There was also a form of house arrest in use (supposedly for people who couldn't be tried for security reasons, I think) that was used to severely restrict people's freedom. This was applied if the right people believed "We really, really think this guy is dodgy" but couldn't say why, at least not in a public forum. The house arrest approach was adopted after a ruling by the Law Lords (would now be the Supreme Court, I think) saying that indefinite detention in prison without trial was not legal. The "suspects" were then allowed out of prison but only permitted a very specific, restricted set of "freedoms" including being restricted to their home for most hours of the day.

I'm not sure if those measures are still in force (though I suspect so). As I understand it, they were a separate issue from the (much shorter) periods you could be held by police without charge, nominally whilst they gather evidence, etc.

Awesome.

I would guess there's a societal aspect to that split also, though... If the Chinese government, with their larger population and stronger controls on the media and information flow, can sustain a large military (and get the public to tolerate military losses) then I'd suggest that they don't need drones so much. That still doesn't give them the other technical advantages of drones, though (e.g. staying aloft for days at a time, etc).

Do you mean ARM 64 bit, or ARM in general? The latter has at least got itself deployed more widely than I am aware of MIPS ever getting. The former ... well, I hope it takes off.

In that instance it strikes me more as protectionism than socialism - the French government are considering measures to aid their local businesses, at a cost to a foreign business which is muscling into their territory. Capitalist governments also take various protectionist measures to safeguard their home industries - often by disadvantaging foreign companies more directly through import duties, etc. For instance, the Conservative government in the UK moved to block EU laws that would have disadvantaged our highly capitalistic financial sector.

You could still argue that protectionism and socialism can be linked, for instance by choosing to protect certain home industries as a way of distributing wealth.

I imagine newspapers all over the world are lobbying their governments about Google. They might not succeed but a common part of big business does seem (sadly) to involve complaining to government about other businesses that seem threatening.

Me too. The feeling of unreality has not yet left me!

This really is an Apple style acknowledgement of fault - I'm reminded on when some iPods were found to be carrying a Windows malware, which then infected some PCs...

http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/

Key quote (emphasis mine): "We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

They do have chutzpah.

I thought that too - but it's in small writing, in the link bar at the bottom of the UK home page.

Apparently if you go there, you also find the stairs are missing and the announcement is in a locked cubicle with a sign on the door saying "beware of the OS X Leopard".

I think Android uses NetBSD-derived userland stuff also? I've had the impression that they wanted BSD stuff for licensing reasons but I wonder if there's something specific to NetBSD that makes everybody particularly like their userland utilities!

The Darwin kernel (which is called XNU) is a bit weird - I spent some time looking into it when it was still a relatively new thing (2003-4 kind of era). XNU is Mach + FreeBSD + DeviceKit/Apple-y bits, all sharing the same protection domain. The latter point is interesting, since despite the fact Mach is considered a microkernel they've actually shoved all of the other kernel-level services in with it, rather than separating them into different processes. This makes the whole kernel basically monolithic (i.e. like the modern Windows and Linux kernels), which is kind of unexpected!

The Apple-y bits in the kernel that I mentioned definitely includes DeviceKit, their driver interface. Maybe some other stuff as well. The drivers are not normal FreeBSD-like device drivers - I think they're even C++, unlike FreeBSD itself.

I found it all a bit unexpected really, things didn't fit together as I'd imagined.

There's probably more in here; I'm not sure if it's the original one I read through!
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/About/About.html

http://microship.com/bike/winnebiko/book.html

This chap decided to adopt a "technomadic lifestyle" in the 80s (or maybe early 90s?) and telecommute from wherever he happened to have ridden his recumbent bicycle to. This was back in days before popular use of the internet, so he was signing in primarily to use the facilities of a dial-up service provider, chat online, check e-mail, etc - using an acoustic coupler on public payphones.

He had to hire someone to work in an office to field calls etc for him whilst he was out on the road - these days, there'd be less need for that sort of thing, since it's more practical to be in constant contact and basically all clients will also have e-mail available. Some or all of the work he was actually doing seemed to involve writing about how he was travelling nomadically whilst working ... a bit circular!

On one of his bikes (the second, I think) he could also type by directly chording ASCII characters using switches on his handlebars - that's proper hacker skill!

Unexpectedly, when I read the book, he also turned out to be a bit of a Cassanova and had great success with the ladies on his travels. I wasn't anticipating that so much!

I think there are a few non-ARM embedded platforms that use gcc. AVR (even the 8-bit variants) has a good gcc port.

Unless they've changed the rules quite recently then you don't need a license unless you're using the device to view TV simultaneously with its broadcast. If you watch as catch-up (e.g. iPlayer) then a license is not needed - and if you just don't receive TV on the device at all you still don't need a license, even if it's a television or somesuch.

The licensing people are sometimes quite good at harassing people until they fork out for licenses that aren't needed; they come on relatively strong with the implied legal threats, so you need to be fairly sure of yourself if you're not buying a license. Nevertheless, in my experience, the actual written rules are more lenient than the impression the licensing people project.

To clarify, I don't mean broadcasts of live events but rather simultaneous viewing of something as it is broadcast. So for instance, watching Doctor Who (somehow) through the internet as it is broadcast would require a license. Waiting until the episode finishes and then watching it on iPlayer (catchup) doesn't require a license.

Having the device is, as I understand it, fine so long as you don't use it to receive live broadcasts (I was told that it doesn't matter whether those broadcasts are license fee funded). So if your PC isn't used to stream live broadcasts, it doesn't need a license. Using a TV as a monitor or for console gaming should also be fine, even though the device could receive TV in principle.

However, I think they tend to hassle addresses that have recently bought a TV and they tend to be somewhat threatening and vague regarding licenses, something which I strongly disapprove of. I've heard that if you're reasonably firm with them it's possible to make them stop hassling, their default just being to repeatedly send you warnings and hope that it encourages you to do the right thing...