Re: Implication being...

"How palatable do you think a game like Civ would be if for example you could play as Pol Pot and win?"

It's actually harder than it looks. You have to be oppressive to your own people, whilst being introverted and technology resistant. It's bloody hard work to win as Pol Pot, race to Fundamentalism, Railroad and Engineers and then start destroying the other players with Fanatics before they discover Partisanism…

Oh you meant ethically. My bad.

Re: One more time -

The downvotes are because a lot of Android apps ask for a litany of permissions, which are 'necessary' to use the game.

An example of this is the legitimate version of Angry Birds, the most popular mobile game, which (at least at some point) used to ask for SMS permissions:

http://www.androidcentral.com/rovio-explains-why-angry-birds-update-needs-sms-permission

Since the legitimate version of the game asks for similar permissions as the dodgy version of the game, can you understand why 'looking at the permissions' is not relevant - most users simply will accept whatever is put to them, as they have to accept them anyway for a lot of their apps.

Re: Reprimanded?

Almost certainly they have obtained money by deception, IANAL, but surely this is a criminal offence?

Re: WTF?!

Actually, the current UK plan is to make information freely available, and let 3rd party developers compete amongst themselves to produce the highest quality app using that data.

For things like tube line status etc, this approach has actually worked quite well.

A logical extension of this would be to make services that developers can use to produce apps which actually do things rather than just interrogate data. Your PAYE example would work here - what is needed is a service to allow an individual to enter their PAYE data securely, which app developers can then integrate.

However, 'logical' and 'politics' don't really mesh.

"""

Meanwhile, Platell confessed that she visited the well-known PornHub website last night, and the Mail columnist added that she was "appalled" by what she found there.

"""

I know the feeling Amanda, pop onto PornHub for a 5 finger shuffle, and it's just stuff you've already seen. Appalling indeed.

Re: "you don't *need* a new machine to code with."

What a load of nonsense. The wannabee kernel mode developer already has a way to do exactly this, by using a vm on their operating system of choice.

I know lots of BSD kernel developers who run OS X on their laptops, and test all their kernel changes in VMs. Very little needs actual hardware to develop upon.

Re: Don't see the point..

This is the real problem with ICT in schools - people like this AC. Supporting Python on Windows is no different than supporting python on the Pi.

This makes me think that the educationalists going ape-shit over the Pi probably think that Pi devices will not require maintenance, support, software upgrades etc.

There is nothing you can do on a Pi that you cannot do on any vintage of a RM PC, teachers and technicians simply haven't wanted to do it. I don't understand why having special devices will get around this.

Re: One little problem

That's not really relevant though. The most important thing is that mail is not delivered successfully to a server that is no longer part of your mail store. This could happen if an MTA (or the NS server it queries) caches NS lookups.

By locking out the server, you don't want bounces, and fortunately, you don't get them. Any MTA that would discard or bounce an email after one failed delivery attempt is moronic.

Most will keep them in an outgoing queue, and attempt to redeliver them at a later date. What you hope here is that when it attempts to deliver it later, it will use the correct DNS name and deliver it to the correct MTA.

Only if an MTA has attempted redelivery multiple times will it contemplate bouncing the email back to the sender.

Re: Would be useful, but...

Close but no cigar. When Greene King bought Ridleys (which bought Tolly Cobbold), they continued brewing Tolly Original in Chelmsford at the old Riddle's site.

Anyway, what's wrong with Westgate St brewery?

Re: "just Linux"

It's not particularly interesting to BSD really - or at least I've seen no interest from the FreeBSD community. See here:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2011-November/036745.html

The Pi is an ARMv6, which isn't that powerful compared to most other (Cortex based) SoC boards. The video out is controlled by a proprietary, closed source system, with no specifications - so there is zero chance of enabling video on a Pi without using the provided binary blob on Linux.

If you want a cheap ARM on BSD that can't do video out, you buy a sheevaplug, or one of the many derivatives. If you want a powerful SoC, you buy a BeagleBoard or a PandaBoard.

Re: If its wrong most of the time...

It is trivial to calculate the distance between an exchange and a subscribers premises, but it is almost impossible to determine the length of cable used to connect them, the quality of the copper in that cable, the amount of environmental crosstalk in the cable, the quality of wiring in the subscribers premises, and all the other factors involved in determining your synch speed.

So, given a location, all an ISP can do is calculate a 'best case' and a 'worst case' bounds for your line. Obviously, marketing would prefer that the worst case is as understated as possible, so there will be outliers that have worse conditions even than the 'worst case'.

As an example of this, around Albert Dock in docklands there are some very curious routing of cables. Some locations in that area are extremely close to the exchange, but have 2+ miles of cabling, due to the strange way that the cables are routed around the docks.

Another example is my old man, who lives in the wilds of East Anglia. His line, if you check, says he should get 1MB, just about, because of distance from the exchange. He actually gets 3MB, because the line from the exchange is new, high quality, goes in pretty much a straight line across 7km of fields, and he has excellent in house wiring, including a fitted ADSL filter on the master socket.

With ADSL, you get the physical maximum synch that your line can handle. Switching ADSL ISPs searching for synch speed is inane, the ISPs and BT cannot change the laws of physics. Instead, you should either move, or see if you can improve the situation by improving your internal wiring, or STFU.

Re: "carrying out an upgrade"

Transport in London is basically semi-organized chaos anyway, on a good day.

Re: This could bite them in the arse

If you are interested in this, you should read about the Islamic golden age, roughly 750 AD - 1250 AD, during which Islamic scientists where the greatest in the world in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, ophthalmology and physics, discovering things which would only later be 'discovered' by western scientists.

The most important thing that Islam gave us was the scientific method.

Re: No wonder

Poverty is also endemic in the US, but the suggestion that they spend money on welfare rather than on more efficient ways is offensive to your average merkin.

Re: Sorry, late to the party, but...

Not quite right. MS have built IE10 for WOA, and to make it fast enough to run on WOA, they have used non-public APIs, which they are refusing to make available to 3rd party developers to use.

As a consequence, Mozilla cannot build a browser for WOA that would compete with IE10, since they cannot use the same APIs.

Re: why the hate?

My Sony-hate derives from an earlier age. Sony used to have a reputation for quality, and you would buy Sony hifi equipment because of the quality.

At some point, they decided to cash in on that reputation, and built some god-awful kit that was cheaper than their regular kit, but way more expensive than equivalent, non Sony kit. Loads of people paid extra for the Sony mark of quality and got ripped off.

I'd rather buy an Onkyo or Wharfedale than Sony these days.

Thing is, 'Proview' isn't a company, it's a collection of assets owned largely by their creditors, the main one being BoC, who are largely owned by the government, who 100% own the judiciary.

Re: Should have applied for .dev

Since when would a server with a ".dev" suffix belong in production?

If its for production, you should be using a domain name you own. If you don't want your domain names resolvable externally, you should be using a split horizon DNS.

If you blithely ignore RFCs when they explicitly tell you you should not do a thing, you should not be surprised when the internet bites you on the ass.

Re: Smacks of the old scam

Isn't that a quote from Lock Stock?

Re: Why would you buy an android?

Can we have a 'Report to a Medical Professional' button please.

Re: WHAT!

I don't allow Adobe Anything anywhere near my computers, I don't download random executables off the internet and run them, I don't allow plugins in my browser, I only open known media types with trusted programs and the box is firewalled to buggery both ingress and egress.

I've been doing this for 15 years with no virus, trojan or malware. Kaspersky runs at £60/year, so that's a £900 saving. It's a bet, with myself. I bet that I won't fuck up my machine, and so far, I'm winning.

Re: Don't worry

It riles me that certain types of people want to infer everything from my choice of tablet. You're still doing it, for instance.

"""

Look, you're posting in a community populated by Assembly programmers, aeronautical engineers and bearded guys who code using only a magnetised needled and a steady hand.

"""

Indeed, I'm part of that community - that's why I'm posting here - although I prefer vim to a magnetised needle.

It's geeky that I got excited about a software update to a music player. What's your excuse?

Re: Why is it only for premium users?

Two main reasons:

1) The desktop client uses P2P as well as direct downloads to source media, where as the mobile client only uses direct downloads. Therefore, it does cost more for them to offer access to mobile devices.

2) Mobile access is the USP of the premium account. It is the main feature differentiator between the two account types. If mobile access was allowed on the mid-range package, no-one would buy the premium account. The account type you are in is specifically designed to make you want to upgrade to the premium account.

Re: Don't worry

Let me guess, you have neither an ipad nor spotify, yet felt drawn to read and comment on a story about both.

I don't need to justify my geekiness, it is apparent in every facet of my existence. The ipad doesn't "qualify me for geekdom", it is just my tablet and, unlike you, I don't think I am defined by my choice of tablet made two years ago.

Re: WHAT!

AV is a con for the stupid. If you aren't stupid, you don't need AV.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid people out there who think they aren't.