In the UK and most of Europe, as others have said, this has been a standard facility since the EU deemed that the telcos were technically able to do this and were putting limits on the freedom of customers who were able to choose a good deal or their old number, but rarely both.
That said, they do like to get their claws into you other ways. I have a phone with Orange and I'm out of luck if I want to use anyone elses SIM card in it (ignoring the backstreet hackers who will fix it for me) as they lock it to their network. All this means is I need a new handset if I switch networks, no real problem now, but when I next upgrade I'll be getting a convergence device (Sony Ericsson P800 for example) and these aren't something you want to have to buy all over again when you switch networks.
On the face if it MS is "indoctrinating" the people that are being taught but, be honest, how many people who work on UNIX plaforms took their first step on MS platforms? I did and the majority of the people I know did as well and in my opinion as long as people are coding and the UNIX platforms remain a good base for programmers, people will move over to them as they discover the advantages themselves.
I am completely at a loss as to why anyone who votes in a country with a system as messed up as the United States thinks that abstaining is a useful form of protest against the presidential elections. Although turn out will certainly be counted and used by some statisticians, the electoral college will decide the matter in it's entireity.
Of course a likely effect of abstention is that of the other elections taking place (Senate etc) the candidate you least prefer could get elected. Sure they may get elected anyway but at least you'd have done your best.
If you do decide to abstain make sure it's for a *good* reason (apathy isn't a reason).
If you take a look at the way open source projects are developed or even the way any large-scale contribution based project is developed, there is always someone working to steer it. Anyone who has an opinion and makes a recommendation or request is moving things towards their own personal preference even if it is shared by the majority.
The key is not to allow any one voice to overpower the rest so that it becomes effectively a free source of development for the voice in question. Clearly companies who are releasing the fruits of the project commercially are the ones to be most wary of because they have to serve both the software and their paying users.
It seems that as open source moves into the spotlight more and more, there will be an increasing number of bodies joining the party and then trying to make it their party rather than everyones.
I don't however see any point in panicing. Providing the members of a community realise this may happen and remain vigilant they can easily try to minimise any negative aspects of the contributions of the corporations many seem to fear.
And they're releasing it in the UK where we pay thru the nose for both mobile and land lines, so Sony probably assume that both Japan and the UK would be as happy paying for mobile as land line.
Almost an extremely cool idea. With PSX2 backwards compatible you could snap up a load of old PSX games and own both that and this "portable" device and play them on either. Sadly Sony seem to be under the impression that we want a largely unportable device to hook up to our mobiles. Sorry but I have a land line for use at home and wouldn't want to pay the call charges for playing online games using the phone when there was a cheaper alternative. As an on the move gaming and easy email access box (if they provided that service) it would have been high on my shopping list. Seems to me that all this really is is a cosmetic upgrade to the slightly old looking grey box, altho it is pretty damn nice:)
No marketing presence outside TV and radio and the web you mean?
They spent a lot on a very flashy ad campaign a while back but the site was really unable to capitalise on that. Estimates of their investment are around 200-250 million and somehow they've managed to burn it with little difficulty.
Their problems are mainly based around their website. Too hard to use, too high-tech for a lot of its services (considering bandwidth needed) and generally not inspiring any sort of confidence in the company. Of course the fact that they were losing key managerial staff didn't help matters too much and that, if anything, signaled the beginning of the end for them. I feel sorry for the people who worked there but I can't see how it wasn't an accident waiting to happen.
Still, their loss. Now some other big name will take over the site and profit from their name.
In the law as I understand it, there is "implied copyright" which essentially boils down to the rule that if you're paying for something and unless the contract/agreement states otherwise, you have the copyright. If the work is done for free then the creator invariably retains the copyright.
However even if they retained the copyright, can they seriously expect to retain the rights to html produced by Dreamweaver? Sure, any scripting or perhaps extremely innovative layout might be copyrighted but the basic formatting itself is almost like saying "I copyright the word AND" and then suing anyone who uses it. In any case Dreamweaver removes them from producing the code by hand so it's irrelevant. This *should* be thrown out but law being law, probably won't.
It's a shame such a nice little toy has been marred by small things that should have been obvious. Positioning of the USB ports and the poor wave out quality are two things that should have been spotted by the manufacturer and never been an issue but they are. Considering that many would be using this as an mp3 player or using it to hook up to networks/the internet these are two damaging flaws. Then again, all things considered even without a fix it's a nice solution for those who would like to move their desktop PC around with them and I'm sure the next revision will fix the problems. It will be interesting to see if this drives any more innovation or if it will just disappear after its 15 minutes of fame.
We've been building a multilingual version of our site recently and do it in a similar way to you suggest. We have a language variable for the various languages (en = English, fr = French etc) and just use that to call the correct version of the text into the page. Currently it's using "static".txt files but when we're sure the platform we run it on can manage it we'll switch to dynamically pulling it out of the database that drives other parts of the site.
There are more elegant ways of doing it than using include() but it's functional and does what you need to get a site up and working relatively easily.
I too have had a Demon site but left because they were simply getting too large for the user to have any real effect. My current ISP's are fairly large but as I have a separate webhost I'm happy to ignore their failings just to access what I want.
However, the current political climate in the UK is going to force smaller ISP's and webhosts to behave like these large bodies in terms of the way they handle their users. Forget the friendly admin editing some scripts for you or installing some server extensions you've asked for, (s)he will be too busy monitoring the flow of information through their network and checking sites on their servers for potentially damaging materials.
The way our courts are behaving is terrifying for anyone involved in e-Commerce in the UK and is the major reason that I would look to take any startup out of the UK jusrisdiction before any of the serious work had started. It is mainly because of this I contacted my local MP (a Labour backbencher) in order to voice my concern at the state of affairs and in particular the Regulation of Investagatory Powers Bill. I recieved more or less the answer I expected ("Dear Blah, I've passed your query onto the DTI, will advise upon reply") but if everyone does this at least the people who can change things are aware of the problem.
The ironic thing about this situation is that the UK Government has pledged to make the UK one of the World leaders in e-Commerce and the internet community at large. Quite how they think forcing the disclosure of commercially and personally sensative information, permitting the closure of websites on hearsay and the prosecution (either in criminal or civil courts) of those who don't buckle under will help matters is beyond me.
If the government cannot ammend the laws to cover new technologies soon then it is clear that the very people they are trying to encourage will start to leave these shores for more productive climes.
Somewhat unsurprisingly we're returning to the attitude of the Salem witch trials and the Inqusition. Not only can you now point the finger at people but there is a chance that these comments could sit on their school or police records for a long time. That there are a number of ways to anonymously report people now doesn't change the fact that there are always people prepared to abuse these things for personal gain.
The fact that there is no guarantee of how this information will be used or even if it will remain on file is extremely worrying. The reaction after Columbine in particular has not been to help schools crack down on the bullying and isolation of some students. Rather the State governments seem to prefer the idea that they would rather ruin the scholastic careers of a few children rather than deal with the issues that are causing the problems.
Expecting a large corporation to take a moral stand was certainly hopeful but it's important that they now know how a large number of people feel on this issue. At least for now they are taking a close look at the way they do this even if they won't stop for commercial reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK and most of Europe, as others have said, this has been a standard facility since the EU deemed that the telcos were technically able to do this and were putting limits on the freedom of customers who were able to choose a good deal or their old number, but rarely both.
That said, they do like to get their claws into you other ways. I have a phone with Orange and I'm out of luck if I want to use anyone elses SIM card in it (ignoring the backstreet hackers who will fix it for me) as they lock it to their network. All this means is I need a new handset if I switch networks, no real problem now, but when I next upgrade I'll be getting a convergence device (Sony Ericsson P800 for example) and these aren't something you want to have to buy all over again when you switch networks.
Time to call my MEP.
On the face if it MS is "indoctrinating" the people that are being taught but, be honest, how many people who work on UNIX plaforms took their first step on MS platforms? I did and the majority of the people I know did as well and in my opinion as long as people are coding and the UNIX platforms remain a good base for programmers, people will move over to them as they discover the advantages themselves.
Of course a likely effect of abstention is that of the other elections taking place (Senate etc) the candidate you least prefer could get elected. Sure they may get elected anyway but at least you'd have done your best.
If you do decide to abstain make sure it's for a *good* reason (apathy isn't a reason).
The key is not to allow any one voice to overpower the rest so that it becomes effectively a free source of development for the voice in question. Clearly companies who are releasing the fruits of the project commercially are the ones to be most wary of because they have to serve both the software and their paying users.
It seems that as open source moves into the spotlight more and more, there will be an increasing number of bodies joining the party and then trying to make it their party rather than everyones.
I don't however see any point in panicing. Providing the members of a community realise this may happen and remain vigilant they can easily try to minimise any negative aspects of the contributions of the corporations many seem to fear.
And they're releasing it in the UK where we pay thru the nose for both mobile and land lines, so Sony probably assume that both Japan and the UK would be as happy paying for mobile as land line.
Almost an extremely cool idea. With PSX2 backwards compatible you could snap up a load of old PSX games and own both that and this "portable" device and play them on either. Sadly Sony seem to be under the impression that we want a largely unportable device to hook up to our mobiles. Sorry but I have a land line for use at home and wouldn't want to pay the call charges for playing online games using the phone when there was a cheaper alternative. As an on the move gaming and easy email access box (if they provided that service) it would have been high on my shopping list. Seems to me that all this really is is a cosmetic upgrade to the slightly old looking grey box, altho it is pretty damn nice :)
They spent a lot on a very flashy ad campaign a while back but the site was really unable to capitalise on that. Estimates of their investment are around 200-250 million and somehow they've managed to burn it with little difficulty.
Their problems are mainly based around their website. Too hard to use, too high-tech for a lot of its services (considering bandwidth needed) and generally not inspiring any sort of confidence in the company. Of course the fact that they were losing key managerial staff didn't help matters too much and that, if anything, signaled the beginning of the end for them. I feel sorry for the people who worked there but I can't see how it wasn't an accident waiting to happen.
Still, their loss. Now some other big name will take over the site and profit from their name.
However even if they retained the copyright, can they seriously expect to retain the rights to html produced by Dreamweaver? Sure, any scripting or perhaps extremely innovative layout might be copyrighted but the basic formatting itself is almost like saying "I copyright the word AND" and then suing anyone who uses it. In any case Dreamweaver removes them from producing the code by hand so it's irrelevant. This *should* be thrown out but law being law, probably won't.
It's a shame such a nice little toy has been marred by small things that should have been obvious. Positioning of the USB ports and the poor wave out quality are two things that should have been spotted by the manufacturer and never been an issue but they are. Considering that many would be using this as an mp3 player or using it to hook up to networks/the internet these are two damaging flaws. Then again, all things considered even without a fix it's a nice solution for those who would like to move their desktop PC around with them and I'm sure the next revision will fix the problems. It will be interesting to see if this drives any more innovation or if it will just disappear after its 15 minutes of fame.
Terraserver is visible using Netscape so this will be too. Sure you have to download a plugin but the same goes for IE users.
There are more elegant ways of doing it than using include() but it's functional and does what you need to get a site up and working relatively easily.
However, the current political climate in the UK is going to force smaller ISP's and webhosts to behave like these large bodies in terms of the way they handle their users. Forget the friendly admin editing some scripts for you or installing some server extensions you've asked for, (s)he will be too busy monitoring the flow of information through their network and checking sites on their servers for potentially damaging materials.
The way our courts are behaving is terrifying for anyone involved in e-Commerce in the UK and is the major reason that I would look to take any startup out of the UK jusrisdiction before any of the serious work had started. It is mainly because of this I contacted my local MP (a Labour backbencher) in order to voice my concern at the state of affairs and in particular the Regulation of Investagatory Powers Bill. I recieved more or less the answer I expected ("Dear Blah, I've passed your query onto the DTI, will advise upon reply") but if everyone does this at least the people who can change things are aware of the problem.
The ironic thing about this situation is that the UK Government has pledged to make the UK one of the World leaders in e-Commerce and the internet community at large. Quite how they think forcing the disclosure of commercially and personally sensative information, permitting the closure of websites on hearsay and the prosecution (either in criminal or civil courts) of those who don't buckle under will help matters is beyond me.
If the government cannot ammend the laws to cover new technologies soon then it is clear that the very people they are trying to encourage will start to leave these shores for more productive climes.
The fact that there is no guarantee of how this information will be used or even if it will remain on file is extremely worrying. The reaction after Columbine in particular has not been to help schools crack down on the bullying and isolation of some students. Rather the State governments seem to prefer the idea that they would rather ruin the scholastic careers of a few children rather than deal with the issues that are causing the problems.
Expecting a large corporation to take a moral stand was certainly hopeful but it's important that they now know how a large number of people feel on this issue. At least for now they are taking a close look at the way they do this even if they won't stop for commercial reasons.