Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: So, if someone comes along and copies all the Star War Movies

The difference is that places hosting trailers for movies are hosting a short, specially created clip provided by the copyright owner.

Google are hosting the entire work in a searchable format and will create and provide a "trailer" on demand from any part of the entire work without permission. They made a whole copy. I'm not so sure Hollywood or the music industry would be quite so enamoured to have this happen to their products.

I wonder how hard it would be to automate a Google search of a specific book and "find" the whole book by scraping all of Googles "small, fair use, selections"? You certainly could not download all of a movies trailers and re-create the whole movie. (Although in recent years, watching a couple of different trailers for a movie generally does give you the main gist of the story and pretty much all of the best bits anyway.)

Re: Not a big deal in the UK...

Although I agree that is already a bad situation, at least the CCTV images are not splattered all over the interwebs (unless they record you doing something particularly unusual, stupid or funny).

With Glass, those images and/or videos may well be posted "just" to that users archive, but if it's anything like Farcebook. his/her friends can see it and more likely friends of friends down however many degrees of separation is allowed. Not to mention the facial recognition that could well "tag" you in those images/videos.

Re: Beards are Best?

Beards add years to your age"

That's precisely why I've grown a beard at the age of 50. In a couple of years I'll shave off the grey bearded and "lose" 10 years :-)

Re: I wish...

"So you could get the balloon to rise to some place where it weighs roughly the same as the stuff around it"

All one needs to do is coat the balloon in Cavorite.

"I know, right? Kids today, with their terrible music, appalling taste in clothing, ..."

Hi Dad!! <waves>

Re: CH3CHOO!

"The CH3CHOO, is expressed this way to represent the reactive carbonyl group."

And there was me thinking they were either just jumping on the climate change train or going off the rails.

Coat. Got. Gone.

Re: It's only a matter of time...

"talking to somebody else, whether they are in the car with you or not, is fatally distracting."

Fatally distracting? If that was true, it would be carnage out on the roads and cars would have been banned within a few years of their invention. If that's how you feel about it, I hope that either you are not a driver or that you always drive alone with the radio permanently disconnected.

Texting while driving is already illegal. Using voice activated text is almost certainly distracting. It seems that smartphone designers with all that processing power and RAM to work with have decided that voice recognition is best handled by having the damned phone keep asking you questions then handing off the speech recognition to some remote "cloudy" server. Even my crappy old Nokia from years ago was capable of doing speech to text for voice dialling simply by pressing a button on the headset cable and speaking the name, Now, with a Galaxy, it's a right palaver so I don't bother.

Re: Don't swim in the Kool-aid

"I bought an iPad mini because I WANT a smaller tablet"

I think you missed the point there. It's not that the iPad mini is selling well or not. The point is that Apple, until recently, had decreed that a smaller iPad would not sell because no one would want one one therefore Apple would not build and sell one. Rather than innovating with a smaller form factor to meet market demand, they had to have the proof shoved in their face (and for Steve "no smaller iPad" Jobs) to be out of the game)

Re: $600,000?

"his paycheck will be garnished"

What with? A sprig of thyme?

If you can't do the thyme, don't do the crhyme!

Re: @James O'Shea

"except that this would involve including an installer for the other system with their product, which would increase the cost of that product, and also that installer probably would force users to restart their machines to be sure that the new file system was properly installed. This is likely to be unpopular."

Most devices which currently run FAT code (as opposed to media which simply stores the data structure) already come with an installer to fill your PC up with manufacturer info, manuals, file/photo/media management s/w, "lite editions" of commercial s/w etc so having that also install a filesystem driver is hardly a problem.

What that filesystem should be, getting a "free" and "standard" one which is useful and efficient and getting manufactures to use it is a different problem.

Re: ...and a non industry standard connector.

"The big innovation of the the Lightning connector is that it fits either way round."

Sort of like a bathroom electric shaver plug and socket?

Re: This is roughly the same as griping about ...

Wild guess here, but the downvoters are humourless USAians who've never heard of a wallet.

Personally, the first time I heard the word "pocketbook", many years ago when I was a tad younger, I thought it was something like a small notebook. Separated by a common language.

Heard recently on an audiobook, I'm still trying to work out what a "clabbard house" is. The spelling may be wrong since I've only heard it, not seen it.

Re: Another one bites the dust

"The irony of you misspelling 'they' in this comment is just too much..."

Personally, I thought the misspelling of smart was the ultimate irony.

Re: If they would ony do it right, it might not be completely terrible...

"do not care about you losing hours of gameplay.

You never, ever, lose "hours and hours" of game play. You still have the memories of playing them, so they can't possibly be "lost".

Think of it as an opportunity to re-live those fantastic, stimulating and life-fulfilling moments all over again.

Re: What is this email change really about?

Since both Google and Yahoo are free webmail providers anyway, it'd not surprise me that the Sky/BT/VIrgin customers are "sold" to Google/Yahoo rather than the ISP buying in a service. All that juicy data for sale with guaranteed valid email addresses and identities.

Re: Building and dividends...

But it has to be round. You can't take a 90^o corner at 88MPH!

The one with the spare flux capacitor in the pocket, thanks.

Re: And I

"especially as gov.co.uk must own quite a few banks at this stage."

Great idea. We could hand the entire system over the the 80% gov. owned RBS.

Then, when Scotland goes independent....oops.

Re: Another problem with archiving.

zip or rar the files to punched tape?

Re: The only safe way.

"waste hours of every week going to the bank to get cash out"

Maybe you're just too young to know that not so very long ago, that was the only option. Luckily, my bank was open on a Saturday morning and cashing a cheque for £50 did me for the week, including petrol for the car.

Regularly occurring bill? Standing order/direct debit.

Unexpected large purchase/bill? Write a cheque.

I'm not saying I especially want to go back to that system as my only choice, but it certainly wasn't as bad as you seem to think. Maybe you only learned about the "bad old days" from history books? :-)

Re: I really get annoyed with radical animal-rights people

Umm, I think I lost the thread somewhere (confused).."

I suspect, since the topic is woolly sheep, that's a not a thread you are looking for. It's a ripping yarn.

Yeah, the one coated in lanolin, thanks.

Re: Great ... for five minutes

"Now, if they could make a nuclear powered robot jellyfish..."

...Yeah! With frikkin' lasers on it's....oh....wait...

Re: Surprisingly, This Is Serious:

"The booklet that came with my car doesn't explain how to take the engine apart, nor does it include the Highway Code or provide instructions on how to drive."

Maybe not, but it does tell you how to check and maintain the fluid levels, fill the washer bottle, change a wheel, change a bulb or fuse, enable/disable the airbags, what type of oil and fuel to use, how to fit a child seat, what the correct tyre pressures should be under various conditions, how all the dash controls work, what the dash display lights/computer is telling you etc etc etc.

Re: @Def Is it just me?

"it would appear to be a featureless black rectangular slab"

And once it's superseded by the next big shiny, we can ship all the "waste" off to Jupiter.