nineties, several million pounds was spend refitting trident submarines a couple of weeks before they were scrapped, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest amount goes on maintaining one of the largest standing armies in the world, and you'll find those spending levels haven't changed from the end of the cold war. Likewise with intelligence gathering.
The thing is that tax is not spent well, simply because of the complexity of the system. Local council tax is spent alarmingly badly, as I've just started running oversight on my local council to find out why they feel it necessary to raise council tax by ~20% to provide a _lower_ level of service.
PS, you may have noticed the MoD whistleblower recently talking about there being no need for the Royal Navy to have new frigates...go check how much they cost, then compare it with social services the like of which you've mentioned.
It's bad, and I got pissed off
"They complain a lot about how they can't make ends meet even working two jobs"
Over here we call them 'MPs'
"Margret Thatcher could get by on just a couple of hours."
Five. And that's why she was insane.
"Sorry about my tone, people start getting like this when they're talking to complete idiots who cannot think on their own, and want everything to be their way."
Despite the tagline of slashdot, not everyone wants to be hip-deep in the registry to transfer obscure keys across...
As for wanting things his own way, that's the basis of a consumer society...he bought the games, and they should have records pertaining to that. Given that the average copy protection scheme is broken and distributed within a couple of weeks, it seems highly churlish that they couldn't check and make a pretence of being customer oriented.
The over-billing was ludicrous, too. Consider that for the moment.
"musical ring tones are fucking annoying"
Dunno, 'Aenima' by tool makes a pretty good ring tone in that it's only the opening chords you hear and it's polyphonic. Although now I have to admit that 'etude' makes me want to kill something.
"Although we have no way of knowing whether or not they have forwarded the information on to Paramount or not."
That would be a 'bad thing(tm)' from a number of different avenues, not the least of which is the fairly strict procedures in place to counter the kind of information passing that some airlines did recently.
The weird thing is that the ISPs _know_ that the killer app for broadband is the download speeds...
Of course, it's quite unusual that the C&D was identified back to Paramount. I have it from a reliable source that some request that their identity being kept a secret in sending out such things.
"Ice crystals are known to be in the atmosphere."
You have my apologies, it seems that what knowledge I had of Mars has been completely overturned by the Odyssey data, and I was probably distracted by something shiny, however, one small point...
If the deposits are as large as claimed, I would still expect some water vapour to be detected as humidity simply because the boiling point of liquids drops as pressure drops...this is going to form a tenuous atmosphere around the poles during the 'melts', I would have thought...What are your thoughts?
"There is a lot of hydrogen down there, and it;s pretty much got to be in water (Methane or Ammonia are too volatile at those temperatures). that would mean ice, or possibly sandy brines."
Yeah, I remember the sulfate analysis from Viking that would have indicated some evaporative action, but that was more geared to 'prehistoric' water that could have been from the impact of a largish comet; indeed that was my favourite theory for the slippage between the highlands and lowlands.
"It doesn' appear that the soil cohesion is purely elecrostatic"
I think that one of the original ideas was that it was 'duricrust' produced by salt-cementing, but that doesn't explain the perceived flexibility of the skin.
Of course, there could be a complete upset and we find that Mars is covered in custard.
"The Water's been found"
...misses out one fundamamental point about the presence of liquid water on the surface, and that's that complex chemical reactions would be able to take place near or on the surface, and you'd have measurable humidity in the atmosphere, especially given the atmospheric pressure. You'd also have to raise the question as to why they didn't find anything with the Viking experiments.
Not entirely. Spirit and Beagle were intended to confirm the existence of permafrosts all over the planet, and from first glances it does actually look like there may have one that has retreated, although the definitive tests (penetrators) were on the polar lander. The definitive answer by the Viking life experiment leader...
("Levin said that the formation of liquid water can happen under the environmental conditions of Mars. Indeed, that water can even exist in liquid form on the surface of the red planet.
Furthermore, the detection by NASA's Mars Odyssey of the widespread presence of near-surface ice means liquid water is on the martian surface, Levin told SPACE.com via email.")
Any ice that exists (excluding the poles, which can be sublimated gases and ice) is going to be deep - a couple of metres wouldn't be unreasonable.
BTW, one interesting thing that nobodies really looked at is the behaviour of superfine particles in high windows to try and explain some of the bizarre behaviour of the soil around spirit; cohesion can be produced through electrostatics and there's enough high wind to produce quite a bit of electron removal.
"But if it always comes down on the side of money, how is that different from just accepting whatever they choose to offer. "Here's two cents, because we're feeling generous.""
Gotta love the fact that the merchants hijacked democracy.
Just heard that Microsoft have backed down because of the terrible PR (I mean, who the hell authorises these domain grabs anyway?), but the register seems to think that it's just waiting for the dust to settle.
Some UK supermarkets do the same thing; they apply for an extension, the local groups oppose them, the application folds, they wait a few months and start it again. It's intended to wear people down, especially those that are best placed to give negative publicity (ie the media).
"Somehow, there is something that seems wrong with all this."
Not at all. It's a much maligned marketing technique, but suing your customers often works at creating short term gains.
"I have always thought that if one get aware of, or suspect, illegal activities, that one should contact and report it to the police (or other authorities)."
That's criminal law, and the crown prosecution service (District Attorney?) has to make the decision on whether to prosecute. The RIAA is undertaking a civil action, and those, notoriously, require a name on the paperwork rather than an IP address.
"they tracked him down with the help of his ISP and sent a cease and desist letter with a threat of legal action if he doesn't cooperate."
Okay, be careful with this one. If the ISP forwarded the cease and desist to him, then that's okay. He needs to be circumspect and keep an eye out, but the C&Ds don't mean much currently.
If they didn't, then they just gave out personally identifiable information in contravention with the data protection act. He needs to clarify what actually happened with the ISP. Then he needs to shift ISPs.
"Is it within his rights to have privacy on the Internet, or does he forfeit those rights when he breaks the law."
The latter, but if the law has been broken in the first instance (ie to obtain the information) then that information should be considered null & void. I am not a lawyer, though, but he doesn't need to worry too much when threatened with American laws.
I've received the same cease and desist notice twice about a file I don't have, and I've been in talks with my ISP about it. They have a condition where they can't tell me who the notice is from, which kinda closes down my avenues for correcting the error on the part of the sender of the C&D. My ISP is telling me not to worry.
"Is it legal or moral to "steal" this music? No, not really;"
The moral issues have become a vast aside for me, simply because They started it. Before the peer-to-peer networks even started up, they were operating cartels and using musicians in the most cynical ways possible. Nothing was too low for them; chart manipulation, price-fixing, breaking contracts, making up 'standard' clauses, charging for everything all the way down the line.
So unfortunately most of these companies have as much standing as the mob in my eyes. Fuck 'em. I _want_ to see Tommy Mattola starving on a street corner for the cynical way they've manipulated the market/consumers (yes, that's me included) and are continuing to pull things out of their ass.
Just heard that the BPI has won a case against CD Wow who were importing CDs from abroad to sell in the UK, mainly due to the pricing differential in Asia. So what was globalisation all about? Cheap labour?
"Since a large of percentage of music downloading is done by teenagers"
Presumably this is why the networks are clogged with Ms Spears the virgin queen?
Damn teenagers, it's not like they're a burgeoning future market or something...oh...wait...