Posts by Charles 9

Republicans deny Hollywood pressure to pull copyright proposal

Re: Yeah, right.

Mickey the character is NOT covered by copyright. He's covered by Trademark. IOW, using the likeness of Mickey without Disney's permission (unless it's for something relatively benign like a holiday display) gets the lawyers on you for Trademark Infringement. That's what got people in the past who lampooned the Energizer Bunny.

It's the cartoons and other works the CONTAIN Mickey in them that are protected by Copyright. Steamboat Willie, The Band Concert, Fantasia, etc. are all copyrighted. Using excerpts from them except in Fair Use or with their permission is a Copyright Infringement.

Yeah, right.

"I know some want to point fingers elsewhere, but the simple fact is that we screwed up, we admitted it, and we hope people will now use this opportunity to engage in polite and serious discussion of copyright law," said Brian Straessle from the RSC."

Yes, and Steamboat Willie is in the public domain (Mickey himself is not subject to copyright--he's Trademarked, instead). Somtetimes, I wonder if any of the recent copyright cases cited that specific part of the Constitution where it says "limited", and then used logic to dictate that a term longer than the average human lifetime is practically no limit. Also should be noted that the speed of dissemination has increased so much that current terms are anachronistic. Software patents are only so bad because they're so long. Shrink them down to two or three years and people won't gripe about them so much.

Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

Re: Like Yikes Scoobs!

Forget that. What if a private enterprise does the same thing, turns it into something everyone wants and becomes the de facto standard. Now you have it even worse because the private enterprise isn't really answerable to anyone (not even the law since they'll probably be an international conglomerate with an HQ no one can approach). Forget Big Brother. Have you considered Big Owner?

Re: OTT

Considering it's needed to open the library (to check out books you need for homework), the cafeteria (so you can have lunch), or the toilet (every so often you can't hold it in), I think those would stop you from taking it off. As for shielding, as they're meant to be shown out in the open, any kind of shielding would likely be visible, too.

Wii U 'has been JAILBROKEN' via legacy games, say homebrewers

Re: Mixed feelings

Perhaps you should look up the term "loss leading". It's a known tactic, though this doesn't apply in Nintendo's case, as it against their policy to loss-lead. Still, it's in Nintendo's interests to lock down the Wii U as it helps to block the pirate market.

So you broke our encrypted files? Ha! They were DOUBLY encrypted

Re: table stakes

I don't know. Could go either way as game theory has its merits.

Re: Trusting a second, third, fourth or fifth party is contraindicated ...

Or in my case, I only use the cloud for low-security stuff. If anyone hacks into my Dropbox. all they'll know is that I belong to a gaming clan and coordinate with clanmates on common maps. Plus a handful of handy programs I don't wanna have to re-search the net to retrieve every day. IOW, stuff to which I'd respond with, "Big fricking deal."

Galapagos islands bombed with 22 tonnes of Blue Death Cornflakes

Re: Where are the animal rights activists?

Doesn't apply here. Genesis proclaims man has domain over the animals. IIRC, most of the punishments meted out in the Old Testament come from human-to-human interaction.

Re: Blue Waffles?

You forget about the fact they're islands. The GPS helicopters are being used to help keep the stuff away from the water. Now, while it's possible they make it so that it's unattractive to aquatic life, you still have to consider the toxic compounds being leeched into the nearby seawater. Don't think it's gonna be all the healthy for the fish.

Re: Skyfall SPOILER ALERT

The scenario overlooks two nagging problems with rats. One, they're good climbers, and two, they can chew through just about anything.

Re: A cheaper option.

Cheaper? IIRC the last time a German rat charmer was enlisted, the village in question stiffed the piper and ended up paying very steeply. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get our hands on German rat charmers OR Discworld dwarfs (plus, for the latter, I think we have a ketchup shortage).

No since there are endangered birds on the islands, and cats are also known to hunt birds. No, you need something a little more selective.

Mozilla needs to find alternatives to the Google umbilical

Re: Echoes of

Still, as someone else has said, how do you reconcile the plethora of I/O devices still in use today? How can you have one application that runs the same on a 27" desktop monitor with mouse AND a 4" multi-touch smartphone?

Samsung readies bendy smarties for 2013

Re: Bendy??

How about a convex shape that can conform to your forearm. Think Fallout's Pip-Boy or those other wrist computer you see in sci-fi. A 5-in smart device wrapped around your arm with perhaps a cover flap might attract some geeks.

New flexible lens works like the one in your eye - and could replace it

Re: I am fed up with these stories

Hey, is that your invisible dog running out through the gap in the fence? And BTW, funny you mention an invisible shed. See, it rained last night, yet I see no dry spot where the shed blocked the rain. Nor any impression in the lawn where a shed should've pressed down.

But to the original poster, point taken. What about holding on the articles until the things are no less than 6 months from market. Save the article space for stuff we can actually USE.

Coffee next on climate chopping-block

Re: And of course, without coffee, we could kiss goodbye to software development as well.

IIRC in the history of beer, humulus lupulus was a relatively recent innovation (a little over 1,000 years old). Before that, we used a variety of botanicals as gruit. And we still experiment with non-hops gruits even today, especially in historical beers. Don't see why we couldn't try other botanicals today.

Last I checked, quality camellia sinensis was pretty finicky about where it grows, too, like coffee.

Judge denies move to ban ad-skipping DVR

Re: TV -- It isn't only ads

Welcome to the non-broadcast market. They bundle channels like that for the same reason newspapers make you buy everything (and not just the most popular sections like the Sports section): they have to throw in the unpopular stuff with the popular stuff to get the ad revenues from those channels. Without them, the ad companies won't supplement their revenues with the cable ads injected into the "local advertising blocks" put into the TV shows' commercial blocks, which means the cable rates go up, especially since the channel providers are squeezing the cable companies at the other end, raising the fees to carry the top channels (like ESPN in the US).

Re: The other way to fix this is of course

And some product advertisements were better than the product. In the US, years ago, Kellog's introduced Corn Flakes with bananas in it. The ad featured their trademark rooster...well...going bananas. Seeing a rooster act like a monkey was one of the few times I turned my head to watch an ad. It was genuinely funny.

But then, I really haven't watched that much genuine TV in a long time. I have so much DVD and recorded content (commercials edited out) that I rarely get bored.

Re: Levels of subscription?

"Either way, advertisers are screwed once we move to 100% V.o.D. as there will be no gaps to put adverts into and they'll have to find a way to insert them into the shows (which probably means product placement - something else that totally hacks me off)."

They already do. It's called intrusive advertising. Plastering the add right into the video. Networks do this for their programming. I've already seen many foreign networks and streams do this by shrinking the picture to show ads along the borders. Next thing you'll know, YouTube will allow advertisers to insert ads to the top or bottom of the stream, on the fly, so that there's no avoiding it without cutting out the scene you wanted to watch.

Swedish boffins: An Ice Age is coming, only CO2 can save us

Re: Ice age?

So what if you hold it upside-down? From the perspective of someone outside the Sol system, their perspective may be different from ours (IOW, we may see it as the underside of the Milky Way, they'll see it as the top side).

Re: Ice age?

Actually, it's pretty safe to say it does. The Milky Way has a distinct planar orientation to it (the starts within are not distributed in a globular pattern but spiral out pretty flatly). There's also the idea of orienting worlds on their orbital or rotational axes. Earth's current coordinate system is oriented on rotational axis.

Singaporeans get hard token baked into credit card

Re: Physical indicators

That's assuming the numbers are actual buttons. They could also be simply touch-sensitive but not powered until the Chip goes in. Such light contact wouldn't leave as strong an impression on the plastic, and by the time it did, it would probably be at expiration, in which case a new card would be issued.

What next?

Maybe this will make inroads into moving the PIN entry in C&P to the card, removing a potential MitM attack.

Sellafield's nuclear waste measured in El Reg units

Re: Risk management.

No, because the greenies fear even the tiniest bump in radioactivity will affect the food chain, which would then, pardon the metaphor, come back to bite us.

Re: Rename all things nuclear

"I have a suggestion that we rename nuclear power stations to chromodynamic power stations and nuclear waste as residual power resource. We may then have some sort of rational debate."

Political correctness can only take you so far. It may feel good for the people affected, but the average person isn't THAT dumb. They soon realize a feces is just another name for a turd, and a turd by any other name is STILL a turd.

Android adware capability a vulnerability, claim boffins

It will look to you and the system like an actual SMS message has come in. For my phone, I get a notification in my status bar and a popup. What happens varies depending on your phone's configuration, but it will for all intents and purposes act just like an SMS message. I learned this myself when I installed an app that had an adware kit. I ran a detector, found the offending app, and removed it.

Apple to ditch Intel – report

Re: Rosetta: "x86 never reorder load w/ load or write w/ writes unlike ARM."

IIRC it's also a necessary evil because otherwise you run the risk of race conditions.

Re: Emulation

Have you seen an x86-on-ARM emulator or DynaRec core in action? You're talking an efficiency core trying to emulate a performance core. In the last two instances, Apple transitioned to clearly-superior hardware which smoothed the transition. Here? ARM isn't necessarily superior to Intel: just different. That handicaps emulation: just as trying to emulate a high-speed PowerPC or MIPS CPU even on today's Intel CPUs is not a walk in the park.

Re: PowerPC?

"The nub of the matter is: what could Apple persuade Intel to do for them, given that X86 is not remotely the mainstream any more, and iGizmos must inexorably move towards zero build cost over the decades."

x86 is still king of the roost when it comes to performance applicaitons. For people running Photoship, Premiere, or the like, that's a big deal. As for HPC, ARM doesn't rule there, either. That's more the realm of specialists and GPU makers.

Re: No need to kill OS X

Maybe, but its programs don't necessarily run on anything, especially if they're binary-only. That's machine code, and most machine code is meant for only ONE type of machine architecture. It's a rare beast that can do more than one in hardware.

Re: research

That was the feeling I was getting from the article: that a move away from Intel would be something Apple would do like five years down the road IF conditions were favorable. This sounds more like back-burner stuff: stuff to consider down the road, not stuff that's on a priority track. Jumping to PowerPC and then to Intel in the past made sense since both processor lines were stalling in the face of continuing x86/x64 development. Now processor development IN GENERAL is starting to stall because of physical limitations (processors can only be so small and go so fast), and R&D is now turning towards finding other ways to improve performance. ARM has shown tremendous progress in the portable market, but as the article notes it's had trouble penetrating the performance market because arm's energy-efficiency focus makes it less suited for high-performance applications.

Pandora sues publishers over online music royalties

Pandora contends that ASCAP's behaviour amounts to cartel behaviour: forcing terms because they hold a captive market. And US law does have precedent when it comes to cartel behaviour. It's the reason why you can't buy a DeBeers diamond in the US: DeBeers is classed as a cartel cornering the diamond market.

Google's Brin: Elected officials should quit political parties

Re: That doesn't work.

Actually, I wonder if the novice amateurs would do a better job. They'll be less motivated by re-election and more by not ticking off their constituency.

Then again, i sometimes wonder if the job of American politician shouldn't become the most thankless job in America. OTOH, doing that by reducing salaries and so on would probably mean no one would want the job. Not too many people are THAT dedicated to politics that they'd do it for the job and not for the money.

Re: Career (and term limits)

Term limits won't really do anything. It'll just give rise to proteges ready to step into the retiring politician's shoes.

Re: Intelligence can be highly selective.

No, because the BIG big issue is that sometimes we need to make sacrifices in order to advance. Trouble is, people in general don't like that. So what if you're faced with a necessary but VERY unpopular choice, such as needing to cut entitlements or raise taxes because the revenues can't keep up (I don't know about in Europe but it's a BIG problem in the US). Party has nothing to do with the decision; the morally right thing to do is ALSO political suicide. I think a number of authors have pointed out that the more people involved in a government, the harder it is to pass politically unpopular acts: barring a crisis.

HIV vaccine safe for Phase II human trials

I'm pretty sure this project has state and international backing, meaning money isn't the object. Any plague the government can block is good for them.

You know who else hates Windows 8? Hackers

Re: Disappointed?

"Relationship between MS and manufacturers poisons the Forum."

Apple is part of the group and COMPETES with Microsoft. What now?

Re: Secure Boot

"You can't even rely on a format-and-reinstall approach because there are rootkits in existence today that can fake enough of the boot process to circumvent that."

Not even the "Nuke 'em from orbit" approach, where the drive's formatted from a an OS on a different boot device, say a USB stick or the DVD installer?

Re: Secure Boot

So what happens when the malware authors turn their attention to the EFI itself? Talks of developing EFI malware have been floating around for years.

Re: AGAIN:

x86 UEFIs are REQUIRED to provide the off switch or they're not Windows 8 compliant. As for RT, those are tablets, complete ecosystems, and not meant to be viewed separately. Even Android a pain in the butt to tinker. Sure there CyanogenMod, but a look under the hood reveals that many of the ones for various phones and such have incomplete support or spates of bugs.

USS Enterprise sets out on its final mission

Re: Another reason for scrapping the Big E

The EXTERIORs are still there, yes, but "gutting" means the INTERNALS are removed. Wanna bet the elevators and magazine chambers (all situated UNDER the big guns) have been stripped down? As for the power plants, odds are passing fair that any regulating mechanisms and anything that would actually cause the boilers to, well, boil, are gone also.

Speaking of the Roddenberry comment, it should be noted that the retiring ship happens to be the (at least) the SECOND U.S. Navy ship named Enterprise (its earlier namesake was CV(N)-5, a WW2-era carrier that saw service for most of the war until it was crippled during the Okinawa campaign).

FTC shuts down five US robocall operations

"Just ignoring the calls, or letting them go to voicemail, would keep the number higher in the queue in the hope of getting an answer."

But at some point they have to think that perhaps the call is being actively screened, especially in these days of Caller ID being much more common. I would think after say 10 attempts sent straight to voicemail/answering machine they have to assume the call is being screened and lower its priority, too.

I don't think that'll work. Look at the USPTO. Terribly underfunded (and you see the results), yet nothing is done to either let the filing fees pay for more workers OR get more out of the federal budget. Two ways to better fund it, and they choose option ZERO. What's to stop the FTC/FCC from suffering the same fate, if it isn't already?

Re: "...tired of Bronco Bomma and Mint Romney"

Unfortunately, political speech (including political robocalls) are considered privileged speech under the 1st Amendment since they're intended to promote the election process.

I frankly think the Founders didn't quite get it right. FREE speech isn't as important as FAIR speech. Until the Constitution is amended to make that distinction, we'll be stuck with this political circus...unless it kills us first.

Re: About fucking time.

Wonder if that's what those "800 Service" calls were for the last month. Thankfully, I have Caller ID and tend to screen all calls from firms and people i"m not expecting (through the answering machine). Tends to scrub out most of the robocallers who are smart enough not to plaster answering machines. That just leaves the collection agency calls (the last owner of my current number was apparently in credit trouble).

Mexican Zetas ENSLAVING engineers to run crimelords' radio net

Re: Pay

The trouble is the cartels' DTA attutide. The last thing they want is a mole, so the only way out of the cartel is feet-first. The only reason this is possible is there are plenty of engineers for the cartel to grab. Once the supply goes down, then they may be forced to husband their engineers, probably by resorting to threats and blackmail.

Xbox SmartGlass hits Android ahead of schedule

Re: Not compatible

For now, Microsoft is saying no to tablets. Phones only for some reason.

Free Android apps often secretly make calls, use the camera

Re: 1.7m apps audited?

OUTSIDE Google Play, perhaps? It's the APK itself that contains the permission list.