Posts by Mark McNeill 91 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Apr 2009
In practice, action will probably depend on the clout and credibility of the entity making the claim. If your ISP gets a letter from $BIGMEDIA threatening them with legal action over your website, they'll cave quicker than you can say "fair usage"; if Universal or Disney get a letter from you claiming infringement, it'll be in the bin before you've even finished licking the envelope.
""Twitter is a social network platform which is available to most people who have a computer and therefore any content on it is not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain"
As it happens, I've found a fantastic platform which is available to most people who have a computer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts - can we assume that its content is in the public domain?
"Portable as a suitcase full of bricks", people said at the time. The luggability wasn't an issue for my father and me (it never moved once from where we first installed it); what sold it for us was the software bundle, which was unique.
The tiny screen gave us pause. The salesman pointed out that text was the same size and legibility as newsprint: all the same, we splashed out on a whopping 9" green monitor. When that died, we never bothered replacing it. It was the easiest computer to maintain I've ever had: if I recall correctly, there were no software updates in nearly ten years use!
Eventually, of course, clients started asking for Windows-compatible files: we decided with some regret to retire the Osborne and buy an IBM PS/1, as I recall, running Windows 3.1.
(And that, gentle readers, was where our troubles began...)
Can't have independent media, now can we? It's not exactly unheard of for anti-terrorist legislation to be used to keep the proles down.
"...the Internet would need to be shut down to prevent further damage to the country, which apparently can no longer function without the Net..." - "In order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy it."
"...those bills were tabled": I do not think that word means what you think it means. In the UK, to table an issue means to put it on the table for discussion. Where a USAian would say "those bills were tabled", we would say "those bills were shelved".
It's perfectly possible to conceive of a device, member or extremity which is intrinsically or under certain circumstances rigid, but flexibly attached to a handle, body, arm or control device, which makes it act in a wobblesome manner, particularly when waved.
Paris. Do I need to draw pictures?
past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war; nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's giorgios while they went doublin their mumper
"To look at the bland expression of polite interest on Wimsey's face, one would have garnered no clue that he belonged to one of England's great Unix families, who had never so much as knowingly used Internet Explorer, much less installed Windows."
You've cheered my morning no end. Chapeau!
As I recall, rates of deaths and serious injuries in the various Australian states fell when helmets became compulsory, by about the same % that levels of cycling fell: in other words, the individual risk wasn't materially changed. Of course, we could reduce the stats for deaths in pretty much *any* activity by doing something to discourage 30% of participants.
If you have different or more up-to-date data, I'd be interested to hear: I've changed my mind once on this matter, and I'll do it again if the evidence supports it.
My head came within a couple of inches of the ground at low speed, but didn't hit. If I'd been wearing a helmet, I might have hit my head, with unknown, but probably minor, consequences. No consequences is better than unknown-but-probably-minor, in my book.
The plural of anecdote is not data; and so far I've heard no data here, only anecdote. The onus is on those who think that helmets do good to provide evidence to support their view.
Small-scale elective studies indicate that cycle helmets may alleviate serious injuries: large-scale population studies indicate they don't. The risks are in any case very small; and in the couple of minor accidents I've been involved in in my life, I was glad not to be wearing one.
of how, after eight or nine years using CP/M at work, I was suddenly introduced to a graphic interface. That was the biggest shock I experienced in computing: moving some years (and versions of Windows) later to Linu^H^H^H^H a better OS was nothing in comparison.
