In limited cases, yes: but it's still 'Persil washes whiter than Brand X', rather than 'Persil washes whiter than [Daz|Arial|Bold]' because direct comparisons on contentious issues are forbidden. Seeing 'Tylenol is better than Advil is better than Excedrin is better than Aleve is better than Tylenol' in American advertising, for me, is mind-boggling.
If you guys didn't know, the British government owns the BBC.
Not quite: you can say that the British public owns the BBC, but it's more complicated than that, since it's an independent public corporation established by a Royal Charter. (Worth reading just for the archaic language: 'The Corporation shall continue to be a body corporate by the name of The British Broadcasting Corporation with perpetual succession and a common seal with power to break, alter and renew the same at discretion') In that sense, it's not really 'owned', but held in trust by the Board of Governors for the British public for as long as its Charter lasts.
(Compare it to the various 'Royal Societies' in Britain, if you like...)
Firstly because the BBC is not supposed to simply compete with commercial channels. It is supposed to be aboutv public-service broadcasting and independent programming.
Note that Channel 4, while a 'network with commercials', is not a 'commercial network'; that's to say, it has a specific public-service remit to provide alternatives to the main channels, and if it were to go 'mainstream', it would be in breach of those conditions. This means, of course, that Brits get HBO series without paying for them, and this is a good thing.
Personally I don't view the license fee as good value for money. Greg Dyke et al. have lowered the tone of its output significantly in recent years.
So, 2/week -- the price of a pint of beer in most towns -- is poor value for money? Compared to, what, nearly 10/week for the cheapest Sky package, and double that if you want to watch anything other than The Simpsons?
And given that Sky produces nothing worth selling -- I don't mean Fox buy-ins, and really, I don't want to see 'Tits Out At Ibiza Part 14' -- the suggestion that the BBC should flog off the output that it has nurtured into success is nothing but self-serving bullshit.
Sky News is now viewed by many people as being every bit as good as BBC News 24.
But if the format is something unreadable and obscure like VIVO or something more evil, or locked via DRM.. why bother making it available at all if nobody can reasonably view it?
It won't be. At least, that's the aim from those pushing for this within the BBC. Basically, the argument has been that the cost and effort of implementing and enforcing DRM would probably be greater than the money recouped from using it. And since the programmes have basically been paid for already, the groundswell within the BBC has been simply to make it available with nothing more than a Creative Commons licence and go after those who reuse or redistributed BBC content for commercial gain.
And I've been in England where the money is in different colors. Except I still can't tell a purple-and-orange 5 from an orange-and-purple 10. Or was it the other way around? Or was it the 20?
Thank you for confirming that you are an idiot, and that your objections are based upon being, um, an idiot. How about for starters that the Bank of England notes get bigger, the higher the value?
Re:Legal mashup playing on the radio
on
Mashed-Up Music
·
· Score: 1
The local dance station here in Austin is playing a recording of Kylie Minogue in concert singing to the music of Bizzarre Love Triangle.
Not BLT: 'Blue Monday'. Kylie actually performed to that backing track at the Brits, having heard the bootleg, which is about as mainstream as you can get.
Brits usually think that the US system is silly, as well: and we have the South Park film to demonstrate the non-enforcement of 'R' ratings. (I had to explain the 'kids get to watch with an adult' rule to friends over here.) Having an adult around doesn't affect what's on the screen, that's for sure.
As for the delay: well, it's not just the rate at which prints are issued, especially these days, and it's certainly not the BBFC's fault. It's more to do with getting the actors over for the premieres in London, Paris, Berlin and doing the local rounds of publicity. So you're not only a whinging Septic, but you're also blaming the Brits when you should be targetting the US studios.
As the anonymous replier noted, you're completely wrong. In fact, Supreme Court cases still cite English statute and common law in their rulings, such as the Fourth Amendment case heard last year involving a mother arrested by a traffic cop. In order to interpret the Amendment, the constructionist justices tried to work out what was considered a 'reasonable' search and seizure in the late 18th century, and the place to look was Blackstone and the combination of English and colonial precedent.
I know that we (as the the community) provided the data for free but as much as we'd like it still costs to host something and whilst it would be nice for Gracenote to do it for free, they themselves will incurr costs that will have to be paid for by someone.
Well, before the CDDB people sold out, they allowed us, the community, to host mirrors of the database, which meant that their own servers didn't take that much of the strain. In fact, the UK mirror was hosted on an academic server in Sheffield. Of course, once CDDB went commercial, it denied access to the database, and closed down the mirrors. So the company that's now known as Gracenote is simply guilty of shitting in its own nest.
Pretty balanced article, equal digs on both sides.
Pity that they had to spoil it all with a closing quote from Bob Metcalfe that "Greylock is a first-rate firm. If they think he shouldn't be working there, they're probably right." Yeah, right, Bob: and all of your recent judgements have been right on the ball.
We are an active participant in many of the standards bodies and have been leading the charge in promoting the use of XML, SOAP and other standards for our.NET initiative.</i>
Well, a cursory glance at Dave Winer's <A href="http://www.scripting.com">Scripting News</a> might suggest otherwise. One of the leading exponents of SOAP, and of cross-platform interoperablity, talking fairly frankly about how he's had his fingers burned by "embrace, extend, exclude".
Has impending fatherhood altered the way you view the net as a social phenomenon? What role do you imagine (or want) the net to play in Shirky jr.'s childhood?
Why Paxman got sent the Enigma... (mod this up?)
on
Stolen Enigma Found
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· Score: 1
Paxman's a good friend of Robert Harris, who wrote the novel Enigma. (In fact, I think he's godfather to Harris's children.) The two of them wrote a book together in the 80s about chemical warfare, called A Higher Form of Killing. Since Harris isn't so much of a public figure, I'd imagine that the bloke with the stolen Enigma thought Paxman was the next best thing.
The anecdote is that Brits slow down when they do postgraduate work, whereas Americans speed up. And it's sort of borne out by the difference between a taught graduate course, like most US universities, and the research-based doctoral and masters' programmes in the UK. That said, I'd argue that the two taught years of US grad school are basically designed to catch up with European and Japanese batchelors' courses.
Where the US really pulls away, though, is in its ability to recruit postdoctoral staff from around the world. Most of my friends with Oxford DPhils in science are now working in California, because they get three or four times as much as they'd get in the UK. Too many people spend four years in a science lab here, then pack it in and become management consultants. And it's that lack of investment in research which cripples the UK.
This all comes from the way that US institutions weight their funding towards doctoral and postdoctoral research. And that's what brings you Nobel Prizes.
Haven't we had this discussion umpteen times before? Such as... two days ago? There's even a link to a discussion on the four competing filesystems. Sheesh. Flogging the dead horse.
Libraries are as subject to the Obscene Publications Act as anywhere else in the UK. And seeing as most US-based pr0n is more-than-technically illegal in this country, they're well within their rights.
And if you want to look at nekkid pictures, then buy a jazz mag. It's cheaper and you can take it into the smallest room with you.
[As an expat Teessider, I'm just glad that web access is available back home; there are plenty of libraries in the UK for which "computerisation" means mono terminals and antiquated catalogues.]
Oxford's response at the start of the year was to block *.napster.com at the firewall. On all ports. Simple as that.
(Along with the Gnutella web page, www.napigator.com, and other "bandwidth hogging" sites. And anonymizer.com, if you want to get around it. And to yank web pages <a href="http://216.167.120.50/ox-chill.htm">deep linking to DeCSS</a>. Sigh.)
Isn't it that management doesn't like the idea of its sysadmins having something they can control? If you staff your NOC with MSCEs who press the reset button every night, then you're less likely to hear arguments than if you employ techies with clue...
I urgently need to transport _______ ___, _______ ___, and a bunch of luggage to Sealand. Britain has started turning away known HavenCo employees at the airport, so I have arranged transport by boat tonight from a port town in _______. I need a brave hearted individual with a large car or van (or the ability to rent one) to drive [the lot] to
the rendezvous point this evening. HavenCo will pay all your expenses, plus some reasonable additional fee for your time. If you can help,
please give me a call ASAP at +__ ___ ___ ____.
----- Backwarded
That WIRED cover story may have been a little bit presumptuous...
No matter how good the algorithm, no matter how free (beer || speech) the licence, no-one's going to be talking about Xiphophorus's Ogg Vorbis project in the bars and coffeeshops.
Let's face it: while Sealand remained a monument to English eccentricity, the UK government has been content to leave "Prince Roy" to grow old on his little platform. (Even though he doesn't live there any more.) Pirate radio and the occasional bit of tabloid reporting isn't likely to cause any problems.
But once the colocation people move in, expect the authorities to move them out pronto. Unlike trademark law, rights of sovereignty don't go away just because they're not regularly policed.
Slashdot Mirror
In limited cases, yes: but it's still 'Persil washes whiter than Brand X', rather than 'Persil washes whiter than [Daz|Arial|Bold]' because direct comparisons on contentious issues are forbidden. Seeing 'Tylenol is better than Advil is better than Excedrin is better than Aleve is better than Tylenol' in American advertising, for me, is mind-boggling.
If you guys didn't know, the British government owns the BBC.
Not quite: you can say that the British public owns the BBC, but it's more complicated than that, since it's an independent public corporation established by a Royal Charter. (Worth reading just for the archaic language: 'The Corporation shall continue to be a body corporate by the name of The British Broadcasting Corporation with perpetual succession and a common seal with power to break, alter and renew the same at discretion') In that sense, it's not really 'owned', but held in trust by the Board of Governors for the British public for as long as its Charter lasts.
(Compare it to the various 'Royal Societies' in Britain, if you like...)
Firstly because the BBC is not supposed to simply compete with commercial channels. It is supposed to be aboutv public-service broadcasting and independent programming.
Note that Channel 4, while a 'network with commercials', is not a 'commercial network'; that's to say, it has a specific public-service remit to provide alternatives to the main channels, and if it were to go 'mainstream', it would be in breach of those conditions. This means, of course, that Brits get HBO series without paying for them, and this is a good thing.
Personally I don't view the license fee as good value for money. Greg Dyke et al. have lowered the tone of its output significantly in recent years.
So, 2/week -- the price of a pint of beer in most towns -- is poor value for money? Compared to, what, nearly 10/week for the cheapest Sky package, and double that if you want to watch anything other than The Simpsons?
And given that Sky produces nothing worth selling -- I don't mean Fox buy-ins, and really, I don't want to see 'Tits Out At Ibiza Part 14' -- the suggestion that the BBC should flog off the output that it has nurtured into success is nothing but self-serving bullshit.
Sky News is now viewed by many people as being every bit as good as BBC News 24.
Well, many people buy the Sun, too.
But if the format is something unreadable and obscure like VIVO or something more evil, or locked via DRM.. why bother making it available at all if nobody can reasonably view it?
It won't be. At least, that's the aim from those pushing for this within the BBC. Basically, the argument has been that the cost and effort of implementing and enforcing DRM would probably be greater than the money recouped from using it. And since the programmes have basically been paid for already, the groundswell within the BBC has been simply to make it available with nothing more than a Creative Commons licence and go after those who reuse or redistributed BBC content for commercial gain.
And I've been in England where the money is in different colors. Except I still can't tell a purple-and-orange 5 from an orange-and-purple 10. Or was it the other way around? Or was it the 20?
Thank you for confirming that you are an idiot, and that your objections are based upon being, um, an idiot. How about for starters that the Bank of England notes get bigger, the higher the value?
The local dance station here in Austin is playing a recording of Kylie Minogue in concert singing to the music of Bizzarre Love Triangle.
Not BLT: 'Blue Monday'. Kylie actually performed to that backing track at the Brits, having heard the bootleg, which is about as mainstream as you can get.
No, bootlegs are tapes of live concerts made by individuals rather than a "live album" released by the record company.
That's as maybe. In Britain, where this stuff is actually in fashion, they're 'bootlegs'. Thanks for calling.
Brits usually think that the US system is silly, as well: and we have the South Park film to demonstrate the non-enforcement of 'R' ratings. (I had to explain the 'kids get to watch with an adult' rule to friends over here.) Having an adult around doesn't affect what's on the screen, that's for sure.
As for the delay: well, it's not just the rate at which prints are issued, especially these days, and it's certainly not the BBFC's fault. It's more to do with getting the actors over for the premieres in London, Paris, Berlin and doing the local rounds of publicity. So you're not only a whinging Septic, but you're also blaming the Brits when you should be targetting the US studios.
Overture: publically traded company, needs to keep its share price buoyant.
Google: privately-held company, no need to deal in short-term publicity stunts.
Get the picture?
As the anonymous replier noted, you're completely wrong. In fact, Supreme Court cases still cite English statute and common law in their rulings, such as the Fourth Amendment case heard last year involving a mother arrested by a traffic cop. In order to interpret the Amendment, the constructionist justices tried to work out what was considered a 'reasonable' search and seizure in the late 18th century, and the place to look was Blackstone and the combination of English and colonial precedent.
You cannot copyright a shade of a color. You cannot trademark a shade of a color. You don't know what you are talking about.
International Klein Blue, moron.
Well, before the CDDB people sold out, they allowed us, the community, to host mirrors of the database, which meant that their own servers didn't take that much of the strain. In fact, the UK mirror was hosted on an academic server in Sheffield. Of course, once CDDB went commercial, it denied access to the database, and closed down the mirrors. So the company that's now known as Gracenote is simply guilty of shitting in its own nest.
Pretty balanced article, equal digs on both sides.
Pity that they had to spoil it all with a closing quote from Bob Metcalfe that "Greylock is a first-rate firm. If they think he shouldn't be working there, they're probably right." Yeah, right, Bob: and all of your recent judgements have been right on the ball.
We are an active participant in many of the standards bodies and have been leading the charge in promoting the use of XML, SOAP and other standards for our .NET initiative.</i>
Well, a cursory glance at Dave Winer's <A href="http://www.scripting.com">Scripting News</a> might suggest otherwise. One of the leading exponents of SOAP, and of cross-platform interoperablity, talking fairly frankly about how he's had his fingers burned by "embrace, extend, exclude".
Has impending fatherhood altered the way you view the net as a social phenomenon? What role do you imagine (or want) the net to play in Shirky jr.'s childhood?
Paxman's a good friend of Robert Harris, who wrote the novel Enigma. (In fact, I think he's godfather to Harris's children.) The two of them wrote a book together in the 80s about chemical warfare, called A Higher Form of Killing. Since Harris isn't so much of a public figure, I'd imagine that the bloke with the stolen Enigma thought Paxman was the next best thing.
The anecdote is that Brits slow down when they do postgraduate work, whereas Americans speed up. And it's sort of borne out by the difference between a taught graduate course, like most US universities, and the research-based doctoral and masters' programmes in the UK. That said, I'd argue that the two taught years of US grad school are basically designed to catch up with European and Japanese batchelors' courses.
Where the US really pulls away, though, is in its ability to recruit postdoctoral staff from around the world. Most of my friends with Oxford DPhils in science are now working in California, because they get three or four times as much as they'd get in the UK. Too many people spend four years in a science lab here, then pack it in and become management consultants. And it's that lack of investment in research which cripples the UK.
This all comes from the way that US institutions weight their funding towards doctoral and postdoctoral research. And that's what brings you Nobel Prizes.
Haven't we had this discussion umpteen times before? Such as... two days ago? There's even a link to a discussion on the four competing filesystems. Sheesh. Flogging the dead horse.
Libraries are as subject to the Obscene Publications Act as anywhere else in the UK. And seeing as most US-based pr0n is more-than-technically illegal in this country, they're well within their rights.
And if you want to look at nekkid pictures, then buy a jazz mag. It's cheaper and you can take it into the smallest room with you.
[As an expat Teessider, I'm just glad that web access is available back home; there are plenty of libraries in the UK for which "computerisation" means mono terminals and antiquated catalogues.]
Oxford's response at the start of the year was to block *.napster.com at the firewall. On all ports. Simple as that.
(Along with the Gnutella web page, www.napigator.com, and other "bandwidth hogging" sites. And anonymizer.com, if you want to get around it. And to yank web pages <a href="http://216.167.120.50/ox-chill.htm">deep linking to DeCSS</a>. Sigh.)
Isn't it that management doesn't like the idea of its sysadmins having something they can control? If you staff your NOC with MSCEs who press the reset button every night, then you're less likely to hear arguments than if you employ techies with clue...
Except it isn't: Suck's now part of Automatic Media.
----- Forwarded
I urgently need to transport _______ ___, _______ ___, and a bunch of luggage to Sealand. Britain has started turning away known HavenCo employees at the airport, so I have arranged transport by boat tonight from a port town in _______. I need a brave hearted individual with a large car or van (or the ability to rent one) to drive [the lot] to the rendezvous point this evening. HavenCo will pay all your expenses, plus some reasonable additional fee for your time. If you can help, please give me a call ASAP at +__ ___ ___ ____.
----- Backwarded
That WIRED cover story may have been a little bit presumptuous...
No matter how good the algorithm, no matter how free (beer || speech) the licence, no-one's going to be talking about Xiphophorus's Ogg Vorbis project in the bars and coffeeshops.
em-pee-three. nap-ster. gnu-tella.
The name's the thing.
Let's face it: while Sealand remained a monument to English eccentricity, the UK government has been content to leave "Prince Roy" to grow old on his little platform. (Even though he doesn't live there any more.) Pirate radio and the occasional bit of tabloid reporting isn't likely to cause any problems.
But once the colocation people move in, expect the authorities to move them out pronto. Unlike trademark law, rights of sovereignty don't go away just because they're not regularly policed.