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Comment Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch (Score 1) 692

I dislike the guy but things have been going that way for a while now. Apple under Jobs were innovative patent trolls, Apple without Jobs are no longer innovative.
All the same, assessing the company on what your kids think is of limited value. Android products are usually more 'affordable' and are being aimed at older (30-something) kids with money to burn.

Comment Re:This makes sense (Score 1) 180

I have never had that problem in Germany but I can imagine where a hotel which had that policy is coming from.
The previous government implemented a law where you can get an "Abmahnung" (cease and desist, you have to pay the lawyers' real or imagined costs) if you have indulged in illegal file-sharing. There is no burden of proof. I got one a couple of years back for allegedly distributing some porno.
I immediately got a lawyer on to it and defused it a bit but a couple of things came out.

  • It does not matter if it was you or not if they claim it was your access-point. That applies even if a Trojan was responsible (unless you can finger the people responsible) or someone cracked your Wifi connection.
  • They absolutely do not care if the allegations are correct or not.

My Wifi was and is WPA2 with a 63-byte random upper/lowercase string as a key. I used a bootable CD virus scanner and made sure there was no trojan.
I *was* online at the time they claimed but assume they asked for the wrong ip-address or the wrong time. I decided I had the wrong ISP and left T-Online.

Comment This is ridiculous (Score 2) 181

Mimicry is perfectly standard behaviour for animals. There have been studies on how parents teach their offspring how to hunt dating back decades. This applies on land, on/under water and in the air. Most of the studies I have heard about involve mammals or birds, I can't remember any involving reptiles, fish or (in particular) insects. Some larger spiders may have this ability - ones large enough to eat small ground-nesting birds for instance
.
The article itself is more about adapting behaviour by watching humans and that is self-limiting, apart from speech there is not much useful a bird can learn that way. I have a neighbour who used to look after the garden before it was turned into a lawn. Back then he had a fan - a blackbird which would hang around when he was digging, waiting for worms to be unearthed. It presumably recognised my neighbour as non-threatening and the digging as the same thing it would do but on steroids.
I was attacked by a goose a few years back. We were sitting outside and someone had fun throwing it scraps, closer and closer to me. It tried to drive me off by driving at me while hissing and flapping its wings. I joined in the fun by advancing on it, hissing back and 'flapping' my arms the same way. Communication was achieved, goose withdrew to a safer distance.

Comment Re:Just as intended (Score 2) 165

oh no - their masters know full well what the rules are and accept protests immediately, it is the one handing out the tickets who does not 'get it'.

This happened a couple of years ago and I caught the person responsible a day later. We had a friendly, civilised (really!) exchange of views on the subject and she went off to check. A couple of days later we saw each other again and she apologised, telling me exactly what to write when I objected.

Comment Re:Just as intended (Score 1) 165

Who did not RTFA? (I say this linked on fark.com a couple of days ago)
The person with 33 is a woman.

I'm having problems with the local authority here at present. Parts of the street are designated "residents only" (people have a residents' card which they display) and parts are not. A muppet handing out tickets hands them out although that part of the street does not have those restrictions. The part which does is a one-way street but after a road comes in from the (other) side it becomes two-way and he does not understand that the rules automatically change.

Comment The photos should include the driver (Score 5, Informative) 165

The way this works in Germany is that two pictures are taken - one of the numberplate and one of the driver. I received a letter several years ago saying that my car had been caught speeding and that the driver was obviously not me - their face recognition software recognised a female driver. The photo was included and my (by then ex-) girlfriend paid the fine.
German courts do not consider the numberplate alone to be adequate ID, a practice going back decades.

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