Posts by mhenriday 1222 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Dec 2009
I had understood that the English measure used in the US dates from the end of the 13th century, but that John Wayne and «the West was won with/in/by feet and inches» had settled the matter for all time in the good old US of A ! But then again, John Wayne was probably a Jesus avatar - or was it the other way 'round ?...
Henri
- nota bene, this dates from before giant corporations devised still more sophisticated ways to rip off inventors and artists and created «rights holders» organisations to bribe law makers, judges, etc :
«It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that..»
Henri
on 12 September 1962 : «We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, ...» Half a century later, activities in space remain difficult - the gravity well still exists and the basic propulsion techniques used to get something into low Earth orbit remain much the same as they were then. For this reason, cooperation - between all countries willing to make the effort - and between public and private interests is necessary. SpaceX's caution is the way to go - sooner or later they'll get their machine into orbit. Slow and steady wins the race....
Henri
«The Cookie Law officially came into force last year as part of the EU Privacy Act, but the UK allowed a year-long grace period during which the law was not actually enforced in order for businesses to work towards complying with it. ... We don't expect all organisations not compliant on the 27th to have some evidence of taking action to be compliant.»
Let me see if I understand - UK websites have had one year since this law officially came into effect to prepare themselves, but still this particular law, which is designed to protect users' privacy, will not be enforced. Dare one draw conclusions about the degree of concern for ordinary peoples' privacy - as opposed to, say, the «rights» of copyright holders - which moves Mr Cameron's government to this unusual laxity ? News of the World, redux - or are all laws in the UK «enforced» in this manner ?...
Myself, I use the DoNotTrackPlus add-on (www.abine.com) on Firefox and Chrome in order to stop tracking cookies - how well I succeed is another matter....
Henri
why OC enthusiasts have been training with liquid nitrogen for years. Those who have money to spare might want to consider investiging in Linde AG (disclaimer : this is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. I am not in any way connected to the afore-mentioned company)....
Henri
«The US has seen its pre-eminent position in the world, both as a global and financial superpower and IT consumer, increasingly challenged by the People’s Republic in recent years, however there were some crumbs of comfort from IDC.
US spending is about 2.5 times the size of China's IT spending and is adding around $20-25 billion (£13-16bn) per year in incremental market value, whereas China's incremental growth is more like $16bn (£10.2bn), Fok explained.»
«Crumbs of comfort» for whom ? Why should greater IT spending in the US than in China be «comforting» for anybody ? China has a much greater population and a much lower level of development ; isn't, then, the need for IT spending greater in that country than in the US ? Is it absolutely necessary for Phil Muncaster to play the role of spokesman för some sort of USA local patriotism in his Reg blogs ? «Just the facts, ma'am», as Joe Friday used to say ; Reg readers are surely sufficiently knowledgeable to draw their own conclusions....
Henri
or for that matter, peripherals like printers, etc. As I don't care for the Unity desktop, I have lately been installing Cinnamon after version upgrades, but otherwise everything works out of the box - or more accurately, out of my fibre-cable connexion....
Henri
and will presumably become available at a severly discounted price. And no doubt Captain Francesco Schettino could be persuaded to resume his old command, and if Blueseed is really, really lucky, perhaps even Domnica Cemortan could be prevailed upon to come aboard in one capacity or another. What could go wrong ?...
Henri
of such Reg contributers as Lewis Page and A O ? Can't Reg posters who reside in the neighbourhood present the relevant peer-reviewed papers to the Chinese, so they come to the realisation that concerns about global warming are merely the improductive fantasies of hippies and people of that ilk and something serious policy makers can safely ignore ?...
Henri
The USG is a tad irritated that it doesn't effectively run the whole globe or even the whole Western Hemisphere (despite, as pointed out by several commentators above, Stephen Joseph Harper's doing everything in his poor power to please his imperial masters). On the other hand, it should be remembered that the distorted view of so-called «intellectual property» (the current version of the enclosure of the commons during the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, in which property held in common by ordinary people was appropriated by the ruling classes) promoted by those who run the US government is a core interest and one on which they hardly intend to compromise, unless they meet a resistance economically, politically - and not least, militarily powerful enough to dissuade them from an invasion....
Henri
help in directing me to the down-vote button ; I might never have found it otherwise ! As to «El Reg's commentards» being «thick and thieves», you might want to be careful ; given the UK's libel laws, such claims might just be actionable. Of course, you did use the weasel word «many», so you might possibly be able to luck it out....
Henri
at least when such is not inhibited by lawyers and artificial monopolies. Having come late to the mobile phone feast, which it originally deemed unimportant, Microsoft can't apply the same strategy and tactics it did to monopolise the desktop. This time consumers do have a choice ; whether they will exercise it wisely is another matter....
Henri
in the United States, for example, the term of patent is twenty years from the date of the filing of the first US application. The term of copyright is, as the article shows, much longer. As regards the case of «Aspirin», acetylsalicyl acid was first synthesized by a French chemist in 1853, and in 1899 Friedrich Bayer & Co was granted a patent for this substance under the trade name «Aspirin» by the Kaiserliche Patentamt in Berlin (obviously, even in those days not too much attention was paid to «prior art»). Thus even had «Aspirin» been «protected» by copyright legislation of the type in place today in many countries, acetylsalicyl acid would still be a so-called «generic» substance, and anyone who so wished could manufacture and sell it (subject, of course, to approval by the health authorities)....
Henri
Thanks for this post, AC ! It succeeds in saying vital things about the process of innovation in relatively few words, given the complexity of the subject. Alas, our present patent and copyright regimes, rather than protecting the interests of inventors, innovators, and artists, serve only those of the people controlling the great corporations, their lawyers, and the politicians that they buy. Due to these latter, for the foreseeable future, these regimes are most unlikely to see the reform they so desperately require....
Henri
of the Evil Empire. In the propaganda for the EU and its predecessor, the EEC, we were told that building this «union» would «give Europe a voice in the world». Now, in the latest of innumerable examples, we see once again that the «voice» we Europeans hear is the one emenating from Washington, via some miracle of ventriloquism. Why am I not surprised ?...
Henri
is to install the Cinnamon PPA (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable) immediately after booting Precise, reboot, and choose Cinnamon from the inlogging alternatives. Lovely desktop environment for active users - and if one flips the panel to the top, it even looks like GNOME2 !...
Henri
things are more complicated than they seem at first glance. Claims - often as in the case of g e's posting above, ensconced in rhetorical questions - to the effect that «the Himalayan glaciers are also going in the opposite direction to the doomsayers' predictions» fail, whether by design or by ignorance, to understand the complexity of the situation. Below the abstract of an article, entitled «The State and Fate of Himalayan Glaciers» (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/310.abstract'), recently published in Science. Perhaps we all need to read more ?...
«Himalayan glaciers are a focus of public and scientific debate. Prevailing uncertainties are of major concern because some projections of their future have serious implications for water resources. Most Himalayan glaciers are losing mass at rates similar to glaciers elsewhere, except for emerging indications of stability or mass gain in the Karakoram. A poor understanding of the processes affecting them, combined with the diversity of climatic conditions and the extremes of topographical relief within the region, makes projections speculative. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that dramatic changes in total runoff will occur soon, although continuing shrinkage outside the Karakoram will increase the seasonality of runoff, affect irrigation and hydropower, and alter hazards.»
Henri
«However, Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said that the three European institutions had created an agreement that they could be "proud of".» Typical Cecilia Malmström, who, despite her «liberal» façade, never saw an agreement which sacrifices the liberties of the inhabitants of the European Union (or her native Sweden, for that matter) to the interests of US government agencies and the MPAA, RIAA, etc, etc (to the degree that there exists a distinction) of which she was not «proud». Alas, I find myself somewhat less than proud of the Sweden's European Commissioner, but given the vassal status of our government to its US master, what can one expect ?...
Henri
Blowing in the wind or not, the answer might just be found in the following interchange between Gustave Gilbert and Hermann Göring in the latter's cell in Nürnberg on 18 April 1946 :
«Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars*.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.»
Nice to see Phil, on the basis of his vast experience and cultural knowledge, giving the US government a tip on how to deal with those dastardly Chinese !...
Henri
*Note that the US Congress hasn't declared war against any country since the declaration of war against Rumania (passed in the House on 3 June 1942, in the Senate on 4 June 1942, signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on 5 June 1942). Neither the constitutional limitation mentioned by Gustave Gilbert, nor the provisions of the UNO Charter don't however, seem to have greatly limited the US governments propensity to go to war in the nearly seven decades after the end of WW II....
when it comes to contemporary science, but Richard Chirgwin's reports are, in my humble opinion, not among them. He does a excellent job of reporting scientific developments in popular (i e, non-mathematical) language, at least as good a job as such pop sci sites as Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/) or Phys Org (http://phys.org/). Moreover, from what I have seen, Mr Chirgwin is ready to correct his articles if and when errors of fact are pointed out to him. There are, alas, other bloggers here on the Reg whose dedication to scientific objectivity is far less evident and who would be much more appropriate subjects for your criticism....
Henri
not least when it comes to IT. But the Reg - or more accurately, certain Reg bloggers, seem to have adopted «Schadnefruede ist die beste Freude» as their very own rallying cry, due, at least to some degree, to the fact that it tends to elicit responses from us suckers, who seem always ready to take the bait....
Henri
«We've determined that this issue affected less than 10 per cent of the Google Mail users who attempted to access their accounts during the affected timeframe.» What part of the above period, Stoneshop, do you not understand ? I suspect the difficulty lies in the subordinate (relative/dependent) clause («who attempted to access their accounts during the affected timeframe»). Such clauses usually appear in children's speech at around two years of age, but obviously they can occasion difficulties for the unwary ; I hope you will find the information found on this site ( http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/subordinateclause.htm) of help in dealing with complex sentences in the future....
Henri
PS : Pedantic grammar nazi, as I here presume that it was indeed a genuine misunderstanding of the grammar that lead you to post....
is very near to being revoked. Not only does he fail to recognise the distinction between trains, on the one hand, and train stations, on the other, but to take merely one other example of his creative book-keeping, he also failed to observe that being 59th and 61st, respectively, on a list (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/06/asiapacific_worldwide_it_spending/), is not quite the same thing as being 51st and 69th, respectively, on that same list (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_IT_Report_2012.pdf - see, p 12 «Table 1: The Networked Readiness Index 2012»). Unfortunately, he shares this predilection to (selective) sloppiness with certain other Reg bloggers ; what is worse is that he, like them, seems unwilling to correct his errors of fact even when they a pointed out to him....
Henri
No, no, Muckminded, the desired reading of these two superficially contradictory rubricks is that «we» should be very, very afraid of those dastardly Chinese, who receive «obscene amounts of money» to attack «us» («grim reading», indeed !), while at the same time retaining feelings of innate (racial ?) superiority, as, according to Mr Muncaster, «16 per cent» of new recruits to the IT sector in China were regarded as «bad». Note that this figure of 16 % does not appear in the Hudson Report itself (http://hudson.hk/Portals/HK/documents/Hudson%20Report%20%28HK%29/2012/Hudson_Report_Q2_2012-Asia.pdf), which states that 13 % were regarded as «bad», 51 % as «average», and 36 % as «good». Aside from his, alas, rather typical sloppiness with figures, Mr Muncaster's claim that «over half of new recruits in China and Singapore are duds» can only be made if the two categories «bad» and «average» are conflated to one called «duds». Is it customary to regard an «average» employee as a dud ? That the question is never posed how many recruits to the IT sector in countries like the UK or the US would be regarded by their employers as «duds» according to the above standards is par for the course....
Henri
doing the right thing and heeding the complaints/orders of the USTR. It's only fair ; here in Sweden we do absolutely nothing to offend the sensibilities of that office - or, for that matter, of the MPAA or RIAA, in the event someone believes that a distinction exists....
Henri
Cantennas are easy and powerful, thanks for the link ! But even for those who don't have German, there's no need to use Google Translate ; the Spiegel story would seem to be a rewrite of this English-language ESA posting (http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMDWMEWF0H_index_0.html)....
It was dem hippies wot don'it !...
Henri
while, just as Mr Orlowski tends to do in his posts, you did manage to misunderstand - not to say willfully misrepresent - the NSIDC article to which you referred, but to which, for some strange reason, you failed to provide a link. But oddly enough, while like him you denigrate those concerned about climate change as «hippies» (a powerful argument, that !), you did not go quite so far as your comrade in arms, who recently on these pages (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/kareiva_new_environmentalism_essay/) evoked the stirring slogan : «Get rid of hippies, save the planet». Don't tell me you lack the courage of your convictions ?...
Henri
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