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Comment Re:Too many protective measures (Score 1) 328

Dead vs, can't sell produce. Hard choice? On the other hand, we can walk straight into a climate change catastrophe, trying to mitigate it with vaporware (subsidised by the US and German govts). It's lucky we ditched the probability theory early on otherwise this argument would start to look like suicide.

Comment Re:And the ranking means what? (Score 1) 427

One thing I noticed is they didn't proof-read their press releases. I guess broken english is appropriate though, since they are representing journalists. "The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests." http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

Comment Re:Your cultural riches have just been plundered (Score 1) 536

There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.

You actually go further than this in your sig - "intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent". Does that mean you wouldn't mind if I just copy and re-post all of your comments as my own? If, in an exam, I copied you and your friend's answers, and through doing so raised the pass grade, so through my actions I passed and you both failed - would that be fair? If a hedge fund manager steals information on a stock, and through doing it makes money, is that wrong? I'm not criticising your views - I agree this legislation is horrible. I would just be interested from a philosophical sense, what you believe.

Comment Re:only gadgets (Score 1) 378

what is the future of a civilisation whose most capitalised stock is gadget manufacturer?

The future is tech rather than oil.

It seems perfectly fitting to western society. When Papua New Guinean natives first met western GIs and explorers, they noticed one major difference between our societies - the westerners had more "cargo" - cargo being sharp knives, jeeps, planes, radios, tinned food. This is the one area which the west has consistently outperformed, and has led to the dominance of our society over all others. The ipad is just the latest useful tool that has been produced. In the 40s, the future looked bright for the west, and not so bright for the Papua New Guinean natives. Might I suggest that today, things look bright for Apple, but not so bright for Exxon?

Comment Re:Surveillance cameras (Score 1) 682

With all the surveillance cameras in London one would thought that is has to be the most secure city in the world. Oh the irony.

And you know what the really strange thing is? After these riots, you can bet there will be a whole lot more CCTV cameras, and police, and I suspect that Theresa May is quietly reviewing the costs of getting a water cannon fleet. And what is even stranger is that the British people will be right behind her. Strange thing is, when people see their houses being burnt down, they stop caring about whether a CCTV camera guy might take photos of a stupid girl that leaves her curtains open, and start thinking it's nicer to lose a bit of privacy than be burnt to death. Funny old world, isn't it?

Comment Re:Forgive us the gloating (Score 1) 1040

UK is AAA because we have a competent government which has undertaken spending cuts, even at the cost of riots. It also helps that our debt is denominated in Sterling, so we can print as much as we want - of course the same is true of the US, but Standard & Poor's Credit Ratings never have been very good at actually rating credit. Remember when they downgraded Japan, then had to upgrade them again :)

Comment Re:looks like facebook is doing just fine... (Score 2) 509

I accept your point that it is impressive that such a mountain of suck runs so effectively on MySQL. However it is still a mountain of suck. Or to put it another way, I don't think computers were invented so some mini bill gates can try to cajole me into "poking" my friends for the purposes of selling advertising.

Comment Re:Shocked, shocked I tell you! (Score 1) 57

This all seems pretty simple. You record every access, all accesses will be audited at a later stage by an oversight committee. 99% of cases are automatically handled (e.g. doctor accessing records for his patient day after admission) but cases which are not clear are reviewed. Any employee who accesses records has to explain his rationale for doing so. If the rationale doesn't hold up, they are disciplined / sacked. A warning explaining this comes up when you try to access records. I would imagine the guarantee of losing your job would curtail the curiosity of most nosy employees, and while the sacking might be post-hoc, their apprehension will be before the fact.

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