When you skip adverts watching a movie, you're not preventing someone from getting paid - that's already done in advance, and it's not a fair comparison.
Don't be obtuse. When you open a store and I neither buy stuff from your store nor recommend your store nor send others to buy something at your store nor do anything which causes money to enter your pocket, I'm not, "preventing you from geting paid," you child of the age of entitlement.
I, as the owner and user of my 'phone, get to choose whether I view or click on an ad. If either of those acts cause you to be paid, I get to choose whether to you are paid. But it isn't "preventing" you from being paid if I choose to do neither, just as I'm not "preventing" you from paying me just because I'm telling you right now that reading this post costs you $5.29 but you're not enabling the transfer of funds to my bank account.
Everyone else is welcome to pay you if they want, either directly or indirectly. No-one is preventing people from paying you if they choose to. You hint at morality in requiring people to pay you, directly or indirectly. Get over your lazy sense of entitlement.
Seriously, you want to download ad-ware but you don't want to watch the ads? Can you whine a little louder?
Thank you. You have summed up everything that is wrong with the Apple user community. I'll be adding that quote - attributed, of course - to my siguature rotation.
Excuse me while I go and watch 20 minutes of adverts. I skipped through them last time I recorded a movie and I'm feeling guilty that some corporation somewhere isn't getting my attention.
You just go to oo.apple.com on an iOS device and you're opted out of targeted iAds.
"Targeted" iAds, not iAds. So that's a no.
You choose apps without ads to avoid seeing ads altogether.
But I choose to not see ads, not to not use apps. So that's another no.
You're so good at offering me all these things I don't want. Next to me I have an empty Coke bottle, an aquarium reflector box and a secondary AA cell which no longer holds a charge - how could anything I advocate be unreasonable when I'm literally giving this shit away to you?
you can even use one without App Store, because iOS fully supports the HTML5 API.
Wow, that option sounds so appealing I can barely understand why there are so many thousands of apps and millions of app downloads.
If you don't like it, don't use it.
I shall use it if and as I please, and in the meanwhile I shall try to make it easier for the less technical to use as they please. Meanwhile, this great country (until the China Apple's just opened its first store in) gives you the freedom to take a different approach to me: in your case, you consider total praise or abandonment to be a true dichotomy. Enjoy!:-)
Cry me a river, toriver. You may think you have a right to control how people use their eyeballs just because someone's downloaded your frontend to cameraFlashLED.enable(), but most of us have moved on from that sort of society.
Enjoy the 2 minutes it would take for any method of detecting jailbreaking to be broken. But do carry on wasting time bouncing your evil-pirate(?)-thwarting updates to Apple until they ban your app for trying to detect jailbreakers using a "naughty API".
You're using the human brain as an error correcting code.
You're grossly simplifying the brain. We don't just "correct missing bits": we perform sophisticated noise filtering, we make complex subconscious pattern matches based on our knowledge of language, and we fill in the missing beat thanks to innate grasp of rhythm. We constantly apply context to information. Otherwise we'd all have to communicate with each other as one speaks to speech recognition software. Wyh do yxo thnki ti is rlaivetxly aesy ot raed hixt setxecne?
This limits which encodings you can use, generally forcing you to use simple almost uncompressed ones, which again means that reception is going to be worse.
Bingo! A compressed digital stream of live audio which competes with analog on bandwidth grounds is going to be worse on reception grounds unless you start making nonsense assumptions like, "My error-correction algorithm is better than the human brain's ability to grasp signal through noise."
No, the way to do it is to jailbreak and firewall off the ad servers - there are prepackaged solutions already available. But this is more challenging for the less technical - unlike similar Windows ad-blocking solutions, it doesn't "just work" to download software and click "Next" a few times.
I was thus keen to see an iAds-blocking solution on the App store which I could recommend and would probably use myself.
If you do not like it, please develop your own platform and release it to us with the restrictions you don't like removed. We'll be waiting.
"If you don't like it, leave and found your own nation. Otherwise put up with it." Grow up.
Oh, what, you don't have the expertise, time and money to donate to this project so it will be out soon? That's right, time and expertise are not free!
Bawwww, I worked so hard on my software and now someone wants to use it without me being able to force them to watch adverts. It's my right to express myself through software, and it's also my right to stop you from listening except on my terms. There was no progress in science and the useful arts before modern IP law.
I look forward, as always, to listener tests with codecs and frequency separations actually chosen by governments! In particular, to compete with FM spacing requirements. A factor of 2 would absolutely not be worth the transfer, though it seems DRM+ would do better than that, but even 4 seems ephemeral.
There is a risk that people will go 64 kbps MP3 or worse, but you can't blame the standard for that.
One could say the same about DAB, of course. But then we get into the debate about whether engineers should consider the motivations of their employers - many people seem to say no, I always say yes.
Degradation is fairly binary -- either you have reception or you don't. I consider that a feature.
Have to disagree very strongly with this. I would like to be able to hear well, but if I can't hear well then I still want to be able to hear. Human brains are great at separating the signal from the noise whether it's in a crowd or on the radio. I don't see why we wouldn't take advantage of this.
Traditionally you'd only do one audio stream per MUX in DRM.
Thanks for this clarification. Yes, bandwidth seems insufficient to consider more than one audio stream.
I can't really think of anywhere within a few hundred miles that I could go to which wouldn't have at least EDGE.
100% reliable EDGE coverage must be a unique thing to... Denmark, I guess, from your address. 'net access is spotty enough commuting on the South Coast of England, and Scotland provides extended areas of nothing whatever.
Tedious enough that it has resulted in days of wasted effort in parliament
So what important issue were they trying to sweep under the carpet that week?:-)
The rest are non-issues
Why? You've expanded only on the sound quality argument - could you name a combination which you believe exceeds the quality and graceful degradation properties of FM, along with an independent study supporting your assertion? Even Dolby, the Via subsidiary of which handles DRM licencing, sells it as "near-FM quality".
DRM+ lets you run a station exactly the same way you run an FM station today. Your own equipment, your own (much smaller) frequency allocation, everything is yours.
Erm, up to 4 data streams per MUX, no? Or is only one audio stream supported?
Then there's the lack of transmitter offerings and patent encumbrance. Yes, amateurs have experimented with DRM homebrew transmission. And the consortium offers seductively cheap per-unit licensing today. Not quite the maturity and freedom FM offers, though, is it?
If I spent the money on a car stereo which could receive Internet radio itself it would be 100% Internet.
But you, like other listeners, don't consider it worth the expense to move on from FM.
It is not so good for live broadcasts, but anything that can live with a 30 second delay works fine.
This is true if all your drives are sufficiently short and urban to give you very good mobile Internet reception (you're living somewhere very well connected if you're getting free and uninterrupted FM quality radio in your car!). Just as DAB "works fine" if you can live with already poor quality sound occasionally cutting out entirely rather than just a degradation in signal quality.
frequency planning is tedious
Tedious in what sense? "This might have take up a few man-days of mathematicians' and programmers' time every few years" tedious? The complexities of DAB are, in terms of mathematical problems raised, far more "tedious".
and there is never enough space.
With your 5 or 6 FM stations you're nowhere near saturating the 87.5-108MHz band. If you honestly believe that sound quality, transmitter cost, receiver cost, upgrade timeframes, power requirements, longevity, robustness and repairability are together less important than some perceived demand for as many radio stations as possible, you should probably be campaigning for PSK31.
DRM+ is even better for local stations though.
Yes, I want the opportunity to rent space from a reseller multiplex rather than setting up my own cheap equipment. Because digital transmitter owners haven't abused their monopoly to force broadcasters to use unreasonably low bitrates at all.
If we don't increase the number of stations, listeners will switch to the Internet
Assuming ubiquity of the Internet - driven a car recently? Assuming that people will choose one of 50 crap channels rather than one of up to 20 (5 or 6? what is wrong with your network?) good quality channels.
The power requirements alone are horrendous.
So horrendous that FM pirate stations exist all over London and even the government recognises that the FM spectrum would be useful to legitimate local stations once - they hope - the big boys have moved off it.
(Number of DAB pirate stations: 0, of course. But there are other obstacles before they have to worry about power.)
Our modern power distribution network is dependent on integrated electronics
If only there were other ways of generating power from household to industrial scale. Curse you, Nature, giving a monopoly to The Man!
Either way that's a lost cause
Yawn. Lie down and welcome the relentless march of tech, no matter how much worse.
in 30 years only radio amateurs will use analog
As above - this isn't even the government's plan. Also pilots. Also vocal cords. Must.. introduce.. unnecessary.. complexity.. to body also.
FM is simple, but who cares when you can have a DSP for a few cents these days
Initial system cost at receiver and even more so at transmitter end: DAB is basically Arqiva trolling every radio listener for profit, raising the bar for entry into the transmission market;
Upgrade timeframes - AM radio: a good century; FM radio: 40 year old commercial receivers going on fine, stereo addition is backward compatible; DAB: about 5 years as complex imperfections are persistently tweaked and old codecs become obsolete;
Power requirements: the limit of lack of power requirement is the AM crystal radio receiver which is powered by nothing more than the radio waves themselves - there is nothing inherently more efficient about demodulating a DAB signal, so it will always cost more to power a DAB radio because of the complexity of equipment. Currently it's at least 5x more;
Longevity: harder to say - even assuming that transmitters fix on a backwards compatible standard for decades, does the analogue and digital circuitry in a DAB radio last so long? My experience with DAB radios has been an increase in bubbling/no reception over time.
Degrading and fixability: And when this happens to an analogue radio, it may be fixable - meanwhile, operation tends to degrade rather than die completely. You have very little hope fixing DAB. This becomes significant when considering disaster broadcasts (and two way transmission, of course). People today assume there'll be roses and sweetness across the world for until the end of time. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're young, or maybe they're idiots. A system which doesn't require a chip fab to replace is essential.
Please define "efficiency in transmission".
Signal out / power in. For example, SSB is more efficient than AM because AM (full modulation) transmits half the power in an informationless carrier and doubles the information in each sideband. I don't know much about the power efficiency of DAB's modulation methods, though.
FM isn't robust, just drive in a built-up area and the multipath interference kills reception on a regular basis.
Yes, DAB is better here as long as you're not travelling too fast;-).
FM isn't effective, it's a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Why the obsession with quantity over quality? Five hundred low bitrate stations pumping out shit is a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Finally, you might want to see just how much more spectrum efficient DAB isn't. The capture effect wat any radio ham kno offsets even the reusability argument.
People don't flock to OS X for the same reason that people don't flock to BMW's from Chevrolets.
Because the BMW driver is generally an inconsiderate self-centred asshole who buys an overpriced toy for a sense of belonging to an elite group, but most people aren't? You'll have to explain to me the cunning detail of your point because car analogies are usually cutting and sophisticated and I'm not very good with cars.
Ignoring substantial ways in which they're different, they are very much the same. The GUI is very much irrelevant on a 'phone and as long as it has a subset of the GNU userland tools it's basically a successful redistribution of Debian.
The problem is the lack of money put into the user experience and consequently lack of polish.
Oh, yes, that's why everyone flocks to OS X from Windows. "Well, I would choose this Linux desktop environment but it's rather unpolished," exclaims Bob, walking out of Walmart in disgust.
Now go console yourself that Android's not a "real" distro.
Android is a substantially new system built atop a Linux kernel. It's not just a redistribution.
You slipped up. Let it go. You don't lose any Internet man-points. It's not as if you got caught on something easy. Many people have been fooled into thinking that AV is "far closer" to PR, thought about it a bit, then acknowledged that it is - as you say - not "anything like" it.
To continue:
The fact you've glazed over the entire section in the freedom bill detailing further information on protecting the rights of protestors
The LD version of the Freedom Bill on the LD web site is not part of any coalition agreement. You've seen the words "Freedom Bill" in the coalition agreement and falsely assumed that it's referring to the LD's Freedom Bill. It's not. It's referring to the concept of a Freedom Bill. In geek terms, if this helps: it's the difference between agreeing "well, we really ought to choose Debian with packages X Y Z" and deciding "we should put some sort of Unix on this machine" (which might end up being SCO).
it's obscure to be for PR and against the coalition government because the coalition government is simply that much more representative of the population
It's a fair question to ask: is an effective, representative UK coalition government of only necessary compromises good PR for PR in the UK? Now, is this an effective, representative coalition government of only necessary compromises?
I guess you really would've preferred a deadlocked Tory minority that would've destroyed our economy,
Sigh. Do you think everyone woke up one morning to find out a pile of Western countries had switched from surplus to huge deficit? Every wise Western investor has profited handsomely from the past decade, and every Western government has supported his behaviour. But no wise investor wants to see his economy destroyed. By extension, no Western government wants to see its economy destroyed. When the time comes for crisis management, representatives of the people are entirely capable of making appropriate agreements / pacts.
Without being tied down in coalition government on other policy.
a full Tory majority which would've damaged our ties with Europe
Perhaps you're predicting, unlike the 1977 non-coalition Pact which lasted two years (up to a few months before the 5 term limit and following the Winter of Discontent), that a minority government would result in another election being quickly forced. I guess also that you're predicting that this new election would give the Tories a majority, unlike the 1974 election which did not give a % swing to Labour sufficient to give the Tories a majority in 2010.
a Lib-Lab coalition where the Lib Dems got no concessions because Mandelson, Calamity Gordon et al weren't willing to give anything up
258+57 is closer to 307 than 326, so it'd have to be more than just Lib-Lab. Since negotiations were closed-door - itself a taint on all parties - I can't say what they were/weren't willing to give up.
a Labour government that would've got ever more drunk on power and ever more totalitarian as a result. Thank fuck you didn't get your way, because all 4 of those alternatives to what happened are far far worse than what we actually have.
As you've said, Labour was getting drunk on power (but not "totalitarian"). As were the Tories before that. The last two No.10 house moves were based not on the people being enlightened by a different approach but by people being fed up with the old bunch.
I can't say how bad this coalition will turn out. I fear most of all further homogenisation of the political landscape by the next election. British democracy becomes an exercise in simply making sure that no single set of equally motivated individuals sits around for too long.
This was the first election where many eligible voters were to
It's a time-wasting hassle for the user, the administrator and the developer.
It's a turn-off to anyone who might otherwise consider supporting a Linux-based platform.
Look, if you want to build a distribution to do something in particular, you're doing it wrong. Stop ironing the "I made my own Linux distribution" in 32 pt Comic Sans on your ego-boost t-shirt and start asking yourself why the kernel and userspace isn't just one huge binary blob. That's right: because not everyone wants to do the same thing, and modularity encourages reuse.
tl;dr.deb meta-packages with a line of Depends longer than a diaper fetishist's. Plus some glue.
I never said it was anything like proportional [and more backpedalling]
On Friday July 09, @01:18PM, you said:
AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction, that's absolutely what matters because AV is still far closer to PR
To continue:
ignoring the actual information out there, or simply putting a spin on the facts.
Each of my points was backed up by a page reference to the individual party and coalition manifestos.
Again, building straw men such as saying the child asylum seeker pledge isn't worth forming a coalition over- who ever said it was?
The LDs imply it in forming a coalition: it typifies the scope and extent of the very few LD coalition achievements.
you'll find plenty more examples there of Lib Dem policies taken over to the coalition document
No. As far as LD-sourced entries, I just see vague handwaving from, "We will introduce a Freedom Bill," to, "We will restore rights to non-violent protest." I'm not expecting the manifesto to go into as much detail as the Bill, but at least some substance would be peachy. Even when the LDs are unsure in their Bill - "a Royal Commission is to be established [on] regulation of CCTV" - the coalition manifesto manages to be even more vague.
You're in a corner and you're just flailing your arms about. Chill. It's just the Internet. Sometimes you can learn instead of fight.
"they must be clever, because they are so rich" - No, its because they are thieves with government protection
Too many of my ex-schoolchumps are now in investment. They are rich and they are thieves with government protection because they are clever. How do you legislate against the strong reaching the top and colluding to take from the weak?
but say they'd prefer Labour to the Tories, that at very least adds a little more credibility to Labour holding majority of power
Implying that your second choice is worth some proportion of my first choice. Under AV the proportion of Tory MPs would have reflected even less the proportion of people actually choosing Tory.
If you want to justify AV, go ahead. But don't use simplistic arguments to claim that it is anything like proportional, or - more importantly - anything like what the LDs appeared to promote before the coalition. If I can't convince you, consider Churchill's opinion and the link to LD Roy Jenkins' detailed analysis somewhere around here.
Most importantly though it benefits the Lib Dems precisely because they are a moderate party meaning they're more likely to push better electoral reform in future.
It'd be more accurate to say that it forces the LDs to align themselves more closely with the most popular party, further homogenising the parties. Nevertheless, I hope an LD wants PR because PR is fair, not because "it means the LDs will win".
- Abolition of NIR as well as just ID cards
Tory manifesto, page 79.
- Ending of detention of child asylum seekers
This is neither (i) an LD victory over Tory policy or manifesto; nor (ii) politically significant, affecting about 1,000 children of asylum seekers per year. This doesn't stop it being a good thing, of course, but it's not worth forming a coalition over.
- Keeping European working directive
No. To quote the BBC web site: As part of the EU truce, the Conservatives will drop their plan to seek an opt-out from some social legislation, especially the working time directive, but will seek to "limit (its) application". This is political speak for, "We're going to do the same thing but change the language to describe how we do it."
- Removing restrictions on protestors
Page 11 of The Coalition: our programme for government? mentions "restor[ing] rights to non-violent protest" without further explanation. Do you have something of actual substance?
CCTV safeguards
The criticism of "spy"ing councils which immediately follows mention of CCTV on p.93 of the LD manifesto is expanded upon on p.79 of the Tory manifesto. What more?
libel reform
Again, p.79. Although the last sentence of p.93 of the LD manifesto is slightly more specific, the detail "to protect freedom of speech" in the coalition document mirrors only Tory manifesto language.
I'm probably done here unless I get some procrastination time later. I think you need to spend more time on the detail of relevant documents. Have a nice day.
No it isn't. It's a single-member constituency system, just like FPTP. To reiterate what I've just typed above: Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead.
Xest has already shown that the LDs have got some policy in which wouldn't have been there otherwise,
ID cards + NIR were already rejected by the Tories. The only material tweak is the £1k increase in personal allowance offset by NIC increases and not close to the original "personal allowance to £10k" of the manifesto.
the presence of the LDs in the coalition make it harder for the Conservatives to get some of the nastier policies through
You think they'd have any more chance of being voted for under a minority government, where the LDs get a free vote?
I know the difference between simply having an agenda and being an "astroturfer"
Erm, well done. Do you know the difference between a comparison and an assertion? The guys here who cry "MS astroturfer!" to anything remotely anti-FOSS suffer the same paranoia you did when you accused me of being a Labour flag-waver.
In other words, you hate the Tories so much that you would oppose any coalition with them.
My opinion on the Tories shouldn't be relevant. The LDs had no good reason to form a coalition - as well as being bad for the Commons, it would only help the Tories and harm the LDs.
They don't like the outcome, but reckon it's the best available given the way the electorate voted and Labour's hostility to cooperating with them.
I guess it depends on the area[tm]. Not everyone belives there was no alternative, and many consider that Clegg made an unhealthy choice very quickly. I see as much "lost trust in LD" as I see your argument.
AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction
Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead.
It's not difficult, compare the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos civil liberties section against the coalition agreement, it's not hard to see the Lib Dems got a lot of what they wanted.
Inability to answer the question and dismissing the exercise with "do your homework" isn't advancing your case. Maybe you have a good example which I have overlooked. I haven't found one.
This would be the same Labour that completely removed the 10p tax bracket in the first place of course.
Was this one of those irrelevant political comebacks? Let's consider the conversation:
The LD manifesto was to increase the allowance to £10k, but the Tories of course did not agree to a timeline for that. We were discussing whether a £1,000 personal allowance increase over two years was somehow a great win for the LDs. To put the scale of figures into context, I pointed out that we've just had a £1,000 increase.
You pointed out that it was offset by the abolition of the 10p lower rate - which it was, but that in turn was offset by tax credit. Pensioners and families were better off; workers who are single and young were worse off. I similarly pointed out in this case that the £1k increase has been offset by NIC increases.
Apart from what I already asserted, which is that the increase of £1k in personal allowance is not a significant win for the LDs, what new conclusions are apparent?
Slashdot Mirror
When you skip adverts watching a movie, you're not preventing someone from getting paid - that's already done in advance, and it's not a fair comparison.
Don't be obtuse. When you open a store and I neither buy stuff from your store nor recommend your store nor send others to buy something at your store nor do anything which causes money to enter your pocket, I'm not, "preventing you from geting paid," you child of the age of entitlement.
I, as the owner and user of my 'phone, get to choose whether I view or click on an ad. If either of those acts cause you to be paid, I get to choose whether to you are paid. But it isn't "preventing" you from being paid if I choose to do neither, just as I'm not "preventing" you from paying me just because I'm telling you right now that reading this post costs you $5.29 but you're not enabling the transfer of funds to my bank account.
Everyone else is welcome to pay you if they want, either directly or indirectly. No-one is preventing people from paying you if they choose to. You hint at morality in requiring people to pay you, directly or indirectly. Get over your lazy sense of entitlement.
Pay attention. The issue I have with Apple is their not admitting iAds-blocking apps to the store.
Seriously, you want to download ad-ware but you don't want to watch the ads? Can you whine a little louder?
Thank you. You have summed up everything that is wrong with the Apple user community. I'll be adding that quote - attributed, of course - to my siguature rotation.
Excuse me while I go and watch 20 minutes of adverts. I skipped through them last time I recorded a movie and I'm feeling guilty that some corporation somewhere isn't getting my attention.
You just go to oo.apple.com on an iOS device and you're opted out of targeted iAds.
"Targeted" iAds, not iAds. So that's a no.
You choose apps without ads to avoid seeing ads altogether.
But I choose to not see ads, not to not use apps. So that's another no.
You're so good at offering me all these things I don't want. Next to me I have an empty Coke bottle, an aquarium reflector box and a secondary AA cell which no longer holds a charge - how could anything I advocate be unreasonable when I'm literally giving this shit away to you?
you can even use one without App Store, because iOS fully supports the HTML5 API.
Wow, that option sounds so appealing I can barely understand why there are so many thousands of apps and millions of app downloads.
If you don't like it, don't use it.
I shall use it if and as I please, and in the meanwhile I shall try to make it easier for the less technical to use as they please. Meanwhile, this great country (until the China Apple's just opened its first store in) gives you the freedom to take a different approach to me: in your case, you consider total praise or abandonment to be a true dichotomy. Enjoy! :-)
Cry me a river, toriver. You may think you have a right to control how people use their eyeballs just because someone's downloaded your frontend to cameraFlashLED.enable(), but most of us have moved on from that sort of society.
Enjoy the 2 minutes it would take for any method of detecting jailbreaking to be broken. But do carry on wasting time bouncing your evil-pirate(?)-thwarting updates to Apple until they ban your app for trying to detect jailbreakers using a "naughty API".
You're using the human brain as an error correcting code.
You're grossly simplifying the brain. We don't just "correct missing bits": we perform sophisticated noise filtering, we make complex subconscious pattern matches based on our knowledge of language, and we fill in the missing beat thanks to innate grasp of rhythm. We constantly apply context to information. Otherwise we'd all have to communicate with each other as one speaks to speech recognition software. Wyh do yxo thnki ti is rlaivetxly aesy ot raed hixt setxecne?
This limits which encodings you can use, generally forcing you to use simple almost uncompressed ones, which again means that reception is going to be worse.
Bingo! A compressed digital stream of live audio which competes with analog on bandwidth grounds is going to be worse on reception grounds unless you start making nonsense assumptions like, "My error-correction algorithm is better than the human brain's ability to grasp signal through noise."
No, the way to do it is to jailbreak and firewall off the ad servers - there are prepackaged solutions already available. But this is more challenging for the less technical - unlike similar Windows ad-blocking solutions, it doesn't "just work" to download software and click "Next" a few times.
I was thus keen to see an iAds-blocking solution on the App store which I could recommend and would probably use myself.
If you do not like it, please develop your own platform and release it to us with the restrictions you don't like removed. We'll be waiting.
"If you don't like it, leave and found your own nation. Otherwise put up with it." Grow up.
Oh, what, you don't have the expertise, time and money to donate to this project so it will be out soon? That's right, time and expertise are not free!
Bawwww, I worked so hard on my software and now someone wants to use it without me being able to force them to watch adverts. It's my right to express myself through software, and it's also my right to stop you from listening except on my terms. There was no progress in science and the useful arts before modern IP law.
OK, good point, cults don't recognise property ownership.
Could someone please link to software on the App Store which can be used to block iAds?
I'm assuming Apple isn't so totalitarian as to require you to view adverts on your own property, but I can't find such an app anywhere.
DRM+ will probably mostly use 50kHz channels
I look forward, as always, to listener tests with codecs and frequency separations actually chosen by governments! In particular, to compete with FM spacing requirements. A factor of 2 would absolutely not be worth the transfer, though it seems DRM+ would do better than that, but even 4 seems ephemeral.
There is a risk that people will go 64 kbps MP3 or worse, but you can't blame the standard for that.
One could say the same about DAB, of course. But then we get into the debate about whether engineers should consider the motivations of their employers - many people seem to say no, I always say yes.
Degradation is fairly binary -- either you have reception or you don't. I consider that a feature.
Have to disagree very strongly with this. I would like to be able to hear well, but if I can't hear well then I still want to be able to hear. Human brains are great at separating the signal from the noise whether it's in a crowd or on the radio. I don't see why we wouldn't take advantage of this.
Traditionally you'd only do one audio stream per MUX in DRM.
Thanks for this clarification. Yes, bandwidth seems insufficient to consider more than one audio stream.
I can't really think of anywhere within a few hundred miles that I could go to which wouldn't have at least EDGE.
100% reliable EDGE coverage must be a unique thing to... Denmark, I guess, from your address. 'net access is spotty enough commuting on the South Coast of England, and Scotland provides extended areas of nothing whatever.
Tedious enough that it has resulted in days of wasted effort in parliament
So what important issue were they trying to sweep under the carpet that week? :-)
The rest are non-issues
Why? You've expanded only on the sound quality argument - could you name a combination which you believe exceeds the quality and graceful degradation properties of FM, along with an independent study supporting your assertion? Even Dolby, the Via subsidiary of which handles DRM licencing, sells it as "near-FM quality".
DRM+ lets you run a station exactly the same way you run an FM station today. Your own equipment, your own (much smaller) frequency allocation, everything is yours.
Erm, up to 4 data streams per MUX, no? Or is only one audio stream supported?
Then there's the lack of transmitter offerings and patent encumbrance. Yes, amateurs have experimented with DRM homebrew transmission. And the consortium offers seductively cheap per-unit licensing today. Not quite the maturity and freedom FM offers, though, is it?
If I spent the money on a car stereo which could receive Internet radio itself it would be 100% Internet.
But you, like other listeners, don't consider it worth the expense to move on from FM.
It is not so good for live broadcasts, but anything that can live with a 30 second delay works fine.
This is true if all your drives are sufficiently short and urban to give you very good mobile Internet reception (you're living somewhere very well connected if you're getting free and uninterrupted FM quality radio in your car!). Just as DAB "works fine" if you can live with already poor quality sound occasionally cutting out entirely rather than just a degradation in signal quality.
frequency planning is tedious
Tedious in what sense? "This might have take up a few man-days of mathematicians' and programmers' time every few years" tedious? The complexities of DAB are, in terms of mathematical problems raised, far more "tedious".
and there is never enough space.
With your 5 or 6 FM stations you're nowhere near saturating the 87.5-108MHz band. If you honestly believe that sound quality, transmitter cost, receiver cost, upgrade timeframes, power requirements, longevity, robustness and repairability are together less important than some perceived demand for as many radio stations as possible, you should probably be campaigning for PSK31.
DRM+ is even better for local stations though.
Yes, I want the opportunity to rent space from a reseller multiplex rather than setting up my own cheap equipment. Because digital transmitter owners haven't abused their monopoly to force broadcasters to use unreasonably low bitrates at all.
That's the most obvious problem today, agreed - even the casual listener is turned off.
But the danger is that people will believe, "Just pay for another new radio with a better codec and it'll all be perfect!"
False.
If we don't increase the number of stations, listeners will switch to the Internet
Assuming ubiquity of the Internet - driven a car recently? Assuming that people will choose one of 50 crap channels rather than one of up to 20 (5 or 6? what is wrong with your network?) good quality channels.
The power requirements alone are horrendous.
So horrendous that FM pirate stations exist all over London and even the government recognises that the FM spectrum would be useful to legitimate local stations once - they hope - the big boys have moved off it.
(Number of DAB pirate stations: 0, of course. But there are other obstacles before they have to
worry about power.)
Our modern power distribution network is dependent on integrated electronics
If only there were other ways of generating power from household to industrial scale. Curse you, Nature, giving a monopoly to The Man!
Either way that's a lost cause
Yawn. Lie down and welcome the relentless march of tech, no matter how much worse.
in 30 years only radio amateurs will use analog
As above - this isn't even the government's plan. Also pilots. Also vocal cords. Must.. introduce.. unnecessary.. complexity.. to body also.
FM is simple, but who cares when you can have a DSP for a few cents these days
Please define "efficiency in transmission".
Signal out / power in. For example, SSB is more efficient than AM because AM (full modulation) transmits half the power in an informationless carrier and doubles the information in each sideband. I don't know much about the power efficiency of DAB's modulation methods, though.
FM isn't robust, just drive in a built-up area and the multipath interference kills reception on a regular basis.
Yes, DAB is better here as long as you're not travelling too fast ;-).
FM isn't effective, it's a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Why the obsession with quantity over quality? Five hundred low bitrate stations pumping out shit is a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Finally, you might want to see just how much more spectrum efficient DAB isn't. The capture effect wat any radio ham kno offsets even the reusability argument.
People don't flock to OS X for the same reason that people don't flock to BMW's from Chevrolets.
Because the BMW driver is generally an inconsiderate self-centred asshole who buys an overpriced toy for a sense of belonging to an elite group, but most people aren't? You'll have to explain to me the cunning detail of your point because car analogies are usually cutting and sophisticated and I'm not very good with cars.
Ignoring substantial ways in which they're different, they are very much the same. The GUI is very much irrelevant on a 'phone and as long as it has a subset of the GNU userland tools it's basically a successful redistribution of Debian.
FTFY.
The problem is the lack of money put into the user experience and consequently lack of polish.
Oh, yes, that's why everyone flocks to OS X from Windows. "Well, I would choose this Linux desktop environment but it's rather unpolished," exclaims Bob, walking out of Walmart in disgust.
Now go console yourself that Android's not a "real" distro.
Android is a substantially new system built atop a Linux kernel. It's not just a redistribution.
"far closer" is not the same as "is the same as"
You slipped up. Let it go. You don't lose any Internet man-points. It's not as if you got caught on something easy. Many people have been fooled into thinking that AV is "far closer" to PR, thought about it a bit, then acknowledged that it is - as you say - not "anything like" it.
To continue:
The fact you've glazed over the entire section in the freedom bill detailing further information on protecting the rights of protestors
The LD version of the Freedom Bill on the LD web site is not part of any coalition agreement. You've seen the words "Freedom Bill" in the coalition agreement and falsely assumed that it's referring to the LD's Freedom Bill. It's not. It's referring to the concept of a Freedom Bill. In geek terms, if this helps: it's the difference between agreeing "well, we really ought to choose Debian with packages X Y Z" and deciding "we should put some sort of Unix on this machine" (which might end up being SCO).
it's obscure to be for PR and against the coalition government because the coalition government is simply that much more representative of the population
It's a fair question to ask: is an effective, representative UK coalition government of only necessary compromises good PR for PR in the UK? Now, is this an effective, representative coalition government of only necessary compromises?
I guess you really would've preferred a deadlocked Tory minority that would've destroyed our economy,
Sigh. Do you think everyone woke up one morning to find out a pile of Western countries had switched from surplus to huge deficit? Every wise Western investor has profited handsomely from the past decade, and every Western government has supported his behaviour. But no wise investor wants to see his economy destroyed. By extension, no Western government wants to see its economy destroyed. When the time comes for crisis management, representatives of the people are entirely capable of making appropriate agreements / pacts.
Without being tied down in coalition government on other policy.
a full Tory majority which would've damaged our ties with Europe
Perhaps you're predicting, unlike the 1977 non-coalition Pact which lasted two years (up to a few months before the 5 term limit and following the Winter of Discontent), that a minority government would result in another election being quickly forced. I guess also that you're predicting that this new election would give the Tories a majority, unlike the 1974 election which did not give a % swing to Labour sufficient to give the Tories a majority in 2010.
a Lib-Lab coalition where the Lib Dems got no concessions because Mandelson, Calamity Gordon et al weren't willing to give anything up
258+57 is closer to 307 than 326, so it'd have to be more than just Lib-Lab. Since negotiations were closed-door - itself a taint on all parties - I can't say what they were/weren't willing to give up.
a Labour government that would've got ever more drunk on power and ever more totalitarian as a result. Thank fuck you didn't get your way, because all 4 of those alternatives to what happened are far far worse than what we actually have.
As you've said, Labour was getting drunk on power (but not "totalitarian"). As were the Tories before that. The last two No.10 house moves were based not on the people being enlightened by a different approach but by people being fed up with the old bunch.
I can't say how bad this coalition will turn out. I fear most of all further homogenisation of the political landscape by the next election. British democracy becomes an exercise in simply making sure that no single set of equally motivated individuals sits around for too long.
This was the first election where many eligible voters were to
Stop. Making. New. Linux. Distributions.
It's a time-wasting hassle for the user, the administrator and the developer.
It's a turn-off to anyone who might otherwise consider supporting a Linux-based platform.
Look, if you want to build a distribution to do something in particular, you're doing it wrong. Stop ironing the "I made my own Linux distribution" in 32 pt Comic Sans on your ego-boost t-shirt and start asking yourself why the kernel and userspace isn't just one huge binary blob. That's right: because not everyone wants to do the same thing, and modularity encourages reuse.
tl;dr .deb meta-packages with a line of Depends longer than a diaper fetishist's. Plus some glue.
You just said:
I never said it was anything like proportional [and more backpedalling]
On Friday July 09, @01:18PM, you said:
AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction, that's absolutely what matters because AV is still far closer to PR
To continue:
ignoring the actual information out there, or simply putting a spin on the facts.
Each of my points was backed up by a page reference to the individual party and coalition manifestos.
Again, building straw men such as saying the child asylum seeker pledge isn't worth forming a coalition over- who ever said it was?
The LDs imply it in forming a coalition: it typifies the scope and extent of the very few LD coalition achievements.
you'll find plenty more examples there of Lib Dem policies taken over to the coalition document
No. As far as LD-sourced entries, I just see vague handwaving from, "We will introduce a Freedom Bill," to, "We will restore rights to non-violent protest." I'm not expecting the manifesto to go into as much detail as the Bill, but at least some substance would be peachy. Even when the LDs are unsure in their Bill - "a Royal Commission is to be established [on] regulation of CCTV" - the coalition manifesto manages to be even more vague.
You're in a corner and you're just flailing your arms about. Chill. It's just the Internet. Sometimes you can learn instead of fight.
"they must be clever, because they are so rich" - No, its because they are thieves with government protection
Too many of my ex-schoolchumps are now in investment. They are rich and they are thieves with government protection because they are clever. How do you legislate against the strong reaching the top and colluding to take from the weak?
but say they'd prefer Labour to the Tories, that at very least adds a little more credibility to Labour holding majority of power
Implying that your second choice is worth some proportion of my first choice. Under AV the proportion of Tory MPs would have reflected even less the proportion of people actually choosing Tory.
If you want to justify AV, go ahead. But don't use simplistic arguments to claim that it is anything like proportional, or - more importantly - anything like what the LDs appeared to promote before the coalition. If I can't convince you, consider Churchill's opinion and the link to LD Roy Jenkins' detailed analysis somewhere around here.
Most importantly though it benefits the Lib Dems precisely because they are a moderate party meaning they're more likely to push better electoral reform in future.
It'd be more accurate to say that it forces the LDs to align themselves more closely with the most popular party, further homogenising the parties. Nevertheless, I hope an LD wants PR because PR is fair, not because "it means the LDs will win".
- Abolition of NIR as well as just ID cards
Tory manifesto, page 79.
- Ending of detention of child asylum seekers
This is neither (i) an LD victory over Tory policy or manifesto; nor (ii) politically significant, affecting about 1,000 children of asylum seekers per year. This doesn't stop it being a good thing, of course, but it's not worth forming a coalition over.
- Keeping European working directive
No. To quote the BBC web site: As part of the EU truce, the Conservatives will drop their plan to seek an opt-out from some social legislation, especially the working time directive, but will seek to "limit (its) application". This is political speak for, "We're going to do the same thing but change the language to describe how we do it."
- Removing restrictions on protestors
Page 11 of The Coalition: our programme for government? mentions "restor[ing] rights to non-violent protest" without further explanation. Do you have something of actual substance?
CCTV safeguards
The criticism of "spy"ing councils which immediately follows mention of CCTV on p.93 of the LD manifesto is expanded upon on p.79 of the Tory manifesto. What more?
libel reform
Again, p.79. Although the last sentence of p.93 of the LD manifesto is slightly more specific, the detail "to protect freedom of speech" in the coalition document mirrors only Tory manifesto language.
I'm probably done here unless I get some procrastination time later. I think you need to spend more time on the detail of relevant documents. Have a nice day.
AV is a lot closer to PR than what we have.
No it isn't. It's a single-member constituency system, just like FPTP. To reiterate what I've just typed above: Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead.
Xest has already shown that the LDs have got some policy in which wouldn't have been there otherwise,
ID cards + NIR were already rejected by the Tories. The only material tweak is the £1k increase in personal allowance offset by NIC increases and not close to the original "personal allowance to £10k" of the manifesto.
the presence of the LDs in the coalition make it harder for the Conservatives to get some of the nastier policies through
You think they'd have any more chance of being voted for under a minority government, where the LDs get a free vote?
I know the difference between simply having an agenda and being an "astroturfer"
Erm, well done. Do you know the difference between a comparison and an assertion? The guys here who cry "MS astroturfer!" to anything remotely anti-FOSS suffer the same paranoia you did when you accused me of being a Labour flag-waver.
In other words, you hate the Tories so much that you would oppose any coalition with them.
My opinion on the Tories shouldn't be relevant. The LDs had no good reason to form a coalition - as well as being bad for the Commons, it would only help the Tories and harm the LDs.
They don't like the outcome, but reckon it's the best available given the way the electorate voted and Labour's hostility to cooperating with them.
I guess it depends on the area[tm]. Not everyone belives there was no alternative, and many consider that Clegg made an unhealthy choice very quickly. I see as much "lost trust in LD" as I see your argument.
AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction
Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead.
It's not difficult, compare the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos civil liberties section against the coalition agreement, it's not hard to see the Lib Dems got a lot of what they wanted.
Inability to answer the question and dismissing the exercise with "do your homework" isn't advancing your case. Maybe you have a good example which I have overlooked. I haven't found one.
This would be the same Labour that completely removed the 10p tax bracket in the first place of course.
Was this one of those irrelevant political comebacks? Let's consider the conversation:
The LD manifesto was to increase the allowance to £10k, but the Tories of course did not agree to a timeline for that. We were discussing whether a £1,000 personal allowance increase over two years was somehow a great win for the LDs. To put the scale of figures into context, I pointed out that we've just had a £1,000 increase.
You pointed out that it was offset by the abolition of the 10p lower rate - which it was, but that in turn was offset by tax credit. Pensioners and families were better off; workers who are single and young were worse off. I similarly pointed out in this case that the £1k increase has been offset by NIC increases.
Apart from what I already asserted, which is that the increase of £1k in personal allowance is not a significant win for the LDs, what new conclusions are apparent?