
WTF?
That is all.
93 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2009
It's about time accurate use is made of the word theft.
If I plug my mobile phone charger into a power point in a hospital or something like that when it is not authorised to do so, I'm guilty of theft. Similarly if I steal somebody's wallet, or pick up a £20 note on the street without handing it over to the police to see if they can trace the owner.
If I download an MP3 of an artist singing without paying anything to do so, that may be a violation of copyright but it is NOT theft.
Similarly, if I visit a website with my ad-blocker turned on, it is NOT theft. It is my response to the invasive, distracting, flashing ads that have been served up over the years.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
I don't know why you're getting down-votes because it's absolutely true. I've had to throw away perfectly good hardware because the drivers were not updated beyond Windows XP too.
At least Windows 7 is good enough that we don't have to bother with Windows 10 until we need to replace our machines - and maybe not even then; Linux is a more than viable alternative.
I don't know all the details of this, but:
(1) The drone operators probably were breaking some laws when they commanded their drone to fly over somebody else's property, especially if the drone was not in sight of the operators at the time; but
(2) Discharging a firearm to disable the drone would seem to be an act that has ample potential to be dangerous. The flight path of the drone after being shot could not possibly be controlled and it could easily cause damage to property and/or injury.
Also, it would seem that the gun owner threatened the operators with shooting them. In Britain, that would rightly get you locked up. I don't understand why or how that's acceptable in America.
Both parties were in the wrong IMO.
You really think indicating first gives you leave to complete your manoeuvre by moving from lane 3 to lane 2 and you would not abort it because somebody else decides to move from lane 1 to lane 2?
See you on the news someday when your use of the horn isn't heard by a deaf driver who wanders into your lane by mistake.
Meanwhile, the robot driver that is performing DEFENSIVE driving will be happily cruising on its way.
Having the latest and greatest is a double-edged sword. I have an old Nexus 7, a newer Nexus 7 and a Nexus 4. The newer Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 were OK when upgraded to Lollipop, but the old Nexus 7 started performing like a dog. Many people had that same experience.
The Nexus 4 started going wrong after two years, so at that point, it was time to buy a new phone. I'd had enough of being one of Google's unofficial beta-testers, looked at the rest of the market, and settled on a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact.
Linus Torvalds has not been great in the past. There is no way I would ever consider working on Linux while he has his rants and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
If, however, he changed, and stopped using "colourful metaphors", one-finger salutes and suchlike, perhaps more developers might contribute, and that could extend to open source in general which does tend to get tarred with the same brush to an extent.
If he holds to what has been said there then this has got to be a good thing for open source software. Hence the icon. Cheers!
In the old days...
"I want to learn programming! Ah, I see. BASIC is the language. There's also this thing called machine language that I might look at. Let's get stuck in."
In the new days...
"I want to learn programming! Ah... OK, what do I use? There's Basic, C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, Python, Go, Dalvik, Objective C, Lisp... How do I choose?"
If you want to try abandoning the Windows world (and who wouldn't, especially with Windows 8 in the world), I recommend Mint. I use Mint at home on my main desktop PC and my laptop, and I am productive using it. Only my laptop now has a variant of Windows on it, and I rarely boot into it.
Of course, whether you can or not depends on what you do and what software is available to support it.
@AC 08:43: Microsoft are of course able to develop, and Windows is stagnating because of it. I would argue that that's as a result of the decisions they've made, and especially the one about the Start button. Reintroducing it is not the solution; it needs to work in pretty much the same way it did on Windows 7.
Why should people be forced to change the way they work if it works for them?
I can understand a purchase of one or two pounds for something that a developer invested time and money making, but the excessive amounts being charged are obviously targeted at non-financially savvy, usually young people who don't know any better.
It's pure greed, and Apple are complicit in that by allowing it to happen and by providing a 15-minute window by default after initial password entry in which the password is not required to be entered again for further purchases. Apple shouldn't be allowing anything like this in the first place, especially as they ostensibly review every app on their marketplace before releasing it.
To all those who are making money using this underhanded approach, I hope you don't sleep well at night. You're practically stealing from hard-working families.
"-Expensive sneakers and clothes are not allowed to show distinct 'brand features' that would identify them to robbers."
Actually, I support that one. I refuse to buy any clothes where you pay extra for the brand name AND for the privilege of advertising it for them.
The next stage is to ban advertising of these brands aimed at children.
I don't like the idea of the kill switch, though.
And they're not even very good at that.
The one that visited my mother got her to buy two unnecessary Homeplugs because "the existing telephone extension socket is not suitable to take the broadband signal." The problem is that the Homeplugs are meant to be plugged directly into wall sockets, NOT extension leads.
In any case, they weren't necessary, and the homeplugs themselves were not working very reliably. The original (non-Talktalk) wifi hub was working fine off the telephone extension. So did the new hub when I plugged it in after figuring out that the socket WASN'T too far from the TV for the wires to reach. (With about 1m of slack, I might add.)
In addition, all they did was to plug in the aerial lead into the Youview box. They did NOT connect the loop-through cable to the TV which resulted in my mother wondering why her normal TV channels weren't working.
The box itself? Many software problems. She's not 100% happy with it; she prefers the way her Humax box worked. On demand content doesn't stream very well. One box stopped working about two months after installation and had to be replaced.
So I ended up feeling very bad over recommending the deal, which on the fact of it looked good. Definitely facepalm.
Technically, Atheism is a faith, because an atheist believe there is no god.
Agnosticism is the absence of faith. You do not know whether there are zero, one or many gods. Neither do I.
I personally believe it is unlikely that any "god" or supreme being exists or has ever existed, because the lack of evidence for such an entity speaks volumes to me. However, I do concede that one might, although if it does, I certainly don't believe it is even remotely close to that described by any religion. Therefore I am not a true atheist. The fact that I am prepared to admit that I am wrong is what differentiates me from being an atheist or a religious person, but I think many people would consider themselves atheists even though they would be prepared to admit that they may be wrong. It is purely a technicality.
I think the humanists had it right when they said something like "There's probably no god. Stop worrying and enjoy your life."
It's a daft idea. I understand that deterioration of physical books can lead to an increase in revenue (if books are repurchased), but of course this does not apply to digital media.
Why not increase the borrowing royalty slightly to compensate precisely for this "loss"? Then there is no need for this waste of time.
Let's think for a minute, shall we?
I would imagine the New York Times gets a lot of revenue from competing car manufacturers by way of advertising.
Although the reviewer is "independent," in accordance with the strict definition of the word, that is not true. The reviewer is paid for his article by the New York Times. They in turn are paid to produce their paper, partly by advertisers. There may be a degree of separation between editorial content and the commercial arm of the paper, but they will not want to piss off their main advertisers.
Of course, the manufacturer of the Tesla cars will be biased, but so will the reviewer.
IANAL but my understanding of the law is...
Under UK law, you can't do it without permission of the people whose likenesses are shown if you're exploiting the pictures commercially, as Google are doing.
It is only permissible if the image of the person is not recognisable, or there is a crowd of such people there so that one person doesn't stand out.
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. With Ubuntu it is far too difficult to find all the programs that are installed.
Mint is what should be recommended to all newcomers IMHO. It is most similar to what they are already familiar with.
In fact, it's not just for the newbie. I've used Linux for well over a decade, and these days I just stick to Mint. It works, gets out of the way, and lets me get on with what I want to do.
The only question is what variant of Mint. I would say that if you have a computer older than about 5 years, use Mint with MATE, otherwise use Mint with Cinnamon.
The thing is, IOS doesn't just work. It's a pain in the neck to do anything simple with it that doesn't involve Itunes. Want to transfer a file to your iPad? You can't just hook the device up and transfer it as you would to a USB stick with IOS; you've got to go through Itunes. With Android devices, it's easy; you plug it in and then select "Mount file system" on the device. And it isn't just techies that can plug in a USB stick and expect it to work.
I don't have experience of this tablet, but my wife has an iPad 3, and I've found that the keyboard on it wasn't amazingly responsive; it was sluggish. Not as sluggish as that on my Orange San Francisco (which cost me about £100 two years ago), but it was still sluggish. What was I doing? Something processor-intensive? Well, yes, if you consider entering a search term on the Safari browser to be intensive.
Somehow, I expected more.
I'm not saying it's all bad, but it's FAR from all good. If this had been around at the time my wife got the iPad, I think she would have got this instead.
What if you're not particularly switched on about affiliate marketing, but you've clicked through Nectar's website to get cookied for some Nectar points when you buy Amazon stuff, then you go through this lens without being aware that the affiliate commission that pays for your Nectar points will be redirected to Canonical Ltd?
But it's not just that. You're not asked whether you want to do it in the first place. That's the first thing that's really bad about this.
The second issue is more serious. Heretofore, whatever you enter into that search box never leaves your local machine. Now, it will. If you enter something that's supposed to remain private into it to search your local machine for stuff, it will be sent to Amazon's servers, so you lose your privacy.
You can remove this feature as others have pointed out, but it really shouldn't be there in the first place. At least, not without an opt-in.
Now Canonical are getting more secretive about future releases, if the press are to be believed. Do you know what's going on? They're NOT LISTENING to the people who use their version of Linux, and they don't even WANT to. This has now happened enough times for me to finally make the decision to move away from them. It's not like there's no choice...