Posts by Alex Harper

Safari 4: Apple's crash-happy shipper

What's new?

Safari has always been a crash happy, hang happy browser for me, during 10.4 and 10.5 and V4 is no different. It seems to be certain pages that can be problematic so I can't wait for the process separation promised in Snow Leopard but most crashes are caused by flash. I firstly recommend safariadblock to get rid of flash ads but on top of that you can use safaricookies to maintain a whitelist-only cookie list, and my favourite of all, clicktoflash: http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master

How the government uses dirty data to legislate morality

Excellent read

What a good article for a Friday afternoon. Easily the best thing I've read in my week of internet news trawling. Made some very strong point about that no matter whether the policies of this nanny gov are ultimately good or bad for society, the one crucial thing they lack is reason. If somebody is going to tell me that I cannot do something, there better be a damn good reason why. Not just a lot of "our shakey evidence says it might cause something"

BitTorrent crackdown cops fail to pay music copyright fees

Actually, I'd side with the fuzz on this one...

The PRS have a mandate for collecting due royalties on behalf of their members, as do the PPL. The both of them have been stomping their feet going round everyone who in their opinion is publicly performing music. I'd agree with shopping centres, etc but in my opinion radios in canteens or private offices closed to the public are none of their business. They make up their own rules on who is elligible without any legal mandate or precident to do so and in my opinion overstep their mark a little. So if they came to me demanding I need a licence then I'd take it under careful consideration instead of just coughing up to their demands, even if I had to go to court to arbitrate.

Disclaimer: I am a rights holder and a PPL member, and even I think they go a bit far sometimes.