Posts by Vladimir Plouzhnikov 3264 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2007
People may not like the Wikileaks guy, consider him eccentric, self-aggrandising, arrogant or whatever.
One should remember though that reasonable people whom everybody likes become plumbers, bankers and IT specialists. Reasonable people usually do not take the risks of non-conforming and going against the establishment.
So, don't expect a project like Wikileaks to be led by a nice guy. It just can't happen.
This and the patent trolling is only possible because of the crazy American system when in a court case the losing side is not liable to cover the winning side's legal expenses. Therefore, people will often give in to settle even a most ridiculous and unjustified claim because they know it will be more expensive for them to win than to pay the extortionist. There is even a term for this - it's called "nuisance fee".
I've heard many people complaining that the latest 3 SW movies are so bad and the PM is the worst of all, however, when asked to elaborate none can come up with any rational explanation to what is actually so wrong with the movies and how they are so much worse than the original 3.
I came to a conclusion that the complainers have watched the original movies when they were children and when they saw the new movies they expected that somehow magically they will be transported back into their childhood, so now it's Lucas fault that it didn't happen.
Objectively, the latest 3 movies are at the very least no worse than the first 3, if not better (while the acting is of the same quality the, effects are, of course, better and there is a semblance of plot as well).
I'd rather have a laptop stolen from me than allow a third party to disable it remotely when they feel like it.
Anti-theft? Sounds more like anti-user. Do something with your machine that Intel does not approve of - get it bricked.
The only useful application I see is for the MOD and HMRC - as they like to have their laptops left on trains/airplanes etc.
I would like some croquet investigation please.
Perscott's lament:
"Ive been waiting here for so long
And all this time has passed me by
It doesn't seem to matter now
You stand there with your fixed expression
Casting doubt on all I have to say.
Why don't you touch me, touch me,
Why don't you touch me, touch me,
Touch me now, now, now, now, now..."
You might want to check these videos for some tips on the payload construction etc.:
http://www.vimeo.com/12421661
http://www.vimeo.com/13891367
Though he has somewhat larger payload allowance - 1240 grams instead of 500... but he used 2 cameras and it was in America, where everything is bigger, as we all surely know.
It's about the market place and liquidity.
The most liquid markets are those that are standardised, open for most participants and don't have high cost of entry/maintaining position. If you have that, the market will tolerate a certain amount of abuse/manipulation as long as it is not too much.
However, that tolerance does not mean that the market may not become even more liquid if you take active measures to reduce manipulation further. That's why the most liquid market places are regulated exchanges.
When you look at say MS Windoze - it is accepted as a "market place" because most PCs in the world use Windoze, anyone can write a piece of software to run on it and the information on system's functions is mostly accessible to everyone. This outweighs the multiple faults of the Windoze itself and the attempts at abuse and manipulation by MS (IE, MSMPlayer, MS Office etc.)
So, MS is a known market manipulator which is temporarily tolerated by the market it runs. Everybody knows it would steal a bit here and there where it can but it won't let some other guy to chop down your market stall and beat you with a stick, so to say.
However, this model is still stinks (just like lots of quasi-exchange markets in the world do) and it can be easily improved by introducing regulated competition.
For example, ff some standards body were to publish a set of APIs that are mandatory for an operating system this would immediately bring competition into the OS arena and MS's "monopoly" will disappear very quickly. Same with the other stuff you mention...
"But that said, you also need a plane which maintains control if it loses both engines. And which stays afloat for long enough to let the passengers get out safely if you do ditch. Airbus scored on both of those counts."
Any plane allowed to operate in scheduled airline service by law must be able to do all of the above unless it loses the engines together with the wings. If it can't, it will never be certificated by any civil aviation regulator (FAA, CAA etc.).
I see lots of Scarebus fans here. Is it some kind of brand loyalty, support for the local manufacturer or superstitious hope that because most of short-haul European aircraft are Airbuses then if you praise it more you will be less likely to crash in one?
The thing is there is not enough data points to say whether an Airbus or a Boeing or an Embraer or whatever is inherently safer than other a/c in a ditching situation.
Examples of most manufacturer's a/c were ditched more or less successfully over the years. The recent Hudson River accident has only one significance to it - it's recent and as such people tend to remember it more. But to base your belief that Scarebus is safer on that one accident is a mistake.
"although my eldest (step)daughters 17 & if someone had pics of her in her undies being listed on the sex offenders registers the least of thier worrys as I have chain saw :-)"
What if that would be her boyfriend to whom she did give the picture herself? You know, that boyfriend of hers might well end-up on the sex offender register because he can shag her legally (over 16) but he can't have her pictures (under 18). Will you still cut him up (perhaps your future would-be son-in-law)?
An article appeared on BBC an hour ago:
QUOTE:
Two teachers have been arrested in the West Midlands on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.
The men, aged 37 and 43, who teach at separate Solihull schools, were arrested in Monkspath, Solihull. Both have been suspended.
A police spokesman said: "At this stage... there is nothing to suggest any physical contact between the suspects and the children."
They were bailed for further inquiries and for seized property to be examined.
Solihull Borough Council will shortly be contacting parents whose children attend the schools to inform them directly of the arrests, the police spokesman added.
UNQUOTE:
Hardly a day goes by now without some child-porn related case appearing in the news. Are these two active abusers who made the pictures themselves or are they passive sexually-confused pictures-watchers? Have they done real harm or is the harm being done by publicly exposing them and in the process traumatising children and parents?
"How people can keep collections of hundred of images of kids showing their underwear and not think it's a problem is beyond me......it underlines how completely fucked up so-called normal sexuality is in this world - something that us BDSM people actually find unnerving and a bit disgusting."
Well, I can't tell for everyone but I consider myself pretty "normal" sexually and I too find these things unnerving and disgusting, so BDSM people do not have monopoly on that.
But I'm also puzzled: why does it seem that anytime anyone's computer appears in the possession of the police they find child porn images on it (especially if it belongs to a teacher)?
Are they all being framed by the police? Is it because of selective publicity in the media? Or is it because we have much higher proportion of paedophiles in the society than we would have thought otherwise?
If it's the latter - we (collectively) must be doing something very wrong because we seem to be in denial.
I am quite sure that the proportion of paedophiles among people should stay pretty much constant throughout the time, just like that of other mental illnesses (unless there are factors involved such as some kind of mass poisoning/mutation etc).
That means that if we see a lot of paedophiles now there were lots of paedophiles before, always. Yet, we are still here and the society has not collapsed. That means in turn that most of the paedophiles are not trying to act out on their fantasies.
So does it make sense to seek out and prosecute these latent/passive paedos if they are not the ones doing the damage? Why not leave them be but concentrate on those who actually abuse children, those who make the photos (and not those who only look at them)? Why not let the passive ones to quietly draw their fantasies on paper and in CGI but crash like a proverbial ton of bricks on those who physically molests children?
It seems to me that the authorities are doing exactly the opposite - going for the easy target, "low hanging fruit", the capture of which gives them opportunities to announce major victories, to stage high-profile prosecutions of small fish while the real sharks keep swimming in the deep.
I have a big problem with such approach.
People are quick to blame pilots in such cases - they have forgotten to set the flaps for take off.
But these pilots were on the same plane as the passengers, they would not have intentionally been cavalier about the plane configuration as it affected them as much as the rest of the pax. They would also not just forget that the flaps need to be set - that's a basic flight issue, you just don't forget that planes need high-lift devices for t/o and landing.
But with all that the pilots still failed to set the flaps, they failed to catch this in their pre-take off check lists, the aircraft automation failed to warn the pilots about that, the pre-flight checks failed to identify that the aurual warning has been turned off by maintenance, the company procedures allowed the critical systems in the head office to be infected with malware and so on and so forth. There is never one single reason behind such a catastrophic event and the pilots cannot be blamed for this.
Pilots are human and they behave as humans - they miss things when they become distracted or overloaded or placed in a situation which has deviated from routine for whatever reason. Humans in the cockpit need a backup in the automation and organisational systems. When those systems fail the "naked" human on the front-end will likely fail as well.
Because I thought the US (and UK) rock'n'roll music has died as the result of the record companies realising that it's far easier to mass-produce sickly-sweet teen-oriented crap on their conveyor belts than invest in risky development of real talent playing real music.
If you, Stevie, join Sir Rich Cliffard and the likes, lobbying for copyright extensions, DRMs, internet disconnections and other IP "protection" you will sure help to put the final nail in the musical coffin once and for all...
It appears that each of these images found on the teacher's computer could well be legal but somehow, because there were 25,000 of them the CPS and the judge decided that the teacher thought certain thoughts while looking at them.
If that is not a prosecution of a thought crime then I don't know what is.
I always thought that if each of the pictures is legal in its own right then even if you have millions of them they should still be legal. I was wrong obviously.
I am becoming seriously worried about children safety in this country now. If every paedophile out there will feel that looking at even legal pictures of children (or drawings, cartoons etc) presents the same risk to him as actually abusing children they will all be on the streets, going for the real thing, instead of wanking away in front of their PCs.
The responsibility for this will be with the moral vigilantes among the police, lawmakers and media.
What is going to be the wingspan?
I'm a bit pessimistic about paper straw spars bearing the load of a cantilever high aspect wing...
Also, I think that even the tailless scheme like that of the Horten will spin on release due to low density of the air at high altitude and it will add to the stress when the plane will descend into lower atmosphere layers.
Maybe a delta wing with a keel or a tail fin (like an origami paper airplane) would be more appropriate?
This is the first time I hear that pedofils are a threat to airports. I understand that terrorists can commit mass murder by blowing themselves up in front of an economy check-in desk but what can pedofils do that is equally dangerous? Wank themselves to death? Commit mass insemination, perhaps?
"So people convicted of sexually abusing children should get into trouble if they are caught looking at drawings of children being abused. "
It's an interesting proposition and one which seems to be taken as a given by the general public as well. But if you think about it - it's the paragon of stupidity, really.
So, you take someone who is a paedophile (we assume that the prior conviction was justified) and who has served his allotted time. He is still a pedophile and will always be (you can't change that by putting someone in prison for a few years). Now, if you really want him to not bother children anymore the last thing to do is to take away the only substitute for real action he can conceivably have - the pictures.
What that will do is quite clear - given that looking at pictures and committing the real acts bear the same risks, your paedophile will be much more inclined to go the whole way. Won't someone please think of the children, just for once?
And the same, as you say, goes for Jeffrey Dahmers etc. You totally confuse cause and effect - it's what's in their mind that makes them like these pictures, not the other way round.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
