I'm not sure I agree with your implication that this is intentional on the part of Italy - after all America is like a shining beacon to the world of how to have a broken legal system.
But... if you are correct, Google stopping linking to Italian businesses won't help, most likely Businesses will sue about that, and it will only speed up the process of investigating Google for anti-trust issues in Europe. (obviously America is already ahead of us on this front too!)
I rebooted a Dell office linux fileserver once, just to ensure my new fstab entry mounted ok on startup. It didn't mount okay because I made an error in the fstab startup options. Although that turned out to be a more minor issue with the reboot, the much larger problem was that after rebooting the server it would no longer recognize any USB keyboard (I tried 5 different ones) - on any USB port - or via a plugin PCI card, and I couldn't work out any other way to give keyboard input without first having a normal working keyboard. I tried reseting the CMOS but that just resulted in the machine asking for an F-key to get pressed on startup.
After talking to Dell technical support for some time it was apparent they had no way to work around the issue either (short of replacing the motherboard) and we ended up throwing out the whole server and moving the disks to a new one.
That was a late night, and one server i really regretted rebooting!
PS We had a leaky roof and an umbrella over the server for some time, the server had got wet previously and still had drip marks all over it, so I wouldn't really *blame* dell...
Only a UK court could rule whether or not the change in contract is permissible under consumer protection laws.
I would guess that if challenged legally, it would be deemed that it is not legal to enforce this contract change on existing customers, or existing customers would have the right to leave the network.
There are many terms that one can put in a contract that are automatically overruled by consumer protection laws, so the enforcement of such a term might be illegal.
No one is forcing you to click on the porn links, it's already opt-in! This is more like taking page 3 behind the counter and having to ask the shopkeeper for the "boobies newspaper".
Don't forget H.264 is a proprietary, patent encumbered video codec and Microsoft directly profits from this as a member of the MPEGLA licensing pool. One should view this in the perspective of a larger effort by key MPEGLA members (notably, Apple and Microsoft) attempting to stop the adoption of an open and relatively patent free video codec becoming a web standard in HTML5. Many measures are being applied including the usual FUD about any competing open codecs.
Competing browsers manufacturers / platforms are trying to avoid patent problems and proprietary technology and keep the web open (Mozilla, Opera) whilst Microsoft and Apple are trying to extend HTML with Patent encumbered formats (in which they have a financial interest!) which if they get heavily adopted will mean their browser/platforms will have a commercial advantage over competitors that are sticking to the open and patent free standards.
Of course it's in Microsoft's interests to push easy playback of the proprietary H.264 format on it's Desktop computer monopoly! Microsoft directly profit from H.264 becoming the HTML5 default format as they are still charging licensing fees related to aspects of the H.264 ecosystem *and* they get more lock-in to the windows platform making it harder for competitors to break the monopoly.
I wish it was just a matter of wanting to get rid of flash but the codec issue really bothers me as it's a clear conflict of interest on Apples part and I feel it rather weakens Apple's position in terms of who holds the high ground.
Jobs is shouting about how flash is proprietary and non-open and how he's all about HTML5 which is a standard and open. Which makes people think he's really great and all about the standards and open-ness but actually he's been trying to push H.264 which is patent encumbered with a number of charges and restrictions and which apple profits from as a member of MPEGLA, whilst at the same time trying to prevent the adoption of and spreading vague FUD about other potential options for video codecs.
Not that I like Flash, it totally sucks, but at least Adobe aren't trying to screw up the HTML5 spec with patent encumbered codecs they profit from!
* The most popular method of adding concurrency to a language is to add threaded/shared-memory style concurrency, which is really really really hard to use without introducing subtle bugs, race-conditions and deadlock - even if you are an expert programmer.
* Most people writing Javascript are not expert programmers, many are not even that familiar with Javascript.
* With flash disabled, it is currently hard for a web page to max out more than 1 CPU core per page by accident.
Think about those facts long and hard - and then be thankful for the delay in introducing concurrency to Javascript.
The BBC is probably just pissed off that they weren't allowed to create a BBC iPhone app, so are getting their revenge on the government by exposing all the pointless apps they've came up with.
* Apple have invested a huge amount of effort in getting UIKit up and running. They think they've got the best interface out there for touch.
Apple hasn't mandated the use of UIKit so this point is pretty moot. Lot's of developers port desktop C apps to the iphone, particularly games and there is no requirement to use UIKit and quality control of native iphone Apps is nearly non-existant.
* If Adobe (or whomever) want to produce cross-platform build tools (ie: write for one platform, target another), they can only target the lowest common denominator of all those platforms or provide spotty coverage.
If the apps are crap and unpopular and don't bring anything to the party why would Apple be worried?
* Even if they do provide coverage for everything in Cocoa-Touch, when will support arrive ?
When will support arrive in HTML5 for everything in cocoa touch? does that mean apple shouldn't support web based apps?
* If Adobe want to play, they need to bring something that excites the user-base.
Why, is that necessary when they meet all the current ToS, and other companies release crap iphone apps and aren't punished?
Firefox doesn't have the responsiveness of either Safari, Chrome or Opera, neither does it have the superior one-process-per-tab model of Chrome. Firefox on linux has particularly sucky performance and some awful problems that haven't been fixed for years. It's so bad, your stand a better chance with the chrome beta.
But I can see how switching to one of the most complained about GUI layouts of recent times may successfully distract people from Firefox's other flaws:)
By this definition of faith everything I don't believe in and yet lack a scientific proof that proves it's non-existance means I have "Faith". This certainly makes me a man of a million faiths!
To start with I would like to take this opportunity to declare my faith in the "non-existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".
We'll finally be able to measure IE's marketshare in a non-biased market.
Now browser market share in Europe will be determined by what kickbacks and/or threats the computer makers receive from the companies behind the major browsers.
Apple can't block it on the current version of itunes, but they could change the handshaking/syncing code in every upgrade to itunes. And boy does that app get frequent updates! If necessary they could even force firmware updates onto ipods if people wish to sync with the latest version of itunes.
In fact apple could even break the palm integration unintentionally.
I'm not sure you understand how things work over here in the UK.
If people start using TrueCrypt volumes they'll change the law to assume everyone has a Truecrypt volume and if you can't give them access to it they'll throw you in prison to join the murderers, paedophiles and the people who forgot their winzip decryption password.
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties
If it's similar to other cases I've read about I believe Sweden can ignore the ruling almost indefinitely, they are a sovereign country and their supreme court has ultimate jurisdiction and decisions can not be overruled by an EU court.
If the court rules against Sweden it will probably fine them. If they still don't comply with the ruling they will probably continue to fine them until they come into line with their obligations. I don't know how large the fines can get, but I think it's normal for the offending country to change their law to bring it in line with their EU obligations fairly quickly after they lose the EU case. It's worth noting however that it's rare for changes in a legal system to be enacted retrospectively in a member state even if it was shown that they were in breach of their EU obligations.
If you know exactly what test case is being optimized for including the chipset etc, and you can feed profiling data to a static compiler for the test case then you probably will be able to beat any other high level language.
But what if the task is to write the fastest implementation for any system where the test cases for the code, the CPU model and the system spec is not known beforehand. This is a more realistic test for a lot of software and it can be hard to beat a decent JIT compiler when you know so little about typical usage and the typical runtime environment.
Best bet for TW would be to throttle the bandwidth after X GB transferred in a month (to still allow email checking etc,). Allow the user to top up or upgrade a tier fairly easily and drop the user an email to let them know as they get close to the throttling cap and when they hit it.
Next to no support requirements, fairer distribution of available bandwidth, no cut offs and it might throttles worms and bot nets a bit. They could make the cap high and still sell it as unlimited just claim it's automated enforcement of the "fair useage" policy.
What I've humbly suggested is, instead of pocketing the extra money, spend it on building more slides. It may take time, but you'll eventually get even more kids paying $20 each, and having a lot more fun.
That's only worth it if people pick water slide parks based on how busy they are. If they mainly just select based on price and the 'Unlimited' feature then there isn't any point in building new slides.
Hell, if the people are mainly just interested in a cheap price and hearing the term 'Unlimited' maybe it's a better business strategy to spend the extra money on advertising your already overcrowded water slides!
You've now made a lot of money with little investment. What if someone else starts building an alternative water slide park?
Well you could then add some extra slides to your park and use your stockpile of cash to give away unlimited slides for free, announcing this on the same day as the other water park opens. You then run your water slide park at a loss for a few months until the competitor goes bankrupt at which point you may choose to pick up that second water park at a big discount. You can then put prices back up to $40 a day to compensate for the free days you had to give out before.
Eventually you run all the water parks in the world, you charge whatever you want, move your headquarters to a tax haven and use the money you've saved to offer large contributions to political parties in return for dropping any lawsuits against you.
Regardless, they sold it as "unlimited". Yes, 6M is a peak throughput, but there was no restrictions on WHEN nor HOW LONG I use that 6M peak throughput.
It's a bit like a water-slide park, where they originally charge kids $20 for 10 slides that have to be used the same day. Then they switch to a new pricing scheme where kids can have an unlimited number of slides on that day for $20.
The scheme is so popular at drawing people in, none of the kids can get more than 5 slides in because the queues are so long.
Sometimes people running a club do the same thing over here, you pay one fixed price to get in and you get unlimited drinks! Only catch is that the club is always packed and they only have 1 slow barman serving. It's also a very unpleasant experience at the bar!
Would you really trust a mechanical translation into another language?
Also even if it does get translated correctly no one will want to work on it because it will still look like COBOL code just written with the syntax of another language.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I agree with your implication that this is intentional on the part of Italy - after all America is like a shining beacon to the world of how to have a broken legal system.
But... if you are correct, Google stopping linking to Italian businesses won't help, most likely Businesses will sue about that, and it will only speed up the process of investigating Google for anti-trust issues in Europe. (obviously America is already ahead of us on this front too!)
I rebooted a Dell office linux fileserver once, just to ensure my new fstab entry mounted ok on startup. It didn't mount okay because I made an error in the fstab startup options. Although that turned out to be a more minor issue with the reboot, the much larger problem was that after rebooting the server it would no longer recognize any USB keyboard (I tried 5 different ones) - on any USB port - or via a plugin PCI card, and I couldn't work out any other way to give keyboard input without first having a normal working keyboard. I tried reseting the CMOS but that just resulted in the machine asking for an F-key to get pressed on startup.
After talking to Dell technical support for some time it was apparent they had no way to work around the issue either (short of replacing the motherboard) and we ended up throwing out the whole server and moving the disks to a new one.
That was a late night, and one server i really regretted rebooting!
PS We had a leaky roof and an umbrella over the server for some time, the server had got wet previously and still had drip marks all over it, so I wouldn't really *blame* dell. ..
It's "not made legal" by that small print.
Only a UK court could rule whether or not the change in contract is permissible under consumer protection laws.
I would guess that if challenged legally, it would be deemed that it is not legal to enforce this contract change on existing customers, or existing customers would have the right to leave the network.
There are many terms that one can put in a contract that are automatically overruled by consumer protection laws, so the enforcement of such a term might be illegal.
No one is forcing you to click on the porn links, it's already opt-in!
This is more like taking page 3 behind the counter and having to ask the shopkeeper for the "boobies newspaper".
Don't forget H.264 is a proprietary, patent encumbered video codec and Microsoft directly profits from this as a member of the MPEGLA licensing pool.
One should view this in the perspective of a larger effort by key MPEGLA members (notably, Apple and Microsoft) attempting to stop the adoption of an open and relatively patent free video codec becoming a web standard in HTML5. Many measures are being applied including the usual FUD about any competing open codecs.
Competing browsers manufacturers / platforms are trying to avoid patent problems and proprietary technology and keep the web open (Mozilla, Opera) whilst Microsoft and Apple are trying to extend HTML with Patent encumbered formats (in which they have a financial interest!) which if they get heavily adopted will mean their browser/platforms will have a commercial advantage over competitors that are sticking to the open and patent free standards.
Of course it's in Microsoft's interests to push easy playback of the proprietary H.264 format on it's Desktop computer monopoly! Microsoft directly profit from H.264 becoming the HTML5 default format as they are still charging licensing fees related to aspects of the H.264 ecosystem *and* they get more lock-in to the windows platform making it harder for competitors to break the monopoly.
I wish it was just a matter of wanting to get rid of flash but the codec issue really bothers me as it's a clear conflict of interest on Apples part and I feel it rather weakens Apple's position in terms of who holds the high ground.
Jobs is shouting about how flash is proprietary and non-open and how he's all about HTML5 which is a standard and open.
Which makes people think he's really great and all about the standards and open-ness but actually he's been trying to push H.264 which is patent encumbered with a number of charges and restrictions and which apple profits from as a member of MPEGLA, whilst at the same time trying to prevent the adoption of and spreading vague FUD about other potential options for video codecs.
Not that I like Flash, it totally sucks, but at least Adobe aren't trying to screw up the HTML5 spec with patent encumbered codecs they profit from!
Reflect on a few facts:
* The most popular method of adding concurrency to a language is to add threaded/shared-memory style concurrency, which is really really really hard to use without introducing subtle bugs, race-conditions and deadlock - even if you are an expert programmer.
* Most people writing Javascript are not expert programmers, many are not even that familiar with Javascript.
* With flash disabled, it is currently hard for a web page to max out more than 1 CPU core per page by accident.
Think about those facts long and hard - and then be thankful for the delay in introducing concurrency to Javascript.
It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1
Just the odd browser issue here and there:
Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en
But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....
The BBC is probably just pissed off that they weren't allowed to create a BBC iPhone app, so are getting their revenge on the government by exposing all the pointless apps they've came up with.
Err, way more than 30% of the stuff on the app store is already crap!
That's what ratings and rankings are for.
* Apple have invested a huge amount of effort in getting UIKit up and running. They think they've got the best interface out there for touch.
Apple hasn't mandated the use of UIKit so this point is pretty moot. Lot's of developers port desktop C apps to the iphone, particularly games and there is no requirement to use UIKit and quality control of native iphone Apps is nearly non-existant.
* If Adobe (or whomever) want to produce cross-platform build tools (ie: write for one platform, target another), they can only target the lowest common denominator of all those platforms or provide spotty coverage.
If the apps are crap and unpopular and don't bring anything to the party why would Apple be worried?
* Even if they do provide coverage for everything in Cocoa-Touch, when will support arrive ?
When will support arrive in HTML5 for everything in cocoa touch? does that mean apple shouldn't support web based apps?
* If Adobe want to play, they need to bring something that excites the user-base.
Why, is that necessary when they meet all the current ToS, and other companies release crap iphone apps and aren't punished?
Even new objective C based iphone apps could fail to make use of new API calls since Apple hasn't mandated their usage.
Wouldn't it have been better to punish apps that *actually* behave badly rather than ones that are cross compiled and might behave badly.
Firefox doesn't have the responsiveness of either Safari, Chrome or Opera, neither does it have the superior one-process-per-tab model of Chrome.
Firefox on linux has particularly sucky performance and some awful problems that haven't been fixed for years. It's so bad, your stand a better chance with the chrome beta.
But I can see how switching to one of the most complained about GUI layouts of recent times may successfully distract people from Firefox's other flaws :)
By this definition of faith everything I don't believe in and yet lack a scientific proof that proves it's non-existance means I have "Faith". This certainly makes me a man of a million faiths!
To start with I would like to take this opportunity to declare my faith in the "non-existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".
It's a computer literacy test, if you fail - it's not safe for you to go on the interweb!
We'll finally be able to measure IE's marketshare in a non-biased market.
Now browser market share in Europe will be determined by what kickbacks and/or threats the computer makers receive from the companies behind the major browsers.
Is that what you meant by non-biased?
Apple can't block it on the current version of itunes, but they could change the handshaking/syncing code in every upgrade to itunes. And boy does that app get frequent updates!
If necessary they could even force firmware updates onto ipods if people wish to sync with the latest version of itunes.
In fact apple could even break the palm integration unintentionally.
I'm not sure you understand how things work over here in the UK.
If people start using TrueCrypt volumes they'll change the law to assume everyone has a Truecrypt volume and if you can't give them access to it they'll throw you in prison to join the murderers, paedophiles and the people who forgot their winzip decryption password.
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties
If it's similar to other cases I've read about I believe Sweden can ignore the ruling almost indefinitely, they are a sovereign country and their supreme court has ultimate jurisdiction and decisions can not be overruled by an EU court.
If the court rules against Sweden it will probably fine them. If they still don't comply with the ruling they will probably continue to fine them until they come into line with their obligations. I don't know how large the fines can get, but I think it's normal for the offending country to change their law to bring it in line with their EU obligations fairly quickly after they lose the EU case. It's worth noting however that it's rare for changes in a legal system to be enacted retrospectively in a member state even if it was shown that they were in breach of their EU obligations.
If you know exactly what test case is being optimized for including the chipset etc, and you can feed profiling data to a static compiler for the test case then you probably will be able to beat any other high level language.
But what if the task is to write the fastest implementation for any system where the test cases for the code, the CPU model and the system spec is not known beforehand. This is a more realistic test for a lot of software and it can be hard to beat a decent JIT compiler when you know so little about typical usage and the typical runtime environment.
Best bet for TW would be to throttle the bandwidth after X GB transferred in a month (to still allow email checking etc,). Allow the user to top up or upgrade a tier fairly easily and drop the user an email to let them know as they get close to the throttling cap and when they hit it.
Next to no support requirements, fairer distribution of available bandwidth, no cut offs and it might throttles worms and bot nets a bit. They could make the cap high and still sell it as unlimited just claim it's automated enforcement of the "fair useage" policy.
If you believe there was really 59,192,963 views of those videos then I'm afraid you are the sucker.
What I've humbly suggested is, instead of pocketing the extra money, spend it on building more slides. It may take time, but you'll eventually get even more kids paying $20 each, and having a lot more fun.
That's only worth it if people pick water slide parks based on how busy they are. If they mainly just select based on price and the 'Unlimited' feature then there isn't any point in building new slides.
Hell, if the people are mainly just interested in a cheap price and hearing the term 'Unlimited' maybe it's a better business strategy to spend the extra money on advertising your already overcrowded water slides!
You've now made a lot of money with little investment. What if someone else starts building an alternative water slide park?
Well you could then add some extra slides to your park and use your stockpile of cash to give away unlimited slides for free, announcing this on the same day as the other water park opens. You then run your water slide park at a loss for a few months until the competitor goes bankrupt at which point you may choose to pick up that second water park at a big discount. You can then put prices back up to $40 a day to compensate for the free days you had to give out before.
Eventually you run all the water parks in the world, you charge whatever you want, move your headquarters to a tax haven and use the money you've saved to offer large contributions to political parties in return for dropping any lawsuits against you.
It's the American Dream.
Regardless, they sold it as "unlimited". Yes, 6M is a peak throughput, but there was no restrictions on WHEN nor HOW LONG I use that 6M peak throughput.
It's a bit like a water-slide park, where they originally charge kids $20 for 10 slides that have to be used the same day. Then they switch to a new pricing scheme where kids can have an unlimited number of slides on that day for $20.
The scheme is so popular at drawing people in, none of the kids can get more than 5 slides in because the queues are so long.
Sometimes people running a club do the same thing over here, you pay one fixed price to get in and you get unlimited drinks! Only catch is that the club is always packed and they only have 1 slow barman serving. It's also a very unpleasant experience at the bar!
Would you really trust a mechanical translation into another language?
Also even if it does get translated correctly no one will want to work on it because it will still look like COBOL code just written with the syntax of another language.