Is there anything you can do on Windows 7 that you can't do on Windows 8?
I don't know. Unless I missed the quietest product launch in Microsoft history, Windows 8 isn't out yet.
However, it appears (from the fact that we're having this discussion at all) that Microsoft are indeed restricting the capabilities of their new generation of developer tools that go with Windows 8, so to that extent the answer to your question would be "yes".
Also, I'll mention here that the default presentation Microsoft chooses will probably have a big effect on a lot of users, even if there are technical options you can configure to go back to how things were. If most people see bright colours and big rectangles on their screen when they turn Windows 8 on, then that's what most people are going to think Windows 8 is unless Microsoft make any alternative presentation very obvious. Again, the OS is not released yet, so I'm not going to speculate about how well or otherwise they might do that.
What do you mean by 'force Metro on everyone'? You mean just replacing the start menu with the start screen?
No, I'm talking about the developer tools, which are the subject of this Slashdot discussion.
I can't type at 100+ WPM period. Last time I was tested, I was around 85 WPM, but I think I could maintain that speed on a Bluetooth keyboard paired to an iPad or on the keyboard dock that connects to the Transformer.
Well, OK, but don't send me the medical bill for your RSI.
Personally, I'd rather have a good ol' 102-key (or similar) keyboard with a robust action and full size keys for everything that are in their normal places.
A tablet shares these drawbacks with the netbook into which I'm typing this comment. Some of those limitations can be worked around on both tablets and netbooks with clever user interface design...
And this is the crux of our difference of opinion. I don't think you can work around the kind of limitations we're talking about, whether it's the input method or the amount of screen real estate available, with a couple of bits of substandard bolt-on equipment and a quick UI refresh.
I was working on a programming project earlier this afternoon, using two monitors with about 8 megapixels between them. I was using every inch of screen real estate I had to save time switching between different source files, documentation, build windows, and so on.
Yesterday, I was working on a graphics project on the same system. Again, I was using all that screen space, with my work and a couple of frequently used toolbars on one screen and all the secondary stuff on the other. I was using a combination of (full size) keyboard, (ergonomic and many-buttoned) mouse and tablet (of the graphic input device variety) to control the system, and the amount of processing power between the CPU and GPU of this computer is staggering, but necessary if you need to visualize a lot of graphics effects in almost real time.
No amount of UI cleverness and Bluetooth keyboard+mouse sets would have let me do these kinds of work on a tablet as efficiently as I did on my serious computer. It's just not the right tool for the job.
On the other hand, when I wanted a break, I took out the iPad and fired up a puzzle game to play for a few minutes by touching the screen exactly twice while relaxing on my sofa.
...unlike the artificial cryptographic limitation of code signing verification with no owner override. A Transformer or virtually any other Android-powered device has owner override; an iPad does not without paying $650 for a Mac plus $99 per year for the certificate allowing owner override
Well, OK. If you want to write your own code and don't use a Mac anyway, don't write native apps for iOS. As you point out, there is nothing inherent about the tablet medium that means development has to be difficult. Apple choose to be developer-hostile, and while they can get away with it up to a point because their hardware is so much better than everyone else's right now, in the not-so-distant future I think they will suffer for it, just as Microsoft will if they pursue the policy we're discussing here on Slashdot today.
Then explain how locked-down game consoles still beat PCs in several genres despite the obvious disadvantage of not having mods or locally developed games.
Console games are frequently mocked by PC gamers for being substandard, and you can spot a console game ported to PC a mile away by the lack of sophistication in its presentation and often the lack of depth in its gameplay, so I'm not sure they really do "beat PCs in several genres". However, even if you maintain that they do, please consider that:
1. PC games are often pretty mod-hostile these days. All the malware maquerading as anti-cheating or copy protection has a horrible chilling effect on the kind of people who used to make level mods or new units or better AI algorithms. A few games/developers make a point of being mod friendly today, because it's actually a good marketing spin to attract a certain kind of fan.
2. Consoles would still serve a purpose anyway, which is
It's interesting that you chose to write "...that locked-down tables perpetuate" there.
I'm all for openness and I'll be the first to agree that mobile operating systems, particularly Apple's, are sadly lacking in this respect and a huge retrograde step in flexibility.
However, I think that is a separate issue. The basic nature of these mobile touchscreen devices is that they are lousy for creating new content. You can't type at 100+ WPM on a touchscreen. You can't display both a large area for your content and as much area again for menus, toolbars, command pallettes, script windows and whatever else you need, if you're starting with a screen that has about a 10" diagonal.
I think we're seeing the next logical step in the evolution of personal computing technology: devices that are more specialised than an old general purpose computer, but where interoperability and communication and sharing data and the behind-the-scenes standards compliance necessary to achieve those things are really important. Some people offering these products/services will hold out and try to lock people into their platform, whether that's by trying to lock down the hardware or the network or the data itself, but in the long run they are fighting a losing battle. Computing is ultimately all about your data and what you can do with it, and tools and software and networks that let people do more useful/interesting things more easily will have a natural advantage that I think will win in the long run.
From this point of view, I am quite happy that we now have mobile devices that allow simple UIs and easy consumption of content without being tied to a desk. People want these facilities, and my new iPad is better at supporting them than any laptop I use. But it's still a laptop -- a large one, with a big, high-res screen -- that I want when I go to a meeting with my clients. The difference is that today, I can use the right tool for each job, because now someone actually makes both tools.
Say someone who owns an iPad and no PC decides to take "introduction to programming" at the local college.
But why would we say that? Most people won't, and that's the point. For better or worse, most people outside of work are primarily content consumers not content creators, and tablets are better content consumption devices for many people's needs than a desktop PC.
All of which might be a reasonable strategy, except that the typical uses for a Windows desktop PC are totally different to the typical uses for a tablet or similar mobile device. One is for power and content creation, the other is for easy content consumption. They just happen to overlap in that both can involve a web browser some of the time.
If MS sticks to its guns and tries to force Metro on everyone, I think it really will be the end of them, at least in their current monolithic form. I don't think they can afford another Vista or another poor assault on the mobile space, and Windows 8 has the potential to be both at the same time.
There have been security vulnerabilities found in every piece of networking/server software, Period. The trick is that on Windows, even Microsoft is often not notified of these for months after their discovery by the black hats, and it has been sometimes two years for a fix. You as a consumer may NEVER know about them.
And how, exactly, is this different to the situation with Linux? There is no guarantee that someone will report a vulnerability to the maintainers of, say, a Linux distro, any more than that someone will report one to Microsoft. And what Linux distribution or major infrastrucuture project still runs an open access security mailing list today, with guaranteed full and immediate disclosure of all reported vulnerabilities?
Ultimately, unless you personally are directly involved with the security and maintenance of every major Linux project you use, you're still trusting other people to be honest in their disclosure and prompt with fixing security issues.
the U.S. Army is “the” single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. Industrial Commercial Bank of China runs Linux at all 20,000 of its locations. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange employs an all-Linux computing infrastructure and has used it to process over a quadrillion dollars worth of financial transactions. No money in Linux malware? Pshaw.
Yes, because obviously the people who are responsible for systems processing a quadrillion dollars of financial transactions just throw a quick Debian CD in the drive to set it up. I don't suppose they're taking any extra steps to audit or secure their systems beyond what a typical home user running Windows for Facebook and gaming would do. Hell, you could probably just walk right into their data centre and remove a hard drive while no-one's looking, and then take it home to look through the files in your own time.
But no, Linux doesn't make you magically immune. It simply has a more mature and advanced security model, better tools for detecting and stopping intrusions, and the ability for a motivated firm to make any security modifications needed on their own schedule.
Leaving aside whether or not any of those things are necessarily true in 2012, about 99.37% of the Linux user base is also experienced enough not to fall for typical malware scams, but I don't suppose that makes any difference.
Well, given that servers are typically administered by either professional sysadmins at the office or keen geeks at home, and both of those groups are going to have a decent idea about security and not fall for typical malware scams: yes, I think desktops are far better targets for malware.
Well, I don't really believe that you could become part of a botnet and not trigger some sort of mobile data cap or at least see major alarm bells at your next monthly bill. Nor do I really believe that you download the same volume of sensitive company information to your phone that you probably have on your usual laptop/workstation. But even if those things are all true, you must realise that you are an outlier. The very fact that you understand what we're talking about already tells me that you know more about how to secure that device than the kind of person most malware is aimed at.
In other words, you're still not an appealing target for malware writers. They want the kind of person who will execute the attached file claiming to be a security update from their bank or who will give honest answers when "Bob from Corporate IT" calls and asks for their user name and password so he can remotely update their personal anti-virus firewall shield. How many of those people are running Windows on a desktop PC, and how many are accessing their corporate intranet via properly encrypted and authenticated VPN from an Android phone with a remote kill switch in case of theft?
Do a lot of on-line banking on your Android phone, do you? Or have a nice, high bandwidth connection you could saturate to support a DDoS attack on someone who didn't pay their protection money? Or store any juicy company data that could be handy for not-quite-insider trading?
There have been security vulnerabilities found in just about every major piece of networking/server software on Linux. There is no doubt about this, because most of those packages are open source, and the fixes are a matter of public record. If there was money in writing Linux malware, there have been plenty of weaknesses to exploit, just like on Windows (or any other major platform).
But serious malware today isn't written by script kiddies any more. It's essentially organised crime, and it follows the money. If you think that wouldn't lead it right to Linux if that became the dominant desktop OS, or that being primarily open source makes the Linux ecosystem magically immune to the kinds of security bugs that make it into code written by highly skilled and experienced professionals working for the best funded software companies in the world, then I've got a few friends in Nigeria who would like your help with some financial transactions.
Because at the very least, you'll be likely to beat inflation with your investments.
Is that even true any more? You can certainly cherry pick market indices and year ranges where they outperform any mainstream interest-bearing savings account, but if you hit any of the black swan periods you're going to suffer badly. Short of some sort of dubious bubble, which isn't inconceivable, it could be a decade or more before anyone who had invested before the recent crash gets back to the same level they would have been at without that crash. That's assuming that the markets do pick up some time in the near future, they sustain an above average growth rate until they've made up any remaining shortfall from the down years, and nothing else happens to cut everything in half again. I live in Europe, so I'm not convinced at all that we're out of the woods yet.
All of that is considering investing in a general market tracker of some sort. Obviously you can potentially do much better if you invest in the right stocks individually, but plenty of professionals who do that still don't beat throwing a dart at the FT listings page. It's a fool's game for small investors who aren't willing to spend a great deal of time learning about both the mechanics of financial markets and the specific investments they're considering making.
If you want to keep your money worth the same amount in real terms over the long run, are you better off just buying gold these days?
Sure, which is why a lot of the pundits were predicting before the markets opened this morning that at the end of day one the shares would close at roughly double the opening price. Quite a few people are eating their words with a side order of humble pie tonight.
I suspect Facebook is in significant trouble now. Today should have been a spectacular confidence booster that set the tone for future offerings and investment. In reality, it's been a damp squib, and that's going to make a lot of people think twice about investing.
You can never tell with these things, because what happens over the next few weeks will be based far more on market sentiment than any fundamentals, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the stock price trickle away over the next few weeks with very few winners. Even Zuckerberg's position won't be safe if that happens, because he's responsible to investors now, and they won't be happy if that's the direction things go in.
Google and Facebook are hitting the Holy Grail of marketing. They do not advertise to generic demographics. Instead they are able to market to the individual.
Advertising is still only worth anything if the people seeing the ads actually buy stuff.
Just this week, GM pulled out of Facebook advertising, representing a loss of millions of dollars to Facebook. Here's the money quote, in every sense, from that link:
GM dropped its Facebook ads because they were less effective than other options such as Google's AdSense, the sources said. Facebook's ads garner about half the clicks per page view, a measure of effectiveness, compared with the average website.
It turns out that focussed advertising is much more valuable when it's related to something that someone is searching for or reading about right now, and people who use Facebook a lot are (shock!) not doing it because they enjoy the ads. IIRC, there was another survey reported this week, in which about half of the Facebook users questioned said they would never click a Facebook ad.
The more effective the advertising, the more money they can charge.
Exactly. And Facebook aren't doing very well on that score.
What's more, the growth in their user base so far has been based on social pressure and reaching a critical mass of users who bring their friends along with them through networking effects. There simply aren't enough people in the world for them to carry on doing that at the same rate.
Surprising, I know, but I'm in the "Are you kidding?!" camp on this one.
It sounds like we agree on a lot here. I think the basic problem is that the Olympics is assumed to be a long term benefit that justifies the costs (financial and otherwise) and risks inherent in being the host nation. However, the Olympic legacy for past hosts has been, at best, hit and miss, and it's not clear at all that any benefits we might achieve in the long run would have been lost had we told them to shove it when they started buying laws and so on. There is a reality distortion field somewhere around the Locog offices, and the political classes have closed ranks to hide it.
FWIW, while complete Scottish independence is a controversial subject, the Scots tend to be rather protective of the powers they have already reclaimed for themselves, and their legal system in particular really is somewhat insulated from the machinations at Westminster. They do a lot of things better than we do down here in England right now, even if there is some debate about how long they could continue to do so if they were fully independent and the financial picture changed. That's a complicated question, which goes into things like ownership of natural resources that can be collected around the UK, but in any case it's a somewhere-in-the-future issue.
Sure. It's not as if they'd abuse stop and search laws to turn the entirety of London into a designated area forever and then search an order of magnitude more black kids using their dubiously acquired new powers. And the police certainly wouldn't do things like introducing a national number plate scanning system on our trunk road network without any real oversight and then presenting Parliament with a fait accompli. This is England, old boy, where we don't politicise the police force and that sort of thing just isn't playing cricket.
I don't know what the 'Olympics scandal' is. The cost of the thing is a scandal, but then these things always are expensive.
Well, aside from the staggering cost to the taxpayer and particularly the locals who are footing a big chunk of the bill, there is the fact that normal daily life for everyone else who isn't particularly interested is going to get turned on its head for varying periods. How much inconvenience regular people suffer and how much financial loss is incurred by businesses who aren't on the Olympic gravy train remains to be seen, but it's a good bet that both will be substantial, particularly for those who live or work anywhere near London or one of the other major venues. Transport for London have already been running damage control publicity, because they haven't got a prayer of coping with demand at peak periods even with all the recent improvements. Half the West End is going on holiday for two weeks. Even local government departments are making plans for people to work from home, not just for the duration of the Olympics themselves, but for almost two months. You get the idea.
Then there is the fact that the Olympic authorities have effectively bought laws to protect their "sponsors". Some things that might (or might not) be considered bad manners under normal circumstances are now criminal acts under English law. That is deeply, deeply offensive.
In a similar vein, there are the special privileges to make sure their VIPs (a list running to tens of thousands of people) do feel very important. There was an interesting radio programme the other day discussing whether members of the "Olympic family" were going to receive priority healthcare from senior medical staff at hospitals in the event of any problems, for example. Representatives of local hospitals and relevant organisations painted a very mixed picture when interviewed, and the best the officials responsible for the Olympics had to offer was, liberally translated, "The IOC set all these conditions if you want to have the Games, so we had to bend over like nice little hosts because what else could we do?" It apparently didn't occur to anyone to tell the IOC, after the winner of the bid was already announced, when reportedly the full contract was produced and seen by officials for the very first time, that the IOC's list of demands was more reminiscent of a self-important diva popstar than a serious organisation, and that if they wanted to buy laws they should publicly undo the big announcement they just made and go somewhere else because our legal system is not for sale.
Next, there is security. Lots of it. OK, I get that it's a big event and an obvious target and everyone wants to keep the athletes and spectators safe. But right now we have a big problem in this country with security theatre, and we have a significant problem with a certain type of person with an over-inflated sense of importance being put into a position of legal authority over everyone else. Do you know what almost all of the media coverage for the Olympics has been about for the last several months? Security. Not the elite athletes. Not whether the focus on sport is encouraging more people to participate themselves. Not the story of creating the venues and the benefits the organisers hope they will bring to local areas long after the Games are gone. Not the opportunity to bring the international world together and build some community spirit at a time when many parts of the world -- not least Greece -- are feeling all too isolated in other ways. No, almost everything is about bringing a helicopter carrier through the Thames barrier, or mounting SAMs on rooftops over London, or hiring vast numbers of people (with any relevant experience?) to help secure the venues, or the fact that our military will be openly running major operations on our own soil in peacetime, oh, and don't forget to fear The Terrorists.
Yes, I'm annoyed by the Olympics. I genuinely hope, for
I'm afraid you do have an overly sunny impression of our approach here in England.
I was a witness in court a while back. It was a simple trial related to a motoring accident, which would take only a few hours. It had been aborted on one occasion a few months after the event in question, reasonably enough IMHO because there wasn't enough time left at the end of the day to be sure of hearing the case fully in one session. It was then tried on a different day, several months later still.
The defendant was found not guilty. In their summing up, the magistrates criticised the police report that was given as evidence, and noted that evidence by one of the prosecution's own witnesses was a major factor in the not guilty decision. In short, the magistrates did not seem to have a very high opinion at all of the case that had been made by the prosecution.
As a witness, I was entitled to some basic cost-of-living expenses for my trouble, and in practice my employer had paid me my normal wage despite missing the two days of work. However, I discovered later that the defendant (who, remember, was found not guilty, and had presumably already had about a year of stress since the accident with the case hanging over them) was entitled to nothing by way of compensation for either the lost time or the reduced quality of life.
It turns out that in England, you can have your day in court -- in fact, you might not get much choice about it, and it might be more than a day -- but only at your own expense. It's no wonder that so many people pay up the fixed penalty fines for traffic offences they cannot possibly have committed, if it would cost them more than the fine to take time off and travel to a faraway court near where the alleged incident took place in order to defend themselves.
It's a shame. I think rules that mean you can lose out even if you have done nothing wrong bring the entire justice system into disrepute. It's not as obvious as a couple of recent high profile cases when someone died after the police made a mistake, but in a way this sort of widespread, low-level abuse is just as insidious, and the kind of middle ground that we're talking about in TFA is the next logical step.
You forgot the criminal equivalents to each category. There are probably drug lords, pirates, etc. in certain parts of the world with economic and/or military power similar to that of a small nation, funded mostly or entirely by the proceeds of their crimes.
If you're going to start playing the "as-is" card then I'm going to start playing the "fit for purpose" card. If it's a one-time purchase of software and what I get in the box is all I ever get, that means your software must do its job properly without any showstopping bugs, and must not damage my system in any way or create any security vulnerabilities.
If your software does have bugs that stop me from using it for its intended purpose, you can refund me the full purchase price and any additional costs for consequential losses to clean up the mess. And if your software is not 100% secure, you can have unlimited liability for any consequential losses caused by your negligence, just like any other product. Oh, by the way, I've got 10 expert witnesses who will testify that you could have made your software much more secure if you'd only spent more money on its development, chosen better tools, and followed better processes, so we'll be seeking punitive damages as well if they apply in your jurisdiction because you cheaped out instead of doing real engineering as befits a product with that price tag.
A lot of people have argued that giving liability to software makers for substandard products is somehow unreasonable, because software development just doesn't work like that. I think it's a relatively weak argument anyway, because while there is an element of truth to it and software engineering certainly isn't as well-developed a field as the major physical engineering disciplines, a lot of software bugs clearly are avoidable and leaving them in really is some combination of negligence or deliberate cost-cutting at the expense of quality. In any case, we are in the Internet era, when avoidable security screw-ups can cause very substantial damage to customers far beyond the purchase cost of the software. I think it's blatant mockery to make an argument that liability for shipping a flawed product is unfair because of the "reality" of the industry, yet then to claim with a straight face that customers are not entitled to ongoing updates to fix any security vulnerabilities or bugs in advertised functionality, free of charge and on the same terms as the original purchase, as such problems are discovered throughout the reasonably expected lifetime of the software.
Adobe supports current version and current -1 version. Under circumistance, 5.0 is -2 versions back(5.0 and 5.5 are different major versions, even though it doesn't looks so)
The typical expected lifespan for a modern business PC is 3-5 years. There is really no excuse for a piece of software that costs four figures per seat not to receive essential security updates for a similar period. If you don't like that, don't charge a premium price for the software. If you want to charge a premium price, you have an effective monopoly, you are too incompetent to write secure software in the first place, and you aren't even willing to cover the cost of essential security updates, then it's about time someone won a profit-eliminating lawsuit against you for selling a product that isn't fit for purpose.
Even with prices much higher for their software, they still have much smaller profit than Microsoft. So judging them on same scales is rather unfair.
No, it isn't. To any given customer, they are charging far more for a product than Microsoft. It is not unreasonable at all to expect a better standard of quality and support for the more expensive product. If they can't sell more copies of it to get the profits up, well, maybe they shouldn't have such a bad reputation for poor quality and security, and maybe they should consider not charging such a high price to incentivise more people to buy. Or maybe their product just isn't as useful to so many people. There's no magic entitlement to megaprofits.
Interesting that you had those problems with SG-1. I'm in the UK, and actually found those DVDs to be relatively sane in the amount of junk shoved on the front; almost everything could be skipped.
(Aside: I don't think there's any excuse for making anything unskippable, and I think using patents to lock down DVD players so no-one can sell one that ignores the no-skip instruction on the disc even though there is clearly an ample market for such a device is an excellent argument for nullifying that kind of patent entirely, but that's another story.)
I wonder how much of this is going to be locale-based rather than universal, if they're already doing different things on different regions' DVDs (I assume). Then again, I get particularly irritated by having to sit through copyright-related junk at the start of the DVD that doesn't even apply to me because it's based on copyright laws in another country, so obviously not everything is localised for my market (UK).
As I hinted in both my previous posts, there are always going to be exceptions where common sense dictates that breaking the law, but safely, is better than delaying an ambulance that really can't get through otherwise. If that happened and a court felt that I had to be punished for not being a prick, so be it.
I just think you have to be very careful with road traffic laws not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In an ideal world, I would have only a handful of driving laws -- don't be dangerous, don't be antisocial, have appropriate documentation/qualifications, that kind of thing -- and leave it to the courts to judge each case on its merits. However, after a long time being annoyed at artificial technical rules like fixed speed limits, I came to realise that these laws are there because a significant proportion of drivers don't actually think sensibly while they are behind the wheel, and if it's not right there in black and white that they shouldn't do something then they assume it's OK. On balance, I would rather a driver like that be taught to wait at the red than be a hero (and then cause another emergency by getting run over by a truck coming across the junction on green because he was too busy watching the blue lights in his mirror).
It is highly unlikely that anyone actually needs to proceed past a red light to let an emergency vehicle through.
Emergency responders are well trained, have well established procedures for dealing with hazards, including exemptions so they can do things like taking paths through junctions that are not normally legal, and have vehicles equipped with high profile warnings to alert other road users that they may be doing this.
The average driver has none of those advantages, and is almost certainly better off moving as far to the side of the road as they can and letting the emergency driver do the rest. There is no need to try to be a hero; they drive the vehicles with the pretty blue lights, and if you want to do that, you should go and undertake the same training and qualifications as they do first.
No doubt there are isolated exceptions, but the thing about these policies is that they are based on a vast amount of real world experience that gets updated every day. Given the kind of person who chooses to work for the emergency services in the first place, if they are saying don't run the light, they probably know that on balance running the light does more harm than good.
The net effect of this is a web of at times contradictory laws. For example - if an emergency services vehicle is behind you with its sirens on you have a duty to move ot the way if at all possible. Last year a man was taken to court because his only safe option to do so involved driving through a red light.
There is nothing contradictory in UK law here, as far as I know.
You should try to allow emergency vehicles to get through, within the rules of the law. However, you are not allowed to proceed over the line at a red light, unless directed to do so by a uniformed police officer (or IIRC a uniformed PCSO these days, if they have been given the relevant authorisation in their area). If you do, you could be prosecuted.
Deliberately obstructing an emergency worker would be an offence, but failing to allow an emergency vehicle through when you cannot legally do so is not; you have a "reasonable excuse" for being in the way.
Emergency service representatives have very consistently supported this position in their advice to the public and on occasion in court, because red lights are there for a reason. There is obviously concern that you might be holding up an important call by staying behind a red light, but equally the ambulance driver doesn't want you -- or someone coming from another direction who goes through on green and then finds you in their path -- to be their next customer.
(None of this negates your general point that we have lots of laws about specific little things these days and this is probably not a good trend. But for the benefit of any UK drivers reading, I think it's important to clear up any misconceptions about this area of traffic law.)
(And yes, I suppose I might or might not choose to obey the law in the kind of situation we're talking about. But I have never yet found myself in a situation where I couldn't let an emergency responder through legally, because these guys are well trained and very good at anticipating this kind of problem and avoiding it. In any case, I'd have to be very sure that anything I did was safe even it wasn't legal.)
You have a problem with a man who has literally fought for his country, who uses his public profile to raise support for charities, who does a lot of work to help those with disadvantages in life, and who continues to serve in the armed forces today, all because he was young once and made his dumb mistakes in the glare of the paparazzi's cameras?
I think all of that is technically true, but in any case, it is irrelevant. If Her Majesty ever exercised a power to overrule the elected government, we would probably be a republic a decade years later.
And that's a lady who gets a pass on the whole democracy thing in popular opinion because of her 60 years of service as a fine ceremonial figurehead for our country. The following generations of the royal family have not earned such public affection, and if Prince Charles becomes king, there is bound to be a wave of popular support for ending the monarchy anyway. If he became king and then tried to overrule the government, I wouldn't give the monarchy past the next general election.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there anything you can do on Windows 7 that you can't do on Windows 8?
I don't know. Unless I missed the quietest product launch in Microsoft history, Windows 8 isn't out yet.
However, it appears (from the fact that we're having this discussion at all) that Microsoft are indeed restricting the capabilities of their new generation of developer tools that go with Windows 8, so to that extent the answer to your question would be "yes".
Also, I'll mention here that the default presentation Microsoft chooses will probably have a big effect on a lot of users, even if there are technical options you can configure to go back to how things were. If most people see bright colours and big rectangles on their screen when they turn Windows 8 on, then that's what most people are going to think Windows 8 is unless Microsoft make any alternative presentation very obvious. Again, the OS is not released yet, so I'm not going to speculate about how well or otherwise they might do that.
What do you mean by 'force Metro on everyone'? You mean just replacing the start menu with the start screen?
No, I'm talking about the developer tools, which are the subject of this Slashdot discussion.
I can't type at 100+ WPM period. Last time I was tested, I was around 85 WPM, but I think I could maintain that speed on a Bluetooth keyboard paired to an iPad or on the keyboard dock that connects to the Transformer.
Well, OK, but don't send me the medical bill for your RSI.
Personally, I'd rather have a good ol' 102-key (or similar) keyboard with a robust action and full size keys for everything that are in their normal places.
A tablet shares these drawbacks with the netbook into which I'm typing this comment. Some of those limitations can be worked around on both tablets and netbooks with clever user interface design...
And this is the crux of our difference of opinion. I don't think you can work around the kind of limitations we're talking about, whether it's the input method or the amount of screen real estate available, with a couple of bits of substandard bolt-on equipment and a quick UI refresh.
I was working on a programming project earlier this afternoon, using two monitors with about 8 megapixels between them. I was using every inch of screen real estate I had to save time switching between different source files, documentation, build windows, and so on.
Yesterday, I was working on a graphics project on the same system. Again, I was using all that screen space, with my work and a couple of frequently used toolbars on one screen and all the secondary stuff on the other. I was using a combination of (full size) keyboard, (ergonomic and many-buttoned) mouse and tablet (of the graphic input device variety) to control the system, and the amount of processing power between the CPU and GPU of this computer is staggering, but necessary if you need to visualize a lot of graphics effects in almost real time.
No amount of UI cleverness and Bluetooth keyboard+mouse sets would have let me do these kinds of work on a tablet as efficiently as I did on my serious computer. It's just not the right tool for the job.
On the other hand, when I wanted a break, I took out the iPad and fired up a puzzle game to play for a few minutes by touching the screen exactly twice while relaxing on my sofa.
...unlike the artificial cryptographic limitation of code signing verification with no owner override. A Transformer or virtually any other Android-powered device has owner override; an iPad does not without paying $650 for a Mac plus $99 per year for the certificate allowing owner override
Well, OK. If you want to write your own code and don't use a Mac anyway, don't write native apps for iOS. As you point out, there is nothing inherent about the tablet medium that means development has to be difficult. Apple choose to be developer-hostile, and while they can get away with it up to a point because their hardware is so much better than everyone else's right now, in the not-so-distant future I think they will suffer for it, just as Microsoft will if they pursue the policy we're discussing here on Slashdot today.
Then explain how locked-down game consoles still beat PCs in several genres despite the obvious disadvantage of not having mods or locally developed games.
Console games are frequently mocked by PC gamers for being substandard, and you can spot a console game ported to PC a mile away by the lack of sophistication in its presentation and often the lack of depth in its gameplay, so I'm not sure they really do "beat PCs in several genres". However, even if you maintain that they do, please consider that:
1. PC games are often pretty mod-hostile these days. All the malware maquerading as anti-cheating or copy protection has a horrible chilling effect on the kind of people who used to make level mods or new units or better AI algorithms. A few games/developers make a point of being mod friendly today, because it's actually a good marketing spin to attract a certain kind of fan.
2. Consoles would still serve a purpose anyway, which is
It's interesting that you chose to write "...that locked-down tables perpetuate" there.
I'm all for openness and I'll be the first to agree that mobile operating systems, particularly Apple's, are sadly lacking in this respect and a huge retrograde step in flexibility.
However, I think that is a separate issue. The basic nature of these mobile touchscreen devices is that they are lousy for creating new content. You can't type at 100+ WPM on a touchscreen. You can't display both a large area for your content and as much area again for menus, toolbars, command pallettes, script windows and whatever else you need, if you're starting with a screen that has about a 10" diagonal.
I think we're seeing the next logical step in the evolution of personal computing technology: devices that are more specialised than an old general purpose computer, but where interoperability and communication and sharing data and the behind-the-scenes standards compliance necessary to achieve those things are really important. Some people offering these products/services will hold out and try to lock people into their platform, whether that's by trying to lock down the hardware or the network or the data itself, but in the long run they are fighting a losing battle. Computing is ultimately all about your data and what you can do with it, and tools and software and networks that let people do more useful/interesting things more easily will have a natural advantage that I think will win in the long run.
From this point of view, I am quite happy that we now have mobile devices that allow simple UIs and easy consumption of content without being tied to a desk. People want these facilities, and my new iPad is better at supporting them than any laptop I use. But it's still a laptop -- a large one, with a big, high-res screen -- that I want when I go to a meeting with my clients. The difference is that today, I can use the right tool for each job, because now someone actually makes both tools.
Say someone who owns an iPad and no PC decides to take "introduction to programming" at the local college.
But why would we say that? Most people won't, and that's the point. For better or worse, most people outside of work are primarily content consumers not content creators, and tablets are better content consumption devices for many people's needs than a desktop PC.
All of which might be a reasonable strategy, except that the typical uses for a Windows desktop PC are totally different to the typical uses for a tablet or similar mobile device. One is for power and content creation, the other is for easy content consumption. They just happen to overlap in that both can involve a web browser some of the time.
If MS sticks to its guns and tries to force Metro on everyone, I think it really will be the end of them, at least in their current monolithic form. I don't think they can afford another Vista or another poor assault on the mobile space, and Windows 8 has the potential to be both at the same time.
There have been security vulnerabilities found in every piece of networking/server software, Period. The trick is that on Windows, even Microsoft is often not notified of these for months after their discovery by the black hats, and it has been sometimes two years for a fix. You as a consumer may NEVER know about them.
And how, exactly, is this different to the situation with Linux? There is no guarantee that someone will report a vulnerability to the maintainers of, say, a Linux distro, any more than that someone will report one to Microsoft. And what Linux distribution or major infrastrucuture project still runs an open access security mailing list today, with guaranteed full and immediate disclosure of all reported vulnerabilities?
Ultimately, unless you personally are directly involved with the security and maintenance of every major Linux project you use, you're still trusting other people to be honest in their disclosure and prompt with fixing security issues.
the U.S. Army is “the” single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. Industrial Commercial Bank of China runs Linux at all 20,000 of its locations. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange employs an all-Linux computing infrastructure and has used it to process over a quadrillion dollars worth of financial transactions. No money in Linux malware? Pshaw.
Yes, because obviously the people who are responsible for systems processing a quadrillion dollars of financial transactions just throw a quick Debian CD in the drive to set it up. I don't suppose they're taking any extra steps to audit or secure their systems beyond what a typical home user running Windows for Facebook and gaming would do. Hell, you could probably just walk right into their data centre and remove a hard drive while no-one's looking, and then take it home to look through the files in your own time.
But no, Linux doesn't make you magically immune. It simply has a more mature and advanced security model, better tools for detecting and stopping intrusions, and the ability for a motivated firm to make any security modifications needed on their own schedule.
Leaving aside whether or not any of those things are necessarily true in 2012, about 99.37% of the Linux user base is also experienced enough not to fall for typical malware scams, but I don't suppose that makes any difference.
Well, given that servers are typically administered by either professional sysadmins at the office or keen geeks at home, and both of those groups are going to have a decent idea about security and not fall for typical malware scams: yes, I think desktops are far better targets for malware.
Well, I don't really believe that you could become part of a botnet and not trigger some sort of mobile data cap or at least see major alarm bells at your next monthly bill. Nor do I really believe that you download the same volume of sensitive company information to your phone that you probably have on your usual laptop/workstation. But even if those things are all true, you must realise that you are an outlier. The very fact that you understand what we're talking about already tells me that you know more about how to secure that device than the kind of person most malware is aimed at.
In other words, you're still not an appealing target for malware writers. They want the kind of person who will execute the attached file claiming to be a security update from their bank or who will give honest answers when "Bob from Corporate IT" calls and asks for their user name and password so he can remotely update their personal anti-virus firewall shield. How many of those people are running Windows on a desktop PC, and how many are accessing their corporate intranet via properly encrypted and authenticated VPN from an Android phone with a remote kill switch in case of theft?
Do a lot of on-line banking on your Android phone, do you? Or have a nice, high bandwidth connection you could saturate to support a DDoS attack on someone who didn't pay their protection money? Or store any juicy company data that could be handy for not-quite-insider trading?
There have been security vulnerabilities found in just about every major piece of networking/server software on Linux. There is no doubt about this, because most of those packages are open source, and the fixes are a matter of public record. If there was money in writing Linux malware, there have been plenty of weaknesses to exploit, just like on Windows (or any other major platform).
But serious malware today isn't written by script kiddies any more. It's essentially organised crime, and it follows the money. If you think that wouldn't lead it right to Linux if that became the dominant desktop OS, or that being primarily open source makes the Linux ecosystem magically immune to the kinds of security bugs that make it into code written by highly skilled and experienced professionals working for the best funded software companies in the world, then I've got a few friends in Nigeria who would like your help with some financial transactions.
Because at the very least, you'll be likely to beat inflation with your investments.
Is that even true any more? You can certainly cherry pick market indices and year ranges where they outperform any mainstream interest-bearing savings account, but if you hit any of the black swan periods you're going to suffer badly. Short of some sort of dubious bubble, which isn't inconceivable, it could be a decade or more before anyone who had invested before the recent crash gets back to the same level they would have been at without that crash. That's assuming that the markets do pick up some time in the near future, they sustain an above average growth rate until they've made up any remaining shortfall from the down years, and nothing else happens to cut everything in half again. I live in Europe, so I'm not convinced at all that we're out of the woods yet.
All of that is considering investing in a general market tracker of some sort. Obviously you can potentially do much better if you invest in the right stocks individually, but plenty of professionals who do that still don't beat throwing a dart at the FT listings page. It's a fool's game for small investors who aren't willing to spend a great deal of time learning about both the mechanics of financial markets and the specific investments they're considering making.
If you want to keep your money worth the same amount in real terms over the long run, are you better off just buying gold these days?
Sure, which is why a lot of the pundits were predicting before the markets opened this morning that at the end of day one the shares would close at roughly double the opening price. Quite a few people are eating their words with a side order of humble pie tonight.
I suspect Facebook is in significant trouble now. Today should have been a spectacular confidence booster that set the tone for future offerings and investment. In reality, it's been a damp squib, and that's going to make a lot of people think twice about investing.
You can never tell with these things, because what happens over the next few weeks will be based far more on market sentiment than any fundamentals, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the stock price trickle away over the next few weeks with very few winners. Even Zuckerberg's position won't be safe if that happens, because he's responsible to investors now, and they won't be happy if that's the direction things go in.
Google and Facebook are hitting the Holy Grail of marketing. They do not advertise to generic demographics. Instead they are able to market to the individual.
Advertising is still only worth anything if the people seeing the ads actually buy stuff.
Just this week, GM pulled out of Facebook advertising, representing a loss of millions of dollars to Facebook. Here's the money quote, in every sense, from that link:
GM dropped its Facebook ads because they were less effective than other options such as Google's AdSense, the sources said. Facebook's ads garner about half the clicks per page view, a measure of effectiveness, compared with the average website.
It turns out that focussed advertising is much more valuable when it's related to something that someone is searching for or reading about right now, and people who use Facebook a lot are (shock!) not doing it because they enjoy the ads. IIRC, there was another survey reported this week, in which about half of the Facebook users questioned said they would never click a Facebook ad.
The more effective the advertising, the more money they can charge.
Exactly. And Facebook aren't doing very well on that score.
What's more, the growth in their user base so far has been based on social pressure and reaching a critical mass of users who bring their friends along with them through networking effects. There simply aren't enough people in the world for them to carry on doing that at the same rate.
Surprising, I know, but I'm in the "Are you kidding?!" camp on this one.
It sounds like we agree on a lot here. I think the basic problem is that the Olympics is assumed to be a long term benefit that justifies the costs (financial and otherwise) and risks inherent in being the host nation. However, the Olympic legacy for past hosts has been, at best, hit and miss, and it's not clear at all that any benefits we might achieve in the long run would have been lost had we told them to shove it when they started buying laws and so on. There is a reality distortion field somewhere around the Locog offices, and the political classes have closed ranks to hide it.
FWIW, while complete Scottish independence is a controversial subject, the Scots tend to be rather protective of the powers they have already reclaimed for themselves, and their legal system in particular really is somewhat insulated from the machinations at Westminster. They do a lot of things better than we do down here in England right now, even if there is some debate about how long they could continue to do so if they were fully independent and the financial picture changed. That's a complicated question, which goes into things like ownership of natural resources that can be collected around the UK, but in any case it's a somewhere-in-the-future issue.
Sure. It's not as if they'd abuse stop and search laws to turn the entirety of London into a designated area forever and then search an order of magnitude more black kids using their dubiously acquired new powers. And the police certainly wouldn't do things like introducing a national number plate scanning system on our trunk road network without any real oversight and then presenting Parliament with a fait accompli. This is England, old boy, where we don't politicise the police force and that sort of thing just isn't playing cricket.
I don't know what the 'Olympics scandal' is. The cost of the thing is a scandal, but then these things always are expensive.
Well, aside from the staggering cost to the taxpayer and particularly the locals who are footing a big chunk of the bill, there is the fact that normal daily life for everyone else who isn't particularly interested is going to get turned on its head for varying periods. How much inconvenience regular people suffer and how much financial loss is incurred by businesses who aren't on the Olympic gravy train remains to be seen, but it's a good bet that both will be substantial, particularly for those who live or work anywhere near London or one of the other major venues. Transport for London have already been running damage control publicity, because they haven't got a prayer of coping with demand at peak periods even with all the recent improvements. Half the West End is going on holiday for two weeks. Even local government departments are making plans for people to work from home, not just for the duration of the Olympics themselves, but for almost two months. You get the idea.
Then there is the fact that the Olympic authorities have effectively bought laws to protect their "sponsors". Some things that might (or might not) be considered bad manners under normal circumstances are now criminal acts under English law. That is deeply, deeply offensive.
In a similar vein, there are the special privileges to make sure their VIPs (a list running to tens of thousands of people) do feel very important. There was an interesting radio programme the other day discussing whether members of the "Olympic family" were going to receive priority healthcare from senior medical staff at hospitals in the event of any problems, for example. Representatives of local hospitals and relevant organisations painted a very mixed picture when interviewed, and the best the officials responsible for the Olympics had to offer was, liberally translated, "The IOC set all these conditions if you want to have the Games, so we had to bend over like nice little hosts because what else could we do?" It apparently didn't occur to anyone to tell the IOC, after the winner of the bid was already announced, when reportedly the full contract was produced and seen by officials for the very first time, that the IOC's list of demands was more reminiscent of a self-important diva popstar than a serious organisation, and that if they wanted to buy laws they should publicly undo the big announcement they just made and go somewhere else because our legal system is not for sale.
Next, there is security. Lots of it. OK, I get that it's a big event and an obvious target and everyone wants to keep the athletes and spectators safe. But right now we have a big problem in this country with security theatre, and we have a significant problem with a certain type of person with an over-inflated sense of importance being put into a position of legal authority over everyone else. Do you know what almost all of the media coverage for the Olympics has been about for the last several months? Security. Not the elite athletes. Not whether the focus on sport is encouraging more people to participate themselves. Not the story of creating the venues and the benefits the organisers hope they will bring to local areas long after the Games are gone. Not the opportunity to bring the international world together and build some community spirit at a time when many parts of the world -- not least Greece -- are feeling all too isolated in other ways. No, almost everything is about bringing a helicopter carrier through the Thames barrier, or mounting SAMs on rooftops over London, or hiring vast numbers of people (with any relevant experience?) to help secure the venues, or the fact that our military will be openly running major operations on our own soil in peacetime, oh, and don't forget to fear The Terrorists.
Yes, I'm annoyed by the Olympics. I genuinely hope, for
I'm afraid you do have an overly sunny impression of our approach here in England.
I was a witness in court a while back. It was a simple trial related to a motoring accident, which would take only a few hours. It had been aborted on one occasion a few months after the event in question, reasonably enough IMHO because there wasn't enough time left at the end of the day to be sure of hearing the case fully in one session. It was then tried on a different day, several months later still.
The defendant was found not guilty. In their summing up, the magistrates criticised the police report that was given as evidence, and noted that evidence by one of the prosecution's own witnesses was a major factor in the not guilty decision. In short, the magistrates did not seem to have a very high opinion at all of the case that had been made by the prosecution.
As a witness, I was entitled to some basic cost-of-living expenses for my trouble, and in practice my employer had paid me my normal wage despite missing the two days of work. However, I discovered later that the defendant (who, remember, was found not guilty, and had presumably already had about a year of stress since the accident with the case hanging over them) was entitled to nothing by way of compensation for either the lost time or the reduced quality of life.
It turns out that in England, you can have your day in court -- in fact, you might not get much choice about it, and it might be more than a day -- but only at your own expense. It's no wonder that so many people pay up the fixed penalty fines for traffic offences they cannot possibly have committed, if it would cost them more than the fine to take time off and travel to a faraway court near where the alleged incident took place in order to defend themselves.
It's a shame. I think rules that mean you can lose out even if you have done nothing wrong bring the entire justice system into disrepute. It's not as obvious as a couple of recent high profile cases when someone died after the police made a mistake, but in a way this sort of widespread, low-level abuse is just as insidious, and the kind of middle ground that we're talking about in TFA is the next logical step.
You forgot the criminal equivalents to each category. There are probably drug lords, pirates, etc. in certain parts of the world with economic and/or military power similar to that of a small nation, funded mostly or entirely by the proceeds of their crimes.
If you're going to start playing the "as-is" card then I'm going to start playing the "fit for purpose" card. If it's a one-time purchase of software and what I get in the box is all I ever get, that means your software must do its job properly without any showstopping bugs, and must not damage my system in any way or create any security vulnerabilities.
If your software does have bugs that stop me from using it for its intended purpose, you can refund me the full purchase price and any additional costs for consequential losses to clean up the mess. And if your software is not 100% secure, you can have unlimited liability for any consequential losses caused by your negligence, just like any other product. Oh, by the way, I've got 10 expert witnesses who will testify that you could have made your software much more secure if you'd only spent more money on its development, chosen better tools, and followed better processes, so we'll be seeking punitive damages as well if they apply in your jurisdiction because you cheaped out instead of doing real engineering as befits a product with that price tag.
A lot of people have argued that giving liability to software makers for substandard products is somehow unreasonable, because software development just doesn't work like that. I think it's a relatively weak argument anyway, because while there is an element of truth to it and software engineering certainly isn't as well-developed a field as the major physical engineering disciplines, a lot of software bugs clearly are avoidable and leaving them in really is some combination of negligence or deliberate cost-cutting at the expense of quality. In any case, we are in the Internet era, when avoidable security screw-ups can cause very substantial damage to customers far beyond the purchase cost of the software. I think it's blatant mockery to make an argument that liability for shipping a flawed product is unfair because of the "reality" of the industry, yet then to claim with a straight face that customers are not entitled to ongoing updates to fix any security vulnerabilities or bugs in advertised functionality, free of charge and on the same terms as the original purchase, as such problems are discovered throughout the reasonably expected lifetime of the software.
Adobe supports current version and current -1 version. Under circumistance, 5.0 is -2 versions back(5.0 and 5.5 are different major versions, even though it doesn't looks so)
The typical expected lifespan for a modern business PC is 3-5 years. There is really no excuse for a piece of software that costs four figures per seat not to receive essential security updates for a similar period. If you don't like that, don't charge a premium price for the software. If you want to charge a premium price, you have an effective monopoly, you are too incompetent to write secure software in the first place, and you aren't even willing to cover the cost of essential security updates, then it's about time someone won a profit-eliminating lawsuit against you for selling a product that isn't fit for purpose.
Even with prices much higher for their software, they still have much smaller profit than Microsoft. So judging them on same scales is rather unfair.
No, it isn't. To any given customer, they are charging far more for a product than Microsoft. It is not unreasonable at all to expect a better standard of quality and support for the more expensive product. If they can't sell more copies of it to get the profits up, well, maybe they shouldn't have such a bad reputation for poor quality and security, and maybe they should consider not charging such a high price to incentivise more people to buy. Or maybe their product just isn't as useful to so many people. There's no magic entitlement to megaprofits.
Interesting that you had those problems with SG-1. I'm in the UK, and actually found those DVDs to be relatively sane in the amount of junk shoved on the front; almost everything could be skipped.
(Aside: I don't think there's any excuse for making anything unskippable, and I think using patents to lock down DVD players so no-one can sell one that ignores the no-skip instruction on the disc even though there is clearly an ample market for such a device is an excellent argument for nullifying that kind of patent entirely, but that's another story.)
I wonder how much of this is going to be locale-based rather than universal, if they're already doing different things on different regions' DVDs (I assume). Then again, I get particularly irritated by having to sit through copyright-related junk at the start of the DVD that doesn't even apply to me because it's based on copyright laws in another country, so obviously not everything is localised for my market (UK).
As I hinted in both my previous posts, there are always going to be exceptions where common sense dictates that breaking the law, but safely, is better than delaying an ambulance that really can't get through otherwise. If that happened and a court felt that I had to be punished for not being a prick, so be it.
I just think you have to be very careful with road traffic laws not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In an ideal world, I would have only a handful of driving laws -- don't be dangerous, don't be antisocial, have appropriate documentation/qualifications, that kind of thing -- and leave it to the courts to judge each case on its merits. However, after a long time being annoyed at artificial technical rules like fixed speed limits, I came to realise that these laws are there because a significant proportion of drivers don't actually think sensibly while they are behind the wheel, and if it's not right there in black and white that they shouldn't do something then they assume it's OK. On balance, I would rather a driver like that be taught to wait at the red than be a hero (and then cause another emergency by getting run over by a truck coming across the junction on green because he was too busy watching the blue lights in his mirror).
It is highly unlikely that anyone actually needs to proceed past a red light to let an emergency vehicle through.
Emergency responders are well trained, have well established procedures for dealing with hazards, including exemptions so they can do things like taking paths through junctions that are not normally legal, and have vehicles equipped with high profile warnings to alert other road users that they may be doing this.
The average driver has none of those advantages, and is almost certainly better off moving as far to the side of the road as they can and letting the emergency driver do the rest. There is no need to try to be a hero; they drive the vehicles with the pretty blue lights, and if you want to do that, you should go and undertake the same training and qualifications as they do first.
No doubt there are isolated exceptions, but the thing about these policies is that they are based on a vast amount of real world experience that gets updated every day. Given the kind of person who chooses to work for the emergency services in the first place, if they are saying don't run the light, they probably know that on balance running the light does more harm than good.
The net effect of this is a web of at times contradictory laws. For example - if an emergency services vehicle is behind you with its sirens on you have a duty to move ot the way if at all possible. Last year a man was taken to court because his only safe option to do so involved driving through a red light.
There is nothing contradictory in UK law here, as far as I know.
You should try to allow emergency vehicles to get through, within the rules of the law. However, you are not allowed to proceed over the line at a red light, unless directed to do so by a uniformed police officer (or IIRC a uniformed PCSO these days, if they have been given the relevant authorisation in their area). If you do, you could be prosecuted.
Deliberately obstructing an emergency worker would be an offence, but failing to allow an emergency vehicle through when you cannot legally do so is not; you have a "reasonable excuse" for being in the way.
Emergency service representatives have very consistently supported this position in their advice to the public and on occasion in court, because red lights are there for a reason. There is obviously concern that you might be holding up an important call by staying behind a red light, but equally the ambulance driver doesn't want you -- or someone coming from another direction who goes through on green and then finds you in their path -- to be their next customer.
(None of this negates your general point that we have lots of laws about specific little things these days and this is probably not a good trend. But for the benefit of any UK drivers reading, I think it's important to clear up any misconceptions about this area of traffic law.)
(And yes, I suppose I might or might not choose to obey the law in the kind of situation we're talking about. But I have never yet found myself in a situation where I couldn't let an emergency responder through legally, because these guys are well trained and very good at anticipating this kind of problem and avoiding it. In any case, I'd have to be very sure that anything I did was safe even it wasn't legal.)
You have a problem with a man who has literally fought for his country, who uses his public profile to raise support for charities, who does a lot of work to help those with disadvantages in life, and who continues to serve in the armed forces today, all because he was young once and made his dumb mistakes in the glare of the paparazzi's cameras?
I think all of that is technically true, but in any case, it is irrelevant. If Her Majesty ever exercised a power to overrule the elected government, we would probably be a republic a decade years later.
And that's a lady who gets a pass on the whole democracy thing in popular opinion because of her 60 years of service as a fine ceremonial figurehead for our country. The following generations of the royal family have not earned such public affection, and if Prince Charles becomes king, there is bound to be a wave of popular support for ending the monarchy anyway. If he became king and then tried to overrule the government, I wouldn't give the monarchy past the next general election.