Particularly irritating is that the UK's comparatively sub-par language education makes it rather difficult to move to one of the parts of Europe in a better political state.
The UK actually has remarkably weak free-speech protections - there are a few cases of people going to prison for a couple of posts on Twitter or Facebook already. My impression (from having lived in both countries) is that the UK has a few terrifyingly bad laws that manage to remain because they are rarely applied, whereas the US has a whole swath of moderately bad laws which are applied with some regularity. Both systems suck, but I marginally prefer the UK's, for the moment.
My first thought was actually "Where does one draw the line?". So the people seeding the torrents are legally in the wrong by most standards - I have significant issues with current copyright law, but that's the way it goes. Apparently, The Pirate Bay are also in the wrong for providing the magnet links that facilitate this; more dubious, to my mind, but that seems to be the opinion of the Dutch courts. And The Pirate Party are also apparently in the wrong for actively circumventing the block, but not for providing instructions on how to circumvent it? How many levels of pointless obfuscation do we need before it's all clean and legal again?
Plenty of 'traditionally tangible' (for want of a better term) products take the vast majority of their price from their design (or, more cynically, their brand name...), though.
Relying on the general public support policy of any OS maker or community for this sort of usage is just fucking ridiculous and proves that, as I have said elsewhere, the problem lies with the SCADA manufacturers rather than the OS.
This is really what it boils down to. Everyone's discussing the relative merits of MS support against a team of coders to keep a given linux implementation up to date, but the fact is that the SCADA guys didn't bother to do either, and the customers didn't demand it from them. Negotiate with MS, negotiate with RedHat, employ your own team to write and support a custom kernel based on RMS's personal HURD installation, whatever, but make sure the plans are in place for a 20-30 year support period before you fucking start. Considering the kind of infrastructure we're talking about here, that sounds like some potentially serious incompetence that needs to be investigated...
It might actually be even stranger than the normal Streisand-related backfiring; there's a theory floating around that EA are actually deliberately exploiting the increased publicity of this to divert attention away from the fact that they're an utter bunch of assholes in many other ways. No idea whether it's true or not, but seemed worth mentioning.
Which is rather unfortunate, since I can say without exaggeration that Blackboard is probably the worst piece of modern software I've ever had to use. Moodle's certainly not perfect, but I've found it absolutely fine in general day-to-day use; Blackboard is slow, buggy, and has a web interface which manages to disable such revolutionary new browser features as 'the back button', and 'middle click'.
In the era of internet searches for flights basically the only thing you compete on is price and times. Everything else only matters to business customers who are contented with champagne and seats which don't jam their knees into their chins.
I'd be interested to see how Pan-Am era ticket prices compare to business class today - idiotic security aside, is it actually the case (as many seem to think) that you got better service for your money back then, or do you still get the same service for a few grand, with the added option of shitty service for a few hundred?
Which is quite understandable, if somewhat depressing. The bit I don't get is why so many airlines still insist on serving food which is never going to survive the cook-chill-reheat process properly - even a decent chef would have trouble making a chicken breast and steamed veg, or the vast majority of pasta dishes, taste good under those conditions. Shepherd's pie, or curry, or a burrito, on the other hand, will all come out just fine. It's not always the case, but even in business class, when they actually have put in the money and effort, there seems to be a surprisingly high chance of a menu that just isn't designed to travel.
At any rate, firing the teacher would be more than sufficient if the school decides it was a major no-no.. criminal charges is beyond ridiculous.
Firing the teacher would be absurd, criminal charges would be truly insane. The former only seems in any way legitimate because of the total insanity of the latter - not for one second does a teacher deserve to lose their job for reading a perfectly innocuous (and pretty damn good, IMO) scifi novel to a class of 14 year olds.
Isn't that one of the main selling points of consoles? Not the absolute cutting edge in terms of hardware, but a comparatively cheap plug and play platform that'll work with more or less any new release for five years plus.
Practically that'll probably work (although it's by no means guaranteed), but it shows tacit approval of this invasive idiocy when the real response should make clear that what they are doing is wrong. Of course, that does assume the ability to walk away from a job opportunity without excessive repercussions...
While I couldn't agree with you more, and wouldn't in a million years be willing to work for an organisation who would do something like that, it's still worth remembering that "choice" for many people boils down to "Give us your password or enjoy another six months of unemployment.". The issue is certainly exacerbated by the fact that plenty of people will roll over in any case, but the coercive element is what really keeps things like this going. That and the moronic managers who actually feel they have something to gain by this kind of thing, anyway.
The question, of course, is what to do about it? That's where I'm stuck - it is a problem in itself, and an outright ban would solve it (assuming one feels that doing so is within the government's rights), but it would do nothing about the mentality that led here in the first place.
Came here to say just that - it's entirely possible that the OP isn't aware of the specifics of mobile message protocols, though, and thus didn't realise it was an option. The problem is that some phones send large amounts of text as MMS (multimedia messaging) rather than SMS (short message service - standard text messaging) - not a picture message per se, but a more flexible data format. That said, it does get on my nerves since it breaks back compatibility and often happens silently, although thus far I've only seen it on messages longer than three standard SMS messages; it's almost always something that can be disabled in settings, but obviously that's up to the users, so you can't rely on it.
As you said, for cheap and basic, just get any MMS capable phone (of which there are many, from around $30 upwards) and throw a prepaid SIM in there. OTOH there are decent reasons to want a 'basic' smartphone even without data - cheap android on eBay plus a prepaid SIM is probably the best bet there. Turn off mobile data in the settings and it shouldn't be an issue.
I'd go as far as to say those people affected deserve to get free limited cable or satellite paid for by the spectrum holder.
And that's exactly what's happening! TFA states that the spectrum holders will be obliged to pay for filters, satellite/cable, or other solutions (probably fibre), in that order, for those who are affected.
I think the issue's more straightforward even than that. The government is allowing phone companies to bid on new spectrum, it's going to be a transaction worth billions; one of the caveats is that if people have their TV signals fucked up, through no fault of their own, then some of that money can damn well go to fixing it. Seems entirely reasonable to me.
£10k is just the edge case upper limit to ensure that they don't get roped into running undersea fibre to some remote island in the Hebrides or anything like that.
Not entirely correct - you need a license to watch or record TV in real time as it is being broadcast. A subtle distinction, but it means that the fact my Xbox display happens to have a tuner doesn't leave me liable for one (it's not even plugged into an aerial), whereas watching a live stream from iPlayer (if you really couldn't wait an hour until it's posted as a recording) on your laptop would require you to pay.
As I mentioned further down, they weren't even particularly sceptical when I called - I get the impression it's becoming more and more common to stick with streaming media specifically to avoid the fee. To be honest I can see the law changing in some manner to include all iPlayer use in the not too distant future; I'm getting almost the full benefit of the BBC services, legally, without paying - I imagine that can't last, and realistically I don't think I'd even be that upset if it did change. I like the BBC.
I really don't see the issue people have with this - maybe I was lucky, and it certainly felt a little bit big-brotherish when I got a letter out of the blue saying "We see you've just bought a new TV, now you need a license." but it took all of ten minutes to call and explain that it was just for gaming/internet streaming, and that was that.
Just to check I'm interpreting this correctly: a well-defined algorithm in daily use across the globe is 'export controlled' if it happens to be implemented by a US company?
Complete speculation here, but hey, it's Slashdot: it's easy to say "There might be some important proprietary data somewhere in that 200 page technical document, best be safe and keep it private.", much harder to commit to "This is completely devoid of private information, let's make it public.". Couple this with the fact that, in normal situations, there's almost no demand for data like this from the general public (even among the techie crowd we get here, it's a niche) and you see why the data isn't released. Now in this case it's the core of a somewhat novel, hackable, as-open-as-reasonably-practicable design, so there is a relatively sizeable demand for the data - Broadcom saw this, put in the effort, and released it. Pretty good of them, if you ask me.
Because the US hasn't nuked anyone in over half a century, and doesn't appear to show any inclination to. They have, however, seized data from New Zealand in the last week or so, and are currently trying to extradite a British citizen for actions that occurred solely within the UK and were already deemed not to constitute a crime under British law.
I'm honestly not quite sure if you're joking or not... damn internets broke my sarcasm detector.
In either case, there's a rather stark gap between the Berne convention's "We'll agree to harmonise our laws such they respect other countries' copyrights" and the link above's judgement of "It occurred solely in the UK, it was deemed not to be a crime in the UK, but fuck it, let's extradite him anyway and the US courts can take a shot".
Slashdot Mirror
Particularly irritating is that the UK's comparatively sub-par language education makes it rather difficult to move to one of the parts of Europe in a better political state.
The UK actually has remarkably weak free-speech protections - there are a few cases of people going to prison for a couple of posts on Twitter or Facebook already. My impression (from having lived in both countries) is that the UK has a few terrifyingly bad laws that manage to remain because they are rarely applied, whereas the US has a whole swath of moderately bad laws which are applied with some regularity. Both systems suck, but I marginally prefer the UK's, for the moment.
My first thought was actually "Where does one draw the line?". So the people seeding the torrents are legally in the wrong by most standards - I have significant issues with current copyright law, but that's the way it goes. Apparently, The Pirate Bay are also in the wrong for providing the magnet links that facilitate this; more dubious, to my mind, but that seems to be the opinion of the Dutch courts. And The Pirate Party are also apparently in the wrong for actively circumventing the block, but not for providing instructions on how to circumvent it? How many levels of pointless obfuscation do we need before it's all clean and legal again?
Netflix: yes, it's in the UK now, isn't it? That's about it.
Something of a digression, but from what I hear, UK Netflix has a much smaller selection than the US version, and a surprisingly poor interface.
Plenty of 'traditionally tangible' (for want of a better term) products take the vast majority of their price from their design (or, more cynically, their brand name...), though.
Relying on the general public support policy of any OS maker or community for this sort of usage is just fucking ridiculous and proves that, as I have said elsewhere, the problem lies with the SCADA manufacturers rather than the OS.
This is really what it boils down to. Everyone's discussing the relative merits of MS support against a team of coders to keep a given linux implementation up to date, but the fact is that the SCADA guys didn't bother to do either, and the customers didn't demand it from them. Negotiate with MS, negotiate with RedHat, employ your own team to write and support a custom kernel based on RMS's personal HURD installation, whatever, but make sure the plans are in place for a 20-30 year support period before you fucking start. Considering the kind of infrastructure we're talking about here, that sounds like some potentially serious incompetence that needs to be investigated...
It might actually be even stranger than the normal Streisand-related backfiring; there's a theory floating around that EA are actually deliberately exploiting the increased publicity of this to divert attention away from the fact that they're an utter bunch of assholes in many other ways. No idea whether it's true or not, but seemed worth mentioning.
Which is rather unfortunate, since I can say without exaggeration that Blackboard is probably the worst piece of modern software I've ever had to use. Moodle's certainly not perfect, but I've found it absolutely fine in general day-to-day use; Blackboard is slow, buggy, and has a web interface which manages to disable such revolutionary new browser features as 'the back button', and 'middle click'.
In the era of internet searches for flights basically the only thing you compete on is price and times. Everything else only matters to business customers who are contented with champagne and seats which don't jam their knees into their chins.
I'd be interested to see how Pan-Am era ticket prices compare to business class today - idiotic security aside, is it actually the case (as many seem to think) that you got better service for your money back then, or do you still get the same service for a few grand, with the added option of shitty service for a few hundred?
Which is quite understandable, if somewhat depressing. The bit I don't get is why so many airlines still insist on serving food which is never going to survive the cook-chill-reheat process properly - even a decent chef would have trouble making a chicken breast and steamed veg, or the vast majority of pasta dishes, taste good under those conditions. Shepherd's pie, or curry, or a burrito, on the other hand, will all come out just fine. It's not always the case, but even in business class, when they actually have put in the money and effort, there seems to be a surprisingly high chance of a menu that just isn't designed to travel.
At any rate, firing the teacher would be more than sufficient if the school decides it was a major no-no.. criminal charges is beyond ridiculous.
Firing the teacher would be absurd, criminal charges would be truly insane. The former only seems in any way legitimate because of the total insanity of the latter - not for one second does a teacher deserve to lose their job for reading a perfectly innocuous (and pretty damn good, IMO) scifi novel to a class of 14 year olds.
Isn't that one of the main selling points of consoles? Not the absolute cutting edge in terms of hardware, but a comparatively cheap plug and play platform that'll work with more or less any new release for five years plus.
Practically that'll probably work (although it's by no means guaranteed), but it shows tacit approval of this invasive idiocy when the real response should make clear that what they are doing is wrong. Of course, that does assume the ability to walk away from a job opportunity without excessive repercussions...
While I couldn't agree with you more, and wouldn't in a million years be willing to work for an organisation who would do something like that, it's still worth remembering that "choice" for many people boils down to "Give us your password or enjoy another six months of unemployment.". The issue is certainly exacerbated by the fact that plenty of people will roll over in any case, but the coercive element is what really keeps things like this going. That and the moronic managers who actually feel they have something to gain by this kind of thing, anyway.
The question, of course, is what to do about it? That's where I'm stuck - it is a problem in itself, and an outright ban would solve it (assuming one feels that doing so is within the government's rights), but it would do nothing about the mentality that led here in the first place.
Came here to say just that - it's entirely possible that the OP isn't aware of the specifics of mobile message protocols, though, and thus didn't realise it was an option. The problem is that some phones send large amounts of text as MMS (multimedia messaging) rather than SMS (short message service - standard text messaging) - not a picture message per se, but a more flexible data format. That said, it does get on my nerves since it breaks back compatibility and often happens silently, although thus far I've only seen it on messages longer than three standard SMS messages; it's almost always something that can be disabled in settings, but obviously that's up to the users, so you can't rely on it.
As you said, for cheap and basic, just get any MMS capable phone (of which there are many, from around $30 upwards) and throw a prepaid SIM in there. OTOH there are decent reasons to want a 'basic' smartphone even without data - cheap android on eBay plus a prepaid SIM is probably the best bet there. Turn off mobile data in the settings and it shouldn't be an issue.
I'd go as far as to say those people affected deserve to get free limited cable or satellite paid for by the spectrum holder.
And that's exactly what's happening! TFA states that the spectrum holders will be obliged to pay for filters, satellite/cable, or other solutions (probably fibre), in that order, for those who are affected.
I think the issue's more straightforward even than that. The government is allowing phone companies to bid on new spectrum, it's going to be a transaction worth billions; one of the caveats is that if people have their TV signals fucked up, through no fault of their own, then some of that money can damn well go to fixing it. Seems entirely reasonable to me.
£10k is just the edge case upper limit to ensure that they don't get roped into running undersea fibre to some remote island in the Hebrides or anything like that.
...given that you need a licence to own a TV...
Not entirely correct - you need a license to watch or record TV in real time as it is being broadcast. A subtle distinction, but it means that the fact my Xbox display happens to have a tuner doesn't leave me liable for one (it's not even plugged into an aerial), whereas watching a live stream from iPlayer (if you really couldn't wait an hour until it's posted as a recording) on your laptop would require you to pay.
As I mentioned further down, they weren't even particularly sceptical when I called - I get the impression it's becoming more and more common to stick with streaming media specifically to avoid the fee. To be honest I can see the law changing in some manner to include all iPlayer use in the not too distant future; I'm getting almost the full benefit of the BBC services, legally, without paying - I imagine that can't last, and realistically I don't think I'd even be that upset if it did change. I like the BBC.
I really don't see the issue people have with this - maybe I was lucky, and it certainly felt a little bit big-brotherish when I got a letter out of the blue saying "We see you've just bought a new TV, now you need a license." but it took all of ten minutes to call and explain that it was just for gaming/internet streaming, and that was that.
Ignore that, I just re-read the GP post and realised it meant the Hollywood parts of Sony. Me fail English.
Letting them? Sony are a significant part of Hollywood, not to mention the second largest music company in the world.
Just to check I'm interpreting this correctly: a well-defined algorithm in daily use across the globe is 'export controlled' if it happens to be implemented by a US company?
Has anyone found any reason why it was secret?
Complete speculation here, but hey, it's Slashdot: it's easy to say "There might be some important proprietary data somewhere in that 200 page technical document, best be safe and keep it private.", much harder to commit to "This is completely devoid of private information, let's make it public.". Couple this with the fact that, in normal situations, there's almost no demand for data like this from the general public (even among the techie crowd we get here, it's a niche) and you see why the data isn't released. Now in this case it's the core of a somewhat novel, hackable, as-open-as-reasonably-practicable design, so there is a relatively sizeable demand for the data - Broadcom saw this, put in the effort, and released it. Pretty good of them, if you ask me.
Because the US hasn't nuked anyone in over half a century, and doesn't appear to show any inclination to. They have, however, seized data from New Zealand in the last week or so, and are currently trying to extradite a British citizen for actions that occurred solely within the UK and were already deemed not to constitute a crime under British law.
I'm honestly not quite sure if you're joking or not... damn internets broke my sarcasm detector.
In either case, there's a rather stark gap between the Berne convention's "We'll agree to harmonise our laws such they respect other countries' copyrights" and the link above's judgement of "It occurred solely in the UK, it was deemed not to be a crime in the UK, but fuck it, let's extradite him anyway and the US courts can take a shot".