Posts by JohnG 1642 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2007
Intel don't seem to understand how laws work. They claim that their actions did not have "immediate, substantial, direct and foreseeable effects" on AMD's EU sales. Even if that were true, their actions were not legal and that is why they are being fined.
The significant difference between idiot motorists and idiot cyclists is that the former have to face penalties for their motoring offences both in cash and in loss of license. Sooner or later, the idiots either learn (from all the fines and points) or they lose their license. The idea that your insurance will increase if you have an accident also encourages people not to hit each other. if cyclists had similar constraints, it might help reign in some of those who seem to belive they are immortal and above any law.
Self-regulation: as it was applied in the financial/banking sector? Yeah, that went well.
Why should US companies be dictating the nature of EU legislation? It's bad enough having comissioners appointed for life - it's even worse if they are directed from the USA. Google, MS and the rest should be TTFO, at least until the taxpayers/electorate have first had some opportunity to express their views on the subject. If the yanks are happy to allow their government to be run by their corporations, that's their business but I see no reason why the same US corporations should have any influence here.
I seem to remember it was Novell that coined the expression "The server is the network" - causing some confusion amongst the less informed.
Given that network and systems tend to run in different teams with separate budgets and different preferred suppliers, Cisco's bid to muscle into the server world looks a bit ambitious to me.
10GE: I had to come up with the networking for some rack systems recently and my boss was pushing 10GE. When I showed him that just the 10GE upgrades for our Cisco kit cost more than all the server kit put together, he was less keen. We went with multiple 1G instead.
How many servers could actually fill a 10G link?
Here in Germany, the organisation I work for was offered a base station to be located on site by a well known telco. We would not pay for the base station or the necessary exchange connectivity - it would be totally free (aside for the electricity used) and would not use our Internet connection. The conditions were that the telco provided both our corporate mobiles (about 200) and the PABX lines (two PRIs). Calls between the PABX and corporate mobiles on the internal base station would be free.
The iphone is not the only game in town for WLAN connectivity: the Nokia E and N series phones offer WLAN and VOIP. Then there are the Windows Mobile offerings and...
1970's Russian hardware has been keeping the ISS resupplied for some time now - during several periods in which the USA's alternatives have been grounded. The Russians are big fans of the philosophy "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". They had all their accidents in the 60s and 70s - now they have kit that is reliable, they see no need to bring in new kit that would put them back to square one.
They have also been making commercial satellite launches using modified ICBMs. They signed up to a treaty saying they would destroy certain numbers of ICBMs and they have chosen to destroy the ICBMs by using them as satellite launchers.
Coal: The vast majority of Prius cars are not of the plug-in variety and all their electricity ultimately comes from whatever is in the fuel tank. Coal has sweet FA to do with it.
"However, the Prius does have huge batteries+a gas tank+2 engines instead of one, which makes it 50% heavier than an equivalent gas-powered car. Guess what it does to you power consumption in the traffic..."
Actually, the Prius has one petrol engine and two electric motors/generators - but one of these replaces the starter and alternator.
The Prius is a compact car (in US parlance) and weighs in at around 1300KG, slightly more than the 1.6 Toyota Auris but less than the 2.0 model. The battery pack weighs 53Kg.
Consumption in traffic is where the Prius scores highest, mainly because it can keep the petrol engine off for most of the time.
It has to be a good idea to investigate alternative fuels like algae, if only to have alternatives when the oil runs out.
Internet by satellite is sold by companies on the continent, who would therefore be unaffected by UK legislation on filtering.
if protecting children is the goal, wouldn't it be better to concentrate on acquiring what child porn is available and, together with law enforcement around the world, make every effort to identify and find the victims and those who have abused them? Filtering the Internet is unnacceptable in a modern democracy, as our politicians are so fond of reminding the Chinese government.
Western Union is a popular way of moving money around for people without bank accounts. In theory, the recipient of cash from a Western Union transfer needs to show ID (passport, national identity card). The reality in many countries is that no ID is really necessary if you know the transaction number. Of course, if there was no ID or the ID was fake, then the money transferred is no longer traceable.
I suppose Hawala is money laundering because it is a traditional form of money transfer between people in Islamic countries whereas Western Union is American and therefore, must be kosher :-)
".... Imagine being able to attach lamps and screens to the wall with velcro...."
Yes - but you still have to attach the Metaklett to the wall in the first place. That fixing may be the weak point.
If you use Velcro to attach two solid objects with flat surfaces, you can't remove it by peeling at one end. Think about it (or try it).
How the Google idea is significantly different from allofmp3 in Russia? Allof mp3's stance was that they were paid up to the Russian government's copyright outfit (ROMS) and were therefore complying with local law and could sell whatever MP3s they liked.
The yanks don't seem to have thought through the wider implications of such a unilateral move on books at a time when they are trying to get the rest of the world to be more draconian about other forms of intellectual property. Some countries might decide that they will only recognise software copyrights if these have been first registered via local organisations to which the copyrigt owner has to be accepted for membership.
Turing was already working for GCCS (Government Code and Cypher School) before the war started - he was not a concientous objector and like most of his generation, wanted to help defeat the Nazis.
I also don't see the point of an apology but would be happy to see Turing's life celebrated with a bank note.
Also, excessive heat (from something going wrong during charging) may distort the casing, placing the glass under stress.
Is the glass used in European models the same as that used in the US? CE approval for cars typically means that windows and lights use different glass on North American and European models.
The people who make the decisions want software with support contracts - it doesn't mattter that they could dave the cost of the licenses and maintenance; they have someone to send their problems and therefore, someone else to blame if the problems aren't fixed. That many of the support people may like and use Open Source software for personal use is irrelevant - they don't shoulder the responsibility for support nor do they make the purchasing decisions.
The Fortune 500 is made up of large corporations who have or intend to dominate their market(s) - so why did FSF think that id would be effective to suggest that such behaviour is bad?
It might have been smarter for the FSF to have played on fears that MS Office could be torn apart by the patent infringement case from i4i.
Why do people do this? The people that decide to do this must be really stupid. It is in the nature of adverts that many people will see them and, sooner or later, some people will see both adverts and spot the difference. All they have to do is just use a different picture with their chosen mix of ethnic/gender/age groups.
If Google were to settle out of court with Port, they would have set a precident for similar future cases. I'd be surprised if there were "rounds of hearings" - I'm pretty sure Google AUPs will have made it clear that users will be held responsible for what they write and that Google would comply with the law of the jurisdiction(s) in which they operate.
Personally, I think it is funny that this cow got found out. It is hilarious that she is now so worried about her own privacy and reputation but was quite prepared to trash someone else's reputation with all kinds of scurrilous gossip.
Do fuck off. We did read the article - but maybe you didn't understand the issues involved.
Having some kind of backdoor might make it easier to identify murder victims but why can't the police simply ask the network operator for the phone records for the SIM? AFAIK, the police have this information available through direct online access. Of course, having a backdoor would also allow fishing expiditions, the sale of information to ex-colleagues now running their own detective agencies (e.g. court case last year) and similar kinds of assault on the privacy of the law abiding populace. The police and other parts of the public sector have shown themselves to be utterly irresponsilbe with almost any powers or data with which they are entrusted.
If the police want the contents of any device for an investigation into a serious crime, they can simply send the device to the manufacturers, who may even offer their assistance for free.
".....but Europe, while historically more tolerant and broadminded, is also now displaying worrying tendencies to that end."
Whilst the UK is part of Europe, it does not represent attitudes in the rest of europe when it comes to issues like nudity, sex, prostitution, etc. Britain is much closer to the US in this respect, with some of the most draconian pornography laws outside of the middle east. Countries in continental Europe are typically far more relaxed about nudity than either the UK or the US.
I wouldn't want to live in a country where people think that a photograph of a woman breastfeeding her baby is pornography but consider it acceptable that guns are sold in supermarkets and that schools need metal detetctors. Each to their own, I suppose.
I don't get it. The public sector (and their contractors) seems to approach IT entirely differently to the rest of us. I'm a contractor approaching 50 and in all the places I have worked, not one would allow a database of sensitive data to be copied onto a notebook and taken outside the confines of the organisation. There are ways of moving sensitive data between sites or for accessing information when away from the office but copying data onto a notebook which is then left in a parked car is not one of them.
Every few months, we hear how public sector organisations lose sensitive data and, despite announcements of measures to be taken, the situation is not improving.
Perhaps the sensible approach would be to apply military classifications to all sensitive data in the public sector, with the accompanying penalties associated with mishandling classified material.
"2. Don't buy any US network product, because there is a division of the US Airforce dedicated to hacking, which means now every US made router, US made OS etc. may have a backdoor for the hacking division of the US military"
But aren't all the "US network products" actually manufactured in China? As the Chinese are accused by Western intellignece agencies of being highly active in cyber warfare, wouldn't the backdoors be for them?
Surely MS could devise a patch fairly quickly to disable the customXML features in Word 2003 and Word 2007 (e.g. disable the use of .DOCX files)? The document management systems I have come across are still using .DOC.
Maybe ISO will now drop the proprietary MS definition for a genuinely open document standard - but perhaps that would be too embarassing for them.
The audience reached via Ithe Internet (and therefore, the injury/damage to the victim) is likely to be much bigger than that reached through fliers or newspaper ads. Newspaper ads tend to be screened for unsuitable content, as the newspaper carries responsibility for what they publish.
The punishment should reflect the damage done. Trying to fuck up the social and working life of a 17 year old should probably carry a short prison sentence.
The bulk of applications for Windows Mobile are from sites that have no MS affiliation. The idea of a closed market, locked into the manufacturer maybe OK for Apple users but it is not what Windows Mobile users are used to. I couldn't give a shit if MS (or Apple) has approved some app for sale and makes something out of the sale - I like the freedom to install what I like from whatever souce. It is the same woth Nokia and Symbian - Nokia is not the only game in town.
If the Apple's idea of controlling everything is so good, why were people so quick to devise ways to break away from such restrictions?
Where MS has really missed the point is that they have not really improved the user interface enough, despite the obvious benefits of the iPhone UI.
Why apologise to someone after they are dead? I could understand an apology to family members or even friends but there is no point offering an apology to someone who is not around to receive it.
As others have said, there were may people affected by the legislation in question - should they not receive an apology because they are not well known? Why stop with homosexuals - how about other dead people affected by other types of unfair legislation?
That Turing is relatively unknown is not because he was a homosexual but because his accomplishments were in computer science, not in the arts like Oscar Wilde.
As a Brit living and working in Germany, I have experience of both the NHS and private medicine with private insurance. For starters, the private route is expensive because the doctors charge more for private treatment. Whilst tax payers have to pick up the tab for the medical costs of those who aren't contributing, the costs in the private systems seem to be much higher.
I found the NHS to be better in that they have a view of my total healthcare whereas the private system sees everything in terms of each insurance claim (and whether or not a condition or treatment is covered). Under the private system, doctors are keen to run up the bills and may even "try" several treatments before hitting one what works. This not only results in bigger insuranc claims but also, more time off work - bloody useless if your are a freelancer. The private schemes seem to get flaky in the area of incurable conditions and long term care.
I think the NHS would be better if the costs were separated from general taxation i.e. run as a real state insurance scheme with NHS costs spread amongst tax payers in a distinct charge.
My personal preference is for NHS with supplementary private insurance - it offers everything the private systems in Germany have but costs less and doesn't have limitations for long term or incurable conditions.
I don't know what the best solution is for the yanks - maybe they first need to reduce the excessive costs of their healthcare (when compared to other developed countries).
If they (Twitter) had left it in place, Twitter would likely have had some legal responsibility for subsequent victims and any losses they suffered.
It is interesting that some of the malware included apparently uses a website at bancobrasil to store stolen information. I wouldn't be comfortable being a customer of said bank if I knew someone was using their servers for nefarious purposes, apparently without the bank having any knowledge of such activity.
The snag for Microsoft here is that customers may be worried what might happen to Word/Office and Microsoft in the future and this may affect their purchasing decisions. Delaying the injunction and seeking to extend the legal process might actually hurt Microsoft more if they start losing customers due to the uncertainty. I would have thought they would be better off stomping up cash quickly to make the whole issue go away.
As a Brit living in Germany for coming up to ten years, I have some experience of both NHS and privately insured healthcare popular in both Germany and the USA. One of the big snags with private healthcare is that insurance companies will bend over backwards to avoid or dump patients with long term or incurable conditions. The NHS is actually quite good at long term care (because they don't look at everything in terms of individual insurance claims) and because they don't have thresholds for types of treatment per patient or shareholders to satisfy.
I know a few Germans who have looked at moving the the UK specifically because they or their partner needed dialysis or simlar treatments for incurable conditions that were no longer covered by their private insurer.
"Should they inadvertantly discover child porn on your PC while looking for bank fraud records, they're bound by law to ignore that, and charges against you for having those files would in fact be against the law (at least here in the US it is)."
That is NOT the case in the UK. Whatever turns up during a search can get someone into to trouble entirely unrelated to the original excuse for making the search. The laws on evidence in the UK are very different from those in the USA.
"...a five per cent decline in gross profits in the first six months of this year, but said it maintained revenues thanks to growth in offshoring work."
They might not have lost so much recruiting work if they weren't encouraging companies to move jobs offshore in the first place.
In Germany, the state of Lower Saxony holds "golden shares" in VW which ensures they can put a stop to any idea of VW moving production elsewhere. They didn't just give VW a loan and rely on a promise that they would stay.
I'm not a fan of nationalisation but shares are better collateral than promises. This can be applied to car manufacturers or banks or building societies.....
This is the famous "We were only following orders defence" and wholly unacceptable. The ordinary police need to be feeding information upwards to their superiors about the negative impact of the police's maltreatment of law-abiding citizens. The snag is, from what I have seen, ordinary police officers are quite happy to abuse people, looking for laws with which to justify it afterwards.
Exactly how many terrorists have been caught using these powers? Is this data available somewhere or is that a state secret? I suspect they have not caught a single terrorist by these means, in which case, the law should be repealed at the earliest opportunity.
Perhaps the Act was given the wrong title. The police seem to think it is "the Terrorism Act" because it gives them powers to terrorise the general public, who seem threatening to them. Had it been called the Anti-Terrorism Act, the police might have understood the true intent of such legislation.
The French have been steadily building nuclear power stations for decades. I thought the policy of the current UK government was to pay for a steady stream of reports from their friends (like the one under discussion here) but decide nothing and do nothing whilst hoping that the French will have enough capacity for everyone.
What's good for the goose.... I hope all those given a penalty will return the favour by charging their own penalty to the banks concerned. Of course, it may well be that some people's costs to rectify the errors (time, telephone, postage) are significantly higher than the costs for the bank to send a standard letter....
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