If you say it's possible to resolve analogue data generated from a laser to produce comparable frequency response to a similar priced friction turntable, I'll believe you but I'm very very surprised. It just seems far more sensible to round a tiny bit and transmit digitally for this sort of thing, hence my point.
Knew about them, but at that price it's essentially a theoretical point. Yes, you _can_, but they're not really helpful for the average user when I could sell all my CDs, all my videos, all my computer software, all my hardware, somehow manage to con people into paying full retail and _still_ not afford one of these.
If laser turntables (which, BTW, would seem to miss the warmth of analog point most vinyl fans seem to make?) came down to, say, $300 then I could see the case being made, even if vinyl's still physically fragile and larger (so harder to store on two counts), but at this price it's anoraks only and CDs remain the better idea.
Probably not. Records degrade pretty easily with playing - remember, the noise is encoded in little bumps in plastic, which have to be rubbed over to play it...
My real preference is for trackpads. I've got a lovely keyboard (BTC 8140M) - well, two actually, one I bought for work - with a built-in trackpad.
To me this has the advantage of not moving my arm of a trackball - but, I'm not having to move my hand over to a new device off on one side, because I've got a pad just underneath my thumbs so can use it with them or move my hand just a few inches and use my fingers.
I've no idea what I'd do if one of these broke and I couldn't replace it, they're just fantastic.
Sorry to shatter illusions, but I can remember some serious mindless violence with Lemmings.
What we used to do with Lemmings 1 was to find a level with lots of stone that could be blown up - below and beside, but not too much above. We'd then fence every single Lemming into a really, really narrow zone. When we had 100 Lemmings into an area maybe 30-40 pixels wide, we'd set off the Nuke 'em. They all blow up 5 seconds later, some sooner than others. Some are blown into the air, some bounce around, lots of scenery gets blown up and it's all very spectacular and silly.
Or, occasionally, for simple sadism, dig a hole above some water or (even better) lava and watch a whole convoy walk along, then fall in and scream, quietly.
With a sufficiently sadistic mind, Lemmings is perfectly capable of being used for violence.
Part of the problem would seem to be the current culture. Oh, this is talking about the UK, I don't know what it's like in the US though I believe it can be pretty similar.
The point being that young male culture currently regards academic success as a failure at life. Socially, the rewards are given for engaging with academic pursuits as little as possible and barely tolerating it as an intrusion on your life. There was a lovely tagling I saw recently, along the lines that it was sad to live in a society where knowing how to program your VCR lowered your social status.
While educational success isn't a social win but a social loss, this performance is pretty much what's expected. Yes, games are always going to have the benefit of immediate reward, but when (youth) society is teaching the kids that they'll be happier if they _don't_ succeed at school, it's little surprise that games (a clearly recognised source of social status) are, in some ways, a more potentially valuable educational tool.
There was an interesting article about this some time ago, which concluded that part of the problem was that most primary age teachers were female - so there weren't many educational role models for the young boys. Guys, maybe you should look again at teaching, even if just part-time in the voluntary sector.
(Disclaimer - I'm British, these are nominally American companies and this would mostly affect American users. Flame away if you think this is none of my business.)
I have to say, this whole saga sounds so much like AOL etc. _daring_ the government to stop them. They can't quite believe they're getting away with it but hey, if they can buy the world before anyone notices and complains then they might as well give it a try...
Someone _really_ needs some backbone to stand up to this, it's ridiculous. A company like this would have so much power it isn't funny and they need stopping. From a shareholder point of view, a company this large would likely be quite unwieldy and so probably wouldn't be as good value as the individuals currently are collectively.
Except look at the current 'business friendly' Whitehouse. Oh well, better luck in 2004, guys.
You try placing footnotes on the correct piece of paper with HTML.
You can do them at the end of a document, sure, but HTML isn't precise enough to guarantee that that matches the end of the physical page on all devices. There's a reason publishers use PDFs instead of HTML, y'know...
A wireless HTML browser on e-paper would be cool, yes, but it alone won't replace books. Actually, the other problem that screams out at me here is annotations. From what they're talking about I can't see a clean, simple way to annotate your copy, which means you instantly knock it out for academic books and quite a lot of non-academic, too. Or end up with a situation similar to the old joke about tippex on the monitor...
While I've certainly heard of this before, its effectiveness may well be limited.
Has anyone heard of the Millennium bridge across the Thames in London? Pedestrian suspension bridge, kept in suspension sideways IIRC so no tall pillars or overhead cables. Problem was, it wobbled. It wasn't damped enough so could sway quite noticeably from side to side and was closed. There was then a controlled re-opening for people who knew full well it would wobble. They then realised they were going to have to have squads of staff to break up those maliciously walking in step and so amplifying any forces.
The problem, though, was that with the bridge wobbling sideways people were inevitably going to try and stabilise themselves so as not to collapse. So, as you feel a wobble sideways you brace yourself against it and so exert a sideways force on the bridge which makes it wobble in that direction... and you get the idea. Everyone quickly falls into step with each other, so amplifying the wobble...
I would (and have) argued that Germany was defeated the second they invaded the USSR, some 6 months before that.
Their army was really only equipped for short, blitzkrieg-style wars - lots of fast tanks but nothing too heavy, lots of small and medium bombers but no really big ones, that sort of thing. This worked beautifully against Poland (smallish, pretty flat and the far side was sealed in by an ally) and France (not too massive and so despondent they basically sat by and watched the troops invade) but couldn't work against Russia.
Russia is massive, has very hard winters, and had demonstrated a willingness to pursue a scorched earth policy before when repelling Napoleon. OK, maybe their military wasn't massively strong in 1941 (though better than Hitler believed) but it didn't have to be. They could run back to the Urals - a heck of a distance - with no great difficulty, clearing the land of useful military and industrial resources as they went. The population then do partisan attacks in the conquered territory so that couldn't be left alone, the front grows to ridiculous lenghts - and winter will ultimately set in. At which point German troops were totally unprepared and unequipped so their tanks and guns were failing and their soup was freezing between the bowl and their mouth. Seriously. While the Russian troops lay in the snow all day then attacked. While the Russians threw convicts they regarded as expendable at the German lines first to wear out the troops, and while they seriously depleted their own population because they could and losing was unthinkable.
Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad all hindered Germany very substantially, but they couldn't have managed an invasion even without them. They had too much land to conquer, too much front to police, supply lines so long they had to build their own railways as they went then treat the railway cars as one-way disposable because they couldn't afford the time to unload and send them back. The army was trying to control most of Europe so was already overstretched, and was ill-designed for this campaign.
Moscow didn't help - and neither did the delay at the start which meant they weren't as far in when an early winter hit - but the Russian campaign was never one that could be won. It was short-sighted vanity all along, and the more you look at it the less the sums add up.
In practice this distorts it to some level. I'd say not as much, but it's still there.
Isn't it lovely to have a bright, considerate and informed electorate who care about the world as a whole as opposed to their own small corner at the expense of all else?:(
(Troll? Oh well, close enough to serious opinion from some that I'm biting anyway.)
Ahem. Oh, FWIW, I have no idea whatsoever whether the Soviet medical industry made substantial contributions to science. This is reasoning why they didn't, IF they didn't.
Firstly, they industrialised VERY quickly. This is a rather different issue from building cars and trains, and I suspect it's rather harder to get right on the sort of timescale they managed it. Yes, the Soviet Union was around for over 80 years - it was also only really industrialised for 60 of them and then at war for 10 after that. Well, a little bit during the industrialisation, out in the east, actually. Anyway. It had maybe 50 years in which to do this work, realistically. To educate the researchers (which requires at least some level of bootstrapping), to build the equipment (ditto) and to get these programs, taking many years each up and running.
Secondly, it was never particularly rich and this isn't exactly a prestige project in a cold war situation in the same way a massive military is.
Thirdly, it was a far from perfect implementation of this style of system with patronage and corruption both working against a truly balanced system.
Fourthly, I said capitalism has a place! Greed might not be nice but it's a usable motivating factor when there's nothing else. I'd be delighted to see the majority of research being directed by need and not profit, but there's no way I'd stop someone who wanted to research just because they planned an eventual profit. I might restrict some of the silliness that can create (as with extreme examples like this), but that's very different.
My simple observation is that research time and spending is currently allocated not by need but by ability to pay, which is sad and will pretty much inevitably lead to the sort of situation which started this thread. Criticising a starving man for stealing bread from those who have a surplus feels odd at a minimum and this is little different, if at all.
This is a serious post, not a troll, not flamebait but I'm still fishing out the asbestos modem.
Uncomfortable a truth as this is, it only highlights the fundamental problem of capitalist research. When (a category of) research into improving the human situation is only carried out by capitalist organisations, that research is inevitably going to be targetted around the needs of those most able to pay for the end result. Who, let's be honest, aren't going to be the greatest possible recipients of research to improve the human situation.
Now, AIDS research is very important. Partly due to the massive third world AIDS pandemic (except, oops, they can't afford the drugs...) and partly due to generic research intro retrovirii. But think about what could happen if the money put into various other bits of research was spent on, for examples, cholera, river blindness, malaria, measles and so on. I'm not going to provide examples of possible targets for the money to come from, that's just going to get emotive.
Think about it, though. If medical research was primarily (or entirely) funded by society as a whole as opposed to by the proceeds of research then, in theory, we wouldn't have this problem. While it remains a part of a capitalist system it is inevitable.
I'm not a communist (Honest! Capitalism has its uses and the people have a right to choose!) but it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this sort of case exposes the limitations of capitalism rather starkly.
I'm not an 'Open source everything!' zealot, but there's three letters anyone here really ought to remember in reply to that comment.
B, S and D. They ripped out the bits they couldn't open, then released the rest. Meanwhile, hackers spend time building replacements that can stay there.
Why not with BeOS? They may have sound business reasons for not wanting to (which they're allowed to), but there is a technical precedent for that sort of move.
Also add improper electrical insulation. The skin charging up isn't necessarily a problem, so long as it discharges evenly. It discharged when the mooring rope hit the ground, BUT some panels didn't because they weren't properly grounded to the airframe. You then have a potential difference between panels covered in pretty much rocket fuel and lots of fire.
Ooh, not how I'd configure it. That effectively imposes a user cap.
Were I playing with this, it'd be set up with maximum burst rate of (bandwidth / users * 2) for n seconds and maximum of bandwidth / users over the course of any given minute, if and when scheduling comes in to play - or something along those lines, anyway. Most of the time, most of the connections are likely to be entirely idle, after all, so there's no point in artificially restricting when the bandwidth isn't banging headlong into its upper limit.
Windows systems can be and are regularly used, totally unsupported, by novices. They add and remove programs and occasionally add stuff like printers and it's not a significant problem.
GNU/Linux systems do not yet, from what I see and hear, provide this degree of ease of use. This means that they are not considered sufficiently easy to use as they cannot be considered for unsupported novice use.
Office workers are supported, so this issue goes away - but they're not a fair test as the problem area (which is very relevant indeed for home users) is simply bypassed for them.
Why is this seen as a complicated or strange concept?
Office workers aren't a fair test of whether Linux is easy to use as they don't have to do enough on their machines. They turn up, use the word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail program (or whatever - you get the idea) they go. If it breaks, or if anything needs changing, they call the office support person.
The significant usability problem with Linux, from what I see, isn't in normal use but in modifying the config which remains hard and which these people don't have to do. Ergo, they're not a valid test of usability here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and yes, that'll get you UK-focussed news but they're not just aiming for eyeballs for advertisers. I'm delighted that we have something like this and they're probably my primary news source.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Probably just printing space in the listings mags. From what I recall, VP simply assumes that the non-aerial system is tuned to a certain number and after that it's just a table to combine calendars and times. After all, it's not switching the decoder box yet...
I'm _not_ saying the device should be illegal. I'm not even saying that using it and publishing the results should necessarily be banned, no matter what use it's put to. I'm honestly not sure.
All I'm saying is that I can see an argument for making it illegal to post a statement which poses as being from someone when (a) it isn't and (b) it causes them harm. Whether I agree with that opinion I'm really not sure.
I'm getting irritated on this one, too. My userbase is only just into double figures, but I've had something like 20% of them ask me if they have to do anything to their machines to guard against this. On this scale it's only an irritation - but it's daft.
If they'd only prefixed the bulletins with a simple rider that this only affects website operators (to word it for the users, remember) and that home PCs are fine, this would be better. Users wouldn't be panicking for no good reason, we'd all have a more peaceful world.
Slashdot Mirror
If you say it's possible to resolve analogue data generated from a laser to produce comparable frequency response to a similar priced friction turntable, I'll believe you but I'm very very surprised. It just seems far more sensible to round a tiny bit and transmit digitally for this sort of thing, hence my point.
Knew about them, but at that price it's essentially a theoretical point. Yes, you _can_, but they're not really helpful for the average user when I could sell all my CDs, all my videos, all my computer software, all my hardware, somehow manage to con people into paying full retail and _still_ not afford one of these.
:-)
If laser turntables (which, BTW, would seem to miss the warmth of analog point most vinyl fans seem to make?) came down to, say, $300 then I could see the case being made, even if vinyl's still physically fragile and larger (so harder to store on two counts), but at this price it's anoraks only and CDs remain the better idea.
IMHO
Probably not. Records degrade pretty easily with playing - remember, the noise is encoded in little bumps in plastic, which have to be rubbed over to play it...
My real preference is for trackpads. I've got a lovely keyboard (BTC 8140M) - well, two actually, one I bought for work - with a built-in trackpad.
To me this has the advantage of not moving my arm of a trackball - but, I'm not having to move my hand over to a new device off on one side, because I've got a pad just underneath my thumbs so can use it with them or move my hand just a few inches and use my fingers.
I've no idea what I'd do if one of these broke and I couldn't replace it, they're just fantastic.
Sorry to shatter illusions, but I can remember some serious mindless violence with Lemmings.
What we used to do with Lemmings 1 was to find a level with lots of stone that could be blown up - below and beside, but not too much above. We'd then fence every single Lemming into a really, really narrow zone. When we had 100 Lemmings into an area maybe 30-40 pixels wide, we'd set off the Nuke 'em. They all blow up 5 seconds later, some sooner than others. Some are blown into the air, some bounce around, lots of scenery gets blown up and it's all very spectacular and silly.
Or, occasionally, for simple sadism, dig a hole above some water or (even better) lava and watch a whole convoy walk along, then fall in and scream, quietly.
With a sufficiently sadistic mind, Lemmings is perfectly capable of being used for violence.
Part of the problem would seem to be the current culture. Oh, this is talking about the UK, I don't know what it's like in the US though I believe it can be pretty similar.
The point being that young male culture currently regards academic success as a failure at life. Socially, the rewards are given for engaging with academic pursuits as little as possible and barely tolerating it as an intrusion on your life. There was a lovely tagling I saw recently, along the lines that it was sad to live in a society where knowing how to program your VCR lowered your social status.
While educational success isn't a social win but a social loss, this performance is pretty much what's expected. Yes, games are always going to have the benefit of immediate reward, but when (youth) society is teaching the kids that they'll be happier if they _don't_ succeed at school, it's little surprise that games (a clearly recognised source of social status) are, in some ways, a more potentially valuable educational tool.
There was an interesting article about this some time ago, which concluded that part of the problem was that most primary age teachers were female - so there weren't many educational role models for the young boys. Guys, maybe you should look again at teaching, even if just part-time in the voluntary sector.
(Disclaimer - I'm British, these are nominally American companies and this would mostly affect American users. Flame away if you think this is none of my business.)
I have to say, this whole saga sounds so much like AOL etc. _daring_ the government to stop them. They can't quite believe they're getting away with it but hey, if they can buy the world before anyone notices and complains then they might as well give it a try...
Someone _really_ needs some backbone to stand up to this, it's ridiculous. A company like this would have so much power it isn't funny and they need stopping. From a shareholder point of view, a company this large would likely be quite unwieldy and so probably wouldn't be as good value as the individuals currently are collectively.
Except look at the current 'business friendly' Whitehouse. Oh well, better luck in 2004, guys.
You try placing footnotes on the correct piece of paper with HTML.
You can do them at the end of a document, sure, but HTML isn't precise enough to guarantee that that matches the end of the physical page on all devices. There's a reason publishers use PDFs instead of HTML, y'know...
A wireless HTML browser on e-paper would be cool, yes, but it alone won't replace books. Actually, the other problem that screams out at me here is annotations. From what they're talking about I can't see a clean, simple way to annotate your copy, which means you instantly knock it out for academic books and quite a lot of non-academic, too. Or end up with a situation similar to the old joke about tippex on the monitor...
While I've certainly heard of this before, its effectiveness may well be limited.
Has anyone heard of the Millennium bridge across the Thames in London? Pedestrian suspension bridge, kept in suspension sideways IIRC so no tall pillars or overhead cables. Problem was, it wobbled. It wasn't damped enough so could sway quite noticeably from side to side and was closed. There was then a controlled re-opening for people who knew full well it would wobble. They then realised they were going to have to have squads of staff to break up those maliciously walking in step and so amplifying any forces.
The problem, though, was that with the bridge wobbling sideways people were inevitably going to try and stabilise themselves so as not to collapse. So, as you feel a wobble sideways you brace yourself against it and so exert a sideways force on the bridge which makes it wobble in that direction... and you get the idea. Everyone quickly falls into step with each other, so amplifying the wobble...
Spot the problem.
I would (and have) argued that Germany was defeated the second they invaded the USSR, some 6 months before that.
Their army was really only equipped for short, blitzkrieg-style wars - lots of fast tanks but nothing too heavy, lots of small and medium bombers but no really big ones, that sort of thing. This worked beautifully against Poland (smallish, pretty flat and the far side was sealed in by an ally) and France (not too massive and so despondent they basically sat by and watched the troops invade) but couldn't work against Russia.
Russia is massive, has very hard winters, and had demonstrated a willingness to pursue a scorched earth policy before when repelling Napoleon. OK, maybe their military wasn't massively strong in 1941 (though better than Hitler believed) but it didn't have to be. They could run back to the Urals - a heck of a distance - with no great difficulty, clearing the land of useful military and industrial resources as they went. The population then do partisan attacks in the conquered territory so that couldn't be left alone, the front grows to ridiculous lenghts - and winter will ultimately set in. At which point German troops were totally unprepared and unequipped so their tanks and guns were failing and their soup was freezing between the bowl and their mouth. Seriously. While the Russian troops lay in the snow all day then attacked. While the Russians threw convicts they regarded as expendable at the German lines first to wear out the troops, and while they seriously depleted their own population because they could and losing was unthinkable.
Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad all hindered Germany very substantially, but they couldn't have managed an invasion even without them. They had too much land to conquer, too much front to police, supply lines so long they had to build their own railways as they went then treat the railway cars as one-way disposable because they couldn't afford the time to unload and send them back. The army was trying to control most of Europe so was already overstretched, and was ill-designed for this campaign.
Moscow didn't help - and neither did the delay at the start which meant they weren't as far in when an early winter hit - but the Russian campaign was never one that could be won. It was short-sighted vanity all along, and the more you look at it the less the sums add up.
Mornington Crescent!
(or does no-one else know of that fine game?)
;-)
Two important words in my post there:
:(
in theory
In practice this distorts it to some level. I'd say not as much, but it's still there.
Isn't it lovely to have a bright, considerate and informed electorate who care about the world as a whole as opposed to their own small corner at the expense of all else?
(Troll? Oh well, close enough to serious opinion from some that I'm biting anyway.)
Ahem. Oh, FWIW, I have no idea whatsoever whether the Soviet medical industry made substantial contributions to science. This is reasoning why they didn't, IF they didn't.
Firstly, they industrialised VERY quickly. This is a rather different issue from building cars and trains, and I suspect it's rather harder to get right on the sort of timescale they managed it. Yes, the Soviet Union was around for over 80 years - it was also only really industrialised for 60 of them and then at war for 10 after that. Well, a little bit during the industrialisation, out in the east, actually. Anyway. It had maybe 50 years in which to do this work, realistically. To educate the researchers (which requires at least some level of bootstrapping), to build the equipment (ditto) and to get these programs, taking many years each up and running.
Secondly, it was never particularly rich and this isn't exactly a prestige project in a cold war situation in the same way a massive military is.
Thirdly, it was a far from perfect implementation of this style of system with patronage and corruption both working against a truly balanced system.
Fourthly, I said capitalism has a place! Greed might not be nice but it's a usable motivating factor when there's nothing else. I'd be delighted to see the majority of research being directed by need and not profit, but there's no way I'd stop someone who wanted to research just because they planned an eventual profit. I might restrict some of the silliness that can create (as with extreme examples like this), but that's very different.
My simple observation is that research time and spending is currently allocated not by need but by ability to pay, which is sad and will pretty much inevitably lead to the sort of situation which started this thread. Criticising a starving man for stealing bread from those who have a surplus feels odd at a minimum and this is little different, if at all.
This is a serious post, not a troll, not flamebait but I'm still fishing out the asbestos modem.
Uncomfortable a truth as this is, it only highlights the fundamental problem of capitalist research. When (a category of) research into improving the human situation is only carried out by capitalist organisations, that research is inevitably going to be targetted around the needs of those most able to pay for the end result. Who, let's be honest, aren't going to be the greatest possible recipients of research to improve the human situation.
Now, AIDS research is very important. Partly due to the massive third world AIDS pandemic (except, oops, they can't afford the drugs...) and partly due to generic research intro retrovirii. But think about what could happen if the money put into various other bits of research was spent on, for examples, cholera, river blindness, malaria, measles and so on. I'm not going to provide examples of possible targets for the money to come from, that's just going to get emotive.
Think about it, though. If medical research was primarily (or entirely) funded by society as a whole as opposed to by the proceeds of research then, in theory, we wouldn't have this problem. While it remains a part of a capitalist system it is inevitable.
I'm not a communist (Honest! Capitalism has its uses and the people have a right to choose!) but it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this sort of case exposes the limitations of capitalism rather starkly.
I'm not an 'Open source everything!' zealot, but there's three letters anyone here really ought to remember in reply to that comment.
B, S and D. They ripped out the bits they couldn't open, then released the rest. Meanwhile, hackers spend time building replacements that can stay there.
Why not with BeOS? They may have sound business reasons for not wanting to (which they're allowed to), but there is a technical precedent for that sort of move.
Ahh, that's a little different from what you said a moment ago. No matter, we all know what we mean now :-)
Also add improper electrical insulation. The skin charging up isn't necessarily a problem, so long as it discharges evenly. It discharged when the mooring rope hit the ground, BUT some panels didn't because they weren't properly grounded to the airframe. You then have a potential difference between panels covered in pretty much rocket fuel and lots of fire.
Whoops. Whoops almighty.
Ooh, not how I'd configure it. That effectively imposes a user cap.
Were I playing with this, it'd be set up with maximum burst rate of (bandwidth / users * 2) for n seconds and maximum of bandwidth / users over the course of any given minute, if and when scheduling comes in to play - or something along those lines, anyway. Most of the time, most of the connections are likely to be entirely idle, after all, so there's no point in artificially restricting when the bandwidth isn't banging headlong into its upper limit.
Wow.
Windows systems can be and are regularly used, totally unsupported, by novices. They add and remove programs and occasionally add stuff like printers and it's not a significant problem.
GNU/Linux systems do not yet, from what I see and hear, provide this degree of ease of use. This means that they are not considered sufficiently easy to use as they cannot be considered for unsupported novice use.
Office workers are supported, so this issue goes away - but they're not a fair test as the problem area (which is very relevant indeed for home users) is simply bypassed for them.
Why is this seen as a complicated or strange concept?
Office workers aren't a fair test of whether Linux is easy to use as they don't have to do enough on their machines. They turn up, use the word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail program (or whatever - you get the idea) they go. If it breaks, or if anything needs changing, they call the office support person.
:-)
The significant usability problem with Linux, from what I see, isn't in normal use but in modifying the config which remains hard and which these people don't have to do. Ergo, they're not a valid test of usability here.
IMHO
Yet one more reason to use the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and yes, that'll get you UK-focussed news but they're not just aiming for eyeballs for advertisers. I'm delighted that we have something like this and they're probably my primary news source.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Probably just printing space in the listings mags. From what I recall, VP simply assumes that the non-aerial system is tuned to a certain number and after that it's just a table to combine calendars and times. After all, it's not switching the decoder box yet...
I'm _not_ saying the device should be illegal. I'm not even saying that using it and publishing the results should necessarily be banned, no matter what use it's put to. I'm honestly not sure.
All I'm saying is that I can see an argument for making it illegal to post a statement which poses as being from someone when (a) it isn't and (b) it causes them harm. Whether I agree with that opinion I'm really not sure.
Given that the digital rebroadcasts of BBC channels don't carry it, it would seem that the restriction is technical.
A real pity, PDC was fantastic. How VCRs ought to have been since day one.
I'm getting irritated on this one, too. My userbase is only just into double figures, but I've had something like 20% of them ask me if they have to do anything to their machines to guard against this. On this scale it's only an irritation - but it's daft.
If they'd only prefixed the bulletins with a simple rider that this only affects website operators (to word it for the users, remember) and that home PCs are fine, this would be better. Users wouldn't be panicking for no good reason, we'd all have a more peaceful world.
Why can't people think harder?