Re: [Dorset] OT: Sign up to oppose the Digital Economy Bill
On Friday 19 Mar 2010, Chris Dennis wrote: I've written to Desmond Swayne -- the MP on this side of the border. Last time I wrote to him about something (the arms trade) he just replied I disagree (embedded in a couple of paragraphs of waffle). When the big US Corporations were bending all the rules to get software patents legal in the EU, I wrote to every one of the South West MEPs. (I've never understood why we are apparently represented by nearly a dozen different people.) The responses were interesting, but not unexpected. Uncannily they all had beliefs that pretty much exactly aligned with those of their party. Generally the ones who were pro software patent spouted the nonsense about rewarding innovation (has any one ever found an innovative software patent?). The ones who were opposed seemed to be better informed. Having read what I just said, I suppose some would say 'I would think that wouldn't I'. :-) ) -- Terry Coles 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wed 2010-04-07 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
Re: [Dorset] OT: Sign up to oppose the Digital Economy Bill
On Saturday 20 March 2010 08:42:27 Terry Coles wrote: has any one ever found an innovative software patent? Wasn't Lempel-Ziv innovative, in its time ? the better points are surely 1 software patents are often not held by the innovators; 2 they last far too long and hamper /further/ innovation; 3 it is impossible in practice to avoid infringing them inadvertently; 4 algorithms are akin to theorems in logic or mathematics. Best wishes, John -- John Palmer Preston near Weymouth, Dorset, England e-mail: jo...@bcs.org.uk (plain text preferred) website: http://www.palmyra.uklinux.net/ -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wed 2010-04-07 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
Re: [Dorset] OT: Sign up to oppose the Digital Economy Bill
On Saturday 20 Mar 2010, Ralph Corderoy wrote: Yes, HTTP lets clients and servers converse over whether they need to fetch a new version of the page to save on needless transfers. A server can use it to help stop the `reload addicts' that keep reloading, waiting for the count to go up by one. :-) OK. So I can see why they would want to do this. Here's the conversation for the first time it's fetched, some headers deleted. A paragraph of request, another of reply. GET /Digital-Economy/ HTTP/1.0 Host: petitions.number10.gov.uk Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cache, max-age=259200 HTTP/1.0 200 OK Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:12:05 GMT Expires: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:12:06 GMT Content-Length: 16664 Last-Modified: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:31:03 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=1 The next time the browser asks, including on a reload, it adds the `If-Modified-Since' header. GET /Digital-Economy/ HTTP/1.0 If-Modified-Since: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:31:03 GMT Host: petitions.number10.gov.uk Cache-Control: max-age=259200 HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:11:54 GMT Unless I've misunderstood this, the server is lying! The browser asks if the page has been modified since the last time it got a fresh page and the server says no, even though it has. Seems a pretty poor approach to me, because it will make people keep asking and wondering why a page they expect to change isn't. Hold down Shift in most browsers when clicking the Reload icon to make it not do this and really get a fresh version of the page. But use sparingly. There's a reason it works as above. You don't want the server so heavily loaded that folks don't bother signing. :-) That is the bit that confused me. I thought the reload button on it's own gave that behaviour. -- Terry Coles 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wed 2010-04-07 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.orgchannel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
