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User: PJ+The+Womble

PJ+The+Womble's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 81

  1. Re:gosh on Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum · · Score: 1

    I agree that the defendant's argument that it's fair use to download copyrighted music seems not to be based in natural justice, or indeed first-order logic. As far as I can make out, that's what "copyright" means. But it's really only as arcane an argument as the judge's assertion that (and I paraphrase the article for effect) "well, if it was legal to download copyrighted music, then lots of people who currently don't do it would start doing it. And that seems like it wouldn't be a good thing for the music industry, so I rule against it". It surely shouldn't hinge on what the judge thinks is the *moral* perspective on file sharing.

    I think all that has become clear to me about this case so far is why I never went on to become a lawyer!

  2. Re:Modems on Weather Balloons To Provide Broadband In Africa · · Score: 1

    Modulation and demodulation processes don't necessarily involve conversion to/from analogue or digital. They simply involve placing one signal over the top of another before transmission of the combined signal (as in radio transmissions) and removing the original signal upon reception, in order to retrieve information included in that signal. The modulation method is at the user's prerogative, and will involve considerations such as the required propagation distance and acceptable losses of data. DAC or ADC are optional.

  3. Re:Honestly, Officer on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 1

    Good point: the "Carry On" films made millions in the 1960s when we had the Lord Chamberlain's Office overseeing everything that went out in any medium for profanity. Everybody except the dear old LC pissed themselves laughing at the double entendres coming thick and fast (as it were).

    "A woman walked into a bar and asked the barman for a double entendre. So he gave her one".

    It's only dirty if you've got a dirty mind.

  4. Re:Senator Robert Ford on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 1

    Oh, my mistake... I thought that URL said "scathouse".

  5. Bad coding practice on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 1

    ^%::&++!

    Reminds me of some of the fabulously badly-written C++ I used to see at IBM in the nineties, the sort of thing that would give the preprocessor a hernia and anyone bug-fixing a nervous breakdown.

  6. Re:That's no leak on Windows 7 Leaked To Pirates By Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    Actually, the interior of a watermelon is both black AND red until it's cut open, according to my local greengrocer, Mr Schrodinger.

    And just how DO you get an 'o' with an umlaut on here? I tried Alt-148 and it reproduces in the editor but not in the preview!

  7. Re:This is so exciting! on Windows 7 Leaked To Pirates By Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    In the sense that nobody will buy it when it comes out because it's sluggish, overpriced, heavy on precious resources and takes 5 years to get the proper service done on it when it leaks?

  8. Re:I guess thats one way to get Beta Testers on Windows 7 Leaked To Pirates By Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    "Zune" as a verb. Nice!

    "I was really looking forward to a night on the tiles, but after a few beers and chasers I zuned by 11.30".

    "Wow! And we thought Guns 'n' Roses had zuned years ago"... etc.

  9. Re:Real mature on Microsoft Zunes Committing Mass Suicide · · Score: 1

    Animal hides and termite-infested wood? Not quite as funny as it sounds...

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/03/anthrax_death/

  10. Re:They're MY bits, not YOURS on Making BitTorrent Clients Prioritize By Geography? · · Score: 1

    Moderate +many. Interesting and funny.

    Though I haven't had a bank statement in 10 years that inspired any confidence.

  11. Re:They're MY bits, not YOURS on Making BitTorrent Clients Prioritize By Geography? · · Score: 2, Funny

    I went to University of Teesside for 3 years. Have you ever been to Middlesbrough? It's grey, cold and wet in July, and the rest of the year the weather is *really* depressing. They're not the most optimistic people in the world. Even free money wouldn't improve their stoical disposition, IMHO.

  12. They're MY bits, not YOURS on Making BitTorrent Clients Prioritize By Geography? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When I was in my first year at college, we were asked to produce a questionnaire about using ATMs, including the question: "If you could change one thing about your bank's ATMs, what would it be?"

    The most popular answer I managed to get was "if the machine's running out of money, they should restrict the cash withdrawal function to customers of this branch".

    Does anyone see a parallel here?

  13. Re:Where where? on BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" · · Score: 1

    I just use it generically (handily, most every stoner I've met in the world seems to know of the term, so the humour works).

    Perhaps the best use of it that I've heard of is in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch about (Cook) the naughty public schoolboy who is going to get caned by (Moore) the headmaster until he informs him that (something like) "actually, I'm much bigger than you are, Sir, and if you do I'll have to kick your silly little head in". At which point the headmaster thanks him for pointing this out, tells him not to worry about the original offence and offers him his "nice deck of Acapulco Gold" by way of compensation for his time. Sadly, my headmaster at public school was a big angry bastard with no dope, a good aim with the stick and the overbearing self-confidence that 5 years in the RAF in WW2 gave one, apparently.

  14. Re:Where where? on BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" · · Score: 1

    They do indeed, and that's what makes it even more mouthwatering a pun if you deliver the coup de grace in a nice rich Bing Crosby baritone (and if possible while wearing golfing slacks and a polo-neck jumper).

  15. Re:Where where? on BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" · · Score: 1

    OK then. Let's not call it a pun. Just think of it as a "Team America World Police" Kim Jong-Il type of "L/R" consonant swap, followed by a Spoonerism, instead.

    Better for you?

    And, seasonally, if there's another way to get the beautiful line "Chess nuts boasting by an open foyer" into any kind of a civilised conversation without the corny, contrived references to FIDE and a bulldozer smasing into the front of The Hilton, I'd sure like to hear it.

  16. Re:Where where? on BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" · · Score: 1

    There are those old curmudgeons amongst us, of course, who would say that Victoria and David Beckham's whole public life is a made-up story.

    And I guess also that a pun is no more than a linguistic device or "function", the "operands" for which can be real-world or abstract. As long as the story makes semantic and syntactical sense, it doesn't have to be true. In fact, I think that some of the best puns are the ones that have you scratching your head and thinking "this can't possibly be true" only to realise that no, *of course* it wasn't true.

    The simple joy of a pun is the "ugh" moment when you realise you've been had.

  17. Re:Where where? on BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" · · Score: 5, Funny

    A friend of mine made a lot of money selling marijuana, but then got word that the heat was on him, so he absconded to his own island with the stash, and disguised it from the prying eyes of the DEA by building a mansion entirely from bricks of Acapulco Gold. He decided to launder his money by starting a collection of expensive gold and velvet chairs from the ancient royal houses of the world.

    Of course, the whole enterprise ended in tears when he bought one too many 24-karat armchair and the building simply disintegrated. He was whining to me on the phone afterwards and I could only offer him the following simple advice: "People in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones".

    Sorry.

  18. A question of property, and intellect? on An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks · · Score: 1

    Why not find somebody who has the book (this Interweb thing may help), ask them to lend it to you and read the salient bits (or maybe get them to read it to you if they're hot - there's nothing nicer then an attractive person reading a book to you while you relax with your head on their lap!)

    Then remember it.

    Nobody ever got sued for recollecting, as far as I know.

  19. Re:Doomsday. on How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists · · Score: 1

    So, law abiding citizens can get ANY guns/ammunition they want, can they? Or is there a kind of like group of guns that they can't get which are kind of like really sorta dangerous?

  20. Geocentricity? on Google Can Predict the Flu · · Score: 0

    Nice map, Google! Does influenza not happen anywhere outside the United States then? Excellent.

  21. Re:Not news on Stretching Before Exercising Weakens Muscles · · Score: 1

    Being into writing code or whatever else doesn't mean you have to be a skinnyfat weakling!

    No, but it *is* a great way to start!

  22. Less power, more point? on Stretching Before Exercising Weakens Muscles · · Score: 2, Funny

    This seems a little like saying: "thinking it through before posting lowers the chance of getting every last random rambling thought onto a forum". Sure, there are *less* words there, but they're more useful.

  23. Re:code from scratch on Reuse Code Or Code It Yourself? · · Score: 1

    Might I quote from the old GBP 1 coin, after Newton? "Standing on the shoulders of giants".

    Except, of course, that one invariably meets one's programming predecessors for a couple of weeks in that nice new job before they go off to their own next little rung. Without wishing to offend anyone of the Pygmy persuasion, of course, and realising that this one works recursively about oneself too...

  24. Re:It's knowing when on Reuse Code Or Code It Yourself? · · Score: 1

    It's not rewriting code or reusing code that makes you a successful programmer: it's knowing when your project manager wants you to rewrite or reuse code for "business reasons". As I have found out to my cost in the past.

  25. Rewriting the law of cyberspace? Whoo! on Air Force To Rewrite the Rules of the Internet · · Score: 1

    Next week: Fat guy tries to rewrite the law of gravity? Mortgage broker tries to rewrite the law of diminishing returns? Nobel prize for Average Joe who successfully rewrites the law of averages? I'm inclined to think that this is more: "Tarzan rewrites the Law Of The Jungle" (before consulting the tigers).