Posts by The Indomitable Gall 1744 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"iPhones might be popular, they might even be good, but they hardly invented mobile data."
I don't think anyone said they did, but they've certainly increased its use -- apps downloads, streaming video, etc etc. They've also made it more mainstream and less geeky.
The iPhone may be all hype, but the hype is working and placing a load on the networks....
I'd tell a commenter who said that to RTFA, but I gather you were the one who WTFA. ;-p
"On one occasion in April, the Russian government official, who was based at the UN, rumbled his surveillance team, according to the court documents. He returned to his office and only one of the usual MAC addresses, allegedly belonging to Chapman's laptop, was observed trying to communicate."
Clever Russian official -- he spotted Netstumbler without even booting up his laptop! This Russian technology is incredible. Where can I get some?
...or perhaps he just spotted the person tailing him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtonal_music#History
The 12 tones of a modern instrument are the Windows of the music world. Buggy, never quite right, but everyone else uses it and you've got to be compatible, hey? Alternatives exist, but there's a lack of "software" (tunes) and there's not so wide a market for anyone considering developing any new stuff....
Penguin, because Linux is dodecatonic. Or something.
While it is true that the Greeks mostly played with the various modes of the basic diatonic scale, Pythagoras was one of the first to investigate acoustics as a serious discipline. Pythagoras "discovered" the 12 note chromatic scale by calculating the ratio between the root and fifth of the basic scale, and noting that an octave was achieved by simply halfing or doubling the length of a struck pipe. As he completed the circle of fifths, he found he arrived on a 13th note that didn't quite match the 1st note of the scale. This slight discrepancy was known as Pythagoras's Comma, and wasn't resolved by instrument makers until more than two millenia later.
So while Greeks weren't in the habit of making music with a 12 note scale, Plato would likely have known about the concept.
The big problem that I have with the description given in the article, though, is this notion of only 12 notes. No melodic instrument I know of has that many notes without having a complete octave.
Even an instrument with a very restricted range (eg a bagpipe) can usually repeat at least one note in the high octave and low octave, so I would expect any Greek music to include a repeated high/low note, and the system described in the article seems to preclude this.
Have another look at the picture in the first version. A nice bit of processing has resulted in good contrast and colour-balance, but it was initially taken on a chronically cheap camera, so there's all sorts of lens flare and internal reflections going on.
Why do Getty accept moderately crap pics from amateurs with cheap cameras? Because they're willing to sell them for less, which means more profit for Getty. It also means market rates drop considerably, and the pros have to charge less.
The dream of everyone with a stake who either archives or uses stock photos is a workforce of "incidental photographers" who give their work away for free or near free.
So wave goodbye to the professional photographer, peeps....
"2) the cost price of an object is the cost to produce a new one. R&D, etc. are important but not when calculating the cost* though I'm not sure about the severance payments made to the relatives of terminated Foxconn employees."
By whose definition of cost?
None that I've come across ignores set up and development costs, which are traditional amortised across each unit sold.
More importantly, the *value* is in the configuration, not the components.
Which isn't to say that the iPhone isn't an overpriced piece of consumer tat -- it is. Just it's overpriced by the value of the configuration.
From TFA
"And what we know about these different effects is that consumption taxes, ie VAT and excise taxes on booze and baccy, have the least effect upon growth for the money they raise. Then income taxes in the middle and the two taxes which are worst for the negative effects they have on growth compared to the amount they raise are capital taxes and corporate profit taxes.
(This is quite distinct from the obvious truth that while companies can collect taxes they can't actually pay them. Corporate taxes are paid by some combination of the shareholders, customers and workers: in the UK at present the best guesstimate is that 70 per cent of corporation tax is paid by the workers in the form of lower wages.)"
Now this I don't doubt, but here you're talking in absolute terms. Right now, we have a lot of pre-existing factors to take into account.
Put quite simply, most UK employers have instituted pay freezes. A change in corporation tax isn't going to alter that. So while next year's pay packets *might* benefit, this year the corporations will be pocketing the cash and the workers' outgoings will increase without any concommitant increase in income.
So while I can see why theoretically this *should* be the right thing to do, in practice it's a bit of a bugger for the overriding majority of the population.
"I'd argue about the superiority of rangefinder cameras, too - I want to see what I'm photographing through the lens that's taking the picture, thank you - but I suppose that's horses for courses."
Well I want to see what I'm photographing too, and what I'm photographing should be what's in front of me when I press the button.
I don't even want a switchable lens -- my rangefinder has a fixed (moderately) wide-angle lens with a shutter in the iris. The short distance of travel for the shutter curtain gives me practically instant snaps. Much better for (eg) getting a picture of a dancer in which you can see his/her face mid-spin.
Too pricey for me sadly, and what with the general public's ignorance of the superiority of rangefinders, I can't see there ever being a digital rangefinder that's enough of a mass-market item to fall into my price range.
However, there's always a 35mm Russian or Far Eastern rangefinder or two on eBay for 20 quid of so, and I've already got one or two of those. Is there any kit out there that lets me attach a full-frame 35mm CCD to an old body? I realise I'd have to take the film door off, but that's cool -- I am talking about something without much value after all....
My business, McKill and McCrazy Hitmen Ltd, is currently under investigation for certain illegal activities. I keep telling the Chief Inspector that his "laws" are all well and good, but they are completely uncommercial -- if I complied with these laws, my business would be unable to operate.
Does he listen?
No. Bloody plods.
It's traditional for the singular to be used with weights and measures -- using the plural is a relative innovation, and there's still plenty of people who will describe something as "3 pound 95" rather than "3 pounds 95".
And there's certain measures that never take a plural after a number: dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions etc may exist, but 24 is "two dozen", 200 is "two hundred", and so on.
Funny how "purists" are just as likely to defend neologisms as anachronisms. The only logic behind "correct" English is that it's whatever the person doing the correction speaks....
"as long as someone is actively monitoring it or a system is in place that can recognise unusual behaviour and automatically notify someone."
Cos it's great they can retrieve my body after I've bled out, but it's no real use to me by that stage.
Just sell the (already well-tested) panic button tech that's out there.
Thanks, Reg.
Please remember that many folk tales in many, many cultures revolve around animals that turn into men or women and conjugate with the locals. This particular story presents a rather unpleasant theory about the origin of these tales. I don't know if I'll be able to listen to a story about selkies or kelpies ever again....
Scientific enquiry doesn't start with empirical data -- it starts with anecdote and observation, and someone asks "I wonder how that works?" and starts to investigate.
This story is about that very thing.
Man hears stories of unexplained phenomenon.
Man decides to investigate.
Man replicates something appearing to be the same as aforementioned phenomenon.
-->potential explanation.
Man performs further experiments on said potential explanation to see if it holds water.
Science starts with unknowns.
The discipline that starts with a bunch of knowns is called engineering, and it doesn't discover anything new.
Joke icon or not, that was a daft post.
I'm guessing this wasn't unheard of in Ireland in days of old...
The tradition of the "wake" was to get lots of people in the room with the supposed corpse overnight and check whether he'd wake up. I mean, do you really want to warm up a room with a dead body in it? No. Unless you thought they might have just gone into "cold sleep".
I'm curious as to whether blood starts to settle out into component parts during cold sleep (do nemotodes have blood like ours?) -- the evidence the Romans took for Jesus being dead was that his blood had separated. Would make for an interesting bit of historical forensics.
""We conclude that section 230 prohibits 'distributor' liability for Internet publications," said that ruling. "We further hold that section 230(c)(1) immunizes individual 'users' of interactive computer services, and that no practical or principled distinction can be drawn between active and passive use. Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeal's judgment."
"No practical or principled distinction"... how so? The Usenet woman specifically chose that piece to upload, so she is (in practice and in principle) publishing.
ISPs are protected on the grounds that they are effectively functioning as printers and/or distributors do in the paper-based world, controlling the medium rather than the message.
In the physical world, a white van man who delivers boxes of magazines to local newsagents doesn't have to read every one to look for infringing content. He doesn't even have to know the titles of the magazines for delivery.
No choice, no editorial control, no volition.
The Usenet case had volition. Maybe the woman should have won on other grounds, but she spread the content of the article of her own volition, so she was not a mere "distributor".
Look at what ravers did to Mr Blobby's house!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220390/Pictured-The-abandoned-ruins-Mr-Blobby-theme-park-ravers-trash-site.html
Do you think trees grow themselves? Hell no! You're looking at the effects of the raver's favourite plant-food, mephedrone.
People keep talking about how the threat of law suits keeps companies in line. Like hell it does. These settlements are always insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and the perpetrator always comes off lightly because they've saved enough money through whatever shady or careless practice they're hauled up for that they're still in the black.
There's no out-of-court settlement against a statutory fine, and it doesn't stop individuals suing for damages. "Small government" fails its electorate -- any civilised country should be protecting its citizens better than that.
He's certainly getting a lot of acting work these days, but I don't really think of him as "an actor" any more. He's a personality, a commentator, and perhaps the closest thing the average TV viewer will see to a philosopher.
When he sells tea, I still see the actor. But what I see in this campaign is different -- I see a trusted media figure, a man of unquestionable intellect, giving me advice. (Fortunately, I already know his advice is wrong.)
You can say that this is my fault, but it's pretty damned normal really, and is, after all, the reason they're using him for the campaign in the first place.
"There will come a time soon when MPs will easily be able to ignore whatever crap papers decide to use as a dog whistle for easily enraged idiots (immigration anyone?)"
Immigration is a serious problem and not just an issue for "easily enraged idiots". These people aren't coming over here and doing unpleasant jobs like toilet cleaning and sewer maintenance at thoroughly pitiful wages.
Nonononono.
They're squatting in our sheds and eating our swans while living in posh flats paid for by the taxpayer and dining in swanky restaurants at our expense!!!!!
Surely if there's doubt over the legitimacy of compensation claims, the courts shouldn't be ordering one way or the other, but making a provisional judgement that places the compensation in escrow pending final evidence of the damage (ie islands going under), with a time limit? The funds would then either be used to relocate the displaced population (surely the point) or returned to the other party.
That way no-one loses.
This is actually why we need the traffic shaping.
There are multiple use cases for the internet.
Some of these need near-instant response speeds -- eg VoIP.
Some of these require large transfers over a more flexible timeframe -- eg downloading Linux ISOs.
Some are less fussy -- eg surfing (your download time is now very often shorter than the browser rendering time).
Traffic shaping allows us to dedicate the resources that each needs. We dedicate the voice bandwidth to voice users at the cost of longer download times for other uses -- shouldn't voice users pay for that?
"It is of course puzzling why Rosenberg did not use the evidence of her own eyes to decide Google Maps' instructions were best ignored.
Almost as puzzling as why she has set the lower bar for suing the world's biggest ad broker at a mere $100,000."
Her lawyer probably figures that given that she ignored the law and (presumably) at least one "no pedestrians" sign, she has a better chance of winning a claim centred on direct costs than punitive damages.
The idea of a HD mux is flawed if there's going to be simulcast HD/SD channels. Popping BBC1 HD on the same mux as BBC1 SD would allow them to broadcast shared audio and red-button data streams.
The promise of digital TV was greater flexibility and interactivity, and clever use of bandwidth. This fails to fulfill that.
There should be one BBC1 "channel" on a single mux, broadcasting "in HD (where available)" with non-HD sets receiving an SD stream.
The current state of affairs is a weak hack, nothing more.
Are these aimed at people going au natural but without natural pointiness, or are they designed to go on top of bras and reinstate lost nipplage while allowing for extra support and shaping?
I know, I've thought about this too much, but it's Friday and my most trusted source of news is talking about lady-bumps.
Copernicus was never considered a heretic, and Copernicus was buried (as the article says) in a Christian grave like any other person of his standing.
The stuff that happened later with Galileo Galilei was a battle of scientific egos and bad judgement on GG's part -- the then-pope was a then-well-reknowned-but-long-since-forgotten scientist (most of the popes of that era had come through the university system, which at that time was still part of the monastic tradition) and Galileo basically picked a fight with him.
The scientific establishment has a history of dismissing ideas because some influential bigwig disagrees with the theory. The only difference here was that the pope had a great deal more power than the chairman of the Royal Society, and anyone who effectively accuses the most powerful man in the world of being thick is really heading for trouble.
Of course, the fact that the pope was more than a little vindictive about it doesn't say a great deal of good about the Catholic church, but that's a different matter.
OK, so you need to lose lift as you lose weight in fuel. So what if your fuel was your lifting agent? This takes care of itself.
That means one thing and one thing only: hydrogen. Unsafe, you cry? Well they keep trying to put it in our cars, so it can't be that bad.
Anyway, a hybrid helium/hydrogen airship could be very safe, with an envelope-in-envelope design.
Have an outer inflation chamber (or series of chambers) filled with helium, and an internal chamber filled with hydrogen. In that way, if the hydrogen cell ruptures, it leaks into a 100% inert atmosphere and cannot explode. For hydrogen gas to escape, there would need to be a total failure of the entire balloon system, which would probably mean a fatal plummet anyway, so the added risk from the hydrogen is negligible.
Besides, the Hindenberg exploded because of a fault in its skin and problems with sparking from static electricity -- modern materials aren't as succeptible to such problems, so a leak would simply be a leak. Explosions are unlikely.
"As far as I can tell it spunks its money up the wall on football rights and overpaying for TV programmes that have built a faithful audience on terrestrial."
Grrrr.... yes.
That is so effing irritating. It's like a weird messed up sort of bait-and-switch where Channel 4 becomes the bait, the viewer is the fish and Sky is a big hairy fisherman who snatches you out on a Lost-shaped hook.
They also screw you over with the bundles -- it's impossible to buy the channels you want without paying for half-a-dozen Murdoch channels you *don't* want.
This is where all the money comes from. ITV makes its money from rubbish people watch, Sky makes its money from rubbish no-one watches and funnels it all into a handful of flagship programs everyone wants to watch.
