Schinckel.net

Microsoft to blast Google for its copyright policy - Yahoo! News “Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs,” says Rubin, who oversees copyright and trade secret law at Microsoft. Okay, let’s examine Microsoft’s record. MS-DOS 6.0: Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. Softimage: Microsoft was found guilty of software piracy last year (2001) by a French court. Windows Media Player: Microsoft used a cracked edition of Sony Sound Forge 4.5 to make the sound files for the Windows Media Player tour. And it’s fairly well understood that MS don’t make good stuff, they buy good stuff from other people, and make it worse… Pot. Kettle. Black.

I don’t have the newspaper article in front of me, but I am riled up by this story. Basically, some church-type fellows have raised a petition about some “anti-religious” laws, that, apparently, “limit people’s right to free speech.” Now, before we get started, let me state that Australia, and South Australia do not have the same rights to free speech for citizens as the USA. Secondly, one of the arguments that is made by the preacher in the article is that it will erode moral values. What makes Christians think they have the dibs on morality anyway? Because the bible tells them so? Let’s have a quote from the bible:

Suppose you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take captives. And suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you are attracted to her and want to marry her. If this happens, you may take her to your home, where she must shave her head, cut her fingernails, and change all her clothes. Then she must remain in your home for a full month, mourning for her father and mother. After that you may marry her.

Okay, so according to Deuteronomy 21:10-14 you can take a woman against her will. Nice. We call that rape. But it doesn’t stop there:

Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and possess the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants.

Hmm, it’s okay to punish people for what their ancestors have done. (Isaiah 14:21) I’m really sorry, Australian Aboriginals.

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.

Wait, this one’s a triple-whammy. Firstly, it’s okay to own slaves. Secondly, it’s okay to beat slaves, as long as they don’t die from it. Thirdly, if they survive for a day or two, and then die, well, that’s okay too. (Exodus 21:20-21) So, how’s your moral superiority looking now, Mr. ne’er-do-evil god-bothering preacher. I’d guess more people have been killed by believers than non-believers. I reckon it’s we atheists who can take the moral high ground. I spit on your vile, disgusting, misogynistic, racist, slavery-supporting, hate-creating religions. Ahh, that feels better.

The new Mitcham Square shopping centre has (kind-of) opened. It’s all very new and clean, and has quite a few shops. The cinema hasn’t opened yet, but it will be nice when it does. No more treks down to Marion to go to the movies. I hate that place. I went into Mitcham Square today to go to the supermarket. The carpark isn’t quite complete, meaning finding a park, and driving around at all was kind of difficult. At least I did find one fairly close to the entrance. Once I went up the escalator ramp, I was in the new place. As soon as I stepped out onto the shiny tiles, I nearly slid on may arse. That floor is very slippery. Old people beware. I wandered around and found the Foodland. Classy new supermarket building; RFID (I assume) price tags on the shelves. That is, no printed labels with prices, but all little LCD screens. Now, I’m all for modern technology that improves our lives, but I have some issues with this particular instance. Firstly, the tags are smaller than regular price labels, and because there is no backlight, you actually need to move in quite close to see the price. And I have good eyesight! Half of the tags had scrolling text ($1.99; Normally $3.99, Save $2.00!), although admittedly the current price was always visible. But small. Secondly, here in (South?) Australia, we have a special Code of Conduct for Electronic Registers. That is, if you purchase an item, and the register records the price as higher than the one written on the shelf, you get the item free. (If you purchased more than one, only the first is free, the remainder are at the lower price!). This is all well and good, but what’s to stop the electronic shelf tag being networked in, and price updated automatically? I’d personally suspect they aren’t (lots of tags -> lots of IP addresses, even inside a private IP range). So, I’d suspect there are programmers that need to be held near the tag to update the price. Okay then, I want one of those. I’d go around changing the prices, and bingo! Everything for free. • My final whinge is against another shop there. I walked up the escalator (yes, they aren’t there to just stand still on!), and thought “Oh cool. An Illy.” However, that sign was misleading. Apparently it isn’t a proper Illy cafe, just sells Illy brand coffee. Except that the Illy sign is more visible (especially when coming up the way I did) than the name of the cafe.

Kosmina may pay ultimate penalty for spray - Football - Sport - smh.com.au You mean they’re going to execute him for yelling a the ref? I thought that’s what “Ultimate Penalty” meant.

ADELAIDE United coach John Kosmina could be forced to watch the A-League grand final from the AFL coaches’ box at Telstra Dome after again falling foul of the FFA’s disciplinary watchdogs after Sunday’s dramatic penalty shoot-out win over the Newcastle Jets.

Oh, that’s what you mean. I love how journalists overdo it.

Leaked video of friendly-fire killing in Iraq

One is heard to say “I’m going to be sick” after he realizes what happened.

Now this makes me sick. Why should killing a “friendly” person make you sick, when killing an unfriendly one doesn’t? Surely killing any person is the same?

Tennis Australia plays with domain ‘scalper’ - Internet Applications Software

Tennis Australia paid a “hefty fee” to the Sydney-based group, but less than a six-figure sum, said Wood. He would not reveal the group’s identity other than to say they were not sport-related.

Now this astounds me. Getting a .com.au domain name is supposed to be rather strictly enforced. That is, you are not supposed to be able to get one unless you have a registered company with the name you want as the domain. And as I understood it, you couldn’t just get a similar permutation, it had to basically be your company name, and that’s it. So, which domain registrar sold tennis.com.au to someone who isn’t involved in sport? What grounds did they get it on?

Autopia

Texas environmental officials have delayed a proposed ban of biodiesel fuel in the state to allow further studying of the emissions of biodiesel blends.

Really? And the oil companies let them delay the ban?

The skeptic might say that Texas regulators passed a law that exploits the one negative aspect of biodiesel to protect the oil industry in that state.

You don’t say.

UK pair’s tickets caught behind - National - theage.com.au

… But when they arrived in Sydney yesterday morning they were told their luggage, in which the cricket tickets were packed, was still in England and would take three days to get here.

So let me get this straight. They didn’t carry their tickets in their hand luggage? That’s just plain stupid! It’s not like tickets are particularly bulky even! Whenever I take teams touring, they always pack all of the stuff they need for playing in their hand luggage, just in case the airline loses their checked stuff. And it’s a bit harder fitting playing gear and boots into hand luggage than some tickets in a small folder. They deserve to miss the match.

That’s it. The worst ‘feature’ of Adobe Lightroom is it’s keyboard shortcuts. Having keypresses that aren’t ‘modified’ (we call Cmd, Alt, etc. modifier keys), is the worst design choice they could have made.

It’s not just bad for gamers. Computers must be real-time in their feedback. Lightroom is pretty cool, but it is getting a little laggy for me at times. This is not cool, but becomes downright dangerous under some conditions. For instance, if I double-click a Shoot title, to edit it, and begin typing, sometimes the double-click doesn’t take, and I’m not editing the title. Instead, my keypresses are passed on to the application to handle. Often, this isn’t too much of a problem - the text will just be entered into the active text entry section, or ignored. But Lightroom uses some keyboard shortcuts without the Command key, for things like rating, or viewing in particular modes. This is bad, as it builds a queue of actions, and these happen, often causing the lag to become worse, as they are sometimes complex series. Luckily, I realised early, and was able to use the Undo feature to recover. And, while I’m at it, Firefox’s handling of most Instant Preview type code is bad too - it lags between text entry and catchup. Not cool at all. IE can handle it much better. Can’t believe I said that!