Labour of course came fifth in the South East region at the last election. They were beaten by the Tories, UKIP, Liberal and Greens. Not exactly a two party system there. UKIP are not racist. They want the UK to pull out of the EU, but are quite happy to be friendly neigbours.
BNP, English Democrats and Vertias are racist parties though.
European elections are proportional representation, not first past the post, and it is Europe where most of the changes need to be made with regards to copyright. Even if the Pirate Party did win the next Westminster election, they couldn't do much about copyright or patent law, because it is set at EU level. They could change encryption and spying laws because they are set at UK level. They would have some influence over the amount of law enforcement resources employed on copyright issues, but it is mostly local council trading standards departments that do that, and they tend to focus on commercial copying.
My smartphone is way more powerful than my desktop computer from 10 years ago. That's not the point. My desktop computer has the same sized keyboard that my 10 year old one had, except that it is connected to the computer by USB rather than a 5 pin AT connector; whereas my smartphone has a tiny keyboard where it is impossible to touch type.
Maybe American credit reports are different, but British ones take the following form:
There is a list of credit accounts you have, and your payment history.
A list of accounts with lots of "0"s (paid on time) gives you good points. A list of accounts with other numbers (no of months late paying), or "D" for Default, gives you bad points. No accounts on the list gives you no points.
There is a list of court judgements. That should be blank. Anything on there is bad.
There is a list of claims on credit insurance policies. That should be blank. Anything on there is bad.
There is a list of CIFAS alerts. That tells the lender to take more care in checking the application details due to risk of fraud.
There is a list of addresses you have been at over the past 6 years. Lenders don't like people who move a lot, but they probably aren't so bothered if it is a mortgage application.
There is details of people on the electoral register at your address. You should be on that.
There is no actual credit score on the report. It is up to the reader of the report to have their own scoring system.
Their score comes from things in your application form as well as the credit report. For example, your employment and income details are not on the credit report, but are very important. Having a landline telephone number is important. Your payment history in respect of it may or may not be on the credit report depending on which telco you use, but they phone you up on the number on the application form to check this.
An employer should be looking for the absence of bad points, but shouldn't be so concerned about the lack of good points on the report.
That will be a different kind of bad rating from the one employers are looking at.
There will be no history of paying off loans on the credit report. Lenders won't like that, but employers won't care. The equivalent for an employer is where you haven't got any previous experience in that particular role.
The other kind of bad rating is where you have loans which you haven't paid on time. Lenders and employers will both hate that.
Are there any hypervisors out there that give you sufficient access to the video card to allow Vista Aero graphics to work? If so, please send me a link.
I'm putting my bet on an Adobe AIR type effort. They have developed a DRM thing for BBC iPlayer, and it works on Windows and Macs.
However, if it is to be successful, it will need to work on portable media players as well, and that means either mp3 which will work anywhere, aac (for ipods), or wma (for playsforsure media players). I'm guessing aac has been ruled out.
But it appears that smoking rates have not falled amoungst mad people, and people who have a tendancy to find themselves in prison. They are still at around 90% of the the population, whereas for everyone else, it has fallen to around 25%.
What's the difference between a working live brain, the brain of someone in a persistent vegetative state, and a recently dead brain? I don't think anyone knows the answer to that, so how do you know how to simulate it? People have studied the brains of highly intelligent people, and the brains of people with normal intelligence, and couldn't find any physical difference between them.
I believe that it is not possible to express the brain's logic functions and processes in boolean algebra, and therefore our current 1970s architecture CPUs are not capable of emulating a human brain.
We can simulate our heart / circulation system, our respiratory system and so on, because we understand how they work, and they are pretty predictable. Brains are predictable some of the time, but not always.
But can a brain be emulated in computer hardware? I don't think it can. Certainly not with existing technology, and I don't think we are any closer to it now than we were in the 1970s.
The two main problems I see are that computers only understand boolean logic, and they only do what they are told to do. No matter how fast you make them, or how much memory you throw at them, you can't get round that without taking the technology in a completely different direction, and that just isn't happening at the moment.
Obviously I'm not going to say that this will never happen. Such a statement can only ever be proved wrong, but I do think the biology lab is most likely place for a synthetic brain.
Sending spam is illegal under the EU's e-privacy directive. However the maximum punishment is a small fine, and nobody has been prosecuted yet as far as I'm aware.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the European Parliament did an excellent job of stopping software patents in Europe.
Labour of course came fifth in the South East region at the last election. They were beaten by the Tories, UKIP, Liberal and Greens. Not exactly a two party system there.
UKIP are not racist. They want the UK to pull out of the EU, but are quite happy to be friendly neigbours.
BNP, English Democrats and Vertias are racist parties though.
European elections are proportional representation, not first past the post, and it is Europe where most of the changes need to be made with regards to copyright. Even if the Pirate Party did win the next Westminster election, they couldn't do much about copyright or patent law, because it is set at EU level. They could change encryption and spying laws because they are set at UK level. They would have some influence over the amount of law enforcement resources employed on copyright issues, but it is mostly local council trading standards departments that do that, and they tend to focus on commercial copying.
Problem is that nobody every got fired for buying Blackberry either.
My smartphone is way more powerful than my desktop computer from 10 years ago. That's not the point. My desktop computer has the same sized keyboard that my 10 year old one had, except that it is connected to the computer by USB rather than a 5 pin AT connector; whereas my smartphone has a tiny keyboard where it is impossible to touch type.
Maybe American credit reports are different, but British ones take the following form:
There is a list of credit accounts you have, and your payment history.
A list of accounts with lots of "0"s (paid on time) gives you good points. A list of accounts with other numbers (no of months late paying), or "D" for Default, gives you bad points. No accounts on the list gives you no points.
There is a list of court judgements. That should be blank. Anything on there is bad.
There is a list of claims on credit insurance policies. That should be blank. Anything on there is bad.
There is a list of CIFAS alerts. That tells the lender to take more care in checking the application details due to risk of fraud.
There is a list of addresses you have been at over the past 6 years. Lenders don't like people who move a lot, but they probably aren't so bothered if it is a mortgage application.
There is details of people on the electoral register at your address. You should be on that.
There is no actual credit score on the report. It is up to the reader of the report to have their own scoring system.
Their score comes from things in your application form as well as the credit report. For example, your employment and income details are not on the credit report, but are very important. Having a landline telephone number is important. Your payment history in respect of it may or may not be on the credit report depending on which telco you use, but they phone you up on the number on the application form to check this.
An employer should be looking for the absence of bad points, but shouldn't be so concerned about the lack of good points on the report.
Remember that things like phone contracts are credit lines, as is a current (or checking[sic]) account. So it is very difficult to avoid it.
We certainly have them in the UK. Equifax, Experian, Call Credit and National Hunter are the four main credit reporting agencies.
That will be a different kind of bad rating from the one employers are looking at.
There will be no history of paying off loans on the credit report. Lenders won't like that, but employers won't care. The equivalent for an employer is where you haven't got any previous experience in that particular role.
The other kind of bad rating is where you have loans which you haven't paid on time. Lenders and employers will both hate that.
Are there any hypervisors out there that give you sufficient access to the video card to allow Vista Aero graphics to work? If so, please send me a link.
I'm putting my bet on an Adobe AIR type effort. They have developed a DRM thing for BBC iPlayer, and it works on Windows and Macs.
However, if it is to be successful, it will need to work on portable media players as well, and that means either mp3 which will work anywhere, aac (for ipods), or wma (for playsforsure media players). I'm guessing aac has been ruled out.
Nicotine I believe causes high blood presure and heart problems, but it is the other chemicals in cigarette smoke that cause most of the problems.
But it appears that smoking rates have not falled amoungst mad people, and people who have a tendancy to find themselves in prison. They are still at around 90% of the the population, whereas for everyone else, it has fallen to around 25%.
What's the difference between a working live brain, the brain of someone in a persistent vegetative state, and a recently dead brain? I don't think anyone knows the answer to that, so how do you know how to simulate it? People have studied the brains of highly intelligent people, and the brains of people with normal intelligence, and couldn't find any physical difference between them.
I believe that it is not possible to express the brain's logic functions and processes in boolean algebra, and therefore our current 1970s architecture CPUs are not capable of emulating a human brain.
We can simulate our heart / circulation system, our respiratory system and so on, because we understand how they work, and they are pretty predictable. Brains are predictable some of the time, but not always.
But can a brain be emulated in computer hardware? I don't think it can. Certainly not with existing technology, and I don't think we are any closer to it now than we were in the 1970s.
The two main problems I see are that computers only understand boolean logic, and they only do what they are told to do. No matter how fast you make them, or how much memory you throw at them, you can't get round that without taking the technology in a completely different direction, and that just isn't happening at the moment.
Obviously I'm not going to say that this will never happen. Such a statement can only ever be proved wrong, but I do think the biology lab is most likely place for a synthetic brain.
Why should we try to create an artificial brain in the computing lab when it would be much easier to do it in the genetic engineering lab?
Sending spam is illegal under the EU's e-privacy directive. However the maximum punishment is a small fine, and nobody has been prosecuted yet as far as I'm aware.
Yes, you have an inalienable right to press whatever button you want on your remote control.
It counts as misleading advertising in the EU as well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ should do the job
VLC is certainly better at playing random video files, but I prefer the UI for MPC.
Is free and open source software only to be used in the home then? Why should it not be used in the office as well?
For me it is getting excel to link to external data from web pages. That is one of the 1% of features oocalc doesn't support.
scp is standard issue on must unix / linux systems.
I expect it will sell in London as an alternative to the GWiz, as it is exempt from the congestion charge.