mac-a-day-or-two-on

Mac, a day or two on

I mentioned lately I got an iBook. It's my first Mac, and so far I'm a fan. 4 or 5 hours of battery life, instant sleep and resume, lovely interface... So, cool things:
- touchpad scrolls if you use two fingers
- instant connection to awkward college wireless network (which requires all sorts of setup on Windows and Linux)
- spellcheck in all apps, including browser
- lightweight office-suite thingy
- cool dev-tools
- iTunes automatically shares music, sees other peoples' shared music (this one gave me a shock!)
- Microphone in laptop, for Skype and such.
- Mighty Mouse is great
- Surprisingly, I really like Expose (always annoyed me when briefly using other peoples' macs)
- Dashboard is cool

Not-so good things:
- I had to temporarily change my WiFi MAC address (don't ask). For the Airport Extreme, it's set in hardware; however, Google told me that the driver itself can be modified with a hex editor to whichever address you like. This worked, amazingly. Then I restarted. Back to original. It turns out that to speed up startup, the Mac keeps an image of the kernel with relevant drivers loaded; had to regenerate this. Works now; yay!
- Using external monitor sensibly is crippled by Apple; apparently this is resolvable.
- Safari's 'find' doesn't work like Firefox's; Safari is better in all other ways, tho, so I'm using it.

So I'm a Mac addict now. Marc sent me this in response to my original Mac post. :)

new-computer

New Computer

Writing this from my new iBook. It's lully. :)

interesting-comments-and-my-v

Interesting comments and my VICTORY against the Neo-Nazis

Let no-one say I don't get interesting people visiting!

And the London Underground have responded to my complaint about Neo-Nazis using their logo. They've forwarded it onto the Transport Museum, who, rather bizarrely, seem to hold the copyright. VICTORY FOR ROB! Ahem.

old

OLD!!!!

I just found out that one of my friends, who I thought was the same age as me, is 21 tomorrow. This brought about the unpleasant realisation that I'm 21 in 8 months. This is disappointing. I had hoped to have my life some way sorted out by the time I was 21. That said, I had hoped to have my life sorted out by end of first year and end of second year; I missed both milestones. I'm all depressed now.

quote-of-the-day-and-whiny-se

Quote of the day, and whiny self pity

Lady Veteran is a net loon. Is she also insane in real life?

On a USENET FAQ.

Whiny self pity relates to the fact that no-one is, or ever has been, sexually interested in me except for the elderly and overweight, neither of which I am interested in. As I am surrounded by happy couply and/or promiscuous people on a daily basis, this is unpleasant. Grr.

And the ESA's Venus Express probe is delayed, due to its Soyuz/Fregat launcher leaking on it, apparently.

racist-pride

Racist Pride

Many European countries have laws outlawing neo-Nazi-ism. In principle, I disagree with such laws; letting the crazy racists make fools of themselves should be far more effective than simply shutting them up. In this case, however...

"Aryan Pride" and other such nonsense seems to be catching on in the US in a big way, now. So you get rubbish like "Prussian Blue". "Prussian Blue" is a couple of teenage girls who sing racist babble. They're a bit like neo-Nazi Charlotte Churches. They're HORRIBLE. Here is their website. And here's one of the horrid little Nazis on the radio! (Tho' the interviewer is also rather irritating)

Note that they are advertising a neo-Nazi CD whose cover incorporates a London Underground (trademarked) roundel logo. (The one labeled "Gloucester Road", here). I've informed the London Underground, though I would be somewhat surprised if they take action. (Their complaints form is rather dreadful).

Update: Reply from London Underground!

Note also the links to various crazy organisations, including the ludicrous Women for Aryan Unity, complete with "baby drive". Eek.

Here's their horrid forum. Note that their moderators encourage personal abuse, note also the average IQ hovering in the low 60s. It's good to know, at any rate, that the crazies who would put people like me in concentration camps probably can't put on their own clothes in the morning. Also, their administrator finds vBulletin 'complecated'.

And finally, the perfect master race. Posted on their website. Yes, they actually posted that photograph. Presumably their cunning plot is to eat, or sit on, all the filthy homosexuals and darkies and so on. Orthodontics Uber Alles!

Yet more crazy Nazi girls; the reason for the name is apparently that "Prussian Blue" was the name of the residue left behind by the concentration gas Zyklon-B. Fun.

other-peoples-legal-threats-f

Other Peoples' Legal Threats from Crazies

I'm not the only one, it seems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29.

Fun.

(If you can't be bothered to read, said lawyer threatened to sue people for talking about him, claimed to call the police on them and is now under investigation by the Florida Bar).

random-little-tool

Random Little Tool

On the spur of the moment, did a quick thing for finding your IP quickly: http://ipget.net. I plan to add all sorts of amazing things to it, but realistically, I won't.

scary-photos

Scary Photos

Shortly after I finished up working for Edgespace, they had a party. (No, it was not to celebrate getting rid of me!)

This resulted in Marc taking scary photos; particularly this and especially this. Eep.

breaking-myspace

Breaking MySpace

Here's the website of a guy who managed to make over a million people on MySpace his friend, breaking the system in the process. Cool :) (Tho his domain is the acronym for an antique paedophile association; bad).

stark-raving-mad-websites

Stark Raving Mad Websites

Yesterday, SomethingAwful linked to http://petsinuniform.com. Or rather, they linked to http://www.petsinuniform.com; that doesn't seem to be working any more. Isn't that the most hysterically crazy website you've ever seen? (Except, naturally, for this one.)

ibooks-and-spelling-of-names

iBooks and Spelling of Names

Well, finally went ahead and got a nice little 12" iBook, and one of those new Apple mice with more than one button. I can't wait! :)

I also got a new cardy thing from the bank. It's a Maestro card; this is a new European debit card thingy that also works as a Laser card, Switch and Solo card, etc. Theoretically. It's covered with holograms and microchips and such. It also has my name on it. Spelt wrong, naturally. They aren't the only ones.

Irritatingly, although Paypal allows Maestro to be used as a source of funds, it only allows this in the UK. Grr.

By the way, some naughty person (I've a reasonable idea who it is; no-one I actually know these days uses that name for me) keeps posting dirty, dirty messages here. Please don't bother.

dodgy-programming-advice-with

Dodgy Programming Advice, With Extras!

When browsing TheDailyWTF.com, a (good) site with snippets of code written by stupid people, I encountered an ad for lamecode.com a (bad) site with snippets of completely unindented code written by the stupid author, his ranting (of the "I'm a macho violent American" variety) and, for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, soft-core pornography. Really WORRYING-looking soft-core pornography, too, of the "just turned 18" variety. Ewh. Ewh, ewh, ewh. (I don't get much exposure to porn, not really approving of it myself, and in any case homosexual, so wouldn't be looking at the straight stuff regardless. And it is very, very creepy-looking.)

night-out-impulse-paris-trip-

Night Out, Impulse Paris Trip, Reflections on Self and iBook. And Zim

Anyone who's had the misfortune to read this for a significant length of time will note that, unlike most web journal writers (someone waxed enthusiastically at me about things like "blogosphere" and "emergent" yesterday; so shocked was I that I'm not using the verbal form of 'blog' for a while as a precautionary defense) I don't go on about my life, much. That's because (a) I'm shy, and (b) my life is, as a rule, un-utterably boring, and non-notable (oops; I may have caught Wikipeditis as well). Anyway, here's something vaguely interesting.

Trinity LGBT had a table quiz thingy tonight. So, spent two hours (yes, two hours) buying stuff for that with friend, who will thereafter be referred (unlike the W3C, I can spell that word) to as 'X', on the basis that it's probably not a great idea to give out people's names on th'internet, especially when one is about to describe them doing something weird. This is a major danger of being on student society committees; you end up wandering 'round buying things for events (the other major danger is prolonged exposure to revolting web-based grant application forms). Table quiz was fun. After this, I and a few other people went to X's room (on campus; lucky X) and had drinks there. Then go to random dreadful pretentious gay bar (I was, seemingly, in a terribly good mood, as I didn't hate it as I do generally; it really is VERY pretentious), and meet other people recently of Trinity LGBT. Then X decides he wants to go to France. Now. (Yes, France, at 12 at night, you understand). Ignore this as harmless insanity. X telephones Irish Ferries, finds time of next ferry (from a port well over a hundred miles away) and seemingly convinces two or three other people to go with him, tries to convince me, fails (obviously). Initially, I assumed that he was messing, until I recalled that he had done something like this before. He revises his plans to a less ambitious target, Manchester (there's a boat from Dublin to Liverpool; the logical next step was Wales, but he didn't get that far). He went so far as to get money for trip from ATM. We go to random late bar/club thingy, I fail to get in due to not having photo id with me and looking like a 16 year old (I look young where is is inconvenient for me to look young, not otherwise), and go home. Am rather relieved to find that there IS a nitelink on Wednesday still; some of them have been canceled, I know. Bus takes an impressively circituous route; all part of CIE's evil plan to cover the whole of North Dublin with 3 or 4 buses offpeak. Hear no more from X. I suspect he went. Oh, well, no doubt he'll return soonish. In ways, I wish I had the nerve to do something crazy like that; I had enough trouble just staying out after the last conventional bus on a weekday... I'd like to be impulsive and interesting. On plus side, assuming he ever returns from France or Manchester or North Korea or wherever, X is going to help me get an interesting haircut (I may have mentioned my issues with haircuts before). Yay!

Another, more prosaic outcome of the night; at the LGBT thing and after, there were lots of couples. That's normal enough, and a necessary evil, I suppose. However, at least three of these couples consisted of one very good-looking guy (90th percentile) and one ugly guy (10th percentile). WHAT? What's going on there? Goodlooking people are meant to go out with goodlooking people. That is the way of the world. (I may get shouted at for this). I should qualify this by saying that I generally think of myself as being very ugly (whether this is true or not I'm not sure; when in a bad mood I'm also inclined to think of myself as being fat; my BMI is 20, and the whole fat thing really doesn't stand up to objective scrutiny, so I know I may not be sensible on these matters).

Anyway, the fact of the matter is, that I can't get a relationship; no-one's interested, not even the ugly people. I can't even get casual sex. I am generally inclined to blame this on simply being overly ugly. The recent influx of ugly 18 year olds getting with pretty people after being at college for a week, though, tends to blow holes in that theory, leaving open the possibility that my chronic singleness is instead caused by my horrid personality or my difficulty dealing with my fellow humans. I tend to be quite scared in the presence of people I'm attracted to (or, in fact, in the presence of anyone I don't know well in general, but particularly people I'm attracted to); I have been told that this comes over as distain, which is unfortunate. The horrid personality can be trivially observed by reading this web journal (oops, nearly said the b-word!) While on the face of it this might seem like a good thing, the fact is that ugliness is, when it comes to it, largely correctable in the long run; it seems less clear that personality is. Oh, I'm lonely.

NEXT!!! I'm planning on getting an iBook for the last few weeks; was going to do so on Monday but held out in the hope that Apple would release something interesting at their most recent press conference. They failed to do so. Silly Apple! I'm not sure why I was bothered about this, precisely; the current entry-level iBook is entirely adequate for my needs, and I don't generally do processor-intensive stuff, so the long-promised PowerBook G5 is of little interest. Hmm....

Oh, and more Zim quotes (I think I'm addicted):

Zim: No playing with the dirty cow-monsters, Gir, this is SERIOUS WORK WE DO.
Gir: Ooooooh.
Zim: We'll switch; you man the tractor-beam, I'll pump the cows full of human sewage.
Gir: Cows are my friends.
Zim (glaring): I don't like you.
...
Zim: Gir, bring me COWS!
----
Gir (after robot Dib's eye falls out): Awh, your little robot boy's broken!
---
Zim: Filthy squirmy Dib. SQUIRMY! The horrible puny-brained meat-child, with his little glasses, and his... head. POINTY HAIR!
...
Zim (to Dib): You dare agree with me? Prepare to meet your horrible DOOM!
...
Gir (taking photos of Dib in front of giant robot): Awh, you! You look so cute!
...
(Robot Explodes) Zim: VICTORY! VICTORY FOR ZIM! I AM ZIM!

magic-power-cables

Magic Power Cables?

Does your brain work? No? Perhaps you'd like to buy a magic audio cable that makes audio systems sound better and computers run faster? Wiring from your house to the local substation? Best not thought of, quite frankly. The skeptics are just trying to confuse you.

curses-again

Curses Again!

DeviantArt, home of psuedo-pornographic fanart (no, don't search for Invader Zim. My brain is broken now) and nonsensical political art (The NAZI party was, of course, elected) has stolen my INGENIOUS idea for a convenient way to put images on mobile phones (This thing). Or more likely, they thought of it indepedently, of course, just like me and the microwave thermal rocket. Grr again.

curses

Curses!

My microwave thermal rocket idea (take nuclear thermal rocket, remove reactor, heat by microwave from ground, higher efficiency than chemical rocket (and indeed nuclear rocket; the reactors can't get very hot), assuming you don't mind the electricity cost) is not actually my microwave thermal rocket idea, it is somebody else's. Grr.

I hate it when I independently think of cool things that other people have already thought of. Silly other people.

NEXT!!!

more-crazy-legal-threats-on-b

More crazy legal threats on Boards!

Not directed towards me this time tho, rather directed towards boards itself.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=298769

Fun

zim

ZIM

I have lately become addicted (it's this boy's fault) to Invader Zim. Awh, oddly cute vicious evil alien! Note the Niven ripoffs (Zim: "The most powerful stealth robot in the Irkan military. Engineered by conquered Vort scientists, actually. They're filthy." Compare Thrintun/Tnuctipun. Or not, if you've never read Niven.)

But anyway, Zim's fun. And very, very quotable.

bandwidth-leachers-exterminat

Bandwidth-leechers EXTERMINATED

Some naughty, naughty person included an image from my site in their post on a forum which, on first inspection, appears to be a gun-loony site with sides of racism, homophobia and so on. As a filthy homosexual, I only allow sites which PRAISE ME to steal bandwidth. The situation has been dealt with. Thank you for your time.

(A surprisingly large number of the big macho gun-toting survivalists have spyware on their AOL-connected computers, btw).

stop-launching-satellites-on-

Stop launching satellites on ICBMs, you fools

A Rockot ex-Soviet ex-ICBM carrying an ESA satellite designed to detect global warming has crashed. What a surprise. This is not the first time. Just stop doing it; it's silly. Use a real rocket next time, please.

found-on-google-ads

Found on Google Ads

Does your brain work? If not, this is for you: The Seven Great Prayers for Financial Blessings

crackpot-idea-454546-warning-

Crackpot Idea #454546 (Warning, involves rockets)

First, a bit of background.

The recent re-emergence of commercial space flight and the US's plan to build a new heavy rocket have sparked a new wave of talk of the glorious, utopian future of space. Space stations, giant solar arrays, advanced materials, mining the asteroids, moon bases... The catch is, this has all happened before. The same thing came as a result of the roll-out of Apollo, something similar happened in the Soviet Union with the launch of the Energia rockets, and even, inexplicably, some of the same mania turned up with the launch of the Space Shuttle.

The big problem with space travel is rockets. A rocket of significant size uses most of its power lifting fuel, not the payload. Doubling the mass of a rocket will by no means double its payload. A Saturn V weighs 2,900 tonnes and has a payload of 118 tonnes to LEO; a Nova design which weighed over 50,000 tonnes had a payload of only 500 tonnes to LEO. The engineering challenges of building such large rockets are considerable, and most heavy rockets have a payload to LEO in the 25 tonne range; the Soviet/Russian Proton, the European Ariane V, the commercial Falcon 9 (under development) and the American Delta IV-H and Atlas V(Heavy) (both under development, though the Delta IV has been tested) are all in this range. So, it looks like lifting very heavy loads by chemical rocket is not an option.

What about nuclear? What indeed. In the early US and Soviet space programs, nuclear thermal rockets were developed; their efficiency was limited due to the rather low temperatures acheivable at the time without damaging the reactor, but they still beat chemical rockets by a wide margin. The top stage of the Saturn V was nearly a small nuclear device, and Werner Von Braun developed a single stage to orbit nuclear rocket capable of putting 500 tonnes in LEO. Nuclear rockets were tested on the ground, but by the time they were developed were politically unacceptable.

Then, there was Project Orion. Project Orion was a collabaration between General Atomics and DARPA in the 50s and 60s; it consisted of a metal disk with a payload on top, from which was dropped small nuclear bombs. It rode into space on the explosions. Designs went from 10,000 tonnes to orbit to 8 MEGAtonnes to orbit. In all, the 10,000 tonne version required about 10 megatonnes of nuclear explosives, though a lot of that energy was wasted. A mini version with chemical bombs was tested, and worked. Of course, this was completely politically unacceptable.

(Crackpot ideas temporarily withdrawn while I investigate patents.)

europe-needs-more-robot-push

Europe Needs More Robot Push

Europe Needs More Robot Push. Also, presumably, more robot shove.

fun-quotes

Fun Quotes

Okay, rather than posting quotes all the time, I'll just put them here, from the top down.

Invader Zim

Zim: Weenies smeenies! Zim needs no meats.
...
Zim: Now prepare your brain, filthy beast of meat and hair. Your magical love adventure begins NOW!
...
Dib: You're just jealous...
Zim: This has nothing to do with JELLY!

Invader Zim

Bus Driver: Where do you think you're going?
Zim: I go home. Now mind your business, bus slave.
...
Taxi Driver: Where to?
Zim: You think I won't be ready. But you're wrong, presumptuous cab beast.

Are you Being Served

(Discussing Mrs Slocome's Birthday)
Granger: I vote we give her a cyanide tablet.... No, I take that back.
Peacock: Good.
Granger: Two cyanide tablets, in case the first one doesn't work.
...
Peacock: We should make it a special occasion.
Granger: I've already suggested a cyanide tablet.

newspeak-for-weather

Newspeak for Weather

"Chilly in isolated areas" will from now on be referred to as "warm for most". "Patchy rain" does not exist. The Met Office is watching you. Oceanica have always been at war with Eastasia. I'd like to talk to you about ducts.

Also, you will note, ONLY FAT PEOPLE MAY BE PIRATES. Gain 50 pounds, or lose the eye-patch, now. NOW.

smeggle-sum-up

Smeggle Sum-up

Okay, one more (short) post on this topic, and then it's gone, unless he comes back claiming I've committed apostacy, or necrophelia, or something. I am unpleasantly aware that I've been inflicting all this crap on other peoples' aggregators, and while it is of course their own fault for adding me in the first place, it's not nice.

You can read the whole history of the thing here, if you haven't already and you're a masochist.

I think that this is all quite a good example of the importance of standing up to internet kooks (it is dangerous to ever let anyone accuse you of a crime you did not perpetrate), and I wouldn't change a thing. That said, it's getting silly at this point, so I think I'll finish it. I may, at some point, write a piece dealing with crazy internet threats and appropriate responses, though SomethingAwful do this better than me.

We'll return to our regular schedule of moaning and Cold War technology momentarily.

complaints-bureau-policy-clar

Complaints Bureau - Policy Clarification

Now I don't get many complaints, and when I do, they're normally from the clearly crazy. So a recent email was interesting. It was from an American, of, I believe, the teenage female excitable variety. Besides the generic "homosexuality is bad, atheism is bad, you're going to hell" bit (why email someone about this? Am I likely to change my beliefs and become attracted to ladies based on reading a letter by an illiterate?), she raised an interesting point.

She was upset that I failed to show the proper deference to Grand Inquitistor Cardinal Ratzinger and baby George Bush. They are, allegedly, worthy of respect. Apparently, it is inappropriate, and in the case of Bush "unpatriotic" (am I American? Do I ever present myself as American? NO) to do so, and she hopes I'm arrested. You know, for using the esteemed president's name incorrectly.

Now, for Mr. Ratzinger, I confess that my major reason for calling him by his old name is simply that I can never remember his number; if he wanted to be addressed correctly he should have chosen a more memorable name, and one which suits his personality better, like "Beelzebub". As for being worthy of respect, the man is a crazy, racist, homophobic bigot and I see no reason that he deserves any.

And saying that George W Bush is worthy of respect is bizarre; the man is either an imbicile incapable of speaking English (bad, in a president) or an extremely cynical actor using the brain-dead persona for his own ends (worse). He also, of course, won the election (the second one; his first term was of course unelected) based on who daddy was. In any case, how is it treason to be disrespectful towards the president? This is the country that calls itself the "land of the free", remember. My correspondent wants to introduce Lese-Majeste (it may be coming; they already want to ban "desecrating" the flag, for goodness sakes). Sheer craziness.

However, we can't have people becoming offended, can we? Certainly not. With that in mind, I have decided to enact strict policy on referring to said dignataries. In future, they will be refered to as "Emperor Bush II, Guardian of the Pretzel" and "noted crazy bigot, Pope Benedict the Somethingth". I hope that that is satisfactory, and let it never be said that I take no notice of feedback.

brazil

Brazil

If you haven't seen Brazil, do so. It's worth it.

(In restaurant, mostly demolished by terrorist attack):
Maitre-D: Madame, I don't know what to say; it never really happens to us.

(On television)
Man: Hi there, I want to talk to you about ducts. Do your ducts seem oldfashioned, out of date?... *shop explodes*

(In Torture Ministry)
Sam: But I could be anybody.
Butler: No you couldn't sir. This is information retrieval.

Also this

Interestingly, it was nominated for Oscars while the film had still not come out in the US; the US publisher tried to cut out the torture scenes and scenes of oppressive government, making it essentially a nonsensical love story with a few random terrorist attacks; Gillam quite rightly protested, and release was stalled. It was eventually released, cut in a more sensible way, to a limited audience in the US.

interesting-spam

Interesting spam

Today, I got a classic 419 scam... from the Philippines. Interesting.

I also got a spam mail in HEBREW; first one I've ever seen. (It was advertising mortages; they'll be first on my list if I should ever wish to buy property in the Holy Land).

us-buys-soyuz

US buys Soyuz?

Apparently, the US is considering buying Russian Soyuz lauchers and vehicles to replace the Shuttle in servicing some of their obligations to the ISS project. Odd. I wonder what Korylev would have thought of that? It does support the conjecture that the Shuttle is considered dead until proven otherwise by NASA.

The Soyuz launcher, derived from the R-7, the world's first ICBM, is one of the few remaining visually appealing rockets. Sadly, in some ways, form gave way to functionality with the Proton and Saturn V, and as for the Energia and Ariane Series... well, really. What were they thinking of?

yet-more-smeggle

Yet More Smeggle

And Again

Here is an interesting piece on copyright of links (specifically looking at "deep links"). It concludes that with certain well-defined exceptions, no permission is required to link: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/linking/linking/link1.html
Here is the judges opinion on the Ticketmaster v Tickets.com case: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/tickemaster.pdf
And some commentary: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/headlines/content/2000040401.html

Now, as a gesture of good faith, and because it is now rather uninteresting, I've removed the deep link (the one to the article previously about the IRA bank robbery). Ordinary links to the site (as in http://blogireland.ie) remain.

Literary references, and references in general, including telephone numbers, are not protected by copyright, which only protects original works, and not basic facts. So, for instance, you are perfectly at liberty to say "The food at John's Restaurant, Blah Street, Dublin is revolting", (but not "the food at John's Restaurant, Blah Street, Dublin contains dead cats" unless you can prove that it does; that would be libel). You can say "JK Rowling's Harry Potter book is tedious"; you can even provide ISBN numbers, Library of Congress references and so on if you feel like it. (Note that tedious and revolting are subjectice opinions, hence not covered under libel law). Similarly telephone numbers are allowed. This is quite important; if these things were in themselves considered copyright violations (making reference to a copyright work) that would severely impede free speech; if someone said something you didn't like about your copyright work, you could stop them doing so.

The argument in the few cases that have been taken based on basic linking (framing and inline images are a separate issue) has been that where website A which links to website B makes a link to website B, A is reproducing B. This has never been accepted in these cases.

Now, as regards, "my starting it"; if you were offended by the talk about your websites on that message board, I really, truely do apologise; that wasn't my intention and I don't think it was the intention of anyone on the thread. I did take severe exception, however, to your talk of my criminality (if you recall, you essentially accused my of trying to break into your system; in this country, the onus would be on you to prove that this was the case). By the way, don't worry, I'm not actually considering suing for libel; that would be absolutely crazy. And I really don't accept the argument that because you know I have "dangerous knowledge", I was naturally going to use it to attack your website. I talk about that subject a lot because it's a very common mistake made by beginning database programmers; I want to inform people about it. In any case, you are using a mature open-source blogging platform which is presumably not vulnerable.

In this case then, you have linked to my material, even after I understood we had agreed (And my apoligies if I am mistaken here) in private that we would keep away from eachother and our respective sites. I even requested that we remove the idiocy that we had each published but you refused that even though I had shown grace by allready removing what I had written.

I agreed to stop linking to my commentary on your original accusations from a forum; that is all. (You should still have the message; please re-read). I have no intention of letting you call me a criminal and then wiping the slate clean.

As to "Grouper" by the way, although it would be rather difficult to convict someone based on their use of it, it is clearly illegal for use with most files unless the user has broadcast rights for those files; for commercially purchased items has almost certainly do not. Like any P2P software, it is not in itself illegal, a large part of its use is illegal.

By the way, you can, of course, stop people going to your page from a link here. Here's a client-side solution: http://fraser.cc/utilities/Bozo/Bozo.html; apparently a server-side solution for IIS is non-trivial after all, but certainly feasable.

if-any-member-of-the-family-s

If any member of the family should die whilst in the shelter, put them outside, but be sure to tag them first for identification purposes

The US seems to be developing nuclear weapons for a limited strategic role. This is a bad thing. While I'm all for nuclear weapons; they have kept the peace since WW2 and led to the development of technologies which guarantee humanity a limited future; their correct role is in a Mutually Assured Destruction role. The idea that limited use of nuclear weapons is acceptable is extremely dangerous, and likely to lead to a ruinous nuclear war.

more-crazy-boy

More Crazy Boy

(For those of you just joining us, see here)

Well, there's really very little more to report. I'd like to thank all you kind people who came and made fun of the crazy person for me. It's interesting that when I post things about stuff I'm interested in, I get maybe one comment; when I post things about crazy people, however, I get lots of them! Crazy people are popular! I think about a third of all comments here are on the "Smeggle" articles. Possibly I should do a TV show, where every week he threatens ever-more-ludicrous action for something silly. It could be on BBC 3, or similar dreadful channel that no-one watches (I'm not even sure how one goes ABOUT watching BBC 3. Do they broadcast it?)

Now, I have taken the liberty of researching the legality of linking. It is much as one would imagine. For normal, non-commercial, non-deceptive links, there is no problem. Case law for links intended to make money is generally that the link itself is not a problem, however if the text of the link is taken from the target website it could potentially be a copyright infringement (though probably not in this country; short pieces of text and headlines are not copyrightable here). Making what is effectively a copy of someone's database is dubious; it has gone both ways. Framing, pretending the content belongs to you and unauthorised use of images is verboten. There was a brief vogue for suing news aggregators over this at the turn of the century, with mixed results; as late as last year, AFP demanded that Google News stop linking to it, although they used Google's use of their headlines, images and text as their excuse. In the US, it is illegal to link to a page that provides data on circumventing a DRM system; it is also illegal to link to pirate copies of things. There is a wealth of information here, and a good summary here. The upshot of it is that simple hyperlinks are not, as far as anyone can see, either copyright infringing or trespass. This seems to be the major test case.

Now, it is of course perfectly simple for this person to stop people from accessing his site through my links. It is trivially easy in Apache, and I doubt that it's difficult in IIS, which he uses (that is of course what started this whole thing).

It seems surprisingly difficult, incidentally, to find out exactly who my accuser is. Whois for his sites, and a listing on a freelancing site, indicates that he's Vince Collins of Cork, but you never know these days, do you? For someone so keen on copyright, he doesn't seem to be squeamish about having local copies of other peoples' works for download on his site, though he may, of course, have permission. He also keeps advertising a P2P app whose claims to legality (through streaming, rather than file storage) are dubious at best. He seems to have designed fabulous websites. His webhost has issues with the humble apostrophe. That's about all the gossip I have for you, my adoring fans, I'm afraid...

You may think I'm being a little hard on this person. Possibly I am. Possibly he should consider being a bit more careful when making mad threats in public fora.

harry-potter

Harry Potter

I'm prob'ly going out tomorrow night. I'm cautious. You see, last time I was out, three separate people told me I looked exactly like Harry Potter. Very, very disconcerting, and not even accurate; my hair is the wrong colour and I'm not 13. Just completely random people, you understand. Usually from Germany or Hungary or somewhere; possibly Harry Potter is different on the front of the books behind the Iron Curtain. No-one ever tries to chat me up (besides the elderly); they just tell me I look like a weird childrens' book character. Harry Potter? I may need to get an aggressively non-Harry Potter haircut, or something.