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Comment Re:Unique? (Score 1) 190

It's written in the judgement, section 84:

"Apple itself must (having created the confusion) make the position clear: that it acknowledges that the court has decided that these Samsung products do not infringe its registered design. The acknowledgement must come from the horse's mouth. Nothing short of that will be sure to do the job completely."

The judge took believed Apple deserved it because they had to lean up the mess they created. The judgement (http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html) is very easy to read and the summary of the Publicity Appeal (section 64 onwards) goes through this verdict. I was quite surprised at how informal and layman-oriented the language was.

Comment OS X Regressions (Score 1) 484

For those not familiar with this paradigm shift in OS X, John Siracusa nails it in his Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review.

I don't think either implementation makes the applications easier to use. They seem to have been done for no other reason than "we can".

Mountain Lion's implementations aren't as awful, adding back most of the 10.6 functionality to iCal and making Address Book usable without constantly clicking between screens. However, they've gone this far, it would be trivial to remove the stitching and faux leather leaving them with standard apps that follow colouring conventions.

Certainly from a HUI perspective and imho the changes aren't positive.

Comment Re:The problem is shifting liability (Score 3, Insightful) 133

I used to work in a store when Chip & PIN was introduced to the UK - after the switchover we were told in no uncertain terms that we would take liability if we didn't use Chip & PIN when it was available (e.g. verify by signature). This makes a lot of sense to me, as some peoples signatures had rubbed off and others really didn't match.

Whenever I go to the US, my card is almost never checked. I usually get my card back before I even sign. There is often zero fraud prevention at the point of sale. Even when they ask for photo ID (rarely) they often just check the picture, not my name or even if it's valid ID.

From my side, I would consider liability to be very much on a merchant who didn't bother checking properly and reduce it as an incentive to help me reduce fraud (e.g. chip & pin systems).

Comment "Find new niches" (Score 4, Interesting) 432

Why does GNOME have to find new niches? It's the de-facto desktop installation for an awful lot of distributions and has been the primary choice for an awful lot of people for the past 10+ years.

It seems to me that they already had a huge user base and many more coming on-board through the likes of Fedora, Ubuntu and Linux Mint. They had a good thing going with a consistent toolkit (GTK+2), LGPL and some really nice software. From my humble perspective, this is a great starting point.

Instead they released GNOME 3. I have no idea who it's for? I remember GNOME 1.x and the thousands of configuration options - it was definitely overkill for a standard desktop environment. I think GNOME 3 is bad for exactly the opposite reasons - completely no customisation. I have no idea why they can't get this right and understand their target audience.

Fortunately, there are solid alternatives. However, I find it a great shame that GNOME seems to be determined to lose its userbase to meet some CS/HCI textbook ideal.

Comment Re:Linux on Mac?! (Score 1) 780

Add this to your .vimrc for numpad:
"================
" Numpad Hacks
"================
" Map numpad keys 0-9 to their respective digits
:imap Oq 1
:imap Or 2
:imap Os 3
:imap Ot 4
:imap Ou 5
:imap Ov 6
:imap Ow 7
:imap Ox 8
:imap Oy 9
:imap Op 0

iTerm2 is a decent terminal emulator in my opinion.

Not saying OS X is perfect, but at least you an use numpad now. My vimrc has a couple of other tricks for OS X too:
http://matt.fragilegeek.com/vimrc

Comment Thanks Debian! (Score 5, Interesting) 172

In 1998 my mother bought me a 'Linux' book with Red Hat 5.2 attached. Being a geek I installed it and loved it. I dabbled with upgrading it and using the Ximian beta Gnome 2. It always felt clunky though.

Then I discovered Debian. Not only did it have an AWESOME package manager, but it taught me about free software. It showed me that people can collaborate across the globe to make an integrated, high quality operating system for free. Around this time, I was finding my place in the world and I honestly think the spirit of Debian helped me discover Humanism and a concept of greater, moral good.

To this day I am in awe of this effort. Looking across its entire collection, the social structure and the individual elements (kernel, GNU toolchain, X, OpenSSH etc) I think free software is one of humanities greatest achievements. Whether you use it or not, take reflection in how awesome this completely free project is and how much it's brought us.

Thanks Debian!

Comment Re:A fraction of what it could have been (Score 3, Insightful) 96

The problem with what you say is that NBCs coverage was profit driven. They tape-delayed shows to ensure prime-time audiences, cut large elements out of the opening/closing ceremonies and most events were not free to watch online without a cable subscription.

Whilst the BBC and the Television License is a subject of debate in the UK, it's very narrow-minded to say the $230 USD (not $300) brings only dramas. Comedy, news, current affairs, radio, light entertainment, online streaming, education and a whole load of other content ad-free.

I haven't looked up the figures, but my bet is that the BBC channels are amongst the most popular TV and Radio offerings in the UK - people clearly seem to like what they produce (myself included, I would pay the license fee just to have Radio 4).

Comment Re:Server (Score 1) 140

Cisco is presently moving to IOS-XE which is the classic IOS binary blob running under a Linux kernel, which strikes them a balance between stability/portability (Linux) and features (IOS).

Of course, it's somewhat disingenuous to describe IOS-XE as "Linux" as it's really using it as a hardware layer - more like a heavy hypervisor which can host other applications.

Comment Academic Freedom (Score 1) 582

Universities should be havens for academic freedom and research, not a narrow corridor where IT can arbitrarily set policy.

Fortunately most universities I know (at least in the UK) respect this. They might hate having to deal with student residences (the wild west), but they prefer to generally treat students as adults and respect that the internet is far too useful as a tool to have some guy lock it down in the misguided name of security.

Comment Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN (Score 1) 1040

It makes sense on a mac because the operating system decouples applications and windows. In other words, you can still manipulate an application even if it has no visible windows. Close and Quit are distinct functions.

I quite like this method as well as it provides a (relatively) consistent place to aim the mouse and the expectation that all programs will behave the same way. Windows confuses me these days. Some applications have no menu bar, others have lots of icons and so on. On a mac, you can click "Help" and type what you want to do and it's there - for every application.

Comment Happy Birthday! (Score 1) 271

'd not heard of this vim before, so thought I'd give it a go on its birthday - I'm even using it to write this message!

Happy birthday!

^C^C^C^Dquit

Comment Lousy reinforcement model (Score 1) 413

I quit about 4 months ago after about 4 years of playing the same class/role (warrior tank). The driving factor for me was that the game had massively shifted from being huge and exciting, with a real sense of achievement, to inevitable victories and reinforcement pellets.

I used to love playing with my girlfriend, levelling and exploring the new content. We felt skillful completing raids with a group of people. We were never the best, but we worked hard and achieved our goals. Even when Wrath of the Lich King came out, it still felt epic and there was a lot of new content to explore and play.

However, now it's just a Skinner box. See here and here for great articles on this.

So, no new content, a lazy achievements system and uninspired story telling made me quit. This time, I don't think I'll ever go back.

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