Every country I have seen which declares that internet MUST be available to ALL citizens has subsequently shot themselves in the fiscal foot with horrendous cost blow-outs for installations. At some point someone must realise that someone living on a farm 2km from high neighbour is unlikely to be able to expect the same kind of services and systems available to inner city tech hubs.
Unlike other countries, the UK has a cabinet system that replaces the need to build exchanges everywhere like other countries, this makes the cost substantially cheaper. On top of that, a lot of these cabinets already exist from pre-existing technology that required them on BT's network. Dark fibre was laid out throughout most of the UK already a few decades ago providing much of the infrastructure needed for bandwidth requirements for access to all these cabinets. What generally happens these days is an extra cabinet is placed next to the pre-existing one and patched into the other cabinet with all the new equipment. High speed broadband is provided through technologies like VDSL and VDSL2 which can use the existing copper cables to the house to provide fibre speeds. BT Openreach (a subsidiary of BT that rents out their lines to other providers - Practically everyone goes over BT lines) is trialing a Fiber to the Premises currently and intends to offer it to all that have existing VDSL/VDSL2 connectivity at the setup price of laying down a new cable to the house.
In summary, it's actually feasible in the UK at not such a great cost.
You can get some further information off this training video:
The internet is a service, someone's labor for which they need compensation.
Currently, most Internet in the UK is provided via BT Openreach's lines, exchanges and cabinets with the exception of Virgin Media (which does provide some services over BT Openreach still). I think the idea behind Cameron's statement is that BT Openreach should sufficiently penetrate the entire country sufficiently with fast broadband. Making it possible for you to have fast broadband if you want (from practically any provider you want).
It worries me that so many politicians are giving away our resources as if it's a gift (we're paying for it after all, not the politician) and calling that "gift" a right.
The government is generally responsible for ensuring infrastructure exists in a country, such as road, electric supply etc. This isn't really a new concept.
A program to make internet available to all areas is certainly a better way to frame the proposal (but not for free).
First sentence of the article:
The PM is to introduce a "universal service obligation" for broadband, giving the public a legal right to request an "affordable" connection.
If you read the article further, it even states:
"Access to the internet shouldn't be a luxury, it should be a right - absolutely fundamental to life in 21st Century Britain," he said.
What's pretentious about wanting software that works.
There is nothing with wanting that software, but it's another thing to apply those values to someone else who has other priorities.
It's folks who pretend they care about access to source code that are pretentious because they neither read nor change the source.
I wouldn't fall into this category, but it happens most modifications I do these days to opensource products is for personal interests that I rarely contribute back. Kind of similar to RMS' printer driver issue.
Open source been around for decades but we have not seen the hundreds or even dozens of variations of a given software that was promised by OSS evangelists.
Yeah, I am sure there are a lot of shit OSS evangelists out there.
Heck, I would like to see a Linux tree that is free of systemd. So far, most distros are adopting systemd.
I'm on the fence on the issue, but mostly because I haven't learned sufficiently enough about it to have a decent opinion.
He said, "I don't have special obligations to people I don't know." That implies he doesn't care for these strangers. Then why is he giving out free software to these people?
I could give an example of my own I guess. Such as the reason I published some random little things (like an XML parser I wrote in m68k assembler for a hobby project), if it's useful to someone, great. If not, sorry but it meets my needs currently and I don't have an interest in it outside of my scope. I might offer a little help here and there if my life isn't busy and I have the drive after doing all the other stuff I have to do at the end of the day, but it's not assured.
Because every other individual or organization that releases software, supports their code?
In my consultancy life, working with large multi-national companies, 'support' (despite paid for) was often (not always), next to non-existent if it wasn't a user/developer-error issue and the only thing they could do was 'waive' various fees. In my personal life, I have had problems with certain audio hardware and software, they just up-front told me that they don't support it and offered a refund. I've also fought with a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (Giff gaff), who would refuse to support me in practically any circumstance (despite having a very specific technical issue) and refer me to their community forums for support despite being willing to pay for support etc.
In summary, no, I don't agree with your assumption here.
The exceptions are lazy programmers
I'm not lazy, the average hours I worked last year (and I know this because of my time sheets) was 112 hours per week (and I only really posted or went on sites like Slashdot when I was travelling). The very few days I took for Holidays are included in that calculation too. I actually stopped contributing to some projects at that point (with some angry users, they were unwilling to accept that I wasn't willing to work further on the project unless I was getting a sufficient salary to quit my existing job to do so - fortunately, there were a lot of understanding users too).
The fun fact behind this though, I was working crazy hours particularly because we weren't getting the support (struggled to find even contractors of a reasonable calibre to help me too) and had deadlines to meet.
or shysters who you want to charge you $$$ for simple fixes (as is in this case).
Considering most of the industry expects you to pay in some form for support (most of which in my experience is insufficient when a 'real' problem is encountered). Then, going further into my consultancy experience, where I've had a one line change and they would charge you ridiculous money (we're talking over 1000USD
Did you attend some evening school where they teach you how to be evil and write confusing, convoluted lies that gives the illusion that a thief in fact was innocent and the victim of thief was in fact the thief.
Actually, I believe what I have written. I should note that I was genuinely interested in your reasoning behind why does it matter if someone he doesn't know or cares about has access to some sourcecode he wrote in response to your 'putting it out there'. If he doesn't care about those particular individuals and doesn't care whether they got it or not, I'm not seeing an actual argument here.
To even help you get a perspective, perhaps this person posted the sourcecode because he wanted to have other programming contributors, contribute more to the application and is not particularly interested in giving handouts of his precious free time when he already works a full time job during the day.
Or are you a lawyer, by chance?
I'm an armchair lawyer at best. But I get the distinct impression you have some sort of 'higher' moral grounds that are strictly from one point of view that doesn't encompass the entire situation. From my perspective, it's interesting how playing a little of devil's advocate on some of your statements is likely being interpreted by you as 'evil'.
As someone that has worked in consultancies, I also have experience with what some companies (I certainly haven't worked for all) do with clients that very problematic usually and are asking for a higher level of support than they're willing to do and not willing to compromise on it. They tend to state they can't help you and in extreme cases, they just terminate your support contract early. Alternatively, if the software was bought as a product, they offer your money back and request you return the product since it didn't meet your requirements.
I very much suspect your point of view stems from the rudeness of responses. Try to apply similar circumstances as above to open source:
Telling people you're giving back their $0 generally comes off as rude.
Telling people you can't accept their push because it's lacks all the proper unit tests, breaks on other bits and pieces, comes off as rude.
Telling people that you do this as a hobby and their concerns aren't really something you even want to help with on your own free time, comes off as rude.
Telling people they have the source and can fork their own version of the software to fix it themselves comes off as rude.
When something is taken as rude, I suspect this this leads to people thinking they're entitled to something and I get the impression this is where your point of view may stem from.
End users want software... that works... they don't care about source code.
You're really pretentious and full of assumptions. I'm an end user (that also happens to do some programming every now and then) and I care about source code in certain circumstances.
Well, why did you release it to people you don't know or care about?
Why does it matter if someone he doesn't know or cares about has access to some sourcecode he wrote?
Keep it on your local machine if you have no intention of helping others.
Opensource lets you help yourself in the worst case scenario. I'd say that's a lot of help in it self.
Or at least have the decency to state that you won't support your software on the download page so people won't bother downloading it in the first place.
Why assume someone will support software when they didn't write "I am going to support this software" on their webpage? I think that's indecent.
You wrote it, so you understand it the most, and therefore you're responsible for any changes.
I don't see the responsibility here, at all.
Are you implying you are not responsible for the bugs you put into the software, intentional or not?
If you bothered reading the licensing of software you used, they usually have sections like:
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
In summary, yes, the license you were granted to use most software generally offers no warranty and in turn, no responsibility.
It's been suggested that if manufacturers are forced to remove encryption from their devices they should simply leave the UK market.
All that will do is make Chinese brands stronger (they'll evolve due to investment and needs) and become competition for existing handset makers.
Voters are pretty apathetic but take away their iPhones and there will be a revolution.
There is a difference between taking away and preventing new sales. Pretty certain a mostly viable replacement would be ready through Chinese makers soon after.
Your nation's made itself a prime target for hostile invasion. You have a completely unarmed populace.
So what you're saying is, my firearm's license doesn't exist and the weapons I have at home don't exist?
Think your enemies don't think thus?
The only 'enemies' I am particularly concerned about are certain nationalists that would have us secede from the union through the use of certain methods that guns can't help with.
You get outta line, do you really think those 'rulers' won't come out with guns to take you out?
Considering how soft touch enforcement is around here when it comes to using projectile weapons, I'm not really seeing a vicious problem you're implying. The only people I really see out of line in the UK tend to be murderers and such (arrested without needing to carry a projectile weapon too), not a guy driving away in a car.
You're long past being "iron men in wooden ships" and more like tinfoil men in balsa wood toy boats.
Wow, you have some wild imagination as to what people think. Most people (sadly) in the UK are thinking about what's in HEAT or the dailymail has to say for gossip, I doubt anyone is thinking this rubbish you're coming up with.
networked Windows box with the fefault CIFS client for printing and drive access enabled publishes the entire hard disk as the hidden crive \\ipaddress\c$, *always*, it's a nightmare to turn off.
On my network, the active directory sets the following registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\AutoShareWks to 0. It's not really a nightmare to turn off, fairly trivial? If I can do it trivially at home, surely you can do it in your corporation.
Filling in the USB slots with hot glue tends to really, rally piss off most laptop users, and many portable phones demand drivers to actually *enable* USB recharging. It's really, really hard to win without compiling your own personally tweaked kernels to entirely disable these features.
You could use one of the numerous end point security solutions out there for windows? I've found Lumension to be quite difficult to bypass, even when you have administrative rights to a system.
It's "Great Britain" and you're right, because as a whole, it's the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", commonly known as the "United Kingdom" or "Britain".
If you don't like the employment laws then don't employ people
You should see the amount of jobs I've replaced with automation scripts and software. It's amazing how few staff you could really go without if you do it right.
In the UK there is still a fairly large amount of 415VAC three phase above ground serving older properties.
I don't think I've ever seen any in the UK.
All street cabling in the UK is 400V 3-phase. Each house is normally fed a single phase tap and neutral (rolling taps down the street).
I'm just having a problem of belief because.. Well, It''s not like I haven't been through all the major cities in the UK and don't travel through a lot of them on a regular basis. Could you show me these above ground power cables that go into houses from the street on Google Streetview? I probably just dont recognise it.
The "up to" is true, but you still have a lower limit where it's not acceptable anymore, a wider span for DSL than fiber though. Generally a quarter of advertized capacity is the "up to" so if you have a 100/100 you should never be below 75.
In the UK, our ISPs tend to say "up to" and then "minimum guaranteed", sample (I actually got above the up-to estimate, 80Mbps), so I guess I'm in some ISP lied to me statistics?
* There's various settings that help I know of (for MS Windows) & DDoS Appliances (IF you have the bandwidth) OR "DDoS-Proof" setups like both Amazon & MS have -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... that can help too...
The 'DDoS-Proof' setups that Amazon and Microsoft use tend to rely heavily on anycast and using intelligent webbased end points, they have routers that sit in front that only pass web traffic to those end points, pings to another system and drop other packets. To my knowledge, they don't make use of DDoS appliances for their own provided services (maybe for customers on AWS and Azure, but that's another story).
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike other countries, the UK has a cabinet system that replaces the need to build exchanges everywhere like other countries, this makes the cost substantially cheaper. On top of that, a lot of these cabinets already exist from pre-existing technology that required them on BT's network. Dark fibre was laid out throughout most of the UK already a few decades ago providing much of the infrastructure needed for bandwidth requirements for access to all these cabinets. What generally happens these days is an extra cabinet is placed next to the pre-existing one and patched into the other cabinet with all the new equipment. High speed broadband is provided through technologies like VDSL and VDSL2 which can use the existing copper cables to the house to provide fibre speeds. BT Openreach (a subsidiary of BT that rents out their lines to other providers - Practically everyone goes over BT lines) is trialing a Fiber to the Premises currently and intends to offer it to all that have existing VDSL/VDSL2 connectivity at the setup price of laying down a new cable to the house.
In summary, it's actually feasible in the UK at not such a great cost.
You can get some further information off this training video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think it's unrealistic in Australia too.
Currently, most Internet in the UK is provided via BT Openreach's lines, exchanges and cabinets with the exception of Virgin Media (which does provide some services over BT Openreach still). I think the idea behind Cameron's statement is that BT Openreach should sufficiently penetrate the entire country sufficiently with fast broadband. Making it possible for you to have fast broadband if you want (from practically any provider you want).
The government is generally responsible for ensuring infrastructure exists in a country, such as road, electric supply etc. This isn't really a new concept.
First sentence of the article:
The PM is to introduce a "universal service obligation" for broadband, giving the public a legal right to request an "affordable" connection.
If you read the article further, it even states:
"Access to the internet shouldn't be a luxury, it should be a right - absolutely fundamental to life in 21st Century Britain," he said.
Did you even read the article?
There is nothing with wanting that software, but it's another thing to apply those values to someone else who has other priorities.
I wouldn't fall into this category, but it happens most modifications I do these days to opensource products is for personal interests that I rarely contribute back. Kind of similar to RMS' printer driver issue.
Yeah, I am sure there are a lot of shit OSS evangelists out there.
I'm on the fence on the issue, but mostly because I haven't learned sufficiently enough about it to have a decent opinion.
I could give an example of my own I guess. Such as the reason I published some random little things (like an XML parser I wrote in m68k assembler for a hobby project), if it's useful to someone, great. If not, sorry but it meets my needs currently and I don't have an interest in it outside of my scope. I might offer a little help here and there if my life isn't busy and I have the drive after doing all the other stuff I have to do at the end of the day, but it's not assured.
In my consultancy life, working with large multi-national companies, 'support' (despite paid for) was often (not always), next to non-existent if it wasn't a user/developer-error issue and the only thing they could do was 'waive' various fees. In my personal life, I have had problems with certain audio hardware and software, they just up-front told me that they don't support it and offered a refund. I've also fought with a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (Giff gaff), who would refuse to support me in practically any circumstance (despite having a very specific technical issue) and refer me to their community forums for support despite being willing to pay for support etc.
In summary, no, I don't agree with your assumption here.
I'm not lazy, the average hours I worked last year (and I know this because of my time sheets) was 112 hours per week (and I only really posted or went on sites like Slashdot when I was travelling). The very few days I took for Holidays are included in that calculation too. I actually stopped contributing to some projects at that point (with some angry users, they were unwilling to accept that I wasn't willing to work further on the project unless I was getting a sufficient salary to quit my existing job to do so - fortunately, there were a lot of understanding users too).
The fun fact behind this though, I was working crazy hours particularly because we weren't getting the support (struggled to find even contractors of a reasonable calibre to help me too) and had deadlines to meet.
Considering most of the industry expects you to pay in some form for support (most of which in my experience is insufficient when a 'real' problem is encountered). Then, going further into my consultancy experience, where I've had a one line change and they would charge you ridiculous money (we're talking over 1000USD
Feel free to post a correction then.
Actually, I believe what I have written. I should note that I was genuinely interested in your reasoning behind why does it matter if someone he doesn't know or cares about has access to some sourcecode he wrote in response to your 'putting it out there'. If he doesn't care about those particular individuals and doesn't care whether they got it or not, I'm not seeing an actual argument here.
To even help you get a perspective, perhaps this person posted the sourcecode because he wanted to have other programming contributors, contribute more to the application and is not particularly interested in giving handouts of his precious free time when he already works a full time job during the day.
I'm an armchair lawyer at best. But I get the distinct impression you have some sort of 'higher' moral grounds that are strictly from one point of view that doesn't encompass the entire situation. From my perspective, it's interesting how playing a little of devil's advocate on some of your statements is likely being interpreted by you as 'evil'.
As someone that has worked in consultancies, I also have experience with what some companies (I certainly haven't worked for all) do with clients that very problematic usually and are asking for a higher level of support than they're willing to do and not willing to compromise on it. They tend to state they can't help you and in extreme cases, they just terminate your support contract early. Alternatively, if the software was bought as a product, they offer your money back and request you return the product since it didn't meet your requirements.
I very much suspect your point of view stems from the rudeness of responses. Try to apply similar circumstances as above to open source:
When something is taken as rude, I suspect this this leads to people thinking they're entitled to something and I get the impression this is where your point of view may stem from.
You're really pretentious and full of assumptions. I'm an end user (that also happens to do some programming every now and then) and I care about source code in certain circumstances.
Why does it matter if someone he doesn't know or cares about has access to some sourcecode he wrote?
Opensource lets you help yourself in the worst case scenario. I'd say that's a lot of help in it self.
Why assume someone will support software when they didn't write "I am going to support this software" on their webpage? I think that's indecent.
I don't see the responsibility here, at all.
If you bothered reading the licensing of software you used, they usually have sections like:
In summary, yes, the license you were granted to use most software generally offers no warranty and in turn, no responsibility.
It's not an Oracle issue though, it's how developers are using a 3rd party library.
All that will do is make Chinese brands stronger (they'll evolve due to investment and needs) and become competition for existing handset makers.
There is a difference between taking away and preventing new sales. Pretty certain a mostly viable replacement would be ready through Chinese makers soon after.
So what you're saying is, my firearm's license doesn't exist and the weapons I have at home don't exist?
The only 'enemies' I am particularly concerned about are certain nationalists that would have us secede from the union through the use of certain methods that guns can't help with.
Considering how soft touch enforcement is around here when it comes to using projectile weapons, I'm not really seeing a vicious problem you're implying. The only people I really see out of line in the UK tend to be murderers and such (arrested without needing to carry a projectile weapon too), not a guy driving away in a car.
Wow, you have some wild imagination as to what people think. Most people (sadly) in the UK are thinking about what's in HEAT or the dailymail has to say for gossip, I doubt anyone is thinking this rubbish you're coming up with.
They are enabled by default with Windows file sharing and fairly trivial to turn off through a registry entry.
On my network, the active directory sets the following registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\AutoShareWks to 0. It's not really a nightmare to turn off, fairly trivial? If I can do it trivially at home, surely you can do it in your corporation.
You could use one of the numerous end point security solutions out there for windows? I've found Lumension to be quite difficult to bypass, even when you have administrative rights to a system.
I can confirm that Gentoo is still for ricers.
It's "Great Britain" and you're right, because as a whole, it's the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", commonly known as the "United Kingdom" or "Britain".
Let me introduce you to VPNs.
You should see the amount of jobs I've replaced with automation scripts and software. It's amazing how few staff you could really go without if you do it right.
I'm just having a problem of belief because.. Well, It''s not like I haven't been through all the major cities in the UK and don't travel through a lot of them on a regular basis. Could you show me these above ground power cables that go into houses from the street on Google Streetview? I probably just dont recognise it.
I admit, I did not understand what you had written initially properly.
In the UK, our ISPs tend to say "up to" and then "minimum guaranteed", sample (I actually got above the up-to estimate, 80Mbps), so I guess I'm in some ISP lied to me statistics?
While that's how it was advertised, it is unfortunately more than that.
The 'DDoS-Proof' setups that Amazon and Microsoft use tend to rely heavily on anycast and using intelligent webbased end points, they have routers that sit in front that only pass web traffic to those end points, pings to another system and drop other packets. To my knowledge, they don't make use of DDoS appliances for their own provided services (maybe for customers on AWS and Azure, but that's another story).
HP load runner, HP quality center, HP application life management.... etc. They're all doing pretty well.
They're not 'over ground', they're under the roads, like everywhere else I've known in the UK. They even state it's in the roads in the video.
I don't think I've ever seen any in the UK.
I'm not actually aware of any country in the EU that has power lines supplied through over ground cables.
I've done RDP tunneling just fine with Cygwin's OpenSSH:
ssh windows-server -L 13389:127.0.0.1:3389
Doesn't Windows Telnet support NTLMv2 encryption and authentication?