Posts by Brangdon 566 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2008
He's accused of having sex with a woman while she was asleep, knowing she wouldn't have consented had she been awake. I gather there is some dispute about whether she was actually asleep, or only half-asleep. (It was the morning after; she got up, then returned to bed and dozed for a bit.
The difference is technology. It was like that in the Victorian era because they had no choice. Now, if you believe in DRM, there is a choice.
The same technology that enables downloaded TV programmes to expire, could also be used to send emails that expire. People complain about DRM partly because it favours the content producer, but when you write an email, you are the producer. You are the artist. Omnipresent DRM would give you control over your data; it would enforce your ownership, your copyright.
Most of the genuine complaints about Metro involve desktop machines. On smaller battery-driven devices like laptops, notebooks, tablets and phones, it makes sense. (And eventually in Kinect-driven devices like TVs and games consoles.) There should be synergies and economies of scale from using the same O/S and same UI across all devices. Nokia is now the best-placed company to dominate in the phone part of that. If they can hold on for a few years, they could do well. Apple will be happy to cream off the premium customers, and Android manufacturers are in a race to the bottom, so there is room for a third tablet/phone O/S.
Microsoft see this as part of their PC business, so they no more want to be a phone manufacturer than they want to make PCs. They will keep Nokia alive until their platform succeeds and has momentum, and they will also try to get other manufactures to use Metro. If this works, rather than buy Nokia they will drop them, but by then Nokia will probably be able to survive on their own anyway. It's not like XBox at all. If Microsoft want other companies to use Metro in their phones, they can't get too close to Nokia. (Cf Google both pushing Android to phone vendors, and also competing with said vendors by building their own hardware. They have to be careful.)
They may fail, but it is premature to try to evaluate this strategy before Windows 8 comes out and we see what it is like on new form-factor tablets. Even then, actual success will be several years away. Microsoft have a vision that will take 5-10 years to achieve (starting from 2-3 years ago). It's based on ideas like "dark silicon" and the notion that the decline of Moore's Law will make phones nearly as powerful as desktops, with the real heavy-lifting being done by the cloud, so having the same O/S and UI everywhere will be both possible and desirable. It will lead to the biggest developer/customer ecosystem or market or whatever you want to call it.
If Microsoft don't grab that omnipresent role growing from desktops down, Android will grab it by growing from phones up. Tablets being the no-man's land in the middle. It is worth Microsoft sacrificing corporate in the short term in order to prevent Android stealing their lunch in the long term. They are in a fight for survival here, and, unusually, they know it.
Whether or not you believe in Microsoft's vision, I think it's what persuaded Nokia to adopt Metro. It will persuade other companies, too. So it will happen, despite all the other people here who don't get it, who think short-term - many of whom also didn't get tablets, some even today think the iPad is style over substance.
Tivo has some patents on hardware that processes the video stream in real-time, cheaply. This was necessary back when TiVo was founded; less so now that Moore's Law has made doing it in software more viable. Regardless, it is/was patent-worthy (and it has nothing to do with the techniques VCRs use).
TiVo has a feature whereby when you stop a fast-forward, it rewinds a little bit to correct for the overshoot due to human reaction time. They have a patent on that, too.
"This caused huge public revulsion" - No; the huge public revulsion was caused by the listening, not the deleting. The deleting was a detail. For the previous known victims, NotW had some kind of public interest justification, or else they were people like royalty who had courted media attention or were otherwise able to look after themselves. None of that applied to the Dowlers. They were innocent. There was no justification for reading their dead daughter's email. The public cared about them in a way they didn't care about celebrities and politicians.
Your article is wrong on this point, and from your 10:31 comment it seems you still don't understand why what the NotW did was a big deal.
I think it's there because they didn't have the resources to replace its functionality with Metro versions. They'd have had to rewrite all of the Control Panel bits, as well as the file explorer and Office, to use WinRT. That's much more work than recompiling for ARM and tweaking the few places that waste battery.
If WOA succeeds, they will eventually get around to rewriting the desktop functionally to use WinRT and then drop the desktop from it entirely. Meanwhile they've tried to limit the damage it can do by only allowing their own apps (and not all of those). If they truly believed mouse and keyboard were essential for certain tasks, they'd open the desktop to everyone, not just their own stuff; to do otherwise would cripple the platform.
Some tablets will use x86, and will have a desktop that runs legacy Win32.
That should work fairly well when mouse and keyboard are available (eg while docked). When undocked, how well it works will depend on how well the apps you use adapt to not having mouse and keyboard. It sounds like we can expect Office 15 will have been updated to support that, and probably other apps will take that route too. It's easier than rewriting for Win32, a sort-of half-way house.
The public were appalled even without the detail of the messages getting deleted. When it was royalty or celebrities or politicians, no-one much cared about phone hacking because those targets benefit from having a high public profile, in some cases have sought it, and were felt able to look after themselves. Dowler's family were much more sympathetic victims. The public cared about them.
5 per 3 sounds like it will punish people like me who don't post very often. I would prefer if, once 5 posts have been accepted, we're considered OK until we do something wrong. Penalising newbies should only be done to reduce spamming. Once I've established I'm not a spammer, I shouldn't have to suffer. Ironically, if I have to make extra posts to maintain my non-spammer status, those posts are less likely to be worth reading compared to posts where I actually have something to say..
I suppose changing it to 5 per 12 would do almost as well. I have about 23 posts in 2011, so I'm above 5 per 3 on average, but it'd be easy for me to slip below.
I have no idea what my posting history is like over that period. You might consider adding something about it to the "My Account" pages.
The super-injunction against Imogen Thomas became IT-worthy when it was widely flouted on Twitter. This led to huge media controversy and the injunction system falling further into disrepute. Like many injunctions, the one against Imogen was granted because the judge believed she was attempting blackmail. It's now accepted that she wasn't, and had never wanted to publish the information covered by the injunction. The whole fiasco was unnecessary.
(But the injunction still stands, so I'm being circumspect here.)
They block images that are illegal. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 makes pornographic cartoons of children illegal, even if they aren't realistic. It's not the IWF that's "demonstrably wrong", it's the government that made it illegal. It'd be a mistake for the IWF to pick and choose which illegal pornography to block.
As for investigating the websites and producers: that needs to be done by the police, so as to preserve a chain of evidence that can be used to prosecute. The IWF should only pass the details onto the police to enable that to happen (which they do).
No. A server URL is human-readable, so if it ends in disney.com, for example, you can decide how much you trust Disney. If a Disney advert has a dodgy-looking URL, you can figure it maybe isn't really Disney. With the barcodes you have no idea where they'll take you so you don't know who you are trusting, and you can't tell if the barcode doesn't match the advert.
It may have little to do with Nukes or Fukushima, and instead reflect increased experience with the alternatives. Green power isn't really viable at the required scales, and fossil fuel is not clean and will run out fairly soon; and these things just become more and more apparent as time goes by. Most people who support nuclear only do so grudgingly, because they see it as the lesser of evils, and would jump at fusion (or whatever) if it worked.
The email fragment doesn't mention licensing fees. It shows they looked at alternatives to Java, but doesn't say why. They might have been looking for something technically better. Indeed, they eventually built their own virtual machine which they believe /is/ technically better for their applications (being register-based instead of stack-based). If something like Dalvik had been available off-the-shelf they might have licensed that instead of rolling their own.
Although you say, "This then leads Google to commit patent and copyright infringement", it's yet to be proven that they did infringe, and this email does not show that any such infringement was knowing. Even if they did avoid Java because of licensing fees, building their own non-infringing system is a legitimate way to do that.
From the rest of the account, it seems she didn't cry out as she was drowning. She merely gasped quietly as she fell in, and then her head was under water so she remained quiet. I mention it because many people don't know what drowning looks and sounds like. It's not like on TV. Even when they get their head above water they are usually too busy trying to breath to cry for help. Knowing the difference might matter one day.
I doubt the hacked emails as provided by anonymous would be accepted as evidence, because anonymous could have tampered with them before publishing. And it could be argued that the original email archive on NI's servers are also no longer valid, because if anonymous copied them, who's to say they weren't also able to modify them in-place?
Unless the police have a pristine copy made before the hack, with proper chain-of-evidence documentation, the hack won't help in court and will probably hinder.
Apparently this sensor is back illuminated, and this technology claimed to yield better results than older sensors of the same size. Pentax started designing the camera 5 years ago, and are only releasing it now because the sensors finally caught up.
I view the Q not so much as a camera, as the start of the new Q-mount system, which will probably still be in use in 30 years. (Pentax's previous system, the K-mount, is nearly 40 years old now. I have 30-year-old Pentax lenses that work with my current DSLRs.) Over that period, optics won't change much but hardware will. Sensors will get better across the board, and tiny sensors will yield adequate image quality. In the same way that few people bother with full-frame 35mm sensors today, in a few years APS-C will seem unnecessarily large. Pentax are being forward-looking here. Q-mount cameras will smaller than m43 ones, forever.
The lenses themselves are small. Part of the benefit of a small sensor is that the lenses scale with it. They'll also be lighter and should be cheaper. It's easier to make small flawless glass than large flawless glass.
Some people will only own one lens. They still benefit from the lens being changeable because they will be able to pick the lens they own. Others will own several, but leave some in England when they travel abroad, or leave them back in the hotel when they go on day trips (or night trips), depending on what they expect to encounter. And even if they do carry several lenses with them, they'll be small. I have a few Pentax Limited primes, and it's easy to have a spare in a pocket because they are already so small and light.
I have a K-x The Q isn't just fractionally smaller, it's a lot smaller, not much bigger than a credit card.
Often reviewers get given a copy of the game a week or so in advance of it appearing in shops, so they can spend time playing it and publish an in-depth review by the time the game is available to buy. If the reviewer has to buy their own copy, they have to wait until release, and their reviews will be late. It seems a lot of games sales occur within a week of release, so the reviewer would miss out on a lot of excitement and buzz.
The first few people who posted to Twitter are the ones who caused it to become public knowledge, and also mostly likely had a direct connection to the case, knew of the inunction and may have been served by it. Those are the ones the courts can, and arguably should, go after.
They are also the ones most likely to have tried to hide their identity, which may make them hard to track down, but that's another matter. They may also fall outside British jurisdiction. However, sometimes criminals are foolish. If it turned out to be, eg, Imogen herself posting from her home PC, or a Sun journalist posting from their work PC, then I don't see why the court shouldn't come down on them hard.
The injunction system is supposed to protect victims of crimes such as rape, and children, and other such innocents. As such it remains valuable even in the internet age. Hence it should be enforced where reasonably possible.
Max Clifford can help keep stories out of the media, or generally advise on how to deal with it. He isn't just a conduit for selling stories. She might have approached him when she realised the media were following her and that she had a problem. Or when the injunction got taken out, naming her with implications of blackmail, while denying her the right to respond. He's a general purpose media expert.
There is an on-screen guide - press OK while watching something. Unlike the original series 1 TiVo, this works while watching recordings (as does the Info button), so you can see what's going on live without switching to a live tuner.
The display doesn't freeze for me when I've finished watching a recording, or lose the sound. Those sound like early bugs. The password thing is a pain, but based on watershed times, not channel. Something recorded off BBC1 after 10pm could well be unsuitable for children. The cost is £3/month, not £45/month (over their usual cable package cost).
The VM TiVo isn't yet polished and sometimes lacks the attention to detail of series 1, but overall it's a big improvement over Series 1 (HD, 3 tuners, 1Gig), and from what I've heard, also a significant improvement over V+ and Sky+ (eg better, persistent season passes, wish lists, easier UI).
He's accused of having sex with a woman while she was unconscious, knowing she would not have consented had she been awake. That is rape by most people's definition. It's a serious crime.
(His not wearing a condom is the main reason she'd have refused, but it's claimed she wasn't given the chance to refuse because he took advantage of her while she slept. He claims she was only half-asleep, and personally I doubt there's enough evidence to convict, but there is a case to answer and the crime would definitely be rape.)
If you want references, read the official court judgment - the one he's now appealing against.
People said Microsoft were wrong because they were using one monopoly to create another. Specifically, they used a monopoly on desktop operating systems to create a monopoly on Internet browsers. The current situation is different because Google do not have a monopoly on phone operating systems.
(Google arguably have a monopoly on the Internet search market, but that's not what they are leveraging here.)
Naughton's claim that developers would have to take on the CopyLeft obligations of the license, shows he doesn't understand the GPL. Basically, it's a license, not a contract. A license gives you permission to do something; it does not and cannot confer obligations.
The GPL gives permission to distribute source, and permission to distribute source and object code together. If you distribute the object code without the source code, then you are doing something the GPL hasn't given you permission for. That's all. The GPL becomes irrelevant because it doesn't apply. Instead you may be in breach of copyright, with the usual legal consequences under copyright law. The worst case is having to pay money in damages.
That's what us series 1 TiVo users are being charged. We get the boxes early, and a reduced setup fee; a reasonable offer but obviously not as good as the 1000 winners. The £3/month is on top of the usual XL TV monthly fee.
The series 1 fee was £10/month, although lifetime subscriptions were available for £200. So £3/month is a reduction, which makes sense now that basic PVRs are no longer anything special.
It's not really like what Sony did with the PS3. TiVo are only halting the EPG update service. The box will still work as a digital recorder. (Almost certainly - it's speculation to suppose otherwise.) We'll just lose all the bells and whistles that depend on the EPG, and have to rely on manual timed recordings.
The EPG service is downloaded via an archaic dial-up modem. It's not networked; it's 11-year-old technology. Those phone calls were part of the service. The cost of them may be part of why TiVo is discontinuing it. The EPG data itself costs money to produce too, as it needs to be massaged into TiVO format in order to drive their Wishlists etc.
"Lifetime" means the lifetime of the service: as long as the service is provided in the UK, lifetime subscribers get it for free. It lasted over 10 years, so those subscribers got a good deal.
I'm still using my s1 TiVo, but I don't think we have much grounds for complaint, either legally or ethically. I'm just surprised they've announced it now. They've created a lot of bad PR right at the start of their Virgin Media launch. Worst possible timing for them. If they could have held on for another 3-6 months, hopefully good feedback from VM early adopters would make s1 complaints less significant.
Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. That's Brooke's Law. In this case, it's quite possible that administering the army crew would distract from doing the work. They'd have to be coordinated with the airport's crew, maybe shown how to use equipment or whatever. It takes time. BAA imply they would have used the army had they been offered earlier. I don't know if BAA made the right call, but it's possible.
"Given that the charges -if they are ever pressed- are likely to be "sex by surprise", which I am told carries a max fine of roughly 80 pounds*," - do you have references for that? As far as I can tell, the whole "sex by surprise" thing was an invention of Assange or his supporters. It is not part of Swedish law. What he is actually used of is having sex with a woman while she was asleep, knowing that she wouldn't consent if she were awake.
Part of the Guardian's rationale for publishing was that a lot of the information was already out there, but in garbled form. I imagine Assange's team is upset because some of his smoke screen is now dispelled.
The best account of events I have found is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden. According to which:
"The Guardian understands that the recent Swedish decision to apply for an international arrest warrant followed a decision by Assange to leave Sweden in late September and not return for a scheduled meeting when he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor. Assange's supporters have denied this, but Assange himself told friends in London that he was supposed to return to Stockholm for a police interview during the week beginning 11 October, and that he had decided to stay away. Prosecution documents seen by the Guardian record that he was due to be interviewed on 14 October."
So although he was allowed to leave Sweden, he was supposed to return for the 14th. He did not do so. I doubt he would have been given permission to leave Sweden had they realised he would not come back. The arrest warrant is to make him do what he had already promised to do. He has, in effect, already absconded once.
(The Guardian article also addresses the text messages which Assange claims prove a set up. Summary: they don't.)
The legislation isn't aimed at paedos. For example, it also catches people who are just curious, or doing unofficial research.
If this chap paid for the porn - which seems quite possible if he had a lot of it - the money may have encouraged the producers to abuse more children. Even if he didn't pay, he'd have been creating the appearance of demand and supported the view that it's relatively widespread and normal. (Or so the logic goes - I'm not saying I agree.)
I have the Pentax K-x. I'm surprised it won this after the less than enthusiastic review, but it is good camera. It's worth noting it will work with every Pentax lens ever made, including old manual primes that are available second hand very cheap, and it gives them all image stabilisation. It's low light performance is outstanding.
I don't get why everyone hates AA batteries so much - AA is part of the reason I picked it. It can run on cheap and widely-available alkalines in a pinch, or lithium AAs if you need the long life and low temperature performance. Most of the time I use Eneloops which perform well and have low self-discharge. There's a big advantage to using a standard format. I have other kit which also uses AAs and shares the same charger. Lithium-ion batteries are proprietary, which makes it expensive to carry many spares. All batteries have a finite life, Li-ion are usually reckoned at 3-5 years and then you are at the mercy of the manufacturer if you want to replace it.
Pentax have just announced the K-r, which is the upgrade to the K-x and uses Li-ion by default with an AA option.
The 18-55mm kit lens is good, and you can also get the K-x bundled with a second kit lens of 55-300mm which is very good. It probably puts it out of the price range of this group, but is very good value if you want a telephoto; you can't do better without spending another £800 or more. Alternatively, the Tamron 18-250mm is pretty good as a superzoom if you don't want to be faffing about with changing lenses.
It wasn't two women at once. It was one woman on the 14th and another on the 17th (according to the linked Guardian article). They apparently knew each other and reported the crime(s) together.
It doesn't sound much like dirty tricks to me. It seems he did have the sex, and they agreed except they wanted him to use a condom. I'd have thought a frame-up would have involved a more clear-cut crime.
I have one. I run it on Eneloops; I much prefer the AA batteries because I can carry spares easily and cheaply, and I don't need yet another charger. I have a great charger for Eneloops, which I already use in my GPS, toothbrush and other equipment.
It gets a lot of criticism from people who seem to expect DSLR quality and/or performance. The images look good at desktop sizes (or on a HDTV), but not at 100% or printed bigger than A4. For all its bulk and controls, it has the tiny sensor of a point-and-shoot compact. When you use the burst modes, the camera gets so busy it has trouble updating the monitor, and then locks up for 15-20 seconds while it processes them. Shot-to-shot time isn't great either. It has RAW, but that's even slower.
Aside from that, it's good. The colours are good and the lens is great. You couldn't get 1-30x on an SLR; it would be too big, it's something you can only build for a tiny sensor. Even the image quality is a step up from my old P&S, and it's nice to have PASM modes, manual focussing and all the other controls.
From Amazon, the E-PL1 is £500, so hardly the same kind of money as the P100 (£300). It also comes with a 3x zoom rather than a 26x zoom. If you want a 26x range you'll need to lug around several more lens. If you want a viewfinder you have to pay more for that, too. It probably gives better quality pictures, though. It's a very different kind of camera.
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