Would this ever happen without the licence fee?
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Sure, some people may bitch about having to pay a TV licence fee, but would this kind of thing ever happen if all broadcasters were only in the game for a profit?
3. UK business want shool leavers trained explicitly in Windows and M$ Office tools as that's what the businesses use. Schools used to use non-M$ computers, and employers found that school leavers couldn't handle the real-world norm.
You can't compare the non-M$ systems in the past (often 8-bit computers such as BBC Micro) with OSS. Employers (such as myself) are after someone who has basic computer and internet literacy, they don't expect kids to be able to write multidimensional array manipulating macros in Excel.
The old 8-bit systems were used for teaching rudimentary basics such as typing skills or using educational software. Newer PCs, regardless of what operating system or office suite they are using, are perfectly adequate in teaching real-world computer literacy.
If you really think that someone trained on, for example, KDE and OpenOffice, wouldn't be able to pick up how to use Windows and MS Word withink a very short time, well, you probably wouldn't want to hire that particular school leaver.
Boss's PA had a monitor that attached with seperate R G and B BNC cables.
I swapped around the Red and Blue cables and carefully adjusted the colour settings in Windows 98 to swap all the R & B components around so all menus, etc looked normal.
Of course, the moment she started browsing websites all the images loaded wrong.
Took ages for them to figure out what was wrong - video driver reinstalls etc.
Got a written warning for that one, but was worth it!
Point. Woosh - that's the sound of you missing it completely.
The problem being described is that by being "merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls" it is simply papering over the enormous cracks and legacy rubbish that is the current Win32 architecture when there was an opportunity here to break free of that all and start with a new, clean, functional and efficient environment for the 21st century.
I don't deny that Microsoft have done a good job in the packaging, but as the old saying goes, however hard you try, you can't polish a turd.
Back in the past I did a lot of work as a computer forensic expert on behalf of most of the UK police forces, Crown Prosecution Service, etc.
Always there would be attempts by the defence to get some of the evidence struck off as inadmissable before the session got underway before the Jury.
I remember one case - the evidence was a print-out showing the log of an investigator connecting to a BBS and downloading something illegal (AT&T calling card numbers or similar).
The defence pointed to a line 2/3 down the page and said there's a letter missing from the start of one of the lines. It said 'ogin' instead of 'Login'. Therefore the printer wasn't working correctly, and if we couldn't trust that the evidence shouldn't be admitted.
So, I take the stand and pick up the evidence bundle, and point out to the judge, with no small amount of amusement, that the original page had been hole-punched (not obvious in the photocopies) and the L had been punched out. The judges are not stupid, they know when the defence are 'trying it on'. All the evidence in that trial was allowed to stand, and as soon as the trial got underway the defendent changed his plea to guilty!
Well, that's exactly the point. The people who would be 'members' are people who book flights, not people who run the sites that link to Orbitz (of course, such a person could also be a 'member' too, but they don't need to be), which is why it's pointless. All it's there for is to try to control what their affiliates do with linking to the site, that's all. If I wanted to deep link I'm free to, as I'm not a member of the site, here you go, just for an example - I'm perfectly free to do this. Companies try this sort of things in terms & conditions all the time, not to stop deep linking completely, but because lawyers love to feel they are in control of everything 'just in case'.
Jolyon
Ok, they have some unenforcable legal nonsense in their terms & conditions, but does that justify giving them a free advert on slashdot?
"The only way not to get caught is to stop"
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
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· Score: 4, Interesting
- quote from their site.
So does that mean if you have downloaded stuff, and you stop, they can't catch you? Does it imply an amnesty? Or is it just sloppy wording on their part?
Sorry for picking on your spelling. Anyway, the answer to your original point is no, the explosion in North Korea recently wasn't a nuclear test. THey can tell pretty damn accurately nowdays from the seismic recording done by earthquake monitors the difference between the pulse of a nuclear weapon test, conventional explosives and natural explosions & earthquakes. And all of the evidence (including lack of radioactivity) points to a non-nuclear cause of that big bang.
I don't actually agree that the decision was right, so don't complain to me, but the analogy of items on a shelf is dead wrong. The complaint was because company X was paying for their adverts to show up when someone searches for Louis Vuitton, and Louis Vuitton were complaining that was unfair use of their trademark. Regardless of whether you agree or not, that's what the judgement was based on. If someone had done a search on 'French Fashion Companies' you would expect, and would probably get, Louis Vuitton and others listed together - that's a better analogy for your shop shelf.
So back to the real world and the products on a shelf analogy, think about if a retailer has installed a Coke refridgerator in their shop (paid for and branded by coke). Would Coke be pissed off if you filled half of it with Pepsi? Of course they would! Although Louis Vuitton haven't paid google for this 'shelf space' they could (and did) argue that it belongs to them by way of the ownership of their trademark. That's between them, google and the french courts, I'm not claiming either side is right, just pointing out the facts.
The whole point of the judgement is that Dior (or any other company) couldn't buy adwords on Google targetting the search term 'Louis Vutton' or vice versa. Nothing to do with web tools or other such nonsenese. RTFJ!
I suspect the real reason for this is so they can control/prevent deep linking into their Terraserver (etc) geographical systems. If my website has a way of generating their coordinate URLs and linking directly to their content bypassing their front page, they could now prevent me from doing this because of this patent.
I, for one, would use this. I hope we can prove that it's a successful idea to have a service which actually puts the trust back in the customer rather than treating them as potential criminals.
I like many others are happy to pay for music, its just there's no way I can BUY music online that isn't crippled. I'd rather buy a CD and rip it.
Call me paranoid, but it's kind of convenient to security services that there is a flaw in Microsoft encryption systems. Surely if you were desigining a back-door for security services you'd do it in a way that looked like a bug rather than a feature.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, some people may bitch about having to pay a TV licence fee, but would this kind of thing ever happen if all broadcasters were only in the game for a profit?
Jolyon
3. UK business want shool leavers trained explicitly in Windows and M$ Office tools as that's what the businesses use. Schools used to use non-M$ computers, and employers found that school leavers couldn't handle the real-world norm.
You can't compare the non-M$ systems in the past (often 8-bit computers such as BBC Micro) with OSS. Employers (such as myself) are after someone who has basic computer and internet literacy, they don't expect kids to be able to write multidimensional array manipulating macros in Excel.
The old 8-bit systems were used for teaching rudimentary basics such as typing skills or using educational software. Newer PCs, regardless of what operating system or office suite they are using, are perfectly adequate in teaching real-world computer literacy.
If you really think that someone trained on, for example, KDE and OpenOffice, wouldn't be able to pick up how to use Windows and MS Word withink a very short time, well, you probably wouldn't want to hire that particular school leaver.
Jolyon
move along, move along..
As the article on The Register pointed out, the MS Grammar Checker is offensive to lesbians, espeically those studying Geology:
The innocent phrase "The dykes which cut the granite are 2m wide" was converted, by MS Word, to "The dykes who cut the granite are 2m wide".
Jolyon
Boss's PA had a monitor that attached with seperate R G and B BNC cables.
I swapped around the Red and Blue cables and carefully adjusted the colour settings in Windows 98 to swap all the R & B components around so all menus, etc looked normal.
Of course, the moment she started browsing websites all the images loaded wrong.
Took ages for them to figure out what was wrong - video driver reinstalls etc.
Got a written warning for that one, but was worth it!
Jolyon
I'm sorry, you just lost all your nerd credentials. Please leave the site immediately!
Jolyon
Well, I think I'll wait for the point-release of IE7 that supports CSS properly then!
Jolyon
Point. Woosh - that's the sound of you missing it completely.
The problem being described is that by being "merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls" it is simply papering over the enormous cracks and legacy rubbish that is the current Win32 architecture when there was an opportunity here to break free of that all and start with a new, clean, functional and efficient environment for the 21st century.
I don't deny that Microsoft have done a good job in the packaging, but as the old saying goes, however hard you try, you can't polish a turd.
Jolyon
Back in the past I did a lot of work as a computer forensic expert on behalf of most of the UK police forces, Crown Prosecution Service, etc.
Always there would be attempts by the defence to get some of the evidence struck off as inadmissable before the session got underway before the Jury.
I remember one case - the evidence was a print-out showing the log of an investigator connecting to a BBS and downloading something illegal (AT&T calling card numbers or similar).
The defence pointed to a line 2/3 down the page and said there's a letter missing from the start of one of the lines. It said 'ogin' instead of 'Login'. Therefore the printer wasn't working correctly, and if we couldn't trust that the evidence shouldn't be admitted.
So, I take the stand and pick up the evidence bundle, and point out to the judge, with no small amount of amusement, that the original page had been hole-punched (not obvious in the photocopies) and the L had been punched out. The judges are not stupid, they know when the defence are 'trying it on'. All the evidence in that trial was allowed to stand, and as soon as the trial got underway the defendent changed his plea to guilty!
Jolyon
Well, that's exactly the point. The people who would be 'members' are people who book flights, not people who run the sites that link to Orbitz (of course, such a person could also be a 'member' too, but they don't need to be), which is why it's pointless. All it's there for is to try to control what their affiliates do with linking to the site, that's all. If I wanted to deep link I'm free to, as I'm not a member of the site, here you go, just for an example - I'm perfectly free to do this. Companies try this sort of things in terms & conditions all the time, not to stop deep linking completely, but because lawyers love to feel they are in control of everything 'just in case'. Jolyon
Ok, they have some unenforcable legal nonsense in their terms & conditions, but does that justify giving them a free advert on slashdot?
- quote from their site.
So does that mean if you have downloaded stuff, and you stop, they can't catch you? Does it imply an amnesty? Or is it just sloppy wording on their part?
Jolyon
Sorry for picking on your spelling. Anyway, the answer to your original point is no, the explosion in North Korea recently wasn't a nuclear test. THey can tell pretty damn accurately nowdays from the seismic recording done by earthquake monitors the difference between the pulse of a nuclear weapon test, conventional explosives and natural explosions & earthquakes. And all of the evidence (including lack of radioactivity) points to a non-nuclear cause of that big bang.
J
I don't actually agree that the decision was right, so don't complain to me, but the analogy of items on a shelf is dead wrong. The complaint was because company X was paying for their adverts to show up when someone searches for Louis Vuitton, and Louis Vuitton were complaining that was unfair use of their trademark. Regardless of whether you agree or not, that's what the judgement was based on. If someone had done a search on 'French Fashion Companies' you would expect, and would probably get, Louis Vuitton and others listed together - that's a better analogy for your shop shelf.
So back to the real world and the products on a shelf analogy, think about if a retailer has installed a Coke refridgerator in their shop (paid for and branded by coke). Would Coke be pissed off if you filled half of it with Pepsi? Of course they would! Although Louis Vuitton haven't paid google for this 'shelf space' they could (and did) argue that it belongs to them by way of the ownership of their trademark. That's between them, google and the french courts, I'm not claiming either side is right, just pointing out the facts.
Jolyon
ps. My wife points out it's spelt Vuitton. And enough of my money has vanished in that direction that I really should know the spelling by now.
The whole point of the judgement is that Dior (or any other company) couldn't buy adwords on Google targetting the search term 'Louis Vutton' or vice versa. Nothing to do with web tools or other such nonsenese. RTFJ!
Jolyon
Yes, and apparently the radioactive cloud released has been leaving a trail of death and dyslexia as it travels around the world.
J
Maybe Terraserver was a bad example - but I would suspect the patent is for exactly this reason, if not for Terraserver for some other project. Jolyon
I suspect the real reason for this is so they can control/prevent deep linking into their Terraserver (etc) geographical systems. If my website has a way of generating their coordinate URLs and linking directly to their content bypassing their front page, they could now prevent me from doing this because of this patent.
Jolyon
I, for one, would use this. I hope we can prove that it's a successful idea to have a service which actually puts the trust back in the customer rather than treating them as potential criminals.
I like many others are happy to pay for music, its just there's no way I can BUY music online that isn't crippled. I'd rather buy a CD and rip it.
Jolyon
Yes. In Hong Kong.
Jolyon (5 letter surname)
'password' is an 8 letter word, I shouldn't have any problems with security!
Jolyon
Call me paranoid, but it's kind of convenient to security services that there is a flaw in Microsoft encryption systems. Surely if you were desigining a back-door for security services you'd do it in a way that looked like a bug rather than a feature.
Jolyon
But the people who wouldn't have a clue about third party codecs will be happy enough with the .WMA files, so there's no problem, everyone's happy.
And much better than that godawful quicktime (No I don't want to be nagged every time I play a video).
Jolyon
35/M/London