I agree that it's unsuitable for lots of tasks, but the government's really only thinking about web and e-mail when they talk about broadband; 3G/4G should suffice for the majority of users. Well, it would be better than nothing, and ultimately it's the price they have to pay for living in the middle of nowhere.
The biggest problem with 3G is going to be coverage; as you say, Cheltenham's OK, but I find as soon as you drive around the Cotswolds, you quickly drop down to GPRS. And when you get the train down to London, there's no 3G signal all down the Stroud valley until you emerge at Swindon - that's half the journey. Hell, Kemble station can't even get enough signal to maintain a phone call. And as soon as you get 10 minutes outside Swindon, you lose 3G again.
If they can't sort it out in relatively high-populated rural areas or commuter train lines, I wouldn't hold out much hope if I lived in the highlands - the business case for putting up a tower for 10-20 people to use once in a blue moon is so weak it means they'll be the last to get it.
The sad thing is that I had really heard nice things about RISCOS... if it were possible to get an old machine inexpensively in the US, I would have tried it.
That's a bit like saying that you would not buy a second hand 486 with MS DOS on, because a different PC manufacturing company ripped off some GPL code last year to get part of their new system working.
I think a lot of people are getting Castle confused with RISC OS, and in this case even Acorn, who don't exist any more - the code being discussed is for the new Castle Iyonix machine, released just before Christmas 2002. It is the first 32 bit RISC OS machine, and as such needs a 32 bit OS. Castle have released RISC OS 5, which is based on RISC OS which is licensed by Pace, who bought it from Acorn just before they were closed down (about 5 years ago I believe).
It is RISC OS 5 that has the alleged GPL breach; previous versions of RISC OS have nothing to do with Castle, apart from Castle's machines run RISC OS.
As a general comment, it would be nice if people on slashdot spent a little more time looking into the facts before posting.
On a separate note, if you really are interested in getting an old Acorn machine, there are a lot of second hand Acorn machines available at extremely reasonable prices if you're willing to spend a little time looking for it - for example, newsgroups, community websites, magazines (such as Archive, which has a small ads section), or companies which sell second hand RISC OS machines, like CJE Micros.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that it's unsuitable for lots of tasks, but the government's really only thinking about web and e-mail when they talk about broadband; 3G/4G should suffice for the majority of users. Well, it would be better than nothing, and ultimately it's the price they have to pay for living in the middle of nowhere.
The biggest problem with 3G is going to be coverage; as you say, Cheltenham's OK, but I find as soon as you drive around the Cotswolds, you quickly drop down to GPRS. And when you get the train down to London, there's no 3G signal all down the Stroud valley until you emerge at Swindon - that's half the journey. Hell, Kemble station can't even get enough signal to maintain a phone call. And as soon as you get 10 minutes outside Swindon, you lose 3G again.
If they can't sort it out in relatively high-populated rural areas or commuter train lines, I wouldn't hold out much hope if I lived in the highlands - the business case for putting up a tower for 10-20 people to use once in a blue moon is so weak it means they'll be the last to get it.
As linked to from the article on Drobe, you can find the whole press release here
The sad thing is that I had really heard nice things about RISCOS... if it were possible to get an old machine inexpensively in the US, I would have tried it.
That's a bit like saying that you would not buy a second hand 486 with MS DOS on, because a different PC manufacturing company ripped off some GPL code last year to get part of their new system working.
I think a lot of people are getting Castle confused with RISC OS, and in this case even Acorn, who don't exist any more - the code being discussed is for the new Castle Iyonix machine, released just before Christmas 2002. It is the first 32 bit RISC OS machine, and as such needs a 32 bit OS. Castle have released RISC OS 5, which is based on RISC OS which is licensed by Pace, who bought it from Acorn just before they were closed down (about 5 years ago I believe).
It is RISC OS 5 that has the alleged GPL breach; previous versions of RISC OS have nothing to do with Castle, apart from Castle's machines run RISC OS.
As a general comment, it would be nice if people on slashdot spent a little more time looking into the facts before posting.
On a separate note, if you really are interested in getting an old Acorn machine, there are a lot of second hand Acorn machines available at extremely reasonable prices if you're willing to spend a little time looking for it - for example, newsgroups, community websites, magazines (such as Archive, which has a small ads section), or companies which sell second hand RISC OS machines, like CJE Micros.