Posts by David Hicks

Man, 19, cuffed after burning Remembrance poppy pic is Facebooked

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

@ mutatedwombat

Just moved back to the ol' uk from there a couple of months ago. Loved the place but couldn't quite settle. At this rate I'll be running back again soon!

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

You can take care of yourself? Then why on earth do you need the police to arrest someone for burning a poppy?

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

Again, so what?

It's not like he's hunting down people on the street and harassing them. It's just a picture on facebook.

It's markedly different from racist comment - this is not targeting people for the colour of their skin. I'm amused (reading a couple of posts back up) that you think these are equivalent, calling skin colour an aspect of someone's personality. It's not, it's a physical fact.

The USA must horrify you. A land where racists are free to express their contemptible ideas and everyone else is free to see them as the scum that they are. I'd far rather live under those laws than under these, where a vague idea of offensiveness is enough to get someone arrested and put in prison. I'd far rather Nick Griffin was legally allowed to say what he really thinks and be even more despised because of it.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

Hmm, that would be criminal harassment, the key being that someone is specifically being taunted. I don't see that here.

Note that I don't really agree with hate-crime legislation either. I don't see what difference it makes if someone was murdered for their skin colour, for their clothing or for no reason at all - it's still murder.

"Who do you deem as being the base animal then? The person at which end of the calling?"

Why do I have to pick only one?

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

The line is where there is a victim of criminal harassment, physical violence, property damage etc.

Not just what someone chooses to get upset about. Just because you hold something sacred doesn't mean you should be able to stop me from expressing how contemptible I think it is, and you are for holding that belief.

Getting offended about something someone says and seeking vengeance (physical or legal) is barely above the animal in my estimation, not human at all. Are we to arrest people for making insensitive jokes about 'your mum' ?

What a lovely polite society we would then inhabit. Perhaps anyone not observing social conventions could be shipped off to the colonies.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

I mean seriously, bun what you like, I'm still not seeing a victim.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

Really? I don't see it.

I would support your right to do both, and see them as roughly equivalent. You certainly shouldn't face legal sanctions for either activity.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

"Who said anything about making them beyond the point of criticism?"

You did when you supported arresting someone for posting a picture and a swearword to facebook. Doesn't matter when it's said, you don't get to decide these things. If you did then you and people like you would quickly suppress all political dissent. See the writings of George Orwell and multiple historical examples all around the world if you need any reference material on that claim.

"This is not a case of the scroat facing sanctions for having a point of view; this is the scroat not having respect for the fact that there is a time and a place for things."

Lack of respect is not sufficient grounds for legal sanction. Nobody was hurt here, there was no victim (no, feeling offended doesn't make you a victim), so there was no crime.

"If you can't see that, they I wish you all the joy that the anger of your misplaced offence will deliver you."

All I see is someone scared of people expressing themselves. it's very sad.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

Remembrance is about remembering how horrific war is, that we don't enter it lightly, about making sure we look after our soldiers past and present, and about honouring their memories and being thankful what they did for us.

It's not about turning past soldiers into gods, inviolate to any criticism. Hell, go and read some WWI war poetry if you think the whole thing was an honourable but necessary sacrifice. That's not what the poor bastards stuck in the middle of it thought at the time.

And it's certainly not about arresting people who disagree with you or forcing into line those that choose to be stupid on the internet. The appropriate response here would have been for his mates to tell him to stop being a nob.

I find it hugely offensive that you think failing to observe a cultural tradition should be met with legal sanctions.

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

"And I believe from what I've read, that most commenters agree with that kind of common sense; and that is where this scroat failed. He decided to get in the way and disrupt things."

What a load of nonsense. He sat in his bedroom and posted to facebook. In whose twisted worldview is that getting in the way of or disrupting of anything?

"You are making comparisons that are bending things. A soldier, politician, those responsible for the decision to go to war, are here, alive, and can be brought to public enquiry to defend themselves."

No, you are making excuses for a police state. The moment you give people the power to arrest based solely on perceived offensiveness, you have lost freedom. There are plenty of people who would push for this to be used in criticism of a current war, and they'll justify it by saying it's offensive to the troops, and can't you just wait until it's over, this is disruptive, it's not appropriate to speak like this now. This can then easily be expanded to leaders - how dare you criticise the PM in a time of war! That's dangerously seditious! You're giving comfort to our enemies!

Without the first amendment we would have seen exactly this in the US over Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd hate to see it here.

"Those who laid down their lives ... can't."

So what? I mean really, so fucking what? It's not like the guy is desecrating their bodies or tracking down family members and harassing them, he's just an idiot posting a dumb picture to facebook and mouthing off about squaddies. And defend themselves from what? A swearword and a picture of burnt emblem. OH MY GOD BETTER CALL IN THE UN!

"And yes, I do care what a 19 year old scroat thinks ... they are the next generation and if they show such disrespect for something such as this, then it is us who have failed them. This is the civilisation that we have already created."

Guess what, you don't get to decide what the next generation think is important, and you certainly don't get to put people away for thought crime. Maybe (and I hope this is true) they value freedom of speech and freedom in general more highly than you do.

Re: Some people are just dicks.

Or we could just ignore it, because what some idiot in a bedroom in Kent posts to his facebook page isn't exactly of national security importance, you know?

Re: I'm gonna get flamed for this

So there are certain things you can't ever say and certain times you can't say them, lest you be locked up?

What a nasty civilisation you propose.

Who gets to decide what and when? How are you going to make sure this doesn't expand to any criticism of soldiers, or a war, or the current political leader?

I agree that what this kid did was dumb, insensitive and offensive to some people. So what? Aren't the rest of us adults? Who gives a crap what some 19 year-old scrote thinks about anything?

But by all means, let's chuck away basic freedoms so nobody feels offended by people's writings on the internet.

Re: God dammit

@AC -

Err, yes, flag burning is protected speech, meaning the government (local, state or federal) can't do anything to you if you do that. Fellow citizens may then, illegally, beat the tar out of you. They should be arrested and prosecuted for that. If they aren't then that's a failure of the police and court system. Violence is never an appropriate reaction to speech.

That situation is far, far different to the authorities themselves coming to whisk you away because you posted a picture to the internet that some people found offensive.

What is it you don't understand here?

I'll also remind you I said that there's a lot wrong with the US and I don't hold them up as a model. I just think that guaranteed freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. For god's sake look at our ludicrous double-secret-super-injunctions and people from foreign counties coming here to sue each other over things never even published in the UK. These things should not happen.

God dammit

This country needs a first amendment.

There's a lot wrong with the US and the way it goes about, but protecting people's right to be an insensitive arsehole (and to be judged by the rest of us for it) should go without saying.

The kid in question needs a clip round the ear from an older relative, not police involvement.

Mini retail empire Micro Anvika implodes, one shop to be shopped

Ah TCR tech shops...

In the early 90s they were the place you could find new things. But by the late 90s and early 2000's you'd only bother if you needed something right now and didn't mind paying double the online price.

If you could wait 24 hours then why would you bother? You could never get the selection you could find at an online retailer, and the prices were huge. End of an era?

Analyst: There are LOADS of iPhone 5s, Apple is keeping them back

Re: Impressive number

Yeah, the S3 outsells the most popular iPhone model now too.

Bitcoin Friday sale event kicks off with deep discounts

Hah, and they said hoarding wasn't a dominant behaviour

78 percent eh?

In line with expectatikns really. Bitcoin is mostly hoarded, speculated on or traded on the silk road...

Apple-v-Samsung $1bn iPhone fine: 'Jury foreman was biased'

Well that and...

... that the guy, despite being a patent holder himself, didn't understand the concept of prior art and has been quoted thusly -

"The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there. "

That was his reasoning for dismissing and ignoring all prior art claims. This verdict is so full of holes I could use it to drain my pasta!

Apple's 'inaccurate statements and FALSE INNUENDO'

Re: quote: Straight off the bat, Torvalds wasn't too keen on KDE user interface:

If you want old-style desktops then it might be worth investigating Trinity (KDE3 fork) or MATE (gnome2 fork).

However it's unlikely these will be available by default in your distribution of choice. I recommend installing XFCE as it's well supported, up to date and simple. in debian or ubuntu it's as simple as typing 'apt-get install xfce4', YMMV for other distro's but they all have it. If you're a Mint user you could also try cinnamon.

Apple tries to add Galaxy Note, Jelly Bean to patent slapfest

@Anonymous Coward

Patents and copyright are very different things. Before ranting about patents it might be wise to figure out the distinction. Comparing open and closed source to infringing on software patents is nonsense.

In the world of software (and now it seems computer and phone hardware) infringing on someone's patent is basically inevitable. They were supposed to be for non-obvious things that took a lot of work to invent, and the idea was that instead of keeping them secret, you published them so the world could benefit. In exchange you got a limited monopoly on production. What we have now is the opposite - patents granted for stupid, obvious things that other people were going to do anyway, and the patent system used as a weapon to suppress competition.

Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job

Re: Lets be honest

If you're entirely under the control of agents and clueless managers then maybe there's your problem. Could be time to find another position or strike out on your own?

As for reliability of product, you know some folks have to program that medical equipment used by the med staff, right? And 10,000 lines is a tiny codebase.

If you're working for muppets and with muppets, it's time to move on or admit you're a muppet too.

Re: Nah

'Unless your name is Linus Torvalds, you can't be so choosy about taking a job in a recession, or despise prospective employers.'

I'm not Linus Torvalds. I am good at what I do. I've recently started contracting, outside of London, and I had three weeks of more or less daily offers for interview, all of which I turned down because they were for permanent positions. At the end of the three weeks I was able to walk into a contract.

I'm not a god, I don't have a huge portfolio of open source, I'm just a guy who's done a lot of C. There may well be a recession on but I don't believe that the tech sector is really affected by it. You can and should be choosy, the more choosy you are the more employers have to up their game, and their compensation packages.

Re: Chairs

Pretty sure that would be my clue to get the hell out of such a dysfunctional place.

If someone has time to be the chair police, and actually believes that that is a useful function, then the company has become so ridiculously rules bound that it's not worth staying.

Obviously in an ideal world, where jobs are easy to come by. But they are in the tech sector aren't they? Only last month I turned down about a dozen interviews for perm jobs, and that wasn't even in London.

Ten... Apple iPad Mini alternatives

Re: Jesus..

That's why it's so cunning!

I know, it's silly, but there could have been an effort somewhere in the Apple corporate structure to make sure that things are still framed that way, such that even talk of other devices always casts them in the shadow of the fruit.

The alternative is of course that the majority of tech journos are Apple fanboys, which is probably more likely.

Re: Jesus..

Not just the reg. The moment the iPod came out people started running articles on iPod alternatives, despite the fact these others had been out longer.

If I was a cynic I'd say there's probably a marketing budget from a certain fruit-logo'd company involved there. If we can just get the press to frame everything else as a competitor to us we can give the impression that nothing else is quite up to scratch and they're all knock-offs! Hmmm....

Annoys the hell out of me, Apple have only just entered this market segment, one in which Google and Amazon were doing rather well already.

Apple's anti-Googorola patent lawsuit tossed by US court

Re: Argh!

@Sirius

No, not every 'journalist' is paid to put forward a specific agenda. Mueller is a self-aggrandising shill for hire, he has a history of writing biased nonsense and spamming his paid opinions all over the place.

He survives on articles quoting him like this, it is his oxygen, but we would all be better off without his kind in the public eye. Look him up. Look up some of the 'conversations' he's engaged in in places like Slashdot and lwn, where he posts over and over and over again until confronted with 'who's paying you Florian?', which usually seems to shut him up.

WinPho 8 fans now able to order HTC handsets

Re: 400 quid?

Why would you want to?

400 quid?

I'd wait a week and a half and grab the Nexus 4 for ~£280 (240 for the 8GB version)

Ay caramba, Ubuntu 12.10: Get it right on Amazon!

Re: The reason for Ubuntu's fall from grace?

You know that R comes after Q, right?

There's a few years left in their first run around the alphabet so I think we're ok for now.

Google rolls out new, cheaper Chromebooks 'for everyone'

Re: Debian please

It will be done. You can install debian on *anything* if you put enough effort into it. My NAS runs debian and it only took me a month to find the onboard serial port, figure out the kernel changes I needed to make and how to package and flash it, after that bootstrapping debian was easy...

My first thought also, nice if it can be repurposed, not really sure what Chrome-OS is for otherwise.

Ice Cream Sandwich still a no-show for most Android users

@RyokuMas Re: Still no evidence of actual fragmentation

Right, so, let's see if I get this -

different versions of android providing all sorts of compatibility and some upgrades = fragmentation.

different versions of windows mobile with limited or no compatibility and no upgrades = not fragmentation.

Double plus good citizen! I can see I'm starting to grok this newspeak!

Still no evidence of actual fragmentation

OMG! Different versions of the OS are out there! OH NOES!

Even a cursory glance at the android development environment and SDKs will show you that -

- Most software built on older versions is forward compatible

- There's a compat library so software developed on newer platforms can run on older ones.

Still not seeing this fragmentation people keep bleating about.

Yes, it would be good in manufacturers got their arses in gear and gave updates to the latest OS to everyone, but it's not like (for instance) Windows Mobile fragmentation where things either have to be rebuilt (7->8) or just won't run at all (8->7).

Valve: Games run FASTER on Linux than Windows

Re: Gabe!

It's not so much that I *need* Open Source everything on my system, but I am going to be deeply suspicious of any and all DRM schemes that come to Linux.

I don't mind things checking for licenses, but if there's any messing around with the system I'm going to be upset.

AIIA takes the ‘Australian’ out of price-gouge concerns

Squeeeeeal piggy!

Sounds like someone's had the wind put up them.

The shipping thing always amazed me. How the hell is it cheaper for me to get an item bought and shipped from the US, even by a proxy shipping service, than it is locally? Surely individual item shipping is orders of magnitude more expensive than the bulk shipping that's available to retailers?

The answer (the only answer) is that people at various points in the chain are making out like bandits and are now getting pissed off we've noticed. Now they're afraid they may actually have to engage in that dirty word 'competition'

Marlinspike demos MS-CHAPv2 crack

Chapcrack? We'll have none of that on my internets thankyou...

I know some folks object to the publishing of exploits, but it really is the only way to ge the industry moving most of the time.

It's been seen time and time again - if you write an academic paper on a crack and speak privately to the affected parties, nothing happens. It's only when you demonstrate how easy it is and publish in the open that anything gets done.

Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers

Sounds like my next gig!

Kidding... though it probably would tempt me if I was in Melbourne and it was an ad for a C position. Put me in the 'capable but lazy' camp. i love tech, but there's more to life than coding all night for your job.

Most superstar/ninja/ultimate warrior type programmers aren't actully all that hot anyway. They think they are but they make as many or even more mistakes than anyone else, in a very self-assured way. They do tend to have enthusiasm in droves though, which I guess is a positive. Most of the actually supremely capable devs I've ever met were rather understated about the whole thing, they just get on with it.

Google suspends 16GB Nexus 7 orders

Re: Does Google not know why people want local storage?

As someone with a NAS that refusese to do UPnp/DLNA, can someone please tell me what I need to make my android (ICS) tablet play media off SMB shares?

In the context of this discussion, please note that a file manager that allows you to copy files across is not an adequate solution - you need local storage space and copying the file leads to a significant delay. I want to be able to just play the media like I could on a normal computer.

Australians receive SMS death threats

Why is the ACCC involved?

Surely this is actually threatening people?

I'd be surprised if at least a few people hadn't absolutely crapped their pants over this. Shouldn't it be a police matter?

Darth Vader is a pansy

Re: Wood Jerry, Wood

And for those without the 'leet skills to carpenter themselves up a wooden PC, there's always fablon!

Yes, yes, the Olympics are near. But what'll happen to its IT afterwards?

Re: I smell some sport! - @bdam

Err, as an ex-Londoner I'd like to mention here that the majority of Londoners didn't want the cost or the extra people crowding the city, neither did we want the extra taxes. The whole 'sell' for the 2012 olympics was a tapestry of lies and half-truths about it being the best way to regenerate parts of the city, when in fact it's pretty obvious it would have been cheaper and easier just to invest the money directly.

Make no mistakes, this is a political pride/legacy play, nothing to do with the people, be they Londoners or otherwise.

Raspberry Pi rolls out speed surge Raspbian OS

It's good people are enthusiastic about this stuff

But the Pi si seriously underpowered IMHO.

I shall be contemplating the ODROID-X, personally, as the Pi feels like a step backwards from the sheevaplug I bought a few years ago. I know, these are different use-cases to the Pi, but I can't actually think of much I'd want to do with the Pi. Most Pi users seem to want to use it as a media streaming/cheap desktop box anyway, for which it seems pretty underpowered.

Humanity increasingly sitting on collective arse

Yup

And long term studies seem to show that (despite the claims coming out of the sporting cabal at the top of the UK olympics team) the hosting nation of an Olympics does not see a rise in sporting participation. We would be doing much more for the people of the UK if the money had been spent on an expansion of the UK's cycle-path infrastructure, removing the current "I don't want to get killed on the road" disincentive to taking up a healthy and non-polluting form of transport.

E-Cat pitching cold fusion to Australians

Re: Erm?

"Don't worry Richard, I think it was funny. Bit too subtle for others."

In my defence I'd like to offer up Poe's law....

Re: Erm?

Yes I have looked into this. The story seems to be this -

Brave Maverick Scientists(TM) discovers totally implausible new scientific process which will revolutionise the world! But only if he can have your money, now! No, there will be no scientific or regulatory oversight!

It's got scam painted all over it in huge letters, regardless of his history. The fact that he's got fraud convictions from previous scams is just icing on the cake. And no, none of it is 'quite informative' in the face of the fact he won't let anyone verify his apparent 'results', his video is nothing but propaganda and part of the scam.

However, the E-Cat has been a hit among...

...green energy enthusiasts morons as a "save the world" technology.

Keep up the good work, these conmen need the light of day shined on them, and I for one enjoy it when they get shot down.

Although some of them seem to keep ticking over for years as true believers continue to try and make their revolutionary technology work through sheer bloody mindedness, even though it's now established it can't and never has. (Orbo, I'm looking at you)

It costs $450 in marketing to make someone buy a $49 Nokia Lumia

Re: Rdad - all of those points also apply to android

There's nothing unique to windows phone in any of the points you made about things working out of the box.

And this is just priceless - "it may be that it's too far ahead of the curve"

Seriously? I know you seem to view the lack of ability to customise as a bonus, but even non-tech people like to be able to do things like add a new ringtone, which every other phone has been able to do for a decade. Not so WP7 until 7.5. And with 7.5 you have to figure out how to edit your MP3 into a 40-second or less sub-1MB specialised rington file.

This is not a user-friendly tool, it's a clusterf*ck.

Re: No room for 3rd ecosystem.

Yup, I would have been in the queue for a nokia android - I mean, assuming they had still gone ahead and ditched maemo/meego.

Nokia still says "quality handset" to some of us, and I believe they could have turned that into a reputation as a high-quality European android manufacturer. But nobody wants windows phone.

Digg, deep in the hole, sells self for $500K

Re: This really does go to prove that web companies are a bad investment

I'm not *sure* fb is going to fail anytime soon, but I do think it was massively overvalued. A lot of the other things you mention that aren't going to fail I agree with - but these are more traditional businesses that rely for the most part on paying customers and actually selling a product.

I agree that a lot of these things follow the wrong success stories as examples. The other problem I see at the moment is overestimating the stickiness factor of these sites/services, and in doing so performing some sort of direct conversion between number of current users and available dollars. The reality is that for an awful lot of these services (and product, like nokia) there is no real stickiness and people just migrate when things change or something else better (or just newer) comes along.

Either way, there seems to be a buttload of money going on uncertain ventures at the moment, and Digg ought to be a case study for the investors.

This really does go to prove that web companies are a bad investment

How many times do we have to see it before the investors realise, I wonder?

Company forms, comes up with a good idea, gets huge, cruises for a few years and then plummets as the next big thing comes along.

Sometime in the middle there the founders (if they're smart) cash out for a few hundred million, though that didn't happen here, then the new owners or public investors are left watching their 'investment' leak cash and drop in value.

This is why things like the facebook IPO and the recent github VC funding both entertain and annoy me - these services are barely profitable, they have huge userbases but no real must-have product that couldn't be provided by someone else. Yet the cash-vomiting 'genius' investors see fit to throw ludicrous wedges of money at them, seemingly oblivious to the way these things fail, and how the cycle of growth and failure is really quite rapid in the tech world.

So yeah, the Digg guys should have gone for the 200m, and I gotta get me some of that.....

Christians get God-optimized 'Edifi' Android fondleslab

At $150....

That's not bad, assuming it can be reflashed with something less... jesusified.

You'll notice it also has a micro SD slot, something the nexus is sadly lacking.