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Comment Re:OMG save the children (Score 0) 541

... Easily worth the trade off. ...

The question is not whether vaccination should be abolished, the question is whether the vaccination regime should be changed to avoid complications.

Perhaps we can introduce a vaccination regime where we gradually vaccinate for one disease at at time rather than the cocktail done now.

Perhaps we can wait to vaccinate until signs of autism should be apparent.

There also seems to be newer tools for diagnosing autism, perhaps we can study these before and after vaccinations.

I'd like to know if these types of alternatives have been considered rather than this black/white vaccinate/not rant.

Comment Re:Microsoft and Google (Score 3, Informative) 99

You are flaming, right? Let me give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's compare the two.
  • Google fesses up to it's mistake, Microsoft fights. If it was not for Google owning up to the error, no-one would have known, while Microsoft tried hard to keep quiet comments like "Knife the Baby".
  • Google made no financial advantage from this while Microsoft made a whole business by killing competitors using it's monopoly advantage.
  • Google did not intend to breach privacy laws, Microsoft knew and were warned on previous occasions that they were to stop the practice.
  • It's not really clear that Google really breached the law, the information they collected was in the clear, i.e. if you go yelling you account numbers and passwords from the rooftops and someone with taking a family video records inadvertently, I suggest that it's hard to prove that the cameraman is at fault. Microsoft was found guilty and convicted of its crime.

... just to point out a few, I can go on if you like.

I think it's important to compare like cases if you don't want to be marked a troll.

Comment Not the first time to happen in Australia (Score 2, Interesting) 227

The laws in Australia are ridiculously thin when it comes to dealing with this kind of theft. I dare say that the agent is a tad bit liable for selling the mans house and may want to invoke their liability insurance.

Real estate agents in Australia are a cowboys compared to the agents I dealt with in the US and yes, I have experience with both.

The Courts

Lineage II Addiction Lawsuit Makes It Past the EULA 267

We recently discussed a man who sued NCsoft for making Lineage II "too addictive" after he spent 20,000 hours over five years playing it. Now, several readers have pointed out that the lawsuit has progressed past its first major hurdle: the EULA. Quoting: "NC Interactive has responded the way most software companies and online services have for more than a decade: it argued that the claims are barred by its end-user license agreement, which in this case capped the company's liability to the amount Smallwood paid in fees over six months prior to his filing his complaint (or thereabouts). One portion of the EULA specifically stated that lawsuits could only be brought in Texas state court in Travis County, where NC Interactive is located. ... But the judge in this case, US District Judge Alan C. Kay, noted that both Texas and Hawaii law bar contract provisions that waive in advance the ability to make gross-negligence claims. He also declined to dismiss Smallwood's claims for negligence, defamation, and negligent infliction of emotional distress."

Comment Re:Ok so they might have a case against google (Score 1) 341

Actually, from what I've heard, this is pretty standard in patent infringement cases. They may not be shooting for it, but they'll use it as a bargaining position.

That's only copyright cases, not patent cases. Patents are free to be read and researched and in fact it is encouraged. That's the basis of patent law, to promote innovation. Copyright on the other hand is for limiting the right to copy and hence extends to the demand to destroy existing copies. The remedy in patents is usually to prevent from using or selling infringing product.

Comment e44.us runs on Google App Engine (Score 2, Interesting) 224

I've been using e44.us running on Google App Engine. I think it will be around for a while as it custs nothing except registration fees to run atm.

The source code is available on e44.us/1.

You can "log in" with your gmail account so one day you can edit your short links.

Anyhow, it's a simple app for now but if there is interest in a "community" OSS project, we can add cool features like, make personalized forms of the app (urls like e44.us/fred/1) or even your own domain (which you can do now with a Google Apps account), optimize it for mobile phones, validate access to URL's etc etc. If you're interested, let me know.

Image

What Does Google Suggest Suggest About Humanity? 513

CNETNate writes "You'll laugh, but mostly you'll cry. Some of the questions Google gets asked to deliver results for is beyond worrying. 'Can you put peroxide in your ear?', 'Why would a pregnancy test be negative?', and 'Why can't I own a Canadian?' being just a selection of the truly baffling — and disturbing — questions Google is regularly forced to answer."

Comment Re:Template la-la land. (Score 1) 501

I have a very different opinion. I think templates in C++ are very powerful and useful.

I don't write template code every day, but that's kind of the point. Templates can eliminate most ugly repetitive code and allow you to model it closer to the abstraction you're most comfortable with.

The project I'm working on at the moment is Java and the generics in Java are so far away from templates and so it limits the usefulness of it dramatically.

Yes, you need to get into templates to understand them, they are a new programming language, not unlike Prolog in some ways.

Comment Re:SOLAR PANELS ARE CHEAP AND EASY TO REPLACE!! (Score 1) 541

There is no "positive". There is an "active" and a "neutral".

Also colours of wires become interesting. Black wire is usually neutral and the red (in AU, white in the US) is active, green is ground (sometimes bare wire in US).

3 phase is even more interesting... Red, Blue and Yellow are the usual "active" colours in Oz.

You may have been capable of wiring a light fixture but did you know how load affected the temperature of the wire and how to the length of the wire may require different types of wire?

It's not very hard to learn this stuff, however if you use words like "positive" when talking about a mains feed, you give yourself away.

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