Posts by Oh Homer 1134 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2013
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 (plus amendments) in the UK, local laws in whatever countries it's hacking in, and various international treaties.
Admittedly pointing out that GCHQ is breaking the law is about as futile as pointing out that Israel is committing genocide. Laws are farcical without the means to enforce them.
BBC content that's paid for by the TV tax is also broadcast for profit in America. Is the BBC "propping up" America, or is that "drivel" too, by your definition?
The BBC is an ambivalent entity that can't seem to make up its mind if it's a public utility or a private corporation, and in reality is a private corporation funded by misappropriated taxpayers money. On the day that it ceases "propping up" America with this fraudulent activity (or conversely stops leaching from taxpayers), both it and its loyal acolytes can feel justified in whining about it also "propping up" Scotland.
If Scotland does in fact become an independent country, Amazon et al can continue selling us goods from Amazon UK, Amazon US or anywhere else it likes, but unless it also incorporates in Scotland it may find itself at a considerable disadvantage with respect to import duty and tax relief, assuming an independent Scotland decides to implement such things. That is after all the sole reason that global companies establish local operations in the first place.
By that same logic, StarBucks, Google and Amazon UK receive investment from their respective US parent operations, therefore the UK is not really independent.
Erm...
Well, if you want to look at it in terms of corporate globalism, it isn't. No country is. And despite the hype (and the tax "license") the BBC is just another global corporation (£5 billion a year, apparently).
Back on topic, whatever happens to broadband in Scotland, it can't possibly be any worse than it already is, so I for one welcome our new Scottish overlords.
Apparently OCR is a compound initialism that stands for Oxford, Cambridge and RSA, and RSA in turn rather inaccurately stands for the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. So really the whole thing should be OCRSAMC, to which my response would be OMFGWALOB.
Brought to you by Oxford, Cambridge and the Royal whatsit, proud ambassadors of the English language, an' shit.
Having read the contract, it's clearly a far better deal than would be offered by Universal, Warner or Sony, all of which would assume copyright ownership of the material in question, unlike Google:
2. LICENSE.a. Provider Content License. Provider grants to Google a non-exclusive, limited right and license to host, cache, route, index, transmit, store, copy, [etc.]
...
g. Reservation of Rights. Except for the licenses granted hereunder: (i) as between Google and Provider, all rights, title and interests (including all intellectual property rights) in and to the Provider Content, Reference Files, ID Files (created by Provider and furnished to Google by Provider), Provider Brand Features, and Provider cover art and associated materials furnished to Google by Provider will remain with Provider in accordance with and subject to applicable law
Sorry, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this can possibly be worse than completely losing title to your own property, as would be the case with any other music publisher.
@Squander Two: It seems there's more than one person here who's irony deficient (re: cockwomble).
I don't expect language to be clinical and soulless, but equally I don't especially enjoy the legitimisation and promotion of ignorance, which seems to be the OED's primary role these days.
@Irony Deficient: Well, by that reasoning, the word "sacrebleu" is English because it has been spoken by Englishmen. For that matter, one might argue that every word in existence is English for the same reason.
I don't see the ordinary man on the street proclaiming these words to be English, I see a single publisher arbitrarily declaring them as such.
It's not that I'm being a cockwomble (see what I did there?), after all I fully appreciate that language needs to be dynamic in order to describe the new facets of an evolving culture, but the problem is that many of these new words are not being created out of the necessity to describe something new, they're being created unnecessarily by illiterate people (mostly Americans, it seems), who are blissfully ignorant of the perfectly adequate words that already exist to describe things that are fundamentally not really new at all.
It's like a sort of idioglossia pandemic borne of ignorance, and the OED is merely legitimising that ignorance.
Yes, but who exactly gets to decide what qualifies as "English", just because it's a new word that appears on the Internet? If it's new, then how exactly is anyone supposed to determine which language it belongs to? Why not designate it as French or Klingon or Gibberish instead?
Has nothing to do with trust, since a) it's open source and thus fully auditable, and b) the NSA washed their hands of it years ago (indeed they regret ever having released it, which is a very good sign), and thus no longer have any influence over it (and it's not like there's any obscure encryption code in there that could have been deliberately weakened).
No, the problem with SELinux is it's just too damned complicated for the average user to understand and maintain, which itself represents a security risk, because if you can't understand it then you can't use it effectively, in fact you're literally lulled into a false sense of security. You end up completely dependent on upstream and/or distro maintainers to provide secure SELinux policies (so in that sense I suppose it really is a question of trust), and sadly they are not only fallible but indeed sometimes appear to have a rather contemptuous attitude toward security.
See PolicyKit as another equally complex and obfuscated example.
I'm a firm believer in the KISS principle, or as da Vinci once put it; "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". The complexity of SELinux makes it utterly useless, IMO, and quite possibly dangerous.
Paralysis - how can we restore movement to those with paralysis;
Electroencephalogram-controlled pneumatic prosthetics (already invented).
Antibiotics - how can we prevent the rise of resistance to antibiotics;
Stop using them.
Food - how can we ensure everyone has nutritious, sustainable food;
Stop being greedy, and freely redistribute the 17% of food we currently overproduce.
Dementia - how can we help people with dementia to live independently for longer;
Stop trying to force the elderly and infirm to live in isolation, and take responsibility for caring for them, instead of discarding them like trash.
Flight - how can we fly without damaging the environment;
Solar-powered aircraft (already invented).
Water - how can we ensure everyone has access to safe and clean water.
Solar stills, wells and desalination plants (already invented).
I claim my £10 million prize.
Please donate it to Oxfam.
It's just a building. What exactly do they expect to "achieve" in one building that they wouldn't in any other?
I'd be more concerned about what certain people "achieve" outside a building in King's Cross, especially after dark.
Or maybe that's part of Google's perks package.
There are still websites that demand a web browser with just a 10% market share?
Wow, that's true loyalty.
Yes, sadly that seems inevitable, given how many Gnome developers and Gnome Foundation members are Red Hat employees (e.g. Poettering). In fact Red Hat should probably just buy Gnome; it already owns it in every practical sense anyway, and is essentially the only Gnome 3 distro (by default).
Windows 7 copied KDE4, not Vista, and KDE4 most certainly did predate Windows 7. Vista, on the other hand, was primarily copied from OS X.
Hundreds of bogus patents along the lines of "rounded rectangles", just like Apple.
If there were any actual substance to these patents, Microsoft wouldn't be so coy about them. Their victims are no doubt coughing up just to avoid protracted litigation - a lose-lose proposition.
"So what?" I see, so first you make a bullshit claim then, when you're proven wrong, you pretend you asked a completely different question, whilst neatly ignoring the entire topic of the article, re: who copied whom.
As for subjective things like "quality", crApple's garbage has had more than its fair share of failures, and it's financial success is purely driven by exorbitant prices (which is why it makes more money than anyone else, despite having a tiny market share). That's all very laudable, I suppose, if you're the sort of person who admires rip-off artists.
But as fascinating as that is, the point of this article is who copied whom, and given that Apple is the least innovative plagiarist in history, clearly it's Apple that copied everyone else.
If I were you, I'd pick a replacement "SuccessCase", because your current one seems to have failed.
Sorry Mr. BasketCase but, as you were already told six months ago, the first portable resistive touch screen device with handwriting recognition was actually the Linus Write-Top, released in 1987, a full six years before the Newton.
That's what this PR exercise is really about. The continued opportunity to easily spy on us, yes, but also the fact that American corporations are screaming blue murder about the business the NSA caused them to lose.
Spying on ones supposed allies is important, and all that, but in the Land of the Fee money is always the number one priority.
My only complaint is that, now it's no longer state owned, BT has basically given up serving rural areas.
At least nationalised industries aren't profit-oriented, and thus people like me might actually have stood a chance of getting decent broadband some time before we die of old age.
I live at the top of a hill. I have three different handsets, three SIMs, one from Voda, EE and O2.
Goes outside and waves at big cell tower in the distance.
Zero bars.
Three miles further away from the tower, at the bottom of the hill, no longer able to see the tower.
Five bars.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
