If the NTIS cannot charge for their service any longer for particular documents, they should stop providing those documents - or are they legally bound to supply the service regardless?

I think many people get stuck in thinking "one single database, thats it, my initial decision condemns me forever", when in-fact theres no shame in having many databases.

Stick the raw data into one database, choose the database that suits that.

Transform the data from the raw database into something you can use day to day, thats well structured etc, choose the database for that.

Transform the data from the day to day schemas into something that more suitable for archiving and long term reporting, again choose the database for that.

You don't have to have one single database type, every particular one has its strengths, so use them!

Theres probably an element of multithreaded access that needs to be taken into consideration here - writing to a single text file may get you into issues if the receiving webserver is multithreaded, meaning the threads will either have to queue for write locks, or write to a different file.

Database engines don't have this issue, so while it may be overkill, there may be reasons to have one irregardless.

The four freedoms are *your* ideal to aspire to, never forget that :) I'm all for people releasing their source code, if they want to - however, I don't feel people should be vilified purely because they choose not to.

Why does everyone in the world have to conform to your ideology? Those freedoms are part of your ideology, nothing more.

Why "full" copies of Visual Studio? What does the Express editions lack that kids would need? They have access to the full capabilities of the .Net framework, a full C/C++ environment and more - the Express editions really lack the surrounding IDE features that would be lost that early on in the developer learning curve, stuff like profiling etc.

We still have to work around issues in newer browsers, and not just IE either :(

And yet on my Xbox360 I've been able to play games, movies, TV shows, access streaming services and live video for five years. How is that late to the game?

The issue with AF447 is that they disregarded *all* instrument readings, not just the ones they were trained to in the event of an air data mismatch. So they never even realised they were in danger, because they didn't think the rapidly declining numbers were true - remember that the descent was 1G, so they didn't even have any feeling of descent, which added to their mistrust of the data they had infront of them.

So as the other poster said, there was nothing to call someone about other than they didn't know what was going on, and they weren't about to admit that to everyone listening.

You must be so warped with hatred, because your posts are starting to become incoherent.

The legal issue of "reasonableness" is well tested, and it doesn't go your way (fortunately). Software cannot wear out, but the Sales of Goods Act is not about forcing an entity to support anything until it wears out, its about ensuring the product lasts for a reasonable period of time - so your car doesn't die catastrophically in two years time, so your fridge doesn't stop working a year from now, so you know that when you invest a significant sum of money into something, it can last a reasonable period of time.

13 years is a reasonable time, as is 6. And the software doesn't stop working after the EOL date, it just won't receive updates, so it hasn't even "worn out".

Its also worth noting that software does not necessarily fall under the Sales of Goods Act, or its amendments - case law in the UK provides for it as a per-case consideration, and not a standard entitlement.

http://www.mablaw.com/2011/03/...

So even "sticking to legislation" shows you to be full of crap.

I'm afraid its actually *you* who is full of shit in this case, as the Sales of Goods Act 1979 and its amendments are precisely what I am referring to, and as I have intimate knowledge of that act and its various legal successes, I can safely say that you are full of bollocks.

The Sales of Goods Act is not meant to cover a product for all eternity, for an indefinite period, until the product actually wears out or for any other purpose than to require a manufacturer to provide a reasonable life span for the product in question. The Sales of Goods Act is not even intended to require a manufacturer to fix bugs or issues past the reasonable period of support, just provide a reasonable period of support.

So lets see what other Operating Systems have endured longer than Windows XP...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 - released in mid-2002, died in mid-2009.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 - released in late-2003, died at the start of this year.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 - released in early-2005, dies at the end of this year.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS - released mid-2006, died mid-2011.
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS - released mid-2008, died mid-2013.

OSX 10.1 - released late-2001, died mid-2002.
OSX 10.2 - released mid-2002, died mid-2003.
OSX 10.3 - released late-2003, died mid-2005.
OSX 10.4 - released mid-2005, died late-2007.
OSX 10.5 - released late-2006, died late-2009.
OSX 10.6 - released mid-2009, died late-2011.
OSX 10.7 - released mid-2010, died late-2012.
OSX 10.8 - released mid-2012, death TBD.

Hmm, I can't see any other consumer or corporate desktop OS that has been supported as long as XP has.

So out of all other reasonable time periods for Operating Systems, XP's support length is definitely an outlier and you would get laughed out of court if you tried to force Microsoft to support it beyond its current and well known EOL date.

If you are giving any sort of legal advice based around the Sales of Goods Act, please fucking stop as you have proved that you know shit about the topic.

99.9999% of all work a fighter pilot does in normal operation is HOTAS - hands on throttle and stick. There are enough controls on those inputs, or within close reach to them, that you can operate the aircraft without ever taking your hands off them.

And while multifunctional displays are a staple in cockpits these days, they are invariably not touch screen in military aircraft.

And that relevance pales into insignificancy when you consider what you would have to replace application wise, as in the real world people dont just boot to a desktop and then sit and stare at it for their working day.

Office applications might be easy to replace, but how about certified xray or MRI viewers, medical record viewers etc?

AF447 never made any calls because the crew didn't have anything to call about, so its hardly a good example - see the Swiss flight over the North Atlantic some years ago that crashed while fighting a fire on board for ages while they diverted, they were making a load of calls about their situation.

In the NHS? A huge amount, since its basically run on third party applications developed for Windows. The last lot that tried essentially what you are suggesting (rewrite the entire NHS infrastructure so its unified) ended up spending well into the tens of billions of pounds before the project was cancelled.

Also, as a UK taxpayer, id prefer my money get spent on solutions that work rather than solutions that play to the idiosyncrasies of the geek/nerd population.