I (kind of) agree with you re: Office and PhotoShop, but I'm stuck with an XP laptop at the moment, with iTunes, Windows MediaPlayer, RealPlayer and WinAmp - and I'm *really* missing Amarok.
I'm not a KDE-person (viva e17!), but I'll cheerfully install the KDE libraries just to have Amarok.
It's one of the things[1] I cite when I'm getting the Student Loans Company to repay the unlawful charges it periodically decides it can charge me. Other people have used it successfully against banks. You can bet that smart ISPs just know their customers are aware of their rights.
[1] The other being a House of Lords ruling from the early 20th century that penalty charges are unlawful except to recover actual or liquidated losses. But I digress.
When writing to your MP, ask that they raise the matter with "the relevant Minister". Your MP is obliged to do so, just as they're obliged to respond to constituents' correspondence. If you live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland be sure to point out that this issue affects citizens throughout the UK, otherwise your MP may just refer the issue to a Minister at Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont. Your MP may find it helpful if you specify the relevant Minister, just so as there's no misunderstanding.
It may also be worth casually mentioning that, in addition to writing to your MP, you've also written to ${THEIR_BIGGEST_POLITICAL_LOCAL_THREAT} asking what their view is about British businesses (ISPs) being sued by their customers because of daft laws passed by your MP. Careerist MPs hate the idea they may lose their jobs to someone who appears to give slightly more of a shit about their constituents.
> Meh. Of course all of their claims of server downtime are for real. I mean, they did publish it on their own website.
Well, you're right, we don't have any third-party confirmation of how long their servers went down when Timo got drunk and tripped over a server. Many of us will remember how much downtime there was when the RIAA goaded the Swedish authorities into raiding them. Three days seems a little long, they're maybe counting the time they were setup temporarily in the Netherlands?
...and you're right, too, about hosting videos. I mean, how long did YouTube last before it was shut down?
> Only time will tell I suppose.
Well, they've been annoying the RIAA/MPAA for several years with filesharing, it's reasonable to believe they'll continue to annoy the RIAA/MPAA for several more years simply by expanding their service to include something similar to YouTube, a service that's legal in the USA (and therefore more than likely to bhe legal in Sweden), and that the RIAA/MPAA haven't managed to lawyer into the ground. I'd be tempted to conclude that its going to be easier for RIAA/MPAA to shut down YouTube than TPB, unless Swedish or European copyright law undergoes a seismic shift.
"I know I used to force myself upon you, repeatedly, with no remorse, but I was thinking seeing as I have asked that you allow me to, and that I have changed my name now, you may voluntarily sleep with me?"
...and if you say no, I'll accuse you of rape. Yeah, it's sickening. Surely if I run an app that removes "software", I'm consenting to removing the software it removes? If I use, say, Spyware Doctor to remove, say, Zango, it's no different from using, say, Windows Explorer to remove, say, Firefox, surely? Should the Mozilla Foundation sue Microsoft? (It's a rhetorical question! Honest!)
""Found Off England", besides making no sense, makes it sound like this was some English-only thing."
Aye, you're absolutely correct. From now on I'm going to refer to the Titanic as a ship that sank off the coast of New Zealand, the Bermuda Triangle as a region off the coast of Sierra Leone, and the Principality of Sealand as a sea-fort off the coast of Chile. I mean - it's all one big ocean, right?
Wahey! I'm gonna become a geography teacher! Ph33r m3 4 1 4m 133t !!!eleventy-one!!!
I don't think he should step down, either, but it does raise interesting questions about legal process in the UK: the government have argued that certain high-profile cases (typically involving complex fraud) should not be subject to jury trial "because the jurors wouldn't understand the complex issues at stake". If judges are equally deficient in understanding, then really - what's the point of removing an ancient right to trial by jury?
In all fairness, I feel Pikoro is to blame: protocol on Ask Slashdot is to ask for legal advice so that responses can follow one of two possible formats:
1. "IANAL, but..."
2. "Ask Slashdot isn't a substitute for an attorney, you retard!"
It makes it very difficult for us to mock the Askee when they ask sensible IT-related questions!
...don't show how close/far away Netscape and Mozilla and Firefox are from passing.
Happy to help! Firefox 1.5 is nearer to Opera 8 than Opera 7.5: the background is yellow (good), the eyes aren't quite right (bad, comparable to Opera 8) and the mouth has turned into a cigar (bad, Opera 8 does this better).
Sorry, best I can do without getting off my backside and doing something useful with screenshots. And I'm not going to get off my backside on a Sunday.
You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".
Jeez - I am one of those tree hugging animal rights people but your post just screams "pratt" to me. Either that or <tinfoil-hat>agent-provocateur for pharma-com</tinfoil-hat>
During second world war, if i remember correctly, a drunk was jailed for 3 years for shouting publicly that Winston Churchill is an idiot and a warmonger.
...and Britain's "last witch" was tried for contacting the spirit of a dead sailor: the sailor's family (and the general population) didn't know his ship had sunk until the clairvoyant was arrested and charged under a 1735 law...
> > We're fighting for freedom and democracy. You'll notice that you have none of those things in the military.
> Actually, I guess any military has neither of those.
Historical trivia: the New Model Army during the British "War of the Three Kingdoms" (the English Civil War and the related conflicts in Ireland and Scotland for those of us educated before or during the 1980s...) consisted of volunteer soldiers and elected "agitators" (officers)... at least until the Commonwealth-under-Parliament became a Dictatorship-under-Cromwell.
Republican military units in Spain during the Civil War also were frequently democratic, at least until the anarchist and socialist militias were assimilated by the pro-Moscow faction.
You make a valid point (that a DDoS attach has the potential to create real harm), but it's slighlty irrelevant: if, through dangerous driving, I crash a motor vehicle and kill someone I would, quite correctly be charged with manslaughter. It doesn't, however, equate to the deliberate and systematic mass murder of civilians and should not merit an equivalent sentence.
Does anyone else find it COMPLETELY wrong someone like Milan Babic (former Croatian Serb leader who just commited suicide) serves 13 years for genocide crimes and hackers can serve as much for a little denial of service attack?
Yes. I live in the south-side of Glasgow, the area represented by Mr Harris. The issues here aren't, apparently, genocide and war: they are graffiti and "anti-social behaviour" (and now, presumably, ha><0ring). Meanwhile, Mr Harris's colleagues in the (Labour-controlled) city council are closing council-run schools and swimming pools, and state-run hospitals. Unemployment in much of Glasgow is still a national disgrace, sectarian violence is still with us, and we still have our reputation as the sick man of Europe (the most polluted street in Europe is just around the corner from my workplace).
So I do feel it's completely wrong that Mr Harris and his cronies devote so much time to so little effect. I'd guess that Mr Harris et al feel that genocide isn't a vote-winning issue. I am slightly surprised to see a Glasgow Labour MP asserting himself: in Glasgow we elect telephone boxes because they're New Labour red. I guess Mr Harris is planning a career beyond Glasgow politics.
Disclaimer: I was a member of Mr Harris's party - Labour - until they went off the rails in 1996.
especially in Scotland, where using solar panels would require seeing the sun, and therefore are obviously out of the questions.
Just an aside, but Edinburgh and now Glasgow have introduced solar-powered parking meters. Living in Glasgow I reject the "Sun myth", but clearly the new meters are true believers;-)
No, PHP's session vars aren't the same thing as caching in memory. Ultimately, the data you write to $_SESSION gets written to disk, and then is retrieved again next time a script using sessions is called.
Ah, fair enough. I take it ASP's sessions *are* cached, or am I not understanding the original question? (I've never really poked behind the scenes with ASP)
In asp and asp net there are extensive facilities to cache in to memory.
I don't know much Php but as far as I can tell there is no way to do this natively.
(Long-time ASP/VBScript coder, recently started using PHP) Are you talking about ASP's session and application objects? If so, PHP has an equivalent to ASP's session object at least: $_SESSION. It looks to me like $GLOBALS may be an equivalent to ASP's application object, but I've not had an opportunity to try it yet.
Incidentally, my first impressions of PHP are that it offers a great deal more than ASP, though if I was using it for any length of time I'd want to check out templating: PHP mixed with HTML makes ASP mixed with HTML look beautiful!
It is quite "possibly";) _atlantisian_ imported by greeks before the fall of Atlantis.
Nah, it's been dated to about 87 BC. My theory is that the Greeks ripped off Atlantean IP. Those Ancient Greeks better hope the Atlanteans didn't sell their IP to SCO before disappearing forever...
We both know Christmas is the time of year where we bow down and worship consumerism. All hail our mighty gods Visa and Mastercard!
My new test for Christmas-is-coming is: when Philips start advertising MRI scanners on prime-time UK TV. Don't ask me why they do this at all, let alone in the run-up to Christmas: I guess these days hospitals need to rely on Santa as much as any of us;-)
If that's not abusing a monopoly, then I don't know what is.
"Abusing a monopoly" does not include charging a high price for features ("superior audio/visual-editing capabilities"), successful marketing ("the Macintosh brand name") or user-zealotry ("they just plain don't want to use a Windows box"). Microsoft were successfully prosecuted for abusing their monopoly position because they strong-armed OEMs into including IE, frequently altered their APIs, and forced "partners" to enter into restrictive agreements. If you feel that Apple are abusing a monpoly position: agitate to get them prosecuted by the DoJ. I won't be supporting you - sorry.
I'm sorry but who is that company again that develops a portable music player and also opened a music store that is the only choice to buy music for customers who bought their player?
Microsoft's got a horizontal monopoly, but it looks like Apple's going for the vertical monopoly.
There's nothing wrong with operating a monopoly per se - and in the Microsoft case the problem was never with Microsoft being a monopoly - the DoJ case was brought because it was alleged that Microsoft had abused its monolpoly position.
In other words, wake me up not when Apple have a monolpoly, but when they start abusing their monolpoly position.
Dude, these stories don't get posted here for information value - it's so we can reduce their pitiful Windows servers to a heap of smoking rubble. Which we're very successful at doing, thankyewverymuch.
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I (kind of) agree with you re: Office and PhotoShop, but I'm stuck with an XP laptop at the moment, with iTunes, Windows MediaPlayer, RealPlayer and WinAmp - and I'm *really* missing Amarok.
I'm not a KDE-person (viva e17!), but I'll cheerfully install the KDE libraries just to have Amarok.
> I'm sure under UK law there are provisions to fight 'unfair contracts'.
There are indeed - The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999
It's one of the things[1] I cite when I'm getting the Student Loans Company to repay the unlawful charges it periodically decides it can charge me. Other people have used it successfully against banks. You can bet that smart ISPs just know their customers are aware of their rights.
[1] The other being a House of Lords ruling from the early 20th century that penalty charges are unlawful except to recover actual or liquidated losses. But I digress.
When writing to your MP, ask that they raise the matter with "the relevant Minister". Your MP is obliged to do so, just as they're obliged to respond to constituents' correspondence. If you live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland be sure to point out that this issue affects citizens throughout the UK, otherwise your MP may just refer the issue to a Minister at Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont. Your MP may find it helpful if you specify the relevant Minister, just so as there's no misunderstanding.
It may also be worth casually mentioning that, in addition to writing to your MP, you've also written to ${THEIR_BIGGEST_POLITICAL_LOCAL_THREAT} asking what their view is about British businesses (ISPs) being sued by their customers because of daft laws passed by your MP. Careerist MPs hate the idea they may lose their jobs to someone who appears to give slightly more of a shit about their constituents.
> Meh. Of course all of their claims of server downtime are for real. I mean, they did publish it on their own website.
Well, you're right, we don't have any third-party confirmation of how long their servers went down when Timo got drunk and tripped over a server. Many of us will remember how much downtime there was when the RIAA goaded the Swedish authorities into raiding them. Three days seems a little long, they're maybe counting the time they were setup temporarily in the Netherlands?
...and you're right, too, about hosting videos. I mean, how long did YouTube last before it was shut down?
> Only time will tell I suppose.
Well, they've been annoying the RIAA/MPAA for several years with filesharing, it's reasonable to believe they'll continue to annoy the RIAA/MPAA for several more years simply by expanding their service to include something similar to YouTube, a service that's legal in the USA (and therefore more than likely to bhe legal in Sweden), and that the RIAA/MPAA haven't managed to lawyer into the ground. I'd be tempted to conclude that its going to be easier for RIAA/MPAA to shut down YouTube than TPB, unless Swedish or European copyright law undergoes a seismic shift.
> And they thought the last lawsuit and raid were bad... I guess they can show the videos from their torrent site now. lol
... here are some reasons why TPB is down sometimes - and how long it usually takes to fix: .. yawn."
They thought the last lawsuit and raid were bad?
"Just some stats...
Tiamo gets *very* drunk and then something crashes: 4 days
Anakata gets a really bad cold and noone is around: 7 days
The US and Swedish gov. forces the police to steal our servers: 3 days
Wow, they're hiding their ph33r well.
lol, indeed.
"I know I used to force myself upon you, repeatedly, with no remorse, but I was thinking seeing as I have asked that you allow me to, and that I have changed my name now, you may voluntarily sleep with me?"
...and if you say no, I'll accuse you of rape. Yeah, it's sickening. Surely if I run an app that removes "software", I'm consenting to removing the software it removes? If I use, say, Spyware Doctor to remove, say, Zango, it's no different from using, say, Windows Explorer to remove, say, Firefox, surely? Should the Mozilla Foundation sue Microsoft? (It's a rhetorical question! Honest!)
""Found Off England", besides making no sense, makes it sound like this was some English-only thing." Aye, you're absolutely correct. From now on I'm going to refer to the Titanic as a ship that sank off the coast of New Zealand, the Bermuda Triangle as a region off the coast of Sierra Leone, and the Principality of Sealand as a sea-fort off the coast of Chile. I mean - it's all one big ocean, right? Wahey! I'm gonna become a geography teacher! Ph33r m3 4 1 4m 133t !!!eleventy-one!!!
I don't think he should step down, either, but it does raise interesting questions about legal process in the UK: the government have argued that certain high-profile cases (typically involving complex fraud) should not be subject to jury trial "because the jurors wouldn't understand the complex issues at stake". If judges are equally deficient in understanding, then really - what's the point of removing an ancient right to trial by jury?
In all fairness, I feel Pikoro is to blame: protocol on Ask Slashdot is to ask for legal advice so that responses can follow one of two possible formats:
- 1. "IANAL, but..."
- 2. "Ask Slashdot isn't a substitute for an attorney, you retard!"
It makes it very difficult for us to mock the Askee when they ask sensible IT-related questions!The result? things are now only slightly worse than they were when British rail was a national joke
That's a tad unfair. The sandwiches have at least doubled in quality, and the prices only trebled.
Everything else is true, though.
(Oh how I wish we were joking. Britain's railways are only acceptable if you never travel on any other country's rail network).
Happy to help! Firefox 1.5 is nearer to Opera 8 than Opera 7.5: the background is yellow (good), the eyes aren't quite right (bad, comparable to Opera 8) and the mouth has turned into a cigar (bad, Opera 8 does this better).
Sorry, best I can do without getting off my backside and doing something useful with screenshots. And I'm not going to get off my backside on a Sunday.
And no, I didn't RTFA very much.
You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".
Jeez - I am one of those tree hugging animal rights people but your post just screams "pratt" to me. Either that or <tinfoil-hat>agent-provocateur for pharma-com</tinfoil-hat>
.During second world war, if i remember correctly, a drunk was jailed for 3 years for shouting publicly that Winston Churchill is an idiot and a warmonger.
...and Britain's "last witch" was tried for contacting the spirit of a dead sailor: the sailor's family (and the general population) didn't know his ship had sunk until the clairvoyant was arrested and charged under a 1735 law...
> > We're fighting for freedom and democracy. You'll notice that you have none of those things in the military.
> Actually, I guess any military has neither of those.
Historical trivia: the New Model Army during the British "War of the Three Kingdoms" (the English Civil War and the related conflicts in Ireland and Scotland for those of us educated before or during the 1980s...) consisted of volunteer soldiers and elected "agitators" (officers) ... at least until the Commonwealth-under-Parliament became a Dictatorship-under-Cromwell.
Republican military units in Spain during the Civil War also were frequently democratic, at least until the anarchist and socialist militias were assimilated by the pro-Moscow faction.
You make a valid point (that a DDoS attach has the potential to create real harm), but it's slighlty irrelevant: if, through dangerous driving, I crash a motor vehicle and kill someone I would, quite correctly be charged with manslaughter. It doesn't, however, equate to the deliberate and systematic mass murder of civilians and should not merit an equivalent sentence.
Does anyone else find it COMPLETELY wrong someone like Milan Babic (former Croatian Serb leader who just commited suicide) serves 13 years for genocide crimes and hackers can serve as much for a little denial of service attack?
Yes. I live in the south-side of Glasgow, the area represented by Mr Harris. The issues here aren't, apparently, genocide and war: they are graffiti and "anti-social behaviour" (and now, presumably, ha><0ring). Meanwhile, Mr Harris's colleagues in the (Labour-controlled) city council are closing council-run schools and swimming pools, and state-run hospitals. Unemployment in much of Glasgow is still a national disgrace, sectarian violence is still with us, and we still have our reputation as the sick man of Europe (the most polluted street in Europe is just around the corner from my workplace).
So I do feel it's completely wrong that Mr Harris and his cronies devote so much time to so little effect. I'd guess that Mr Harris et al feel that genocide isn't a vote-winning issue. I am slightly surprised to see a Glasgow Labour MP asserting himself: in Glasgow we elect telephone boxes because they're New Labour red. I guess Mr Harris is planning a career beyond Glasgow politics.
Disclaimer: I was a member of Mr Harris's party - Labour - until they went off the rails in 1996.
especially in Scotland, where using solar panels would require seeing the sun, and therefore are obviously out of the questions.
Just an aside, but Edinburgh and now Glasgow have introduced solar-powered parking meters. Living in Glasgow I reject the "Sun myth", but clearly the new meters are true believers ;-)
No, PHP's session vars aren't the same thing as caching in memory. Ultimately, the data you write to $_SESSION gets written to disk, and then is retrieved again next time a script using sessions is called.
Ah, fair enough. I take it ASP's sessions *are* cached, or am I not understanding the original question? (I've never really poked behind the scenes with ASP)
In asp and asp net there are extensive facilities to cache in to memory.
I don't know much Php but as far as I can tell there is no way to do this natively.
(Long-time ASP/VBScript coder, recently started using PHP) Are you talking about ASP's session and application objects? If so, PHP has an equivalent to ASP's session object at least: $_SESSION. It looks to me like $GLOBALS may be an equivalent to ASP's application object, but I've not had an opportunity to try it yet.
Incidentally, my first impressions of PHP are that it offers a great deal more than ASP, though if I was using it for any length of time I'd want to check out templating: PHP mixed with HTML makes ASP mixed with HTML look beautiful!
It is quite "possibly" ;) _atlantisian_ imported by greeks before the fall of Atlantis.
Nah, it's been dated to about 87 BC. My theory is that the Greeks ripped off Atlantean IP. Those Ancient Greeks better hope the Atlanteans didn't sell their IP to SCO before disappearing forever...
We both know Christmas is the time of year where we bow down and worship consumerism. All hail our mighty gods Visa and Mastercard!
My new test for Christmas-is-coming is: when Philips start advertising MRI scanners on prime-time UK TV. Don't ask me why they do this at all, let alone in the run-up to Christmas: I guess these days hospitals need to rely on Santa as much as any of us ;-)
If that's not abusing a monopoly, then I don't know what is.
"Abusing a monopoly" does not include charging a high price for features ("superior audio/visual-editing capabilities"), successful marketing ("the Macintosh brand name") or user-zealotry ("they just plain don't want to use a Windows box"). Microsoft were successfully prosecuted for abusing their monopoly position because they strong-armed OEMs into including IE, frequently altered their APIs, and forced "partners" to enter into restrictive agreements. If you feel that Apple are abusing a monpoly position: agitate to get them prosecuted by the DoJ. I won't be supporting you - sorry.
I'm sorry but who is that company again that develops a portable music player and also opened a music store that is the only choice to buy music for customers who bought their player?
I don't own an iPod, or any other Apple product for that matter, but I was under the impression that iPod's played a variety of formats: iPods can play MP3, WAV, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, Audible audiobook, MPEG-4, and Apple Lossless file formats. The fifth-generation iPod can play .m4v, .mp4 and .mov files... It looks like iPod users can purchase MP3s at least from any site offering MP3s.
If Microsoft would do that, everybody would be raising hell.
Again: Microsoft has been found guilty of abusing its monopoly position. Apple - thus far - has not (innocent until proven guilty, etc).
Apple's business ethics are just as commercial as Microsoft's.
Of course - they both have a responsibility to their shareholders to deliver value. Assuming you're a capitalist then there's nothing wrong with that.
They're both in it for the money and will do whatever nessecary to maintain their monopoly.
Perhaps, though in Apple's case it remains to be seen whether the action they take to maintain their (alleged) monopoly are proven to be abusive.
Microsoft's got a horizontal monopoly, but it looks like Apple's going for the vertical monopoly.
There's nothing wrong with operating a monopoly per se - and in the Microsoft case the problem was never with Microsoft being a monopoly - the DoJ case was brought because it was alleged that Microsoft had abused its monolpoly position.
In other words, wake me up not when Apple have a monolpoly, but when they start abusing their monolpoly position.
If I wanted to know how Vista was doing...
Dude, these stories don't get posted here for information value - it's so we can reduce their pitiful Windows servers to a heap of smoking rubble. Which we're very successful at doing, thankyewverymuch.