The UK measures the proportion of the population able to theoretically get Broadband if they want it on the basis of the number of enabled telephone exchanges. Unfortunately - there are customers with telephone lines connected to exchanges who live too far out to get a stable ADSL connection - so this measure overstates the real number of people who can get access. I have a friend living in East London who can't get broadband because the line noise is too high due to his distance from the exchange - and he lives in recently built development in the capital city.
UK pricing tends to ignore the 10UKP (19USD) you have to pay BT for telephone line rental in order to get most broadband connections.
I currently pay 14UKP (~26USD) for my 8mbit ADSL connection. But in practice I get 4mbit throughput (from bandwidth tests) since I'm too far from the exchange to get the top speed. My ISP (BT) upgraded me from 1mb last month for free though. (Actually better than free they actually dropped the price from 18UKP to 14UKP presumably as a response to other special offers in the UK from Orange and Talk Talk).
Talk Talk are currently offering telephone line rental, 8mbit broadband, and unlimited europe wide telephone calls for 20UKP a month.
I am relatively IT literate but the installation routines that come with Linux distributions vary from average to shockingly bad, compared with say Windows installation processes.
I feel that more home users would be attracted to Linux if they could stick in the distro CD and make a few choices (GUI, non standard applications (e.g. Wordperfect)) and then watch it install the operating system and applications automatically, and load the relevant drivers for plug and play hardware.
I trashed my painstakingly installed SuSE system last year, and couldn't be bothered to go through the pain of reinstalling it with that ghastly YAST tool, when instead I could ram in a Windows CD instead and have a working operating system with all my drivers back installed etc within 2 hours.
So I don't think we need a 'standard' GUI (in fact that would suck). But there should be an express installation routine available with each distro that requires MINIMAL user input beyond selecting the GUI and applications they want.
If this becomes compulsory, no way I am buying a new car in Britain!
I'll either go abroad, or buy second hand, or keep running my existing car.
Anyway the chances of this getting through parliament are between slim and none. Even if it did, the other political parties will have a field day and use revocation of the requirement in order to guarantee themselves an election victory next time.
I recall when phone number portability became free in the UK.
My father's mobile phone bill dropped by 300UKP per month switching from the old ripoff tariff he'd been stuck to for years because his businesscards all used that number, to a new provider and tariff.
So since mobile phone calls are a significant cost to most businesses these days, this change should benefit most US businesses (except telecoms =P)
Most of my friends change providers every 1 or 2 years to whichever gives them the best handset and tariff combination.
If you have a high value call plan. you can get some pretty nifty handsets free.
I apologise for the fake expert comment, I took from this sentence:
Come again? Since when was a house of Lords debate an indication of anything other than the fact the members still have a pulse?
that you felt the lords played nil part in the UK parliamentary system. When I should have read it as you intended it, i.e. that you felt their debates were out of touch with reality.
I do however disagree with them being a joke, yes they've made some errors, but their ability to resubmit ill-thought out legislation back to parliament for further debate is a key part of our democracy.
Without the Lords, we would have no safety net in times where the ruling party's majority is so large. This is especially true at the moment where MPs seem inclined to propose a lot of legislation increasing police powers, and reducing the rights of individuals, at the first sign of a terrorist threat, however tenuous.
Whether the Lords should be elected or appointed is another debate entirely. I personally favour restricting the Lords membership to persons of who have proved successful in academic/business fields over a free for all second elected chamber. For that reason at least the law lords should stay as persons clearly knowledge about the laws of the country, in a similar way, renowned economists, scientists, sociologists, etc (to cover all key areas of government control) would (IMHO) make better representatives than the current lords. I'd be happier to elect representatives from a subset of the overall population who are best able to understand the implications of legislation being considered, than allowing any old muppet with a pile of cash to stand. This would also maintain the distinctly different flavour between the two houses.
Far from being more representative than the commons it has failed to put a stop to any of the Tory party's reactionary measures such as the poll tax and it was the origin of their anti-gay legislation.
Anti gay legislation? - The only piece of gay related legislation I am aware that got delayed by the lords was the lowering of the age of consent from 18 to 16 for anal sex. Something that many people, myself included, felt left children, who may not yet have fully figured out their sexuality, more vulnerable to predatory adults.
I'd have favoured an amendment to the existing age of consent for heterosexual sex, to disallow sex outside of a 5 year age band before 18.... which would have left both gay and straight teenagers with equal rights, without exposing kids to perverts, but that option wasn't even considered.
Whilst I'd be the first to agree that your average joe is probably heavily influenced by what they read in the Sun and the Mirror. The tabloids still play to their audiences, if they wrote articles that the population vehemently disagreed with, they'd lose market share pretty fast.
I find the ability of the UK tabloids to pretty much dictate election results quite scary. (But hey at least we aren't in Italy's situation yet, where their own president controls most of the media.)
I don't however find it as scary as Parliament trying to force through bills that most of the UK population disagree with by survey.
I hope the Lords continues to exist with its current powers as long as possible, for the sake of our democracy if nothing else.
Zeinfeld - I am calling you out as a fake expert, as you do not appear to understand the significance of the House of Lords in the UK parliamentary system.
The House of Lords has the power to send bills back to parliament for reconsideration if it feels they have been poorly thought through. It can do this up to two times before parliament can force a bill through.
This allows them to delay the passing of legislation significantly.
In recent years, the UK press have praised the House of Lords as actually better reflecting the views of the UK public than their elected representatives in the Commons.
I find it quite scary that a bunch of unelected aristocrats appear more in touch with reality than the current labour government, but this is in fact the case.
I suspect the motive behind this legislation is to allow spammers to be prosecuted.
Europeans (encouraged by the press) are currently outraged at spammers sending hardcore porn to their children.
Most of these spam e-mails do not have a valid return e-mail address.
If its illegal to send out mail without a valid reply-to address, it would help combat spam (at least spam originating in Europe.)
That has to be a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK measures the proportion of the population able to theoretically get Broadband if they want it on the basis of the number of enabled telephone exchanges. Unfortunately - there are customers with telephone lines connected to exchanges who live too far out to get a stable ADSL connection - so this measure overstates the real number of people who can get access. I have a friend living in East London who can't get broadband because the line noise is too high due to his distance from the exchange - and he lives in recently built development in the capital city. UK pricing tends to ignore the 10UKP (19USD) you have to pay BT for telephone line rental in order to get most broadband connections. I currently pay 14UKP (~26USD) for my 8mbit ADSL connection. But in practice I get 4mbit throughput (from bandwidth tests) since I'm too far from the exchange to get the top speed. My ISP (BT) upgraded me from 1mb last month for free though. (Actually better than free they actually dropped the price from 18UKP to 14UKP presumably as a response to other special offers in the UK from Orange and Talk Talk). Talk Talk are currently offering telephone line rental, 8mbit broadband, and unlimited europe wide telephone calls for 20UKP a month.
If I was a wose I'd be really irritated - not only do we get missed by Jackson, we even got missed by the nitpickers..
I am relatively IT literate but the installation routines that come with Linux distributions vary from average to shockingly bad, compared with say Windows installation processes. I feel that more home users would be attracted to Linux if they could stick in the distro CD and make a few choices (GUI, non standard applications (e.g. Wordperfect)) and then watch it install the operating system and applications automatically, and load the relevant drivers for plug and play hardware. I trashed my painstakingly installed SuSE system last year, and couldn't be bothered to go through the pain of reinstalling it with that ghastly YAST tool, when instead I could ram in a Windows CD instead and have a working operating system with all my drivers back installed etc within 2 hours. So I don't think we need a 'standard' GUI (in fact that would suck). But there should be an express installation routine available with each distro that requires MINIMAL user input beyond selecting the GUI and applications they want.
If this becomes compulsory, no way I am buying a new car in Britain! I'll either go abroad, or buy second hand, or keep running my existing car. Anyway the chances of this getting through parliament are between slim and none. Even if it did, the other political parties will have a field day and use revocation of the requirement in order to guarantee themselves an election victory next time.
Although halflife is of course just as deadly as EQ... :-P
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_382974.html?m enu=news.technology
I recall when phone number portability became free in the UK. My father's mobile phone bill dropped by 300UKP per month switching from the old ripoff tariff he'd been stuck to for years because his businesscards all used that number, to a new provider and tariff. So since mobile phone calls are a significant cost to most businesses these days, this change should benefit most US businesses (except telecoms =P) Most of my friends change providers every 1 or 2 years to whichever gives them the best handset and tariff combination. If you have a high value call plan. you can get some pretty nifty handsets free.
Come again? Since when was a house of Lords debate an indication of anything other than the fact the members still have a pulse?
that you felt the lords played nil part in the UK parliamentary system. When I should have read it as you intended it, i.e. that you felt their debates were out of touch with reality. I do however disagree with them being a joke, yes they've made some errors, but their ability to resubmit ill-thought out legislation back to parliament for further debate is a key part of our democracy. Without the Lords, we would have no safety net in times where the ruling party's majority is so large. This is especially true at the moment where MPs seem inclined to propose a lot of legislation increasing police powers, and reducing the rights of individuals, at the first sign of a terrorist threat, however tenuous. Whether the Lords should be elected or appointed is another debate entirely. I personally favour restricting the Lords membership to persons of who have proved successful in academic/business fields over a free for all second elected chamber. For that reason at least the law lords should stay as persons clearly knowledge about the laws of the country, in a similar way, renowned economists, scientists, sociologists, etc (to cover all key areas of government control) would (IMHO) make better representatives than the current lords. I'd be happier to elect representatives from a subset of the overall population who are best able to understand the implications of legislation being considered, than allowing any old muppet with a pile of cash to stand. This would also maintain the distinctly different flavour between the two houses. Far from being more representative than the commons it has failed to put a stop to any of the Tory party's reactionary measures such as the poll tax and it was the origin of their anti-gay legislation. Anti gay legislation? - The only piece of gay related legislation I am aware that got delayed by the lords was the lowering of the age of consent from 18 to 16 for anal sex. Something that many people, myself included, felt left children, who may not yet have fully figured out their sexuality, more vulnerable to predatory adults. I'd have favoured an amendment to the existing age of consent for heterosexual sex, to disallow sex outside of a 5 year age band before 18.... which would have left both gay and straight teenagers with equal rights, without exposing kids to perverts, but that option wasn't even considered.
Whilst I'd be the first to agree that your average joe is probably heavily influenced by what they read in the Sun and the Mirror. The tabloids still play to their audiences, if they wrote articles that the population vehemently disagreed with, they'd lose market share pretty fast. I find the ability of the UK tabloids to pretty much dictate election results quite scary. (But hey at least we aren't in Italy's situation yet, where their own president controls most of the media.) I don't however find it as scary as Parliament trying to force through bills that most of the UK population disagree with by survey. I hope the Lords continues to exist with its current powers as long as possible, for the sake of our democracy if nothing else.
Zeinfeld - I am calling you out as a fake expert, as you do not appear to understand the significance of the House of Lords in the UK parliamentary system. The House of Lords has the power to send bills back to parliament for reconsideration if it feels they have been poorly thought through. It can do this up to two times before parliament can force a bill through. This allows them to delay the passing of legislation significantly. In recent years, the UK press have praised the House of Lords as actually better reflecting the views of the UK public than their elected representatives in the Commons. I find it quite scary that a bunch of unelected aristocrats appear more in touch with reality than the current labour government, but this is in fact the case.
I suspect the motive behind this legislation is to allow spammers to be prosecuted. Europeans (encouraged by the press) are currently outraged at spammers sending hardcore porn to their children. Most of these spam e-mails do not have a valid return e-mail address. If its illegal to send out mail without a valid reply-to address, it would help combat spam (at least spam originating in Europe.) That has to be a good thing.