lol american.

We've already for gotten Re Anderson! This is historic and something quite relevent to our "constitution".

( facts : http://www.justice.org.uk/images/pdfs/11inter.PDF )

Re Anderson is an ex parte case involving one of the Jamie Bulger killers. The death of this toddler was horrific beyond many people's imagination (I've purposefully kept ignorant of exactly what the killers did because the little i've heard sickens me enough!). The case set a precent however. It involves the HRA - Human Rights Act... A "bit of law" (a fantastic peice of legislation that DOES work - and actually protects your civil rights - see Re MB). The HRA enacts the ECHR - the European Charter on Human Rights - which essentially requires the "law" or officer of the judicary (a distinct and separate entity to the government) to pass judgements on people. Ex p Anderson makes descretionary tariff setting (by a politician or government appointee) illegal. The principle is simple: they are not a fair judge. Anderson proved that the then Home Sec was unfair in giving the individual life (all of it, not a sentence) imprisonment without parol. McKinnon is a prime example of where ee have another case of no judicial oversight into a judicial matter - the whim of a politician is massaged in exactly the same way as Ex p Anderson!

Yadda yadda

Matt

I'm pleased with Windows 7... So in order the counter the FUD i'll explain. Also, don't read this to merely complain I'm spewing crap: I know I am.

I'm an 'old school' zipslack 3.4 user. I not-so-recently installed ubuntu on an away-from-home PC that sits at my parents, and admin a decrepit centos-4 virtual machine. I've come a long way on RH machines.

I'd like to think I know what I talk about when I talk about the desktop: I've tried QNX ("things work"), BeOS (50Mb of "everything works all at once, weee"), and various Linux GDMs - fvwm95 being "good enough" for me. I'm a part-time KDE fanboy too. I'm a Vista-hater, although I do put up with it on my laptop because I have to (came pre-installed/don't want a Linux laptop)

Prior to Windows 7 I ran XP64. I didn't upgrade to XP32 until after Win 98 was largely depreciated and support began to stop (for the first time), as Win 98 was "perfect" for me (so was Communicator 4.72, but that's another story). SP2 was out shortly after I upgraded to XP, so I didn't feel any of the pain people consistently remind me XP had. I upgraded to x64 a few months after it came out, (again missing pre XP SP1 problems since XP64 is Win 2003 + SP1) even though I couldn't use any wireless adaptors, I praised the Win 2003 'core' stability.

So... with all that: I like Windows 7... *BUT* I have a brand new 4-core, 6Gb, dual ATI beast to enjoy it with. My initial reason for buying it outright on preorder (£140!), and not going the student edition upgrade route (£38) was that I wanted the "Pro" edition for gaming, and another licence not an upgrade in situ copy (I've plenty of working license via my MSDNAA membership, but this year I don't have access to Windows because I've switched away from the Computing dept).

I also wanted to experience a newer OS that had multiple cores in mind. As an LWN reader and Con Kolivas fanboy, I knew I wasn't ready to move to a full Linux desktop: I don't want to configure my graphics card to work, and the new open source ATI drivers won't power my games like they do under Windows (I spent money on my graphics card, and I want to make use of it!).

I usually theme to Windows classic without exception, and did the same with Windows 7 until I decided I wanted a transparent taskbar - so although I've small icons, quick launch and zoomed out on my desktop for smaller icons (CTRL-mouse wheel everyone), I'm happy with the Windows 7 UK theme. The new Win-key short-cuts are pretty useful!

It's the little things I'm pleased with. The console defrag has a parallel option, and works great out of the box - I can defrag a HD and watch videos without *any* stuttering. The native h.264 codecs work well (although I haven't tested them much they were the 3rd thing I upgraded b/c of a TV Versity transcoding limitation - ie: upgraded to recent codecs/and TVV needs to be a "user" service etc).

I'm pleasantly surprised with the instantly available/stripped down Media Player: under Windows 7 it's x2 as fast to start as Media Player Classic - the only annoyance I have with it is how small the track bar is, and that I can't use space to pause or my mouse wheel for volume.

oooh time to go to the pub!

Oh please!

It's not a stealth thing at all. The low power SoC market has always been ARMs. It's AMD (Geode... and then Intel's Atom) who decided to bring x86 to the low power market. If anything the article should focus on the troubles ARM is likely to face in the near future: unless RISC can continue to compete for price (aggressively), I doubt that adding more pipelines will make the general purpose platform developers happy - RISC bottlenecks will always be bottlenecks; x86 can simply gun for greater clock speed.

IMO Transmeta had it right: very long instruction words (which ultimately do 'everything'). Unfortunately it came 10 years too soon and no-one was ready because we didn't know "what" we wanted from a clock (or half clock etc if you're talking ARM...).

VLIW will be back soon enough, but I worry that it wont be the right place for ARM.

(nb: I am an ARM fanboy, having 'matured' in an ARM sponsored undergrad lab. it upsets me as much as anyone that ARM haven't tried to reinvent the wheel using the cash from their recent market dominance)

Matt

I thoroughly recommend his book, Bad Science, availible for less £5 on some sites.

We have moved to a service economy, therefore people have to justify their jobs in government.

We have a bloated civil service that commands too much power because they're not on top of their current workload thus submitting stupid proposals based on improper or myopic research is a career move and gives the illusion of competence.

I've met several councillors: they tend to be idiots with some form of aspergers (one is now a registered sex offender!)... Most are more concerned with controlling the incompetent voices rather than getting work done. It's a PR nightmare when you sack someone in public office - more so when you can't say how bad they are without further revelations about the state of the office ("So how long has it been that bad?") - so we're stuck with idiots in charge. But idiots surely wouldn't hide their incompetence would they?

The cabinet members don't have degrees or experience in their roles. There are too many cabinet changes (posts should be for the term of the cabinet, considering the first year of a politician's job is literally getting used to the backlog). If the Government killed some of the BS cabinet posts and put two ministers in charge of the really important stuff, things *might* get done.

In my opinion the problem is career politics and disrespect for the House of Lords and the peerage system (now stopped via the constitutional reform act), because they're too slow and considered, and the last bastion of hope for those pesky civil rights.

A good example is the no right turn sign that's recently appeared outside my flat in Nottingham, in order to make a road bus/bicycle only. There are several thousand people living here in a central city location. Go left and you hit traffic causing chaos (it's also a dangerous left). Go right, and you can ease into traffic via a route predominantly used by buses (coming from the town centre). From what I can tell, someone simply decided to add the no right sign. There was no consultation. We didn't get letters regarding the planning change. And they've added a number plate camera to catch people who continue to use it. If they expected people to continue to use the road (in order to justify the co-installation of the camera), perhaps there was a good reason *not* to make it a bus only route in the first place?

Another example is the decision of Oxfordshire council to change *all* their derestricted roads (national speed limit 60mph) to 50mph. Why?! Because it looks good.

I read the rough translation over at http://drop.io/breinpaidforthis_english

The only bit interesting was:

1.3 Since they summoned did not show up at the summoning they can now not fall back on the letter they have sent from 27th of juli 2009. Since they have said they were not going to be in court at the date appointed they can not fall back on not knowing about the summoning (article 142, lawbook of the netherlands Civil rights)

In most jurisdictions, if hold yourself out as intentionally disobeying an order of the court, they can throw the book at you in your absense. It all hinges on how the judge decides to interpret your letter of intent - they can be strict and litteral, or understanding and wide. Saying you will not be attending is very different to being unable to attend, regardless of whatever else said. Consider, "I am unable to attend the meeting because a family member has died and I am at the funeral at that time. I will not come." and "[at that time]. Please rearrange meeting". The latter indicates intent to come, whereas the former does not.

I find it hard to believe that they don't have prescribed methods of good notice - ie: in the UK good notice can be at their abode, registered address, or place of work. Only when you have "good notice" can you reply on preceedures in absense.

Matt

In Soviet Russia, super computer created from YOU!

If like me you read the business section of your broadsheet, then you'll probably be a little happier about this.

For those that didn't, Karl Icahn has been a one man activist investor of late. While admittedly Yahoo has had no compelling game plan, Icahn has quite simply been shit-stiring the whole Microsoft approach in order to get Yahoo to cave in. Originally MS wanted to buy out Yahoo's search business - but what would that leave the rest of Yahoo with? Icahn has been vocal about Yahoo not accepting several MS offers, so much so he's now got two seats on the Yahoo board in order to shut him up. The MS position was a simple win-win: gut one competitor, become stronger against google. Yahoo would get nothing but capital.

The Telegraph's business section insinuates Yahoo as missed out on the MS deal, but imho Icahn is a destructive force and a publicly vocal MS fanboy who's ignorant of the last 5 failured for MS search relaunches. Yahoo.com needs search (regardless of who provides it) to remain a serious internet business. It cannot move to advertising and mail alone - just look at Doubleclick's poor growth (wtf did the SEC approve the doubleclick/google merger?!). People notice when search engines become irrelevent - just look at the death of hotbot/altavista/lycos.

With this deal Yahoo remains Yahoo when MS lose interest.

like

Please learn both Ruby and Python, and while you're at it, some Javascript/JQuery/Mootools cool stuff too. And do it all using full systems hungarian notation. In vi. On Solaris. Upside down!

AND

If you feel like having some fun, adopt and a silly "langauge" like brainfuck or MS ASML (a quirky state machine language you can do OOP in).

Because of the current economic climate, please do not learn C, C++, Perl or Java. Please do not approach any VHDL gigs either (nb: you'll design some plain awful crap until you've done your advanced systems/digital modules). Please do not learn any programming abstraction methods or useful models - specially via the easy-peasy Java intro to it all at http://www.bluej.org./ Dont learn Qt or STL, and especially avoid OpenMP and Boost. Dont code a transaction engine, but DO make use of obscure SQL calls and extremely long queries with lots of stored proceedures on unnormalized sets. If you know when to use singletons, RAII/smart pointers or observer patterns, or know when to hit someone for telling you how to program, then stop: STOP I said! Forget everything you know and start again. Perhaps you could learn how to code a standards compliant doc type definition spec for the process of eating cheese. If you've learned anything useful, stop and spend time coding an XML parser or i18n input library, or if that's too hard, go and add lots and lots of structured exception handling to your favourite open source library.

In advance, I'd like to thank you for not competing with me and everyone else who's graduated or recently been made redunant.

Cheers,
Matt

So this is really just a very obfuscated way of achieving what DRM providers have been trying to [favourably] do when they (willfully) allow their authentication services to die or go the companies hosting them plunge into insolvancy.

And to think people thought we were crazy when we warned them that the above DRM 'technique' was a bad idea for consumers from the get go. Pitty "a do over" or repurchase isn't a very good business plan for message encryption -

"Sorry about this, can you send me your email from last week since it's expired now and I need to check up on a few things?"
"No can do, we didn't actually mean anything we said in it. But we didn't lie either. Got proof?".

Sad that it works for media formats.

Just imagine if we allowed the reasons behind why we went to war or how the recession occured to expire like this! Blame would be apportioned in terms of aquiessence rather than proof, "Yes sir, it's definitely not our fault, since we have no records of that - and there's no point in looking since all the keys have expired! If only it had crossed our minds a little sooner, we could have looked at our records when it was politically damaging..."

You make some excellent points. I'm worried about the wording too, specifically "participate". PE will not operate if the promise is unclear. By releasing a potentially ambiguous promise like this they are making their own cause of dispute.

A clause to revoke the "personal promise" for participation in legal action is not particularly new, but the more I consider it the more it worries me. It is qualified by 'voluntarily', making the clause somewhere bare for the principle party, because being sued is not voluntary, thus it would rarely operate. In other words, should MS decided to sue someone, this clause would not extinguish the promise. So far-so-good for individuals, PE is your Jesus.

The clause would come into action if someone decided to sue MS for a "patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification". Unless they can prove duress (and the need for action) so to render the clause unfair, they risk loosing the protection offered by PE. Surely this will prevent many individuals from suing MS? In other words this appears to be a cunning lure to prevent people suing MS and participating in such suits.

Far more sinister is the fact that "voluntarily" would encompass aggrieved 3rd parties. Should a 3rd party join a suit against MS, their action would revoke this promise, and they would be unable to rely on it in the future as the base of their defence in equity, leaving them as liable as the claimant.

A possible disaster scenario:

• MS revoke their promise with good notice - possibly addressing it to only one individual (i.e.: Novell).
• The communities and defendant are paralysed because they cannot show a reliant position much different from what we have now, and thus unable to claim that the promise is irrevocable for a defence of PE.
• MS decide to take action for violation of their patents. Defendants cannot claim PE. Defendants who try to rely on the promise and fail may be liable wilful infringement (triple damages)
• Users/developers/small children move away from Mono (etc.) implementations to .Net/C#, and this causes the defendants loss of revenue. Other individuals cannot 'voluntarily' help the defendant because they risk loosing their protection under the promise

Matt

The lawyers amongst us are leaping for joy. I happen to be a law convert. So ill try and explain why we're happy!

Promissory estoppel is a legal defence (a so called shield). When a party (A) intending legal relations promises not to assert their strict legal rights, and another party (B) moves to rely upon this promise, that party (A) is estopped from enforcing their rights (against B) by way way of promissory estoppel.

It goes something like this: Now MS has promised not to enforce their C#-rights , and people rely on this promise, such as start development/deploying C# applications because of this promise, if the case came to court, MS's argument would be estopped by a defence of promissory estoppel.

It's a little more complicated. For instance it must be inequitable for B if A reneges on their promise (fairly clear if they suffer a disadvantage or loss as 'one who comes into equity must come with clean hands'), the promise must be clear and unequivocal (I'd say yes), there must be a change in reliance on the promise (yes), and it is a shield not a cause of action (in other words, we can't sue MS for revoking the promise, we can simply aovid being sued).

However, things get a little confusing. MS have declared that this promise is unilateral, in other words, it is a promise to the world without the need for a formal agreement. Such things are valid in the eyes of the law, and enforced by the fact promissory estoppel acts as an equitable remedy - there is no need for consideration, a key ingreediant to the traditional offer/acceptance/consideration contractual model.

Promissory estoppel is a common law principle. It's basis in England is from Lord Denning's High Court decision in High Trees.

Law bit:

In High Trees, due to WW2, the claimant ("High Trees") agreed to reduce rent for a block of flats. After the war, the claimant brought action seeking the past and future rent. Lord Denning said "When a promise is made that is intended to be acted upon, and is acted upon, you are estopped from going back on it."

In High Trees Denning referred, not to a previous case of Foakes v Beer (about the part payment of debt), but Hughes v Metropolitan Railway to establish his basis for promissory estoppel. In Hughes, it was held that the opening of negotiations for sale of a property had an implied promise not to enforce an outstanding notice of repair that would forfeit the respondents lease.

Key to the criticism over Denning's decision is that Hughes only suspended rights, whereas High Trees may extinguish them. This position has recently been approved in the UK by the House of Lords in Tool Metal Manufacturing Co. Ltd - the promisor may revive rights by formal notice, unless it is impossible for the promisee to resume his original position.

Is it impossible to resume the original position prior to this agreement? We're talking about computers here. The agreement has come now, not several years ago. Consider Mono as it is now, as the original position. This is such a contentious area when you consider MS can revoke the promise, creating ambiguity, and because under Coombes v Coombes promissory estoppel is not a cause of action, the Mono community cannot sue MS to enforce this promise!

Matt

As a 3rd party, auditors remarks and certifications can give a representation inducing someone to wrongfully contract. There is an established principle in the tort of negligence that allows an injured claimant to sue a non-contractual 3rd party in this type of misstatement. We call this the Hedley Bryne principle (google it).

It's great. Providing you can establish a duty via special relation ship of reliance.

It's bad for contracting parties however, if you imply that all contracts should have this principle without the need for a special relationship of reliance, because priciple parties (the other guy, not the certifing agent) cock up - and it's their fault. It should be their fault. How am I to control the actions of someone I *thought* was competant?