Posts by grammarpolice

Android to drop Dalvik VM for high-performance ART in next version

Re: Strange...

The next best thing ever is a solution that works on many platforms not just one.

So for the foreseeable future that is HTML5+JavaScript.

Samsung's 'OS of Everything' Tizen still has little to offer

Re: Its the Apps Stupid!

Apps are a massive issue. And developers these days don't want to have to redevelop their app five times in five different languages for five different platforms.

Therefore, increasingly, they just write to the lowest common denominator, which is *tada* HTML5+JavaScript. Every mobile platform can run this. It's rapidly becoming the new Latin. And Tizen looks like it will be able to run it faster.

Piketty thinks the 1% should cough up 80%. Discuss

Re: Hmm

"The welfare state does not take money from anybody (that's the job of the inland revenue)"

It is disingenuous to suggest that there is absolutely no connection between the two. We are taxed at least in part in order to fund the welfare state. If the article is predicated on this not being the case, it fails.

Hmm

"We have a welfare state, whose aim and purpose is to make us all richer."

No it isn't. It's to prevent people from dropping off the bottom of the ladder and either dying (which makes our society look bad) or resorting to crime to survive (which damages lawful taxpayers).

New iOS 8 SDK: Come in, apps. Get cozy, sip wine, swap numbers

All new technology

I seem to remember there might have been something like this before. Wasn't it called COM?

Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the worst

Re: Platoooooo0n - HALT!

There is no information yet on how much calling up a "pod" would cost. It might be more expensive than a taxi.

Google's SPDY blamed for slowing HTTP 2.0 development

Good

Internet protocols should be designed first and then implemented afterwards. Retrofitting the design to an existing implementation is a sure fire way to get lock in.

Son of ACTA pours fuel on IP trade fire

"The public interest"

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140516/06133827253/water-cannons-turned-peaceful-ttip-protestors-brussels-as-public-barred-negotiations.shtml

"Peaceful demonstrations are not in the public interest"

ULA says to blame SpaceX for Russian rocket rebuff

Re: Oh shit

Boring Putin propaganda is boring.

Watch out, Yahoo! EFF looses BADGER on sites that ignore Do Not Track

Re: What do you want for free?

Tracking has nothing inherently to do with advertising.

If you don't like your tracker being blocked, try treating your customers as human beings rather than pigs to be fattened.

So, just how do you say 'the mutt's nuts' in French?

Re: Testicul par canem

Actually no.

Colei canis is what you're after.

Meet the man building an AI that mimics our neocortex – and could kill off neural networks

Re: Let a thousand flowers bloom

I'll echo thanks for this, but I will say that trying to emulate pre-cortical brain structures is unlikely to elicit much excitement from the general populace, who won't consider something intelligent until it can speak their language. Kudos to Jeff therefore for trying to build some models of much higher level stuff.

Regarding private sector need for results - not so long ago the main driver for results was the military, and I don't think that private enterprise's goals are much more worthy. Better to strive for a better understanding of who we are as humans than settle for models that can help us to destroy or one-up each other.

Original iPhone dev team was 'shockingly small' - Apple engineer

So how big was it? Small is relative. Article is lacking in useful information.

ISPs' pirate-choking blocking measures ARE effective – music body

Re: Censorship?

"I don't particularly agree with a lot of the actions of the music corporations, but how is trying to stop people illegally access your copyrighted product without paying for it censorship?"

Definition of censorship: The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated.

That's how.

Reality check: Java 8 finally catches a multi-core break

Re: Wait, what?

Multicore programming has been in Java since java.lang.Thread. And if you think that lambda syntax is cleaner and more maintainable than the explicit API of java.util.concurrent, well, all I can say is you're going to be creating jobs for contractors for years to come.

Three-yaarrgh! Major UK mobile network's data goes down

Not so hard

When Virgin sods up my cable connection yet again, I can always rant about it via 3G. So why shouldn't the reverse be true? Likewise I can go use a connection at work or round a friend's.

Quite a lot of people have more than one way of connecting to the Internet, old chap.

Ex-NSA guru builds $4m encrypted email biz - but its nemesis right now is control-C, control-V

Useless

This is all totally pointless because if the bad men know you have a secret they will force you to tell them the secret (give you the keys) or they will do nasty things to you (like imprisonment, thanks Paul Beresford!).

The only workable solution is one whereby you don't have a secret that is detectable by any known means, i.e. steganography. This puts the burden of proof on the courts to show that you actually had a secret in the first place. Of course, it's still not 100% watertight because it will probably be countered by a Yanukovych-style squad of hit men who will come around and anonymously break your kneecaps because you made life difficult for them anyway.

Developers: Behold the bug NOBODY can fix

Deploy, then test. No, wait, was that right?

Virgin Media's 'little(ish)' book of deals contained BIG FIBS, rules ad watchdog

Re: They are slimy

Broadband is fast but even with a rock solid fibre optic network they still manage to have network outages lasting several hours at a time, at least as frequently as DSL providers. I'd rather have something slower where I can actually do stuff more of the time.

Bacteria-chomping phages could kill off HOSPITAL SUPERBUGS

Re: One question...

Also, when they have finished eating all their target bacteria, they die off because they don't have any food any more, instead of hanging around damaging anything else.

Re: What took them so long?

All of this together means that there's relatively little money to be made from them for most applications.

And now we see the real reason that big pharma has been persuading the medical establishment in the West that they're too risky.

The web needs globally backed, verifiable security standards – says Huawei

Re: Hahaha

What, you mean outright lying? Because that's what Huawei is doing here.

[citation needed]

Re: Verifyable and open standards @Steve Knox

I'm going to call bullshit on both of those statements as I have implemented directly from RFCs perfectly easily before and know many others who have; and generally the "off-the-shelf" source code is targeted towards the app it was written for rather than being a generic library, and in the case where it is a generic library it's often too generic for the purpose or usues the wrong paradigm (e.g. push rather than pull).

Oracle drops shedload of CRITICAL vuln-busting Java patches

You're running Windows, so you clearly enjoy a load of crap being installed on your machine.

Whodathunkit? Media barons slit own throats in flawed piracy crackdowns

Re: "Theft"?

It's not theft of the content, at any rate (since the owner is not deprived of the content).

Cannabis can CURE CANCER - cheaply and without getting you high

You can use 'an' before a word starting with h only when its first syllable is unstressed or where the h is silent (e.g. 'hour', or 'herb' if you're American). In 'hotel' the second syllable is the one with the stress so 'an hotel' is fine. The stress on 'hallucinogen' is /ˌhæl.uː.ˈsɪn.ə.dʒən/ i.e. the first syllable has secondary stress.

there is a significant difference in an intoxicant and an hallucinogen

there is a significant difference between an intoxicant and a hallucinogen (NB 'hal' syllable of hallucinogen has secondary stress and 'an' is therefore not appropriate)

Double-click? Oh how conventional of you, darling!

Re: Click, wait, click...

(Alternatively, open Terminal.app . Type 'mv', drag victim file from Finder window and drop onto terminal window, type new name inside quotes, press return)

I love having all my files in my home directory as well.

Wanna run someone over in your next Ford? No dice, it won't let you

Do No Evil

Perhaps Ford are finally trying to make up for all those donations to the Nazi party and the Ford Pinto case.

Or maybe they're just trying to make money.

Be prepared... to give heathens a badge: UK Scouts open doors to unbelievers

Re: What about the elephant?

The Queen is just a symbol representing the country; it's exactly the same situation when you take a commission in the military.

It's a bit like putting your hand on your heart when you say "I solemnly swear..." - nobody is actually claiming that the heart is actually the centre of honesty and probity in the body, it's just a representative symbol of such.

Re: Nice to see them catch up with the girls

[quote]Given that the last Census shows that 59% of the country is Christian[/quote]

...given a census with the following multiple guess options:

1. Christian good next door neighbour

2. Mujahideen terrorist*

3. Om chanting unwashed hippy*

4. Atheism is not a religion, we'll just put you down as Christian

5. Something else*

*by selecting this option you give permission for jackbooted police to kick down your door

'Stupid old white people' revenge porn ban won't work, insists selfie-peddler

Re: Ah, his scumbag is

I agree, it's pretty boggling.

1. Revenge porn

2. ???

3. Socialists are evil

Big data: You've got to spend a dollar ... to make fifty-two cents – report

Re: Unless this is actually an advertising piece, I suggest this conclusion is wrong...

*itself

HTH

Congrats on MP3ing your music... but WHY bother? Time for my ripping yarn

ICT or drama

Since ICT as she is taught in modern British schools is to computer science as the quickstart guide to Mario Kart Wii is to mechanical engineering, I humbly submit that your progeny made a superior choice with drama.

Valve shows Linux love with SteamOS for gamers

cooperating system?

More like co-opting system when Valve are involved. These guys are going to make Canonical look like champions of user freedom.

'Peeping while you're sleeping' NSA parody T-shirt ban BACKFIRES

Trivially avoiding anti-parody trademark suits

These are ridiculously easy to avoid if you think for 2 seconds about it.

Simply replace "National Security Agency" with "Notional Security Agency", reverse some of the colours in the logo and add and/or remove some of the embellishments. People will still know exactly what you're talking about.

Russian spyboss brands Tor a crook's paradise, demands a total ban

Re: Welcome

Based on this logic, during the time that being gay was a criminal offence in the UK, you would propose to gay people "just don't be gay then".

Microsoft warns of post-April zero day hack bonanza on Windows XP

Re: Wait, hear that?

Of course, when you do upgrade, we'll do exactly the same thing to you again a few years down the line. And that's a promise.

Boston U claims LED patent, files against tech giants

Re: So who still thinks software patents are a special case?

Logic is a mathematical construct. All software is an expression of that logic. Therefore all software is a mathematical construct and should not be patentable.

The processing that goes on in your brain can be expressed as a mathematical construct. An idea is an example of the processing that goes on in your brain. Therefore an idea is a mathematical construct and is not patentable.

Firefox OS mobilises HTML5, without the added Steve Jobs

Re: I don't see this as an advantage.

People wrote good apps in BASIC, and that was brutally limited and unsophisticated.

Grow up and get over your entitlement issues.

Whitehall grants copyright pirates safe haven until 2015

Thank God for that

We were in danger of losing our Quintessential Pirate Nation Award to the Somalis.

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf predicts the future, fears Word-DOCALYPSE

Re: This is not new

Generally the County Record Offices these days are wise to this and busily converting everything to PDF/A, which Vint seems to have completely overlooked.

iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent

Re: @john 19

After all their products, outside of the styling, may as well have been made from a parts catalog of components on offer by other companies.

OS X: made from bits on offer by other companies.

Not.

Re: Waste of Space (Don Jefe)

There is no right or wrong in this case.

Of course there is: software patents are wrong. I think everyone else in this thread can see that.

Google nuke thyself: Mountain View's H.264 righteous flame-out

Google not evil enough

If Google had been Microsoft, then when they acquired YouTube they would have started dropping support for H.264 in favour of WebM - not across the board, but selectively, gently and quietly, until enough of the clients it didn't control implemented WebM well enough. Then they could just drop H.264 completely since virtually everything that could view YouTube could use WebM to do so.

Unfortunately they were too concerned with scraping the pennies from every last corner under the sofa by giving consumers what was convenient for them at the time, and dropped the ball.

Facebook bows to pressure, vows to rid itself of sexist hate speech

Re: If we don't protect the speech we hate...

The problem with invoking freedom of speech or censorship arguments here is that the means by which the information is published has moved on rapidly from the concepts that ideals of freedom of speech and censorship were supposed to address.

If you as a person stand up and say "I believe X", whatever X is, then you should not be punished for it (although you may be criticized) and you should not be refused publication based simply in the argument you present. That, I think everyone can agree on.

If an untraceable anonymous publication is made that urges people to kill their neighbours and rape their wives, does this deserve the same degree of protection? Arguably, by remaining under the veil of anonymity, you forfeit your right to publication in any case - your posts can be removed and it's not censorship - because you're not opening yourself up to proper criticism or legal recourse should there be any. In traditional media, it's the difference between publishing a scientific paper expounding some theorem (which the majority may well disagree with or object to) versus scrawling graffiti in a public place. You're not going to argue that the council can't remove the graffiti? It simply doesn't deserve the same degree of protection because the author is not accountable.

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

Half way

The Start Menu is mostly good for 2 things: (1) to launch applications, and (2) to log out, reboot, or shut down the computer. If the Start Button jumps immediately to All Apps, it solves the first problem. Show me where in the new interface the new user (former Windows user) is supposed to discover how to log out.

Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

Re: So wait, these services aren't competing on merit?

As a tech-savvy person ... I don't see why everybody is in a privacy tizzy. Maybe if somebody at Google was reading all my email ... then how is that a privacy issue exactly?

Hilarious, keep it up.

Forget the word 'cyberwar' says Marcus Ranum

Not war

When you use the means at your disposal to attack civilians rather than soldiers, we usually call this terrorism rather than war.

So cyberterrorism would be a better term than cyberwar. Now it's for the Americans to justify their budgets and resources dedicated to terrorism.