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User: tpholland

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Comments · 37

  1. Re:data protection and guns (was: wayback machine on Upcoming EU Data Law Will Make Europe Tricky For Social Networks · · Score: 1

    You could have Googled 1) if you were actually curious. 2) is unrelated to anything in the post you were replying to, but I believe there are websites where people who are that way inclined discuss the relative merits of various weapons; Google will probably give some pointers here, too.

  2. A first step to personalisation on Wikipedia May Censor Images · · Score: 1

    Over the past 27 months, two magical and revolutionary concepts have changed the way we interact. The first is the Cloud; the second is the Personalized Web.

    We all know what the cloud means, but the personalized web means that when I search Google, it no longer returns results based on the words I was searching for. It returns the results it knows I wanted to see, based on a personal profile built up from information about my geolocation, the version number of my browser's rendering engine, and my degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon.

    Imagine this personalization concept carried through to Wikipedia. Rether than viewing a bland article entirely made of compromise and negotiation, I'd be able to read words and see pictures tailored to my point of view--based on my profile, previous reading habits and the kinds of edits I've made. I believe that the proposed changes are just the start of this kind of advanced personalized functionality.

    Remember--choice is not censorship, people. And if the choices can be chosen for you in advance, so much the better!

  3. Re:for the wrong reasons on News of the World Investigation Expanded to 9/11 Victims · · Score: 2

    Yes, but according to the Guardian who have been doggedly pursuing this story, there was an external company involved, Essential Computing, who were the ones who blew the whistle and recovered the incriminating messages. In other news, it sounds like the Bangalore operation they outsourced most of their IT to have had no problems disappearing vast amounts of information.

  4. Re:This is one reason I've never incorporated on Falun Gong Sues Cisco · · Score: 1

    You didn't. See this Language Log post.

  5. Re:Not something to be proud of on Wi-Fi Shown To Interfere With Aircraft Systems · · Score: 1

    RF energy doesn't give a fuck where you bought something.

    Than is my new favourite quote. Genius!.

  6. Re:3M sure does a lot! on 3M Says Its Multi-Touch System Means Almost No Lag · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A lot of it is down to the famous 15 percent rule--the idea that their researchers and engineers are free to spend 15% of their time pursuing their own ideas.

    Some of the younger developers at our place are in awe of Google having "invented" the whole one day a week innovating thing, and are shocked that some of the less cool corporations were doing this back in the sixties.

  7. Something you can do about this on Major ISPs Challenge UK's Digital Economy Act · · Score: 2, Informative

    OK--perhaps it will have little effect on anybody taking decisions, but it won't take more than a few minutes of your time, and if it can drive stories in the press etc, so much the better.

    1. Create an account at that rather lame new government site about repealing unneccessary laws to save money.
    2. Search for Digital Economy Act, or go to http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ayourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk+digital+economy. Vote up some of the many threads that you find. Comment in support of each of these threads.
    3. Start your own thread asking for the repeal of the Digital Economy Act.
  8. Re:Great! on Google Wave Out of Beta · · Score: 1

    You can be as arch as you like, but until this "Slashdot" thing allows me to respond to your comment by inserting an interactive Sudoku, I'm sticking with Wave, thank you very much.

  9. Re:Great! on Google Wave Out of Beta · · Score: 1

    Sure: Wave is a new paradigm that disrupts preconceptions about how users can be empowered to create collaborative social content in real time, and it's situated at the convergence of several key web 2.0 technologies.

  10. Re:Justice on PS3 Owner Refunded For Missing "Other OS" · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the informative response. (Note to mods--iapetus is apparently the customer in question.)

  11. Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? on Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do I feel strongly enough about it to emigrate? The law as it stands in terms of freedom of speech has been much the same for centuries.

    Please don't emigrate just yet—you may be in luck. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of speech for all EU citizens. It was enshrined into UK law by the Human Rights Act in 1998; this was the biggest fundamental change in the law regarding freedom of speech for centuries.

    The problem is, the way it is enshrined into UK law also introduces a significant number of restrictions, mostly around the areas of security, crime, and morals. But the government has to actually pass specific legislation to limit speech in these areas, and if these national laws fall short of the European Convention then they can be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights.

    One of the weaknesses of the British constitutions is that most people—even most British people—seem to have been persuaded that we don't have one, so few people are willing to stand up and fight against unconstitutional laws.

    Far from free speech not being a vote winner, it looks likely that reform of our libel laws will become a significant issue at the next election, for example with campaigns like libelreform.org causing a lot of unrest in political circles.

  12. Re:stupid on New Hitchhiker's Guide Book "Not Very Funny" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe it's because TV and movies--regardless of how much the original director or writer put in--are always a team effort, the product of lots of different actors', artists' and technician's visions. A novel on the other hand is the unique product of a single imagination, so it inevitably carries a stronger stamp of its creator.

  13. Re:How good can a transcription be? on SpinVox "Recognition" Is Often Expensive Human Transcription · · Score: 1

    The Philippines, South Africa--English is an official language in both of those countries. The South Africans and Philippinos I've met may have had interesting accents, but either English was their first language or they were damn good at sounding like it.

  14. Re:There can be only one! on Open Source Languages Rumble At OSCON · · Score: 1

    I say wrench.

  15. Re:You mean like Nokia Maps? on Using the iPhone As a Pointing Device For the Real World · · Score: 1

    Yes, Nokia make some amazing stuff, like that web server I had running on my phone, what, two and a half years ago. The problem is that the department responsible for communicating the more cutting-edge of what they do is based in a secret bunker under the Finnish tundra, and have the national shyness in spades.

  16. Re:It comes as no suprise. on No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And they also need to pay for:

    6) Over half a million pounds for the National Codes Centre at Bletchley Park

    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/571874

    An announcement from March 2009. The funding came via a government body called English Heritage whose remit is to fund historical monuments and heritage centres.

    The story here is that the government refused to provide funding on the basis that they were already providing funding.

  17. Re:Bletchley is NOT the 'home of the Enigma' on No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine · · Score: 2, Informative

    They have a working reconstruction of the Colossus at the Bletchley Park museum:

    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/attractions.rhtm

  18. Re:Why? on No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bletchley Park is not particularly neglected— they're canny fundraisers and this is a good way of drumming up some publicity.

    As a Brit and a CS PhD student, you should definitely visit if you're passing near Milton Keynes. There is a museum there; I've been and it's a really great one. The article title is just plain misleading—what actually happened is that they weren't given the same national status as the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.

    More cash for them would of course be nice, but the evidence if you visit says they're not doing badly without it.

  19. It's a fine museum--visit if you're in the area! on No Museum Status For UK Home of Enigma Machine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I visited the Bletchley Park museum last time I was in Milton Keynes on business. As you'll see from the link in the article, it's a fascinating site and an interesting collection, complete with reconstructions of the Bombe and Collossus. The place seems in pretty good shape and pretty well supported; lots of plaques announcing funding from big corporates (IBM, I seem to remember)—better funded, certainly, than a lot of museums.

    It recently got a grant from English Heritage, the UK government agency responsible for supporting museums and sites of historical interest. This story is about it not getting a direct grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (but that's not how most of our museums are funded anyway).

  20. Re:Oh noes! - Grandma hates to compile apps on Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked · · Score: 1

    And the beauty is that you just described the complex way of doing it. If I'm no power user, I can just select "applications", "add/remove" and pick what I want.

    Try doing that add/remove trick using what I believe in Windows is called the "control panel", and if I remember correctly it doesn't even give you a list of programs to install; you have to scrape around for something called an "exe". Will Windows ever be ready for the desktop?

    PS. We seem to see a lot of these comments about the insurmountable difficulty of installing apps in Ubuntu. A subtle troll doing the rounds, surely.

  21. Re:How do I opt my website out? on Amazon To Block Phorm Scans · · Score: 1

    BT don't need a top level certificate to do that. They have Bruce Schneier.

  22. Great opportunity for playing dirty on iPhone App Refund Policies Could Cost Devs · · Score: 0
    1. Buy competitor's app
    2. Return competitor's app
    3. Rinse and repeat
    4. Competitor loses patience
    5. Errr...???...Profit
  23. Re:Translation on YouTube Music Content Takedown Continued · · Score: 1

    Let's not forget the reason that "Never Gonna Give You Up" has been played so often on YouTube: people aren't marvelling at the music, they are being tricked into watching it as a newfangled alternative to sending them to a goat-related website. This is not a typical story about a typical songwriter--it should be seen rather in the context of goat-, cup- and girl-related internet phennomena.

  24. Re:Cooking knives on YouTube Bans Gun and Knife Videos In the UK · · Score: 1

    Are they going to ban all the videos that teach you how to cook too?

    No, I wouldn't think so. Would you?

  25. Re:Alternative Anti-Virus Software? on AVG Fakes User Agent, Floods the Internet · · Score: 1

    This looks like a good option?