Tariffs on IP licensing would just hinder the businesses that are genuinely licensing IP, the tax avoiders would switch to something else and the charade would continue. If the EU wants to play hard ball it should impose a levy on transactions with known tax havens and have a uniform corporation tax level across member states, this would of course require the member state who are tax havens to agree, so perhaps unlikely then.
In the UK this makes sense the isps put up a legal fight against this and we have at least notional principles of free speech the isps should show their opposition with a simple informational page. But in other situations we might find a status code or codes that could be inserted into headers or other data stteams, it might be better if this was unofficial so it could be inserted subversively so technocrats don't cotton on to this.
I don't think the EU could ever realistically be called a democracy. The decision making process and appointments are often the result of political horse trading between politicians with very little mandate from the people. A prime example of this being the removal of democratically elected governments in Greece and Italy during the debt crisis, with the Greek prime minister being removed after he dared to ask the people what they thought. This story is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to contempt for the democratic process in the EU.
By putting a steam box under the tv they are moving out of the basement and into family life. Like it or not if valve want this to be a success beyond the rich poser demographic they are going to have to adapt to family life and that means sharing and probably censorship control for parents.
No doubt Microsoft indoctrination classes will continue but from age 11 to 24 I think I got introductory classes to Word, Excel, Access etc about 5 or 6 times. Each tediously going over the same things we were taught at the previous attempt as there isn't really that much to teach and we'd forgotten everything as we didn't use them outside the classroom and it was duller than dull. You only need that twice; once to allow you to write essays for other subjects and when they're about to kick you out in the 'real world'. The lack imagination in the ICT curriculum in UK has been staggering for the past decade holding non-geeks back and being studiously avoided by anyone who knew anything about computers. No doubt Microsoft will try and shoe horn in their own technologies but who cares anything is better than 10 years of powerpoint lessons.
The IT department should have told him that instead of just saying no. The IT department shouldn't try and hold the keys to the budget, I've worked in IT departments and whenever someone came out with an out of the park idea or request I would provide a price and say we need authorisation from you manager / budget holder. The IT department is there to provide advice, create solutions and fix problems but when it comes down to business costs it's for the business people to make a business decision about whether the cost is worth the benefit provided. As an IT department you should not be a road block to business decisions, make sure it's the business manager or finance department who take the heat.
Just like City Centres all over the UK there won't actually be any public toilets, you'll be forced into the nearest McDonalds for additional consumer experience opportunities.
A number of companies disagree with this viewpoint; Amazon, Baidu, QQ and Alibaba have all forked or modfied Android beyond recognition. Nokia could have taken a similar route providing it's own app store and making it a complete no-brainer for developers to upload their apps to Nokia's market too. Sure it's not a pure Android solution but it would have allowed Nokia to maintain it's own user interface design and uniqueness in the market while tapping into a wider ecosystem.
Instead Nokia choose to join hand in hand with Microsoft and as far as I can lose their uniqueness in the market place while at the same time marrying their success to that of Windows Phone. While it might be easier and cheaper for Nokia to pick up Windows Phone they've lost the opportunity to make their product stand out while still tapping into the underlying application development created for Android. Clearly the fee and attention paid to them by Microsoft was what really cut to the chase.
The continuous debate we're having over user interface isn't about simply packaging the user interfaces and putting them in repositories as pretty much all the distros allow you to install whatever user interface package you want, it is instead about the average "user" experience of the product. However much we like to laugh and joke about the "Year of Linux desktop" the people who design those Linux desktops are still shooting for the best user experience for the man off the street who isn't going to delve into the repositories and install KDE, Gnome, Unity or whatever. In addition to that the enthusiasts berating Shuttleworth and Ubuntu for moving away from Gnome must have in the back of their mind that Ubuntu could provide significant developer time and user eyeballs (i.e. testing) to Gnome 3 development (or perhaps forking Gnome 2) and that's now all going into Unity.
And who's to say Debian aren't making a statement about this? Last I heard the packages had only just been moved into experimental when every other distro is kicking out full releases with Gnome 3 or Unity as default. I know by the time we get to the next Debian release we'll be talking about Gnome 4 but with the lack of urgency they're clearly showing they either don't care or it's not ready.
On Channel4 news (in the UK - report here) a spokesman said it was a problem with their core switch infrastructure at their primary European site in Slough. Their backup infrastructure was also not functioning correctly either - the problem with the backup infrastructure is unspecified. My first reaction to that is that it must be gathering dust somewhere untested - but it's been on and off for the last three days in the UK so either they have the same problem with the backup infrastructure, they are lying about having a backup infrastructure or their back up plan is to use the North American network for European traffic. If that's the case did the volume of traffic just take out the North American network?
I've been living with a limited internet connection (3G phone only) for 4 months or so as I've moved twice in that time. It hasn't made me anymore productive, I just find other ways to procastinate or waste time and it just leaves you frustrated not having all the possible information at your finger tips - making you even less productive.
They actually did the exact opposite and produced a series of limited edition vinyl records exclusively for the event, which is great for the collectors but I'd asumme they will already aware of their local independent shops. For those of those who have been tempted away from independent record stores by the internet first with cheap cds then downloads and finally streaming, it doesn't offer that much more really apart from a chance to pull in a few extra pundits with some publicity. My local shop put on a band and given that I'm new in the area and hadn't heard of the shop I tagged along, it did the job in a way I suppose as I've now been in the shop but I came away empty handed, no way am I paying GBP100+ for something I can't even play.
I'd reckon on Nokia needing something like four phones:
1. Small basic calls and text with a traditional numbered keypad 2. Basic touch screen device aimed at web browsing and social networking 3. "Business" or "Chat" device with a built in physical keyboard 4. Super Computer in a phone
They could iterate no 4 fairly rapidly, it seems to work well for HTC they're hardly ever out of the news with their rapid release cycle.
Say we get hard intel that sometime later that day, someone will be using Twitter or Gmail to issue timing commands to a bunch of people ready to drop off backpack bombs on metro trains in half a dozen large cities around the country. The "kill switch" mechanism doesn't shut down the internet. It allows the counter terror people to ask the administration to use that legal power to get on the phone with Twitter and tell them what needs to happen to prevent such use.
What exactly do you need to legislate for? If there was genuine intel that terrorists were going to use Twitter to arm a device or orchestrate an attack, do you really think that when presented with this information and a request to make changes if order to avert an national catastrophe that Twitter would turn around to the government and tell them to get lost? Even if the data was being transmitted on services outside the US and it required changes at a network infrastructure level to disrupt peering of data from those services, do you really think that a company would turn down a request to make such a change?
Steam and mainstream publishers often engage in classic skimming pricing, start and work their way down to nearly free. We're currently at the point where so many games are at pocket money prices that there seems to be little incentive for gamers to actually buy at the top end of the price range, indie games aren't driving this the mainstream publishers and distributors are, but the indie developers have very little choice but to participate else they face being priced out the market. The problem as far as I see it is that the race to the bottom starts very quickly; Super Meat Boy for instance was released on the PC at around £12 but within three months had reduced it's price to a quarter in a Steam sale to £3. Anyone who did actually buy at full price did so either because of their anticipation of the title or their good will towards indie developers, much of that goodwill could be eroded by deep discounts so soon after release, some people who purchased at full may have not even played the game yet. It's one thing to gain new customers by deep discount it's another to have people who will pay full price feel cheated.
I'm reasonably competent at my job and managed to persuade the managers at the company that they liked their infrastructure to be on. I used to get stressed when there was an electrical storm, the infrastructure I inherited couldn't cope with a power outage, blip or heat wave. Now we've put all the necessary in place I can sleep soundly and I can leave it unattended apart from backups for a couple of weeks, safe in the knowledge there's another guy an hour away who know's how to sort it out if someone drives into the Aircon unit or there's a complete power blackout.
Perhaps when you've been in a situation where the fundamentals are just not there it's puts the rest of it into perspective.
Absolutely you need to define the policy before you go out and purchase a product. The majority of the policy iso9001 policy doucments for my company were held on a plain old file server until someone thought sharepoint was a good idea. In both Sharepoint and file server the permissions are restricted to editing by 'gatekeepers' only, the advantage of Sharepoint is simply that it fronts out onto the web and therefore much more convenient to access externally.
The Conserative party seem to have en masse abstained only 9 of their members even thought it was important enough to actually vote, with 4 for and 5 against. This is blantant electioneering on their part, it is now difficult to tell their position on the subject and shows complete contempt for one of the most important issues presented to parliament in the 'washout' and the people they represent. My MP David Davis voted against and this leaves my confounded, although he has a good grasp of the issues around liberty and freedom of speech in the UK he will vote in to government a party that clearly does not have the grasp on the political issues or is even willing to actually represent their constituents opinions in parliament.
To sum up he argues that; this is only an addition to existing power of copyright holders in the UK and simply clarifies their role in the process.
I do think he misses the point however that this ammendment puts emphasis on the ISPs which provide any service that can access this material rather than those which host the material. It's one step closer to to a great firewall of the UK, I think this has been missed by commentators who have compared it to the DMCA and the vitriol in their critcism has somewhat distorted the issue.
Although they don't use the same language many writing in the Guardian hold the same opinion as the Daily Mail of ID cards, cctv, and the police state. If both of these papers they're probably right, indeed you'll struggle to find many sources in the British media that agree with the government's tightening burgeoning arsenal of powers and technology it is using against it's own citizens. A sign that we're not quite living in a police state just yet and it's up to us vote for a party in next spring's election that will reel in some of these powers. As much as it pains me to say it; vote anyone but Labour even the Tories would do.
We've all heard stories of old Windows 95/98 computers running a "business critical" function on obscure software using even obscurer hardware. We've surely going to see this in infinitely larger proportions once XP starts pushing up daises, sure if you're lucky and driver model doesn't count out your device then Windows 7 might play ball but beyond Windows 7; emulation of XP might well become patchy. ReactOS if successful could provide a patched up-to-date OS for legacy applications / hardware and although it'll never be up with the latest hotness from Microsoft could also provide a very stable and familiar corporate desktop for many organisations, who let's face it are afraid of technological progress.
Pulseaudio should be taken outside and shot. I too thought we'd put the troubles behind us but on upgrading to 9.10 I found everything and gone completely to pot again with no audio at all. ALSA at least plays sound but the start up sounds don't quite chime correctly, now I know at some point I'll want to get the thing working again because Pulseaudio has some useful features. However I do have to wonder if Ubuntu's priorities right at all, I shouldn't have to dive into config files and command-line just to get sound working.
Please Canonical just get sound working for everyone, once that's done you can worry about the positioning and colour of the notification dialogue.
Oink is not up and runnning as Ellis' computer equipment was taken as evidence by the police and returned with the hard drives returned. It's amazing to think that Oink pulled in so much money from donations, a site like that could be quite lucrative for the record industry if they found a way to legitmise the business model. But alas only pirates and certain indie record labels will ever get sharing music.
Perhaps it's an experience thing, rather than any sort of trend. I guess I count as part of the so called 'net generation' and I used to multi-task a lot; instant messaging, blogging, playing games, studying etc all at the same time. Around the time I was at university my behaviour changed, I think mainly because I didn't want to screw up my degree. To me some of the observations made in the original article sound like the naivety of youth rather than anything actually heavy weight. They demand instant responses because they are impatient and immature, they use instant messaging because they want instant responses.
It would be interesting to see what previous studies on information behaviour has found, I'm pretty sure I read studies with similar results but they were focused on the 'Net generation'.
Slashdot Mirror
Tariffs on IP licensing would just hinder the businesses that are genuinely licensing IP, the tax avoiders would switch to something else and the charade would continue. If the EU wants to play hard ball it should impose a levy on transactions with known tax havens and have a uniform corporation tax level across member states, this would of course require the member state who are tax havens to agree, so perhaps unlikely then.
In the UK this makes sense the isps put up a legal fight against this and we have at least notional principles of free speech the isps should show their opposition with a simple informational page. But in other situations we might find a status code or codes that could be inserted into headers or other data stteams, it might be better if this was unofficial so it could be inserted subversively so technocrats don't cotton on to this.
I don't think the EU could ever realistically be called a democracy. The decision making process and appointments are often the result of political horse trading between politicians with very little mandate from the people. A prime example of this being the removal of democratically elected governments in Greece and Italy during the debt crisis, with the Greek prime minister being removed after he dared to ask the people what they thought. This story is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to contempt for the democratic process in the EU.
By putting a steam box under the tv they are moving out of the basement and into family life. Like it or not if valve want this to be a success beyond the rich poser demographic they are going to have to adapt to family life and that means sharing and probably censorship control for parents.
No doubt Microsoft indoctrination classes will continue but from age 11 to 24 I think I got introductory classes to Word, Excel, Access etc about 5 or 6 times. Each tediously going over the same things we were taught at the previous attempt as there isn't really that much to teach and we'd forgotten everything as we didn't use them outside the classroom and it was duller than dull. You only need that twice; once to allow you to write essays for other subjects and when they're about to kick you out in the 'real world'. The lack imagination in the ICT curriculum in UK has been staggering for the past decade holding non-geeks back and being studiously avoided by anyone who knew anything about computers. No doubt Microsoft will try and shoe horn in their own technologies but who cares anything is better than 10 years of powerpoint lessons.
Everyone knows you wait for Service Pack 3 nowadays and frankly I don't really feel safe until number 4 is out the door!
The IT department should have told him that instead of just saying no. The IT department shouldn't try and hold the keys to the budget, I've worked in IT departments and whenever someone came out with an out of the park idea or request I would provide a price and say we need authorisation from you manager / budget holder. The IT department is there to provide advice, create solutions and fix problems but when it comes down to business costs it's for the business people to make a business decision about whether the cost is worth the benefit provided. As an IT department you should not be a road block to business decisions, make sure it's the business manager or finance department who take the heat.
Just like City Centres all over the UK there won't actually be any public toilets, you'll be forced into the nearest McDonalds for additional consumer experience opportunities.
A number of companies disagree with this viewpoint; Amazon, Baidu, QQ and Alibaba have all forked or modfied Android beyond recognition. Nokia could have taken a similar route providing it's own app store and making it a complete no-brainer for developers to upload their apps to Nokia's market too. Sure it's not a pure Android solution but it would have allowed Nokia to maintain it's own user interface design and uniqueness in the market while tapping into a wider ecosystem.
Instead Nokia choose to join hand in hand with Microsoft and as far as I can lose their uniqueness in the market place while at the same time marrying their success to that of Windows Phone. While it might be easier and cheaper for Nokia to pick up Windows Phone they've lost the opportunity to make their product stand out while still tapping into the underlying application development created for Android. Clearly the fee and attention paid to them by Microsoft was what really cut to the chase.
The continuous debate we're having over user interface isn't about simply packaging the user interfaces and putting them in repositories as pretty much all the distros allow you to install whatever user interface package you want, it is instead about the average "user" experience of the product. However much we like to laugh and joke about the "Year of Linux desktop" the people who design those Linux desktops are still shooting for the best user experience for the man off the street who isn't going to delve into the repositories and install KDE, Gnome, Unity or whatever. In addition to that the enthusiasts berating Shuttleworth and Ubuntu for moving away from Gnome must have in the back of their mind that Ubuntu could provide significant developer time and user eyeballs (i.e. testing) to Gnome 3 development (or perhaps forking Gnome 2) and that's now all going into Unity.
And who's to say Debian aren't making a statement about this? Last I heard the packages had only just been moved into experimental when every other distro is kicking out full releases with Gnome 3 or Unity as default. I know by the time we get to the next Debian release we'll be talking about Gnome 4 but with the lack of urgency they're clearly showing they either don't care or it's not ready.
On Channel4 news (in the UK - report here) a spokesman said it was a problem with their core switch infrastructure at their primary European site in Slough. Their backup infrastructure was also not functioning correctly either - the problem with the backup infrastructure is unspecified. My first reaction to that is that it must be gathering dust somewhere untested - but it's been on and off for the last three days in the UK so either they have the same problem with the backup infrastructure, they are lying about having a backup infrastructure or their back up plan is to use the North American network for European traffic. If that's the case did the volume of traffic just take out the North American network?
I've been living with a limited internet connection (3G phone only) for 4 months or so as I've moved twice in that time. It hasn't made me anymore productive, I just find other ways to procastinate or waste time and it just leaves you frustrated not having all the possible information at your finger tips - making you even less productive.
They actually did the exact opposite and produced a series of limited edition vinyl records exclusively for the event, which is great for the collectors but I'd asumme they will already aware of their local independent shops. For those of those who have been tempted away from independent record stores by the internet first with cheap cds then downloads and finally streaming, it doesn't offer that much more really apart from a chance to pull in a few extra pundits with some publicity. My local shop put on a band and given that I'm new in the area and hadn't heard of the shop I tagged along, it did the job in a way I suppose as I've now been in the shop but I came away empty handed, no way am I paying GBP100+ for something I can't even play.
I'd reckon on Nokia needing something like four phones:
1. Small basic calls and text with a traditional numbered keypad
2. Basic touch screen device aimed at web browsing and social networking
3. "Business" or "Chat" device with a built in physical keyboard
4. Super Computer in a phone
They could iterate no 4 fairly rapidly, it seems to work well for HTC they're hardly ever out of the news with their rapid release cycle.
Say we get hard intel that sometime later that day, someone will be using Twitter or Gmail to issue timing commands to a bunch of people ready to drop off backpack bombs on metro trains in half a dozen large cities around the country. The "kill switch" mechanism doesn't shut down the internet. It allows the counter terror people to ask the administration to use that legal power to get on the phone with Twitter and tell them what needs to happen to prevent such use.
What exactly do you need to legislate for? If there was genuine intel that terrorists were going to use Twitter to arm a device or orchestrate an attack, do you really think that when presented with this information and a request to make changes if order to avert an national catastrophe that Twitter would turn around to the government and tell them to get lost? Even if the data was being transmitted on services outside the US and it required changes at a network infrastructure level to disrupt peering of data from those services, do you really think that a company would turn down a request to make such a change?
Steam and mainstream publishers often engage in classic skimming pricing, start and work their way down to nearly free. We're currently at the point where so many games are at pocket money prices that there seems to be little incentive for gamers to actually buy at the top end of the price range, indie games aren't driving this the mainstream publishers and distributors are, but the indie developers have very little choice but to participate else they face being priced out the market. The problem as far as I see it is that the race to the bottom starts very quickly; Super Meat Boy for instance was released on the PC at around £12 but within three months had reduced it's price to a quarter in a Steam sale to £3. Anyone who did actually buy at full price did so either because of their anticipation of the title or their good will towards indie developers, much of that goodwill could be eroded by deep discounts so soon after release, some people who purchased at full may have not even played the game yet. It's one thing to gain new customers by deep discount it's another to have people who will pay full price feel cheated.
I'm reasonably competent at my job and managed to persuade the managers at the company that they liked their infrastructure to be on. I used to get stressed when there was an electrical storm, the infrastructure I inherited couldn't cope with a power outage, blip or heat wave. Now we've put all the necessary in place I can sleep soundly and I can leave it unattended apart from backups for a couple of weeks, safe in the knowledge there's another guy an hour away who know's how to sort it out if someone drives into the Aircon unit or there's a complete power blackout.
Perhaps when you've been in a situation where the fundamentals are just not there it's puts the rest of it into perspective.
Absolutely you need to define the policy before you go out and purchase a product. The majority of the policy iso9001 policy doucments for my company were held on a plain old file server until someone thought sharepoint was a good idea. In both Sharepoint and file server the permissions are restricted to editing by 'gatekeepers' only, the advantage of Sharepoint is simply that it fronts out onto the web and therefore much more convenient to access externally.
The Conserative party seem to have en masse abstained only 9 of their members even thought it was important enough to actually vote, with 4 for and 5 against. This is blantant electioneering on their part, it is now difficult to tell their position on the subject and shows complete contempt for one of the most important issues presented to parliament in the 'washout' and the people they represent. My MP David Davis voted against and this leaves my confounded, although he has a good grasp of the issues around liberty and freedom of speech in the UK he will vote in to government a party that clearly does not have the grasp on the political issues or is even willing to actually represent their constituents opinions in parliament.
Lord Clement Jones has replied to critism of the ammendment
http://www.libdemvoice.org/digital-economy-bill-web-blocking-lib-dems-18165.html
To sum up he argues that; this is only an addition to existing power of copyright holders in the UK and simply clarifies their role in the process.
I do think he misses the point however that this ammendment puts emphasis on the ISPs which provide any service that can access this material rather than those which host the material. It's one step closer to to a great firewall of the UK, I think this has been missed by commentators who have compared it to the DMCA and the vitriol in their critcism has somewhat distorted the issue.
Although they don't use the same language many writing in the Guardian hold the same opinion as the Daily Mail of ID cards, cctv, and the police state. If both of these papers they're probably right, indeed you'll struggle to find many sources in the British media that agree with the government's tightening burgeoning arsenal of powers and technology it is using against it's own citizens. A sign that we're not quite living in a police state just yet and it's up to us vote for a party in next spring's election that will reel in some of these powers. As much as it pains me to say it; vote anyone but Labour even the Tories would do.
We've all heard stories of old Windows 95/98 computers running a "business critical" function on obscure software using even obscurer hardware. We've surely going to see this in infinitely larger proportions once XP starts pushing up daises, sure if you're lucky and driver model doesn't count out your device then Windows 7 might play ball but beyond Windows 7; emulation of XP might well become patchy. ReactOS if successful could provide a patched up-to-date OS for legacy applications / hardware and although it'll never be up with the latest hotness from Microsoft could also provide a very stable and familiar corporate desktop for many organisations, who let's face it are afraid of technological progress.
Pulseaudio should be taken outside and shot. I too thought we'd put the troubles behind us but on upgrading to 9.10 I found everything and gone completely to pot again with no audio at all. ALSA at least plays sound but the start up sounds don't quite chime correctly, now I know at some point I'll want to get the thing working again because Pulseaudio has some useful features. However I do have to wonder if Ubuntu's priorities right at all, I shouldn't have to dive into config files and command-line just to get sound working. Please Canonical just get sound working for everyone, once that's done you can worry about the positioning and colour of the notification dialogue.
Oink is not up and runnning as Ellis' computer equipment was taken as evidence by the police and returned with the hard drives returned. It's amazing to think that Oink pulled in so much money from donations, a site like that could be quite lucrative for the record industry if they found a way to legitmise the business model. But alas only pirates and certain indie record labels will ever get sharing music.
Perhaps it's an experience thing, rather than any sort of trend. I guess I count as part of the so called 'net generation' and I used to multi-task a lot; instant messaging, blogging, playing games, studying etc all at the same time. Around the time I was at university my behaviour changed, I think mainly because I didn't want to screw up my degree. To me some of the observations made in the original article sound like the naivety of youth rather than anything actually heavy weight. They demand instant responses because they are impatient and immature, they use instant messaging because they want instant responses.
It would be interesting to see what previous studies on information behaviour has found, I'm pretty sure I read studies with similar results but they were focused on the 'Net generation'.