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Comment Re:No (Score 1) 671

All of you who have replied to this are missing something crucial.

Sure he might have some silly ideas on what to do, that's why he is asking for your advice. But saying he should take a personal laptop isn't the solution. The reason he is probably looking for an answer is because he doesn't want to lug two laptops around!

I would think if your company denies you access to news sites and facebook etc. while you're away in your own time, that's a little harsh. But if the OP is just wanting to look at porn while he is away... come on, surely you can go without a few days!

Comment Good for business (Score 0) 155

While clearly Google could just turn around and canibalise the idea, this may help Canonical's growth with businesses.

A company could provide certain employees who don't need fast machines a simple work phone. Anywhere they could communicate and work on the same device.

Lets face it, the idea of the pocket computer is the future. The people who will be most happy if this succeeds would probably be ARM chip makers. Maybe Mark Shuttleworth is trying to setup his company to be bought by Google now.

Comment Re:and where's heisenberg? (Score 1) 566

I don't know how it is done in America but where I am from there is essentially a 9km/h grace. This means while and where the speed limit is 50km/h, you will never get a ticket for less than 60km/h (except for public holidays where the grace is switched to 4km/h in an effort to curb the road toll). Part of the reason for the grace (apart from allowing for normal human error) is to account for possible errors that may occur in the measurement.

Now that makes me think that if his average speed between the two points is estimated at 35mph and the areas speed limit is 50mph, with a similar grace that is one giant error in the system. (Since typing I've gone on to read that the grace is 12mph, which converts to 19km/h... in my opinion a huge leniency). The reason I feel it must be a glaring error is that the calibration of these devices, which I presume are radar would be far more precise than 19km/h. I would go on to guess that the 0.363 seconds between the photos is fairly accurate too, given that these devices are designed to be evidentially sound.

So he's worked out he's going 35mph, he must have been going at least 62mph to activate the camera. 35mph is 15.6464m/s meaning that in 0.363 seconds he would have travelled 5.67m, 62mph is 27.71648m/s which would indicate he travelled 10.06m. There would also me a small amount of error in the reading due to the doppler shift going on in the radar that records his speed. The favour of the cosine coefficient from the doppler effect always goes to the advantage of the motorist. It seems to me that with all the possibilities to cause error, there is still one huge difference. So while I think that the error is actually in his use of photogrammetry, he must have done one big error and fooled the judge on it. He's worked it out too. As per the article "Mr. Foreman said he is awaiting trial on about 40 more tickets, all of which he called “bogus.”" He worked out he get off the tickets and now he speeds everywhere like a maniac no doubt. I just do not believe that there can be that large errors in the system so that leaves him behaving like an arrogant tosser who is a danger to all other drivers and especially pedestrians.

The odd thing is the manufacturer of the camera says:
"Optotraffic representatives said the photos are not intended to capture the actual act of speeding, and are taken nearly 50 feet down the road from sensors as a way to prove the vehicle was on the road.

“No one has come to us with a proven error,” company spokesman Mickey Shepherd said Tuesday. “Their speed is not measured by the photos. The speed is measured before the photos are taken.”"

I would have thought that would be enough to get his style of defence thrown out of court. Are the judges in America trained lawyers or are they political monkeys? The company should be making everything as evidentially sound as possible though.

Submission + - Outrage as New Zealand Passes Anti-Filesharing Law (pirateparty.org.nz) 2

master5o1 writes: "The Pirate Party of New Zealand is disappointed that the Government used urgency to pass the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill after the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill.

"Not only is the urgency process being abused," party secretary Noel Zeng stated, "but our government is also exploiting the people of Christchurch by using their unfortunate situation to pass underhanded legislation.""

Comment Internet Addict Parents. (Score 1) 278

Is it possible that kids using the computers isn't the problem? Perhaps it is that their parents monopolize the devices and spend all their time on the internet instead of interacting with their kids. It's a parent's involvement with their children that has the largest effect on their school work.

Comment Re:Bugs are an error in the... (Score 1) 596

That is not what I was trying to get across, you sure can use Linux if you don't share the ideology... It's more that just because you don't share the ideology doesn't mean it isn't important over all.

There seems to be an increasing movement, evident sometimes on Ubuntuforums for example to suggest Linux should become less Free (For reasons of convenience or market expansion).

There are more users now who don't care or only care about the free as in beer side of things. Just because they may be the majority doesn't necessarily mean it's right to change the way things were before.

I'm really to tired and exhausted at the moment to make a decent effort of what I'm trying to say... It's along the lines of if you're not happy with the way things are move to change them yourself or use something else. If you don't care whether your system is half proprietary for example you could always use Mint.

My opinion is that if Linux was not F/OSS, it wouldn't exist. From there I also begin to believe that the less Free it becomes the more likely it is to cease to exist. In the long run the only thing that can also prevent its extinction is openness.

Comment Re:Bugs are an error in the... (Score 4, Insightful) 596

Well I don't see people joining PETA and saying "Hey you know what, our views are a little extreme, lets try be a little more level headed".
I don't see people joining Greenpeace and saying "Hey now, Genetic Engineering's alright y'all". And lets not get started on Sea Shepard.
You also don't see hippies and vegans going to MacDonald's or Wallmart and working there in the hope to make it more ethical.

The point I am trying to make is that GNU started as the environment for people who cared about those Freedoms. Linux became part of that and is Licensed under the GPL. It is part of the Ecosystem that cares about those Freedoms. To turn around and say, well maybe those Freedoms aren't important, maybe we should become more mainstream so we can cater to the masses who like MacDonalds and Wallmart and don't care about Hens in cages or sweatshops, is kind of besides the point.

We all have our own reasons for using Linux but it would not exist without those freedoms... If you have a different view on freedoms you can also use *BSD, Solaris or something like Haiku (Etc. etc.). If you don't care, there is NOTHING that is stopping you from using Windows or OSX.

I certainly know that if I emigrated to a country and started saying people should follow my political views I certainly wouldn't be well received, it's no different with the F/OSS sphere. It is what it is. It is what it is because of what it is and really, most of us have bigger mouths than we should.

The Developers are free to do what ever they want and their projects can go in what ever directions they want them to. Users like me can be thankful for what they give us. Yes some are more rabid in proclaiming the Freedoms, but then again if a single project isn't free enough, a half-assed effort of replacing it is at least made.

Long post after a tired and long day tl;dr: Freedoms could be only a concern for a minority, but a large part of what exists is because of them. Even if they aren't the most important thing doesn't mean they aren't important.

Comment Re:DNA Databases are good (Score 1) 203

To some extent a methamphetamine addict for example, is no longer exactly on the right emotional level to really be classified as human by the way you explain it.

In my country though most murderers are out of prison after 10 years. A person can commit hundreds of burglaries and they are being treated harshly if they get even a year in prison. From that perspective, criminals are getting off pretty lightly as is.

Having said that when you compare a prisoners rights in respect of search and fingerprinting, how is compulsory DNA after arrest any more invasive? Once arrested their person can be searched pursuant to arrest, there homes and vehicles even if the circumstances are such. Their finger prints are automatically taken and not disposed of... That is all accepted and has been for decades.

I fail to see how a DNA database is more invasive than a fingerprint database.

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