Afaik explicit consent is not explicitly demanded by the EU. UK opted in to require this in their law.
I'm not sure about the wording of the law itself, but the guidelines from the Information Commisioners Office (who are responsible for enforcing the law) implied consent is allowable; that's also how a number of organisations such as the BBC have implemented it, with a once-only banner informing the user and giving them the ability to alter the behaviour if needed.
IANAL, currently in Austria it says that the user decision already happens through the browser settings. If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
That would be much more acceptable; this has been argued for in the UK as well but the ICO have stated that this alone is not an acceptable solution. That said, a lot of sites are now linking to http://www.aboutcookies.org which provides this information.
UK postcodes are just a grid 1km I think, I am on the wrong computer to check. You can always import that leaked Postcode db into a mapping software to see what I mean. This normally translates in to a part of a street.
Not a grid, and their size does vary, but they are generally only a few hundred yards across; Google Maps will do an outline of the approximate area that a postcode covers, but as a rule of thumb a postcode covers an average of 15 properties.
Oh, and forget using any 'leaked postcode db'. The Ordnance Survey made available a CSV file that maps postcodes to coordinates as part of their OpenData project a few years ago; usage only requires attribution, not payment.
In addition to your very good point some of the commercial maps (used to?) deliberately add mistakes to their maps as a test that they can use to see if anyone is copying them.
ye ye - I know [citation needed], don't feel like it
It's still possible to be loyal and yet move on. It may be that the new company would accept you working a longer notice period at your current employer (for example, if you're on 4 weeks ask if they'd wait 6 or even 8 for you)? That should be sufficient to ensure that the company can bring someone else in of a similar skill level to yourself, that the product can be handed over with minimal disruption, and you leave things in a stable situation.
It's your career, after all. Sometimes you do have to be selfish, otherwise you will never leave.
The sad truth is the support that comes with most PCs and software is usually under-utilized and seldom needed.
In this case, "support" is likely to be the infrastructure team within the organisation itself who handle the repairs, upgrades, security updates, server maintenance, etc. It's not going to be the telephone helpline that tells you where to plug your mouse into or what your ISPs telephone number is.
The main problem is that, like all the other numbers, the £3,500 figure is unexplained. For all we know, it's "total amount that the IT department spend" divided by "number of users". That would mean it also includes a proportion of the costs of the servers, switches, cabling, telecommunications, etc.
... that this £3,500 doesn't just cover "hardware sitting on a person's desk"; it also includes the software, support, long-term upgrade contracts, etc. This "journalism" sells newspapers (unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail featured it quite prominently) but ignores most of the facts.
I'm not denying that some money is being wasted, but nowhere near as much as this report implies. See this article for more detail.
Honestly if you're going to spend another $80k for two more years of post-college education, it's not worth it for most fields. When it's free, that's a different matter all together.
This was my approach, completely. I graduated with a Bachelors back in '97 with a 3rd (due mainly to a lack of motivation in the later years), and never considered returning. Then, about 5 years ago, I discovered that there was funding on offer that could be used towards a Masters.
So... I enrolled as a part-time student on a modular degree (each module being a week of teaching and then several months of working every evening), with the teaching time given as paid (i.e. not from my holiday allowance) in lieu of any other training by my employer. The end result is that I now have an MSc with Distinction, having learnt the value of hard work. It hasn't changed much about my current job, but at least my CV will be read sooner when the time comes to hunt for a new job. And, unlike many professional qualifications, it's also mine for life with no need to retake any exams or pay additional fees.
Although people seem amazed about this, it's not the first time that this has happened.
Back in '98, I worked on a network where it was against Government regulations to connect it in any way to the Internet, and an 'air gap' was required between the two. I was one of a very small team that wrote a system (using Zip disks for storage) that pulled data from a mail server on our secure network and pushed it to a mail server on the Internet, and vice versa. It had very high latency - people were assigned to do the mail drop only twice a day - but it worked well.
"Cut the Rope" on iOS uses multitouch within its gameplay. I have also seen applications that allow both zoom and rotation - a scroll button could emulate one or the other, but not both concurrently.
I wonder why he would need to sell a book. I mean.. he's got 13 billion dollars or something.
By your own logic, that means that money isn't the reason (something which most other authors will also claim, although probably slightly less honestly). The only other one that comes to mind is to allow him to put the record straight about the relationships between himself, Gates and, to a certain extent, Ballmer. To some people, making sure the truth is known is important.
Of course, the book isn't about Allen and Gates, and I doubt it's even 'about' Microsoft any more than iWoz was 'about' Apple. They're just the elements that will generate the most interest and get people wanting to read more.
people need to stop thinking of web apps in terms of "Internet explorer users".
Oddly, I happened to RTFM before it even reached Slashdot; the plugin they've developed is Firefox-only.
This doesn't mean it's not headed for the bad-ideas graveyard, though.
How could an external company actually persuade UK politicians that it would be an unfair advantage to UK citizens that it would be unfair for a non-UK gaming company to have tax breaks?
(Did you mean 'for a UK gaming company? I got confused with all the negatives.)
I think this is an important question, whichever way it was meant. Nothing in TFA itself convinces me that this is anything more than an attempt to stir up some publicity for the individual who wrote it.
A question that Develop should answer: why are you not naming the company in question? Possiblity of legal action (as you have no evidence), or because they don't actually exist?
Just for the record, businesses can reclaim VAT - it's a consumer level tax, and one that's only applied to non-essential items.
Yes - although I didn't explicitly state it, that was my reasoning behind it hitting B2C (specifically, because it lowers the spending power of the consumer) not B2B. That said, when Labour reduced VAT temporarily from 17.5% to 15%, I don't recall the (admittedly potentially biased) media reporting a massive upswing in spending, so I can't see that this increase will cause a massive downswing.
Food (unless consumed in a restaurant), Water, and Utilities are all VAT free.
Unfortunately, you appear to have been misinformed. VAT on electricity and gas is charged at 5%. Depending upon the type of food, it may either be zero-rated or full rate. Mains water may be zero-rated, but mineral water has VAT applied at the full rate. It's a bit of a minefield, but HMRC does explain it comprehensively.
The only reason to put a stop to this would be due to lobbying by a company (companies) that may be adversely effected by this
There is another alternative, and one that means the tin-foil hat can be left on its hook. Leaving in a tax break for an already profitable part of an economy would have left them open to critisism (and accusations, ironically, of underhand lobbying from the games industry), so what they've done instead is to distribute the breaks around a number of different parts of the small business economy; think of it as spreading the risk.
Thus, we have the lowering of corporation tax; potential (although I think currently undefined) breaks for companies setting up outside London and the South East; and, savings on National Insurance payments for new small businesses. VAT, which admittedly may hit the business-to-consumer games industry more than business-to-business industries, will still only add 85p to a £40 game.
Personally, I don't think the reason was lobbying. It was the realisation that they could actually use the Budget to help the entire small business economy - of which the video games companies are just a part.
The (previous) government's brilliant solution to this issue? Add an A* grade at A-Level and carry on as normal.
Much as I enjoy kicking them now they're down, to be fair the main reason for that was the range of marks an 'A' grade covered. 'B' could, in theory, cover 60 to 69%, whilst 'A' covered 70% all the way up to 100%. 'A*' simply made it possible to differentiate between the increasingly common (for other, more fundamental reasons) 'A'-grades.
The danger is that in the future, people will forget exacrly when A*s were introduced, and judge 'old' A grades as being inferior.
If I was about to commit to a 4 year course, I would at least want a taste of the meat of the subject, not some Programming for Dummies version.
By the time you've done two years of an A-level, you'll have picked up a lot more than 'Programming for Dummies'. I saw a lot of people on my course go from no programming ability to would-make-a-good-developer during those two years. Plus, by the time they finished they also knew whether they wanted to take it further - and, if they had the ability to do so.
Going back to the original poster, their issue was that the language chosen for them to learn initially was a complex one. Because of that experience, people who had the intelligence and enthusiasm for computing - but, lacking the experience of how alien computer languages can appear - may have been put off entirely, and the industry a worse place for it. People learn at different rates, and assuming that everyone should start on possibly the most complex mainstream language in existence smacks of elitism.
Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming.
A-level Computer Science is supposed to be a grounding in computing theory and programming - there is no such thing as a Computer Programming A-level.
That was the point I was making, yes. People are treating this story as if it relates to a (non-existent) A-level in Computer Programming, not one in computer science itself, albeit one with the more generic title of 'A-level Computing'.
Before I start, please learn how to quote posts properly. It makes dismissing your points so much easier.
C++ will thin the herd a bit, get rid of people who haven't the apptitude. Thats if the institution wants to produce the best. If you want some mediocre Java/.NET drones then go with the soft approach.
A Levels aren't about 'institutions producing the best'. They are about learning a subject to a reasonable level, before potentially going on to study it at university. Furthermore, programming is only a part of the qualification.
Stanford is the gold standard for CS education, therefore what they teach should be emulated as it produces the calibre of students who came up with Google etc.
They are also a University. A Levels are not taught at University. This isn't about trying to weed people out, it's about trying to bring them into a subject. If the post as quoted does represent your true attitude - rather than just being a clumsy attempt at a troll with Dilbertian comparisons thrown in - then elitist attitudes such as yours don't help.
As a developer, the amount of paperwork I have to do is minimal, and I expect to be able to do it during my working day, as part of the work I do. If I am not finished by the end of the day, I put it down and pick it up the next morning. If I need to learn a new language, that becomes part of my daily work and I actively use it in new projects to assist with that learning.
A teacher, on the other hand, is routinely expected to stay late in the school doing out-of-hours INSETs, and to take work home with them for marking and assessment, planning future lessons and producing any additional resources that may be needed. I would imagine that a fair number of them simply don't have the time to keep up-to-date learning new languages, and as a result a lobby group somewhere has insisted that older languages - whose runtime is still supported even on Windows 7 - be allowed. This is possibly also the rationale behind Pascal / Delphi being on the list.
(Don't bother mentioning 'long holidays' until you've lived the life of a teacher: just because you don't see the work happening in front of you, doesn't mean it isn't happening.)
Err no, the fact that only 3 out of 25 could get to grips with C++ tells us that the class what made up of lower than average students.
It tells me that the class is not made up of people with previous programming experience, but rather people who needed to be taught programing concepts first, not a specific programming language.
And.Net should be avoided, from what I can see Stanford is one of the top CS Unis and in their first year of CS they teach, Java, C (some Assembly), C++, Scheme Python. Those are the langugues that you should know.
Just to clarify, are you stating "Don't learn this, because I think they teach different things in a University in another country"? I quite honestly do not understand the point that you're making.
My A level course taught Pascal. My degree covered Modula-2, Mathematica, Miranda, Prolog, 68000 assembler, and a few more I can't remember offhand. I don't think not having been taught any of these at A level caused me any problems.
Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming. The students aren't there to learn how to program for later commercial use, they are there to learn how computers work and are used. Programming is just one part of the course, and one of a number of areas of assessment.
Secondly, a lot of people - many of whom, I assume, are experienced programmers - seem to be focussing specifically on which would be the best language to learn for themselves, rather than putting themselves in the position of a 16-year-old who had never programmed before. On my course[1], we were taught Turbo Pascal[2]; however, I remember Logo also being studied. Not because we would ever use Logo in anything other than an academic environment, but because most of the students were programming novices and needed to learn concepts, not code.
Show these people C, they would have run a mile: for complete novices, the syntax can seem very intimidating. Show them Pascal, they might actually realise that programming isn't as scary as they thought and consider learning C at a later date.
[1] Between 1991 and 1993.
[2] How well it was taught, I don't know; those of us who already understood programming were allowed to skip those lessons.
I think the idea here is "no one, get a warrant/subpoena"
My question was more, who would the warrant be addressed to? RIPE? IANA? Would the rightsholders necessarily know to contact AAISP - or any other ISP that also implements this tactic - in what is effectively their role as just an upstream provider?
(I guess they could just traceroute and pick the ISP immediately before the customer, but that's starting to get awkward).
Of course, if the customer is a private individual, the privacy laws allow him to suppress much of the personal details from the whois record. So rather than needing a court order, all the rights holder has to do is issue a whois query on the alleged offending IP address.
Just out of interest, who would the rightsholder be allowed to approach (going by the DEA and AAISP's definition of 'subscriber') if the individual's personal details are suppressed?
Slashdot Mirror
*******
Did you mean to type those?
IANAL from Austria.
Afaik explicit consent is not explicitly demanded by the EU. UK opted in to require this in their law.
I'm not sure about the wording of the law itself, but the guidelines from the Information Commisioners Office (who are responsible for enforcing the law) implied consent is allowable; that's also how a number of organisations such as the BBC have implemented it, with a once-only banner informing the user and giving them the ability to alter the behaviour if needed.
IANAL, currently in Austria it says that the user decision already happens through the browser settings. If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
That would be much more acceptable; this has been argued for in the UK as well but the ICO have stated that this alone is not an acceptable solution. That said, a lot of sites are now linking to http://www.aboutcookies.org which provides this information.
UK postcodes are just a grid 1km I think, I am on the wrong computer to check. You can always import that leaked Postcode db into a mapping software to see what I mean. This normally translates in to a part of a street.
Not a grid, and their size does vary, but they are generally only a few hundred yards across; Google Maps will do an outline of the approximate area that a postcode covers, but as a rule of thumb a postcode covers an average of 15 properties.
Oh, and forget using any 'leaked postcode db'. The Ordnance Survey made available a CSV file that maps postcodes to coordinates as part of their OpenData project a few years ago; usage only requires attribution, not payment.
In addition to your very good point some of the commercial maps (used to?) deliberately add mistakes to their maps as a test that they can use to see if anyone is copying them.
ye ye - I know [citation needed], don't feel like it
[citation provided] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_streets
It's still possible to be loyal and yet move on. It may be that the new company would accept you working a longer notice period at your current employer (for example, if you're on 4 weeks ask if they'd wait 6 or even 8 for you)? That should be sufficient to ensure that the company can bring someone else in of a similar skill level to yourself, that the product can be handed over with minimal disruption, and you leave things in a stable situation.
It's your career, after all. Sometimes you do have to be selfish, otherwise you will never leave.
The sad truth is the support that comes with most PCs and software is usually under-utilized and seldom needed.
In this case, "support" is likely to be the infrastructure team within the organisation itself who handle the repairs, upgrades, security updates, server maintenance, etc. It's not going to be the telephone helpline that tells you where to plug your mouse into or what your ISPs telephone number is.
The main problem is that, like all the other numbers, the £3,500 figure is unexplained. For all we know, it's "total amount that the IT department spend" divided by "number of users". That would mean it also includes a proportion of the costs of the servers, switches, cabling, telecommunications, etc.
I'm not denying that some money is being wasted, but nowhere near as much as this report implies. See this article for more detail.
Honestly if you're going to spend another $80k for two more years of post-college education, it's not worth it for most fields. When it's free, that's a different matter all together.
This was my approach, completely. I graduated with a Bachelors back in '97 with a 3rd (due mainly to a lack of motivation in the later years), and never considered returning. Then, about 5 years ago, I discovered that there was funding on offer that could be used towards a Masters.
... I enrolled as a part-time student on a modular degree (each module being a week of teaching and then several months of working every evening), with the teaching time given as paid (i.e. not from my holiday allowance) in lieu of any other training by my employer. The end result is that I now have an MSc with Distinction, having learnt the value of hard work. It hasn't changed much about my current job, but at least my CV will be read sooner when the time comes to hunt for a new job. And, unlike many professional qualifications, it's also mine for life with no need to retake any exams or pay additional fees.
So
Although people seem amazed about this, it's not the first time that this has happened.
Back in '98, I worked on a network where it was against Government regulations to connect it in any way to the Internet, and an 'air gap' was required between the two. I was one of a very small team that wrote a system (using Zip disks for storage) that pulled data from a mail server on our secure network and pushed it to a mail server on the Internet, and vice versa. It had very high latency - people were assigned to do the mail drop only twice a day - but it worked well.
"Cut the Rope" on iOS uses multitouch within its gameplay. I have also seen applications that allow both zoom and rotation - a scroll button could emulate one or the other, but not both concurrently.
I wonder why he would need to sell a book. I mean.. he's got 13 billion dollars or something.
By your own logic, that means that money isn't the reason (something which most other authors will also claim, although probably slightly less honestly). The only other one that comes to mind is to allow him to put the record straight about the relationships between himself, Gates and, to a certain extent, Ballmer. To some people, making sure the truth is known is important.
Of course, the book isn't about Allen and Gates, and I doubt it's even 'about' Microsoft any more than iWoz was 'about' Apple. They're just the elements that will generate the most interest and get people wanting to read more.
... does he use open sauce?
people need to stop thinking of web apps in terms of "Internet explorer users".
Oddly, I happened to RTFM before it even reached Slashdot; the plugin they've developed is Firefox-only. This doesn't mean it's not headed for the bad-ideas graveyard, though.
How could an external company actually persuade UK politicians that it would be an unfair advantage to UK citizens that it would be unfair for a non-UK gaming company to have tax breaks?
(Did you mean 'for a UK gaming company? I got confused with all the negatives.)
I think this is an important question, whichever way it was meant. Nothing in TFA itself convinces me that this is anything more than an attempt to stir up some publicity for the individual who wrote it.
A question that Develop should answer: why are you not naming the company in question? Possiblity of legal action (as you have no evidence), or because they don't actually exist?
Just for the record, businesses can reclaim VAT - it's a consumer level tax, and one that's only applied to non-essential items.
Yes - although I didn't explicitly state it, that was my reasoning behind it hitting B2C (specifically, because it lowers the spending power of the consumer) not B2B. That said, when Labour reduced VAT temporarily from 17.5% to 15%, I don't recall the (admittedly potentially biased) media reporting a massive upswing in spending, so I can't see that this increase will cause a massive downswing.
Food (unless consumed in a restaurant), Water, and Utilities are all VAT free.
Unfortunately, you appear to have been misinformed. VAT on electricity and gas is charged at 5%. Depending upon the type of food, it may either be zero-rated or full rate. Mains water may be zero-rated, but mineral water has VAT applied at the full rate. It's a bit of a minefield, but HMRC does explain it comprehensively.
The only reason to put a stop to this would be due to lobbying by a company (companies) that may be adversely effected by this
There is another alternative, and one that means the tin-foil hat can be left on its hook. Leaving in a tax break for an already profitable part of an economy would have left them open to critisism (and accusations, ironically, of underhand lobbying from the games industry), so what they've done instead is to distribute the breaks around a number of different parts of the small business economy; think of it as spreading the risk.
Thus, we have the lowering of corporation tax; potential (although I think currently undefined) breaks for companies setting up outside London and the South East; and, savings on National Insurance payments for new small businesses. VAT, which admittedly may hit the business-to-consumer games industry more than business-to-business industries, will still only add 85p to a £40 game.
Personally, I don't think the reason was lobbying. It was the realisation that they could actually use the Budget to help the entire small business economy - of which the video games companies are just a part.
The (previous) government's brilliant solution to this issue? Add an A* grade at A-Level and carry on as normal.
Much as I enjoy kicking them now they're down, to be fair the main reason for that was the range of marks an 'A' grade covered. 'B' could, in theory, cover 60 to 69%, whilst 'A' covered 70% all the way up to 100%. 'A*' simply made it possible to differentiate between the increasingly common (for other, more fundamental reasons) 'A'-grades.
The danger is that in the future, people will forget exacrly when A*s were introduced, and judge 'old' A grades as being inferior.
If I was about to commit to a 4 year course, I would at least want a taste of the meat of the subject, not some Programming for Dummies version.
By the time you've done two years of an A-level, you'll have picked up a lot more than 'Programming for Dummies'. I saw a lot of people on my course go from no programming ability to would-make-a-good-developer during those two years. Plus, by the time they finished they also knew whether they wanted to take it further - and, if they had the ability to do so.
Going back to the original poster, their issue was that the language chosen for them to learn initially was a complex one. Because of that experience, people who had the intelligence and enthusiasm for computing - but, lacking the experience of how alien computer languages can appear - may have been put off entirely, and the industry a worse place for it. People learn at different rates, and assuming that everyone should start on possibly the most complex mainstream language in existence smacks of elitism.
Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming.
A-level Computer Science is supposed to be a grounding in computing theory and programming - there is no such thing as a Computer Programming A-level.
That was the point I was making, yes. People are treating this story as if it relates to a (non-existent) A-level in Computer Programming, not one in computer science itself, albeit one with the more generic title of 'A-level Computing'.
Before I start, please learn how to quote posts properly. It makes dismissing your points so much easier.
C++ will thin the herd a bit, get rid of people who haven't the apptitude. Thats if the institution wants to produce the best. If you want some mediocre Java/.NET drones then go with the soft approach.
A Levels aren't about 'institutions producing the best'. They are about learning a subject to a reasonable level, before potentially going on to study it at university. Furthermore, programming is only a part of the qualification.
Stanford is the gold standard for CS education, therefore what they teach should be emulated as it produces the calibre of students who came up with Google etc.
They are also a University. A Levels are not taught at University. This isn't about trying to weed people out, it's about trying to bring them into a subject. If the post as quoted does represent your true attitude - rather than just being a clumsy attempt at a troll with Dilbertian comparisons thrown in - then elitist attitudes such as yours don't help.
What is VB6 doing there?
As a developer, the amount of paperwork I have to do is minimal, and I expect to be able to do it during my working day, as part of the work I do. If I am not finished by the end of the day, I put it down and pick it up the next morning. If I need to learn a new language, that becomes part of my daily work and I actively use it in new projects to assist with that learning.
A teacher, on the other hand, is routinely expected to stay late in the school doing out-of-hours INSETs, and to take work home with them for marking and assessment, planning future lessons and producing any additional resources that may be needed. I would imagine that a fair number of them simply don't have the time to keep up-to-date learning new languages, and as a result a lobby group somewhere has insisted that older languages - whose runtime is still supported even on Windows 7 - be allowed. This is possibly also the rationale behind Pascal / Delphi being on the list.
(Don't bother mentioning 'long holidays' until you've lived the life of a teacher: just because you don't see the work happening in front of you, doesn't mean it isn't happening.)
Err no, the fact that only 3 out of 25 could get to grips with C++ tells us that the class what made up of lower than average students.
It tells me that the class is not made up of people with previous programming experience, but rather people who needed to be taught programing concepts first, not a specific programming language.
And .Net should be avoided, from what I can see Stanford is one of the top CS Unis and in their first year of CS they teach, Java, C (some Assembly), C++, Scheme Python. Those are the langugues that you should know.
Just to clarify, are you stating "Don't learn this, because I think they teach different things in a University in another country"? I quite honestly do not understand the point that you're making.
My A level course taught Pascal. My degree covered Modula-2, Mathematica, Miranda, Prolog, 68000 assembler, and a few more I can't remember offhand. I don't think not having been taught any of these at A level caused me any problems.
Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming. The students aren't there to learn how to program for later commercial use, they are there to learn how computers work and are used. Programming is just one part of the course, and one of a number of areas of assessment.
Secondly, a lot of people - many of whom, I assume, are experienced programmers - seem to be focussing specifically on which would be the best language to learn for themselves, rather than putting themselves in the position of a 16-year-old who had never programmed before. On my course[1], we were taught Turbo Pascal[2]; however, I remember Logo also being studied. Not because we would ever use Logo in anything other than an academic environment, but because most of the students were programming novices and needed to learn concepts, not code.
Show these people C, they would have run a mile: for complete novices, the syntax can seem very intimidating. Show them Pascal, they might actually realise that programming isn't as scary as they thought and consider learning C at a later date.
[1] Between 1991 and 1993.
[2] How well it was taught, I don't know; those of us who already understood programming were allowed to skip those lessons.
I think the idea here is "no one, get a warrant/subpoena"
My question was more, who would the warrant be addressed to? RIPE? IANA? Would the rightsholders necessarily know to contact AAISP - or any other ISP that also implements this tactic - in what is effectively their role as just an upstream provider?
(I guess they could just traceroute and pick the ISP immediately before the customer, but that's starting to get awkward).
Of course, if the customer is a private individual, the privacy laws allow him to suppress much of the personal details from the whois record. So rather than needing a court order, all the rights holder has to do is issue a whois query on the alleged offending IP address.
Just out of interest, who would the rightsholder be allowed to approach (going by the DEA and AAISP's definition of 'subscriber') if the individual's personal details are suppressed?