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User: jonbryce

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  1. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    It's about 62mph, and I didn't need to check on Google.

  2. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 2

    Ireland switched to Metric for road signs a few years back. Their speed limit signs say things like 50km/h with no mph on them. At the border with Northern Ireland, which still uses mph, there are signs facing into Ireland saying "Speed limits in mph", and into Northern Ireland saying "Speed limits in km/h"

  3. Re:Fear Mongering on Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter · · Score: 1

    You have to tick all three boxes for it to be terrorism.

    Box (a) is definitely ticked, no question about that.
    Box (b), he wasn't trying to intimidate the public. Was he trying to influence the government? Maybe, it was retribution for wrongs he considered the police to have carried out against him. You could argue that he was trying to influence the police not to commit those wrongs.
    Box (c), was it for a political cause - not really, religious - no, racial - no, ideological - not really. It was a personal vendetta against the police.

    The (a) offences listed in section 2 are criminal offences elsewhere in criminal law. They only become terrorism if they are used to advance the aims in (b) and (c).

  4. Re:Fear Mongering on Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter · · Score: 1

    http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/1 defines terrorism

    It must (a) involve and action which falls under subsection 2 of the act [violence against the person, damage to property etc, it does no dispute about that]
    (b) the threat is designed to influence the government or international governmental organisation or intimidate the public etc
    and (c) be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, radical or ideological cause

    Did Raul Moat intend to influence the government or intimidate the public? Maybe but it is a difficult one to prove
    Was he trying to advance a political religious etc cause? Not really
    That just leaves (a), violence against the person, and there are other laws dealing with people who do that for non-terrorist reasons.

  5. Re:Fear Mongering on Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter · · Score: 1

    The murderer made statements before hand saying that his murder was for political reasons. Under the terrorism act, those statements make his act an act of terrorism.

    I agree that this should be treated as a mad lunatic who needs to be locked up for public safety, just like any other axe weilding lunatic.

  6. Re:Why on UK Consumers Reporting Contactless Payment Errors · · Score: 1
  7. Re:Why on UK Consumers Reporting Contactless Payment Errors · · Score: 2

    In Europe, and most of the rest of the world, we use smart-chips when we aren't using contactless. There is a magnetic stripe on the card, that that is only so that the card can be used in the USA and other similarly backward countries.

  8. Re:Double payments on UK Consumers Reporting Contactless Payment Errors · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure about those two stores, but in a lot of stores, especially ones owned by smaller companies, the credit card terminal is not linked to point of sale system. The checkout operator presses the button on the till for card or cash, nobody takes cheques any more, then if it is card, they enter the total amount into the card terminal, process the payment, and usually put the store copy of the card receipt in the till. It may well be that they thought the card terminal wasn't working, and put the payment through again.

  9. Re:Minor difference at best on Password Strength Testers Work For Important Accounts · · Score: 1

    There are accounts where you have to register with an email address and password to access content. For those sorts of accounts, I don't care if someone else finds the password and uses it to read the stuff on the site. I have a spamcatcher webmail account, password the same as the username, and the username and password on the sites I register using it are the same as the webmail ones. The name and address details are completely made up based on a fictional character. Completely insecure, but I do not care. If someone else gets in, they are welcome to have a look round.

  10. Re:What's really needed... on Password Strength Testers Work For Important Accounts · · Score: 2

    There is a case in Europe of people getting into bank accounts by compromising their cellphone. They sent a phishing message puportedly from their bank telling them they needed to install some security software on their phone, with instructions on how to do it for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

    Then, having got the login details for the bank account, they log in, do a transfer instruction, and when the bank sends a code to the phone to authenticate it, the malware on the phone intercepts the message, and sends it to them, so they can complete the transaction,

  11. Re:No big deal on Anti-Infringement Company Caught Infringing On Its Website · · Score: 1

    If a company's entire business model is enforcing copyright, then they ought to be very careful when respecting other peoples' copyright.

  12. Re:It's started... on DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments To and From Mt. Gox · · Score: 1

    Suspicious activity in this case will mean buying drugs on Silk Road. They are under pressure to "shut it down". They can't obviously because it is on Tor, but they can try to stop drug buyers from buying bitcoins with dollars, and drug sellers from selling bitcoins for dollars.

  13. Re:Google will block it on Microsoft YouTube App Strips Ads; Adds Download · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The courts consider downloading and streaming to be two different things.

    Downloading means receiving the transmission from their server and recording it on non-volatile storage.

    Streaming means receiving the transmission and storing it only as required for processing to send it to the screen / speakers, and for buffering to deal with speed variations in the transmission.

  14. Re:Google will block it on Microsoft YouTube App Strips Ads; Adds Download · · Score: 1

    There is also basic copyright law. The courts seem to consider streaming and downloading to be two completely different things for copyright purposes. If Google has authorised streaming, but not downloading of their content, then this YouTube app could be considered a tool that enables and encourages copyright infringement.

  15. Re:No, he's asking whats so good. on Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android · · Score: 1

    I suppose you could use rsync for that, but I don't think it would be a very good solution. Firstly, rsync doesn't support "push" syncronisation. You would need to have rsync constantly poll the server for any changes which would use a lot of data and battery even when nothing is happening whereas activesync will open a connection to the server and only receives data if there is actually a change on the server (or sends it if there is a change on the client). Secondly, activesync doesn't maintain an idential copy of the data on the device, just a user specified subset of it. I have mail and calendar entries on my Exchange server going back to 1996 when I started using a computer rather than a filofax to organise my life. It takes up about 3GB on the server which is nothing when you consider the storage capacity of a server, desktop or laptop, but quite a lot for a mobile device, so I only sync the last 6 months and all future calendar entries, and the most recent 1000 emails up to a maximum of 10kb, with no attachments unless I specifically choose to download them. I use rsync to synchronise some files on my FreeBSD server with my MacBook, though I'm currently evaluating alternative solutions for that.

  16. Re:Does anyone have a list of the patents? on Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android · · Score: 1

    That is a different ActiveSync to the one I was refering to that Android uses, and yes that one is pretty rubbish. Exchange Activesync works over the air, and it makes no difference how many other devices are connected to the same computer, or even if it is connected to one at all.

  17. Re:No, he's asking whats so good. on Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android · · Score: 1

    rsync and activesync are two completely different things. One is for transferring files, the other is for delivering emails, calendar, contacts etc to mobile devices.

  18. Re:Does anyone have a list of the patents? on Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android · · Score: 2

    ActiveSync is for receiving email from Exchange or other compatible email servers and syncronising calendar, contact etc items. The alternatives are things like IMAP IDLE, but they generally use more data bandwidth and more battery power than ActiveSync.

  19. Re:Does anyone have a list of the patents? on Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android · · Score: 5, Informative

    The main ones are long filenames in FAT, ex-FAT for > 32GB SD cards, and ActiveSync.

    There are alternatives for all of these, but in the case of Activesync alternatives, they are not as good, and in the case of FAT, it means getting the same filesystem drivers onto other computers and devices.

  20. Re:Priority Failure. on BT Begins Customer Tests of Carrier Grade NAT · · Score: 1

    Skype and SIP work on my cellphone, and all the mobile networks in this country operate carrier grade NAT.

  21. Re:Piracy on Adobe Creative Suite Going Subscription-Only · · Score: 1

    Because at least some of the people who use photoshop like to take photos in remote locations of mountains, animals and so on. Those sorts of places tend not to have internet connections available.

  22. Re:Already there on Adobe Creative Suite Going Subscription-Only · · Score: 1

    CS2 doesn't work in Lion or later operating systems.

  23. Re:PSC Failure? on In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper · · Score: 1

    My local cell tower is connected to the same street cabinet as my landline phone, so unless the problem was between the end of my street and my house, anything that affects landlines is also going to affect mobiles.

  24. Re:I wrote a CFF renderer in C# on Google and Adobe Contribute Open Source Rasterizer to FreeType · · Score: 1

    Is hinting much of a problem with retina and similar high resolution displays?

  25. Re:who cares on Antivirus Firms "Won't Co-operate" With PC-Hacking Dutch Police · · Score: 1

    Anti-virus will often report if a program tries to edit /etc/hosts, change network settings or install new security certificates - the sort of thing you would need to do to implement a man-in-the-middle attack.