Recent Posts

4701

Developer's Corner / Re: Amazon Allows Eliminating Ads on Kindle - Is this idiotic?

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 04:50 AM »

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is here.
There was already a "special offers" screensaver-advert standard Kindle you could buy at a pretty cheap price, as opposed to a slightly more expensive non-ads standard Kindle. The ads presumably subsidised the cheaper price. Consumer choice. I tried to buy the screensaver-advert standard Kindle from Amazon (it was cheaper), but they would only sell it for delivery in the US (I was in NZ). So I got a non-ads standard Kindle from Amazon, and it was still cheaper than buying it from my local retailer in NZ.

I wouldn't have cared about the adverts. They were non-intrusive, and did not interfere with the reading experience - at least, not according to the detailed reviews that I read anyway.

The recent new twist seems to be that Amazon are effectively offering the same choice with a newer model of Kindle, or something - except you buy it by default with screensaver-adverts and pay a bit more to disable them. If the adverts offend you or anyone else, then you could (say) either turn it off, or leave it on but turned onto its face.

I thought this screensaver-advert idea was quite a good way of getting the Kindle into the market for people to read books with and at what was probably a knockdown price. Not a lot different to FREE commercial TV advertising/funding really. Same kind of principle, no?

4702

General Software Discussion / Re: sublime text: some innovative text editor!

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 04:08 AM »

I just noticed that at http://www.sublimetext.com/2 it says:

The current version of Sublime Text 2 is 2.0.1.

- and there's a an enthusiastic review at The Tech Report: Oh, Sublime Text, how do I love thee?

4703

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 12:24 AM »

Quote from Cosmic Log - whimsy:
My favorite from Twitter: "Now that we have evidence for the Higgs it doesn’t make sense to keep calling it 'the god particle.'"

-Arizona Hot (September 20, 2012, 10:34 PM)

4704

Living Room / Re: Help scientists decipher 'lost' gospel

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 12:05 AM »

I think we probably have a duty to offer help to some scientists. I'm a member of Clime-Aid.

4705

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 12:00 AM »

Huh? There's no subtitles. That's just the original clip. Or am I missing something?

-Deozaan (September 20, 2012, 11:52 PM)

Sorry. Wrong link. Fixed it now.

4706

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 20, 2012, 11:50 PM »

Loved the $137 piggies. Cute.
Just saw this YouTube vid. Not being an American, I had to work to understand the peculiar references to Romney "Jen" and the campaign PR, but once I did I thought it seemed quite clever/funny. The Aussies have the term "Dorothy Dixer" for this.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=86FqN3raehs
(Can't embed this.)
Link is: http://meemsy.com/v/3721

4707

Living Room / Re: Reader's Corner - The Library of Utopia

« Last post by IainB on September 20, 2012, 03:02 PM »

It seems as though we might not be able to expect publishers to play straight when it comes to prizing their fingers off the old business models and cartels, despite being taken to task by the courts in Europe - at least that seems to be one of the inferences to be drawn from this report from Digital Book World: (copied sans embedded hyperlinks and with my emphasis added)

Mystery in the EU E-Book Price-Fixing Settlement
Categories: Industry News   
September 20, 2012 | Jeremy Greenfield

Four major publishers and Apple have agreed to a settlement with the European Commission over the issue of e-book price-fixing.

It’s much like the settlement Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster entered into with the Justice Department, so we won’t go into details.

There is a mystery here, though: Macmillan and Apple are part of this settlement and they weren’t part of the settlement in the U.S. Why did Macmillan and Apple decide to settle in Europe but will go to court next summer in the U.S.?

Macmillan told The Bookseller, “it is in the best interests of our European business.” Apple has been mum.

If the settlement is approved (there is a month-long public comment period), we could have Macmillan playing the agency game in the U.S. and using a different model in the EU.

So, probably no surprises there then.

4708

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2012, 05:31 PM »

Wow! Just spotted this clip from what looks like a seriously good SF-type spoof out of Pakistan. Going to see if I can find the full movie in the "International" section of my local DVD rental shop. Apparently 1990 vintage.

4709

Living Room / Re: SkyDrive: Apple iCloud : Google Drive: Dropbox - comparison (FREE versions)

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2012, 05:05 PM »

My Dropbox has 7.8 GB free space. Just saying.

-Tuxman (September 19, 2012, 04:27 AM)

Good point. Dropbox hadn't been properly mentioned in PC Mag's above table. Just out of curiosity, I have added Dropbox details (from their site) to the FREE/Cost pa. table, below - presumably you somehow got to your 7.8GB FREE storage allocation with referrals(?) - and I have updated the SkyDrive and Dropbox FREE storage allocations to show the min/max FREE storage allocations. Interesting table. I might put it into a Google Drive collaborative spreadsheet if people in the DC Forum would be interested in helping to update/maintain the table. (It's seriously tedious and constrained doing it in a table in the Forum like this.)

FREE/Cost pa. Cloud storage allocations:

	SkyDrive	iCloud	Google Drive	Dropbox	Amazon Cloud Drive
Free storage	7-25GB	5GB	5GB	2-18GB	5GB
Add  20 GB	$10	$40	N/A	N/A	$10
Add 50 GB	$25	$100	N/A	N/A	$25
Add 100 GB	$50	N/A	$60	$99	$50

NB:

• SkyDrive offers a FREE default Recycle Bin facility that holds deleted items for 3 days from the deletion date.
• Dropbox offers a "Packrat" unlimited undo history for $39 pa.
• Google Drive offers Google Apps./Scripts/Forms as a useful toolset, though this probably requires some technical expertise to use fully.
• SkyDrive is to introduce an Excel surveys feature which could be easier to use than the Google Drive toolset and thus generally more appealing to a wider audience.

  "...you can easily use the power of Excel Web App, Excel for Windows, or Excel for Mac to sort, analyze, or chart the results of your survey."

4710

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2012, 06:13 AM »

@Renegade: Reminds me of this from The Old Grey Whistle Test (1972).
Superb lyrics.

4711

Living Room / Re: SkyDrive: Apple iCloud : Google Drive: Dropbox - comparison (FREE versions)

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2012, 04:11 AM »

There's a new announcement from Microsoft on The Windows Blog: New SkyDrive recycle bin available today and Excel surveys coming soon
As well as introducing the Recycle Bin feature, it begins to look like they are starting to compete 1-for-1 against Google Drive. For example, Google Apps./Scripts/Forms make for a pretty useful toolset, but rather requires technical expertise. I suspect that the Excel surveys feature will be easier to use and thus generally more appealing to a wider audience as they say:

"And unlike competing services, you can easily use the power of Excel Web App, Excel for Windows, or Excel for Mac to sort, analyze, or chart the results of your survey."

The only bad thing about the announcement is that they seem to have copied the use of the moronic cliché used in Google announcements:

"Today, we’re excited to release..."

Perhaps eventually Google and Microsoft will end up with virtually identical Cloud service product sets, indistinguishable from one another, same as their clichéd product announcements...

4712

Living Room / Re: SkyDrive: Apple iCloud : Google Drive: Dropbox - comparison (FREE versions)

« Last post by IainB on September 19, 2012, 01:01 AM »

Interesting  article by PC Magazine - seems like they did their usual comprehensive comparison. Of the main user Cloud services (Apple iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and Amazon for price comparison), SkyDrive was the Editor's Choice. (Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks or graphics.)

Microsoft SkyDrive
   Review Date September 11, 2012
   editor rating: excellent
   MSRP $0.0

Pros	Cons	Bottom line
Simple, clear, consistent interface. Clients for Mac, iOS, and Android, as well as Windows and Windows Phone. Fetch any file from a PC you set up. Syncing. Web interface to files and media. Photo slideshows. 7GB free storage space. ------------------------------	No music matching or Web streaming. Synced folders not for collaboration, just your own files. Windows 8 desktop mode requires separate installation. ------------------------------	With Web, Android, iPhone, Mac, and Windows clients, and a nifty "fetch" feature, Microsoft's cloud solution, SkyDrive, is one of the most complete offerings of its type. ------------------------------

Apple's iCloud and Google Drive made big splashes at their recent launches, but Microsoft's cloud service, SkyDrive, has been quietly hosting people's documents, photos, and more for more than years. And all the while Microsoft has been honing the service, most recently redesigning it to give it a modern, tiled look and folding in the syncing capability that formerly was handled by a separate service, Windows Live Mesh. The company has also made SkyDrive a cornerstone of its next big operating system version, Windows 8. So how does Microsoft's cloud service stack up against the other tech titans'? Read on to find out.

Like iCloud, SkyDrive serves a lot of functions. If you just want access to documents or media files, it offers simple online storage accessible from the Web. If you want the same set of files replicated on multiple PCs it provides folder syncing. For users of Windows 8 and Windows Phone, it backs up settings. Because of this diversity of function, there are several different cross-sections from which you can view the service—by type of data, client, or function. The data types include documents, photos, video, music, or settings. The clients include computer, mobile, and Web, and the functions are things like syncing, viewing, playing, and simple storage. Let's take a look at the service from these various angles.
View all 5 photos in gallery

Your SkyDrive Account
Everyone gets a SkyDrive account--well, everyone who's created a Microsoft account, which includes everyone who's signed up for a Hotmail or Outlook.com account. All users get 7GB free storage space, and, if you're a longtime SkyDrive account holder (since before April 22, 2012), you get 25GB free. This compares with 5GB free for iCloud and Google Drive (though if you convert docs to Google format, storage is free), and 2GB for Dropbox. You can add 20GB to SkyDrive for $10 a year, and 100GB for $50. Here's how the pricing compares with the other services:

	SkyDrive	iCloud	Google Drive	Amazon Cloud Drive
Free storage	7GB	5GB	5GB	5GB
Add  20 GB	$10	$40	N/A	$10
Add 50 GB	$25	$100	N/A	$25
Add 100 GB	$50	N/A	$60	$50

------------------------------
Device Syncing
Microsoft likes to refer to SkyDrive as a "device cloud" and with Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phones, the moniker makes sense. The service can sync settings and apps on those types of devices, while clients for iOS, Android, and Mac OS X give users of those devices access to the files stored in SkyDrive's online folders. Like iCloud for iPhones and iPads, SkyDrive lets Windows Phone users automatically upload photos taken with the phone's camera to SkyDrive's camera roll, so that the photos are quickly available for viewing online, in a SkyDrive folder on a PC, or in a Windows 8 PC's Photos app.

Google Drive and Android Play don't provide this functionality, which, once you've gotten accustomed to it, is pretty slick and convenient. And in the SkyDrive Web interface, you can view the photos as a slideshow, and even see a map of where they were taken along with EXIF camera info. A similar Web interface of this type is completely lacking in Apple's iCloud, though that may change with iOS 6.

Another service in the realm of device syncing is the ability to sign into your account and magically reproduce a previous machine you've set up—color and background themes, social accounts, user photo, browser favorites and history, and even apps. SkyDrive accomplishes this for both Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phones. In Windows 8, the service goes even further, by allowing third-party apps to take advantage of your cloud storage. Apps and sites can even use the service for single sign-on with your permission.

SkyDrive Clients
SkyDrive is built into Windows 8 and Windows Phone, as long as you've signed into a Microsoft account. But what if you use other technology platforms? SkyDrive includes apps for not only Windows 7 and 8, but for Mac OS X, iOS, and Android. For other mobile platforms such as Blackberry, a mobile Web interface is available, and for desktop access when you're not at your own computer, a full feature Web app is available. The last is particularly important, and one thing that's long disappointed me about Apple's iCloud: Why can't I access photos in my iCloud Photo Stream from a Web browser, if the stuff is actually in the "cloud?"

Another SkyDrive option for mobile users is the OneNote app. It's available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, and on the Web. This lets you create notes that will be automatically synced to all your SkyDrive access points.

4713

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 18, 2012, 06:39 AM »

This from TechDirt (copied below sans embedded hyperlinks):

This Is Not Transparency: TPP Delegates Refuses To Reveal Text, Refuse To Discuss Leaked Text
from the massive-fail dept

The folks over at the EFF have a decent summary of the travesty that was the "stakeholder" events at the latest TPP negotiating round, in which various groups (on all sides) were supposedly given an "opportunity" to express their thoughts on the TPP. We've already discussed some other aspects of it, but the one thing that the EFF writeup makes clear, is that the whole thing is a complete joke. The text, of course, remains "secret," and negotiators flat out refuse to discuss any points raised about the various leaked texts:

The stakeholder engagement events in the morning were followed by a stakeholder briefing in the afternoon. The briefing allowed registered individuals from civil society and the public to ask questions of and make comments to eight out of the nine negotiators who represent a TPP country. The press was barred from the room. Roughly 25 people rose from the audience to ask questions to the trade delegates during the 90-minute briefing period. As predicted, they were not transparent about the talks, revealed little new information, and delegates also refused to make any comments based on leaked version of texts—the only text EFF and other public interest organizations have had access to. It is difficult for public stakeholders to ask accurate questions or receive any substantive answers when the content of the agreement continues to be shrouded in secrecy.

Rossini asked the USTR about its claims that the TPP’s intellectual property chapter will provide for fair use in its IP chapter, and how those public statements starkly contrast with the recent leaked TPP chapter that shows that the US delegation is in fact pushing for provisions that will restrict non-US countries from enacting fair use. Further, they neglected to comment on the fact that the leaked test has the potential to limit US fair use to the three-step test restrictions. In response, the lead negotiator for the USTR dodged the question and stated that they would not comment on issues raised by text EFF has “purportedly” received. The representative did acknowledge that fair use would be discussed during the week's meetings.

This is not "transparency," no matter how many times the USTR claims that they have "unprecedented" levels of transparency around the TPP negotiations. If negotiators won't share what they're even negotiating, and won't respond to any questions related to the actual text that's leaked, the only thing you can discuss are vague generalities not found in the leaked documents. That's insane. And because of that, the negotiators are focused on ridiculous ideas. For example, the EFF writeup notes that negotiators were asked how they could justify negotiating expansive copyright laws in secret after seeing what happened with SOPA and ACTA... and the response revealed just how out of touch the negotiators are. They don't even realize that the DMCA is controversial:

The last question of the briefing came from EFF’s International Intellectual Property Coordinator, Maira Sutton, who raised from the crowd and asked the lead negotiator how they justify pushing for ever more restrictive copyright laws in the agreement even though it has become clear, with the defeat of ACTA in Europe, that users are sick and tired of international agreements regulating their Internet through overprotective intellectual property provisions... In response, the lead negotiator for the US stated that the standard for copyright regulation in international agreements has been the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They claimed that the DMCA was legislated fairly and is an effective model for copyright enforcement in the US. The representatives' answer contradicted the fact that EFF and others have been arguing for years that the DMCA is fraught with problems. Sutton responded that based upon what we saw in the recent leaked text on fair use, developing countries would not be able to implement such copyright laws as soundly given that the three-step test language restricts signatory nations from determining and establishing fair use as they see fit.

So, the end result is that we have a completely secret back-room process, where the USTR pretends to listen to the public, but won't talk to them about what's in the actual negotiations, and refuses to comment on the little we actually know is in the document thanks to leaks. And because of that, we have completely clueless negotiators pushing something they think is sensible, totally ignorant of the reality.

This could be solved pretty easily: make the US positions and negotiating documents public and allow public comment on them. The USTR still hasn't given a reason why this can't be done. Though, the answer seems kind of obvious: actually being transparent would mean having to listen to the public and various experts point out where they're completely clueless. If USTR negotiators are so insecure in their positions, they shouldn't be in that job.

4714

Living Room / Re: In Search Of Good Web Based RSS Reader

« Last post by IainB on September 18, 2012, 06:02 AM »

I think you may find that you can pretty much get Google Reader to stand on its head nowadays, using add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts.
What you want seems fairly simple to achieve. For example, as an alternative to disabling auto mark as read:

4715

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 18, 2012, 04:44 AM »

...I could make out some of it, but the audio quality has been degraded so much that much is muffled...

-Renegade (September 17, 2012, 08:58 PM)

Actually, the sound seems - as it always was in this clip - relatively clear, but the speaker is sometimes muttering in an Aboriginal dialect of Aussie English. I can make out almost every word, but am constrained in my understanding by being unfamiliar with some of the Aussie vernacular.
By the way, if you watched it using VLC (as I did), don't have the volume turned above 100% because, if you do, then it will introduce noise/clipping making the speech less discernible as speech.

I think it's really a very clever piece. In response to the Aussie PM's apology, the Abo starts off apologising to white Aussies for all his and his people's failings, but gets only so far before he then questions why he's apologising, and then ends up telling them all to "F off" in no uncertain terms. Prodigious use of the F-word.
I loved it. Real LOL material. Had me in stitches. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea. Maybe you need to be an Australasian to best appreciate the humour.

4716

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 18, 2012, 04:31 AM »

Please, can I be declassified as Flora/Fauna?...

-Fred Nerd (September 18, 2012, 02:08 AM)

Be careful what you wish for. You might be reclassified as a fungus or a yeast, or something. That'd be no kind of life for a dog.

4717

Living Room / Re: SkyDrive: Apple iCloud : Google Drive: Dropbox - comparison (FREE versions)

« Last post by IainB on September 17, 2012, 09:21 PM »

Have you actually tried the Google Drive yet?...

-barney (September 17, 2012, 06:04 PM)

Yes, I have been using it for ages - since before it was rebadged as Google Dive, when it was Google docs.
It has been progressively improved by Google.
The only problem I currently have with Google Drive is inconsistency:

• When it was Google docs, it used "labels" (tags) as pseudo-folders - you could attach as many labels to a document as you wanted - Many-->One relationship. You only had the one copy of the file though.
  
  
• When Google later produced a Google docs Sync-to-PC tool, you gained the ability to read the docs offline. The labels however manifested as actual folders on the PC sync copy, and a document in the Cloud with "N" labels was replicated "N" times. It was thus automatically downloaded and synced "N" times and the "N" duplicate copies were put into the "N" folders on your PC disk, named the same as the labels. One-->One relationship. This was confusing, and greatly increased disk space and bandwidth utilisation.
  
  
• When Google Drive was introduced, the labels seemed to have become logical folders, so you can now apparently only have a One-->One relationship.
  
  
• The Google drive sync now mirrors the actual Drive folders/files in a One-->One relationship.
  
  
• In Google docs, documents that someone else had shared with you would sync as entire documents to your PC, so you could read them offline. Now in Google Drive, they sync as links only. To to be able to read them offline you have to manually copy the docs in Drive to your main Google Drive folder. This seems cumbersome and unintuitive.

4718

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 17, 2012, 08:47 PM »

Apology to Australian Aborigines
On 13th Feb. 2008, the first piece of business for the then newly-elected government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was to open opened a new chapter in Australia's tortured relations with its indigenous peoples with a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs and a call for bipartisan action to improve the lives of Australia's Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Just for fun, someone made a video clip of a very moving response from the Aborigines - Aboriginal apology to white Australia.

This vid clip had previously been on YouTube: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=US32todWY6Q
- but it now says there that it has been removed as "hate speech".
I don't understand that. It is parody and very funny too, though perhaps not "politically correct".
I guess the YouTube censors have been at it again.

4719

Living Room / Re: SkyDrive: Apple iCloud : Google Drive: Dropbox - comparison (FREE versions)

« Last post by IainB on September 17, 2012, 05:39 PM »

Just when I was beginning to think that maybe Google had run out of improvement/innovation ideas, there is a highly informative post quietly made on the Google Drive Blog (they don't use the cliché "exciting" at all!), and I have copied it below, sans embedded hyperlinks.

Note especially (as emphasised in the post):

• 1. the introduction of OCR recognition of text in saved images, and used in searches.
• 2. the introduction of new technology for image recognition, and used in searches.
• 3. the simple structure of pricing for different size storage-paid accounts.

I wondered when Google were going to introduce the new features. I think this may be disruptive in the Cloud market - e.g., as it probably easily leapfrogs services such as Evernote. It will be interesting to see how the Cloud marketing and pricing for such services unfolds now.

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really
(Cross posted from the Official Google Blog)

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist. Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.
With Google Drive, you can:

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
  
  
• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
  
  
• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future. This is just the beginning for Google Drive; there’s a lot more to come. Get started with Drive today at drive.google.com/start—and keep looking for Nessie...

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome & Apps
Posted 25th April by A Googler

Google also refer to this in a separate post - here:

...Last month, we launched a feature to let you search for text inside the PDFs in your documents list. Now, using the same optical character recognition technology, you can search for and copy highlighted text when you open a scanned PDF, like a fax or hotel receipt.
It’s not just stuff in your documents list: we’ve also made text in PDFs and images uploaded to Google Sites searchable...

4720

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 17, 2012, 07:26 AM »

Beginner’s Guide to Police Harassment
Vol.46 No.8 | NZPA | Sat September 1st, 2012

A North Island police station received this question from a resident through the feedback section of a local Police website:

“I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?”

In response, a sergeant posted this reply:

First of all, let me tell you this ... it’s not easy. In the Palmerston North and rural area we average one cop for every 505 people. Only about 60 per cent of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as “general patrols”) where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing units that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. At any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60 per cent of general patrols are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So, roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 6000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 15,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average eight-hour shift runs 28,800 seconds long. This gives a cop two-thirds of a second to harass a person, and then only another third of a second to drink a Massey iced coffee AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to the challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilise some tools to help us narrow down those people we can realistically harass.

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. “My neighbour is beating his wife” is a code phrase used often. This means we’ll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, “There’s a guy breaking into a house.” The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or drivers with no licences and the like. It’s lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light.  Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.

LAWS: When we don’t have phone or cars, and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called “statutes”. These include the Crimes Act, Summary Offences Act, Land Transport Act and a whole bunch of others... They spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people. After you read the law, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offences and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, the book says that’s not allowed. That meant I had permission to harass this guy.

It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because, for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to “harass” some people.

Next time you are in Palmerston North, give me the old “single finger wave”. That’s another one of those codes. It means, “You can harass me.” It’s one of our favourites.

4721

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - Mini-Review (as at 2012-09-17)

« Last post by IainB on September 16, 2012, 09:45 PM »

A post from the future   
(It's still 16th here)

-rgdot (September 16, 2012, 08:30 PM)

Yes, the date is in NZT - which is +12hrs ahead of UTC (GMT/Zulu), and +16hrs ahead of NYT.
(NZ is not far off the International Date Line.)

Mind you, that's nothing compared to my Thai wife who was born in 2517!

4722

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - Mini-Review (as at 2012-09-17)

« Last post by IainB on September 16, 2012, 06:36 PM »

Just made a few updates to the Opening Post and added this edit:

EDIT 2012-09-17:

Hooray! This seems to be an effective fix to the episodic real-time performance monitoring issue:
(for more info., refer HDS FAQ page http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php)

The real time performance monitoring worked per the Registry settings workaround (see earlier edit below), but after some time (for example after connecting/removing external hard disk, pendrive or similar storage device) it stopped working and I periodically had to reset the Registry settings - i.e., the Registry settings change did not "stick". This was apparently caused by a function in HDS which provides for performance monitoring when a new device - e.g., an external hard disk - is connected/detected. When this happens, Hard Disk Sentinel has a function that clears the performance object cache and re-detects the performance objects. On some systems (regardless of hardware configuration) this function apparently causes the Windows performance monitoring settings in the Registry to be disabled.

If this happens, you can disable this HDS function as follows:

• 1. click "start" (Windows) button and to the search field enter REGEDIT
• 2. open REGEDIT
• 3. navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\HD Sentinel (or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HD Sentinel under 32 bit Windows), where you will see a lot of keys.
• 4. create a new STRING key named DisablePerfCacheClear and specify a value of 1 for that.

Then restart HDS, which now will not issue this special function to clear the performance object cache when it detects the change of configuration, so the performance counters will continue working normally - once reset in the Registry. Those Registry settings should now "stick" and not need to be reset again.   

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: FreeFileSync - automated backup - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on September 13, 2012, 08:18 AM »

There's a comparison at MakeUseOf.com, between FreeFileSync vs. Microsoft SyncToy:
Is FreeFileSync Better Sync Software Than Microsoft SyncToy? [Windows]

...
The Verdict
FreeFileSync trumps SyncToy on all fronts. Perhaps it’s not surprising, given that SyncToy isn’t something Microsoft is focusing on – it hasn’t been updated since 2009. Maybe it’s time to take Microsoft SyncToy off our Best Of page and add FreeFileSync? I can’t see a reason to use SyncToy over FreeFileSync.

4724

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 13, 2012, 05:39 AM »

Spotted on the Readers' Digest website:

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Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 11, 2012, 06:32 AM »

A third cogent post about the TPP at the PublicKnowledge's PolicyBlog provides a useful overview of the infeasibility issue of "temporary copies" prohibition in the context of the TPP:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks.)

Failing to Understand the Needs of the 21st Century: The TPP and Temporary Copies
By Sherwin Siy  | September 10, 2012

This is the third post in our our series on how a US proposal for a copyright chapter in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would hurt the rights of citizen’s in the 21st century. That proposal was leaked on the Internet in February last year. For more details on the TPP, check out tppinfo.org.

By reading this post, you have made copies of a copyrighted work. In fact, this is true of any copyrighted work you view on an electronic device. That copy is sitting in your computer or your phone's RAM, and likely also in a cache in its long-term storage. Streaming online video, even if you don't save it to your hard drive, still means that a copy of that video is made on your computer: bit by bit, the entire video is copied into a buffer before it gets played to you.

So are those everyday uses copyright infringement? It's highly unlikely under US law. But if the TPP has its way, they might.

The very first paragraph of the TPP's copyright section (at least as of February 2011, which was the last version of the agreement to be leaked to the public) says,

Each Party shall provide that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms have the right to authorize or prohibit all reproductions of their works, performances, and phonograms, in any manner or form, permanent or temporary (including temporary storage in electronic form).

It's that insistence that "temporary" reproductions, including "temporary storage in electronic form" be part of the author’s reproduction right that raises some real questions. Every digital file that's opened on a computer has reproductions made of it in RAM—temporary storage in electronic form. Even a CD player that has anti-skip protection does the same thing—music is copied into a digital buffer (temporarily) before it's streamed to the audio output. DVRs do the same thing with incoming TV signals. Every piece of software you run is also copied into your computer's RAM.

A few different legal principles prevent all of these things from being illegal under US copyright law. Some instances of a copyrighted work are so fleeting—lasting only fractions of a second, that they aren't even considered "copies" for the purposes of the law. Others might be considered fair uses, while still others might fall into specific exemptions written in to US copyright law for software use.

This doesn't mean that temporary copies can never infringe copyright, but the language in the TPP seems to say a lot more than that. It expressly defines temporary copies as infringing, and then reiterates that temporary electronic copies are infringing. It's certainly possible to read that as not making RAM copies and buffers illegal prima facie, but it's not the most intuitive reading of it. And potential interpretations are incredibly important in the context of international agreements. A particular phrase in a treaty can be easily read one way by an American lawyer, and completely differently in the context of Australian or Chilean law. This is particularly salient in copyright law, a field where very few countries have a system of limitations and exceptions to copyright as strong as US-style fair use.

And since proponents of the TPP are particularly concerned with its promised benefits for US industry, what effects would a ban on temporary copies have for the American tech sector? US-based makers and exporters of devices that make temporary electronic copies of everything they encounter as a matter of course (computers, smartphones, tablets, DVRs) could face liability for the copies they make of copyrighted material in other countries. The same is true for cloud-based services that make temporary copies, like search engines caching websites. Would Apple need to be concerned about running afoul of New Zealand copyright law when a user in Auckland streamed a rugby match? Would Google face liability in Singapore for caching an article on the Straits-Times website?

This isn't the first time that this temporary copy language has appeared in trade agreements—the US has signed bilateral free trade agreements with Colombia, Korea, Australia, and others that include similar language. Including it in a multilateral treaty simply further enshrines a bad idea, makes it even harder to fix, and creates more opportunities for harm from that language than has already been risked with bilateral trade partners. Removing the temporary copies language doesn't prevent those existing bilaterals from doing their current work, and it wouldn't create any inconsistency with other international agreements. It does, though, remain inconsistent with US law.