Why should the ISPs enter into talks when they've already won in court?
You can win as many times as you like in court, if the legislature doesn't like the verdicts being given in court they'll pass laws to change future verdicts.
This is why we have a strong civil service (watch "Yes Minister" if you have never seen it, very funny) and the House of Lords as a safety net.
I have just finished watching all three series of "Yes, Minister" and I've finished the first series of "Yes, Prime Minister".
I would point out that the "strong civil service" was usually portrayed as wanting to increase their own empires (and, with it, power). I don't know how much of it came from truth, but legend has it that Margaret Thatcher considered it compulsory viewing for junior ministers and there was a surprising amount of research going on behind the scenes.
Most of the proposals Labour has put forward over the years also dramatically increase their own power, generally with powers which are so far open to abuse it's amazing that anyone was stupid enough to propose them in the first place. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is the most obvious one that springs to mind - it's already been abused quite a bit - but there are plenty more laws on the books which are open to serious abuse. The Proceeds of Crime Act is another: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6892915.ece
Watch the whole video. Some of the laptops in those videos would have been considered obsolete when Noah was deciding what laptop to take onto the Ark.
Not strictly true. In order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: the UK, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way there could never be a war. Unfortunately, there was one tiny flaw in the plan.
Go to your local farmer's market and roadside stands. Grow your own garden. Push back on food globalism
Depending on the area you're in, this can actually work better. At my local farmers market, the farmers frequently sell their more unusual produce to me at the same (or very nearly the same) price they sell to the supermarkets - who obviously add their own markup on top. It's not a cheap way to buy basic fruit & veg though.
From what I've seen small companies are the way to go, big companies get infected with 'career manager' types.
This x100. A certain company that shall remain nameless started relatively small but had a branch office which kept on getting infested with "career manager" types.
I swear they breed like cockroaches. Took on one or two people who it turned out were career manager types whose sole purpose, it seemed, was empire building. Before long, they'd grown to 80 staff. (Well and good, but at the time there wasn't a saleable product, and a large number of those people had nothing to do with putting together a saleable product). They sent someone senior over there, sacked about 30 people straight away... and 6-12months later back up to 80 staff and still no saleable product. Sack another group of 30.... 18 months later, 120 staff, a warehouse (for a product which wasn't in mass production), a shipping team (for a product which, again, wasn't in mass production). And still no saleable product.
You ever heard of demolishing a building because it's just become so infested with vermin that no pest controller can deal with it? First time in history I've heard of an office getting shut down because of an infestation of managers.
He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Legally, he would have been "Mr. Lord David Sutch".
No it will mean even residential user will be forcwed to log everything in their system, and if they do not they will be found breaking the "private logging law" (soon to come). Seeing the power trip the UK is on, you have to be +5 insane or +5 funny to think otherwise.
My fear is you may be correct. I can easily see a future where cable modems and firewalls are forced to ship with extensive logging which cannot be tampered with by the end user (probably logging to a syslog server at the ISP).
I just hope Labour don't win the upcoming election. Not that I think the Tories are much better right now, but with any luck they'll find they have bigger things to worry about.
It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.
I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.
Most of the hereditary lords lost their seats years ago when Labour first came to power. So they're not the nobles they once were.
However - and this is the important bit - they are not elected by the voting public. Seats are (generally speaking) for life.
This is completely counter-intuitive and flies in the face of democracy. I guarantee there will be at least one person who will reply saying "What a ridiculous system" or words to that effect. But the thing is, it works quite well. IIRC the Lords can't introduce legislation themselves but they can discuss and block legislation that's coming through - and because their seat is for life, they don't need to worry too much about pandering to either a panicked electorate or to commercial interests who are going to be funding their next election campaign.
In fact, it works rather too well in some cases. Our Glorious Former Leader, Blair, very nearly discovered this to his cost with a few of his anti-terror bills. They only got through because of the use of "emergency" legislation which essentially allowed him to bypass the House of Lords.
What makes you think they don't? You've heard of WSUS, right?
Indeed I have, which is why I can't for the life of me figure out why Microsoft only releasing patches once a month is such a benefit.
The only reason I can think of is that the great majority of businesses by a long way in the UK (and I believe the US) aren't huge businesses. They're the small businesses which employ 5, 10, maybe 20 people. (Yes I know this may be hard to swallow at first. I had a lot of trouble getting my own head around it but I've looked into it in some detail - it's true)
Such businesses are going to have - at most - one server running SBS and possibly some sort of agreement with a local chap to provide support and they're certainly not going to run WSUS.
I know they datamine to improve their ad targeting, and record every single thing you do... but that's for internal use, to improve the value of their services.
This sounds more like improving the value of Microsoft's shares.
Care to explain how Google improving the value of their services cannot improve the value of their shares?
Facebook is full of data mining for the adverts. When my status was "Engaged", I was inundated in adverts for companies that organise stag weekends, suit hire and photographers.
Now my status is "Married", most of the adverts I see are for dating websites.
Has yet to decide whether to repair it? Hmmm... Ok, they're trying to decide when to. How about doing what every other browser company does and give us the patch NOW?
Some of us are old enough to remember before Microsoft implemented Patch Tuesday. The official reason was simple - companies were sick to death of having new patches to test, deploy and roll out several times a week.
Myself, I take the view that if a company large enough to test, deploy and rollout patches on a managed basis can't institute their own timetable rather than rely on that provided by a third party they have huge problems. But what do I know?
Well, if any of those cookies are being used by supposedly secure sites to remember somebody's login so they can conveniently purchase in future, you may well know enough to log into their account on those shopping sites and get their real name, address and purchasing history. From this point, it's not a particularly large step to large-scale identity theft.
Exactly. This is a thing OSS developers usually miss. They develop primarily for home users or single users and have no idea how it works in work place, while MS understands a need for enterprise solutions.
"Understands" is a bit of a strong word. While Group Policies solve a lot of problems, PowerShell should have been developed about ten years earlier.
No, seriously, all the best to those making a grand attempt to remove something from the internet without just causing it to be spread around even more. I imagine you'll have many fun years of failure.
Actually, for all practical purposes they can do exactly this. It transpires that for all practical purposes we have a Great Firewall of Britain - and very few people were aware it even existed until recently:
How it's implemented depends on your ISP. One or two put up an error page saying "Sorry, you can't look at this" - but most simply block the TCP connection in the first place so it appears to a casual observer like the site in question is down.
So long as the RIAA-members have legally obtained their copyrights, they are well within their legal rights. If you don't like the way the copyright laws currently exist
To be fair, I think there are a number of issues at stake here:
How fairly were those rights obtained? We live in a much more complicated society today than in the mid 18th century, and the extent to which a small number of organisations have systematically set themselves up to screw the very people upon whose output they depend and yet continue to get away with it was probably never dreamed of. If there was real competition, a record label could openly embrace a "Do no evil" policy and promptly swallow up the rights to every new, interesting artist for years to come. As it stands, the only record labels to have such policies are by and large minute - and certainly won't be getting anyone to number 1 soon.
Is the purpose of copyrights to encourage the arts or to encourage idleness? If the former, why is it necessary for them to continue for decades after the artist dies? There's a whole industry dedicated to providing for your loved ones if you die suddenly - it's called life insurance. Did that industry not exist back then? (Serious question, it may not have done)
Hardware usually costs more than software - you're only going to have limited processing power on such a dongle so the likelihood of having to drop out of the nice productive API to program it is pretty high. Even higher if each dongle has to be essentially re-programmed from scratch for every game (rather than just putting a public key on it).
The only benefit is that it improves resale value.
"The security measures used to restrict the unauthorized use of this software may cause your computer to experience partial or total loss of functionality, and may conflict with other software or hardware you may have installed on this machine"
In many countries, such a disclaimer would not absolve them of responsibility if they did hose your box. With the added bonus that the disclaimer would basically amount to written confirmation that this could happen.
True story: Back when I was at school, there was one kid (obviously been held back a year or two) who tried to intimidate everyone new. You know the form: stand about 6 inches away from your face, take a very aggressive tone just because you had the bad manners to be in the same room as him.
The previous school I had been at, I'd had it about ten times worse. So I just stood my ground and said "Or what?". (In truth, I was pretty nervous, but I tried not to show that)
He didn't have a clue what to do. He actually shrank back! Never did get any serious hassle from him.
Of course, there's a risk. There's a risk that he'd have beaten the shit out of me instead - something which he would easily have been capable of. But IME few who go for hassling verbally go in for hitting - and those who do go in for hitting don't generally bother with long elaborate warnings.
Why do these dinosaur publishing businesses still manage to thrive despite the Internet?
Because nobody has yet invented the book equivalent of "a ubiquitous drive which will read the raw data at high speed with 100% accuracy (or as near as makes no difference) without damaging the storage medium".
Slashdot Mirror
A man without a woman is like a statue without pigeons.
Do you mean "He doesn't wind up with shit all over him"? You go out with some weird women.
I called up my local Apple store with exactly this question. They said "Come in and buy a retail copy of 10.6, we'll burn you a disc with 10.5 on".
YMMV.
Why should the ISPs enter into talks when they've already won in court?
You can win as many times as you like in court, if the legislature doesn't like the verdicts being given in court they'll pass laws to change future verdicts.
This is why we have a strong civil service (watch "Yes Minister" if you have never seen it, very funny) and the House of Lords as a safety net.
I have just finished watching all three series of "Yes, Minister" and I've finished the first series of "Yes, Prime Minister".
I would point out that the "strong civil service" was usually portrayed as wanting to increase their own empires (and, with it, power). I don't know how much of it came from truth, but legend has it that Margaret Thatcher considered it compulsory viewing for junior ministers and there was a surprising amount of research going on behind the scenes.
Most of the proposals Labour has put forward over the years also dramatically increase their own power, generally with powers which are so far open to abuse it's amazing that anyone was stupid enough to propose them in the first place. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is the most obvious one that springs to mind - it's already been abused quite a bit - but there are plenty more laws on the books which are open to serious abuse. The Proceeds of Crime Act is another: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6892915.ece
Watch the whole video. Some of the laptops in those videos would have been considered obsolete when Noah was deciding what laptop to take onto the Ark.
Not strictly true. In order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: the UK, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way there could never be a war. Unfortunately, there was one tiny flaw in the plan.
It was bollocks.
(With apologies to Richard Curtis and Ben Elton)
Go to your local farmer's market and roadside stands. Grow your own garden. Push back on food globalism
Depending on the area you're in, this can actually work better. At my local farmers market, the farmers frequently sell their more unusual produce to me at the same (or very nearly the same) price they sell to the supermarkets - who obviously add their own markup on top. It's not a cheap way to buy basic fruit & veg though.
From what I've seen small companies are the way to go, big companies get infected with 'career manager' types.
This x100. A certain company that shall remain nameless started relatively small but had a branch office which kept on getting infested with "career manager" types.
I swear they breed like cockroaches. Took on one or two people who it turned out were career manager types whose sole purpose, it seemed, was empire building. Before long, they'd grown to 80 staff. (Well and good, but at the time there wasn't a saleable product, and a large number of those people had nothing to do with putting together a saleable product). They sent someone senior over there, sacked about 30 people straight away... and 6-12months later back up to 80 staff and still no saleable product. Sack another group of 30.... 18 months later, 120 staff, a warehouse (for a product which wasn't in mass production), a shipping team (for a product which, again, wasn't in mass production). And still no saleable product.
You ever heard of demolishing a building because it's just become so infested with vermin that no pest controller can deal with it? First time in history I've heard of an office getting shut down because of an infestation of managers.
Ok, where does Lord Sutch fit into the picture?
He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Legally, he would have been "Mr. Lord David Sutch".
No it will mean even residential user will be forcwed to log everything in their system, and if they do not they will be found breaking the "private logging law" (soon to come). Seeing the power trip the UK is on, you have to be +5 insane or +5 funny to think otherwise.
My fear is you may be correct. I can easily see a future where cable modems and firewalls are forced to ship with extensive logging which cannot be tampered with by the end user (probably logging to a syslog server at the ISP).
I just hope Labour don't win the upcoming election. Not that I think the Tories are much better right now, but with any luck they'll find they have bigger things to worry about.
It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.
I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.
Most of the hereditary lords lost their seats years ago when Labour first came to power. So they're not the nobles they once were.
However - and this is the important bit - they are not elected by the voting public. Seats are (generally speaking) for life.
This is completely counter-intuitive and flies in the face of democracy. I guarantee there will be at least one person who will reply saying "What a ridiculous system" or words to that effect. But the thing is, it works quite well. IIRC the Lords can't introduce legislation themselves but they can discuss and block legislation that's coming through - and because their seat is for life, they don't need to worry too much about pandering to either a panicked electorate or to commercial interests who are going to be funding their next election campaign.
In fact, it works rather too well in some cases. Our Glorious Former Leader, Blair, very nearly discovered this to his cost with a few of his anti-terror bills. They only got through because of the use of "emergency" legislation which essentially allowed him to bypass the House of Lords.
What makes you think they don't? You've heard of WSUS, right?
Indeed I have, which is why I can't for the life of me figure out why Microsoft only releasing patches once a month is such a benefit.
The only reason I can think of is that the great majority of businesses by a long way in the UK (and I believe the US) aren't huge businesses. They're the small businesses which employ 5, 10, maybe 20 people. (Yes I know this may be hard to swallow at first. I had a lot of trouble getting my own head around it but I've looked into it in some detail - it's true)
Such businesses are going to have - at most - one server running SBS and possibly some sort of agreement with a local chap to provide support and they're certainly not going to run WSUS.
Google sells to the highest bidder?
I know they datamine to improve their ad targeting, and record every single thing you do... but that's for internal use, to improve the value of their services.
This sounds more like improving the value of Microsoft's shares.
Care to explain how Google improving the value of their services cannot improve the value of their shares?
Facebook is full of data mining for the adverts. When my status was "Engaged", I was inundated in adverts for companies that organise stag weekends, suit hire and photographers.
Now my status is "Married", most of the adverts I see are for dating websites.
Has yet to decide whether to repair it? Hmmm... Ok, they're trying to decide when to. How about doing what every other browser company does and give us the patch NOW?
Some of us are old enough to remember before Microsoft implemented Patch Tuesday. The official reason was simple - companies were sick to death of having new patches to test, deploy and roll out several times a week.
Myself, I take the view that if a company large enough to test, deploy and rollout patches on a managed basis can't institute their own timetable rather than rely on that provided by a third party they have huge problems. But what do I know?
Well, if any of those cookies are being used by supposedly secure sites to remember somebody's login so they can conveniently purchase in future, you may well know enough to log into their account on those shopping sites and get their real name, address and purchasing history. From this point, it's not a particularly large step to large-scale identity theft.
Exactly. This is a thing OSS developers usually miss. They develop primarily for home users or single users and have no idea how it works in work place, while MS understands a need for enterprise solutions.
"Understands" is a bit of a strong word. While Group Policies solve a lot of problems, PowerShell should have been developed about ten years earlier.
Oh; and I really worry about decisions made before active MRI and other techniques came about, I think some horrible things have happened.
There's no "think" about it, it's a dead cert:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/buried.asp
Good luck with that.
No, seriously, all the best to those making a grand attempt to remove something from the internet without just causing it to be spread around even more. I imagine you'll have many fun years of failure.
Actually, for all practical purposes they can do exactly this. It transpires that for all practical purposes we have a Great Firewall of Britain - and very few people were aware it even existed until recently:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/07/brit_isps_censor_wikipedia/
How it's implemented depends on your ISP. One or two put up an error page saying "Sorry, you can't look at this" - but most simply block the TCP connection in the first place so it appears to a casual observer like the site in question is down.
So long as the RIAA-members have legally obtained their copyrights, they are well within their legal rights. If you don't like the way the copyright laws currently exist
To be fair, I think there are a number of issues at stake here:
Hardware usually costs more than software - you're only going to have limited processing power on such a dongle so the likelihood of having to drop out of the nice productive API to program it is pretty high. Even higher if each dongle has to be essentially re-programmed from scratch for every game (rather than just putting a public key on it).
The only benefit is that it improves resale value.
How does that benefit the publisher?
"The security measures used to restrict the unauthorized use of this software may cause your computer to experience partial or total loss of functionality, and may conflict with other software or hardware you may have installed on this machine"
In many countries, such a disclaimer would not absolve them of responsibility if they did hose your box. With the added bonus that the disclaimer would basically amount to written confirmation that this could happen.
I wouldn't bother. It turns out that it's less expensive than a diamond, so women won't be as happy with it.
Give DeBeers a few years and then see.
True story: Back when I was at school, there was one kid (obviously been held back a year or two) who tried to intimidate everyone new. You know the form: stand about 6 inches away from your face, take a very aggressive tone just because you had the bad manners to be in the same room as him.
The previous school I had been at, I'd had it about ten times worse. So I just stood my ground and said "Or what?". (In truth, I was pretty nervous, but I tried not to show that)
He didn't have a clue what to do. He actually shrank back! Never did get any serious hassle from him.
Of course, there's a risk. There's a risk that he'd have beaten the shit out of me instead - something which he would easily have been capable of. But IME few who go for hassling verbally go in for hitting - and those who do go in for hitting don't generally bother with long elaborate warnings.
Why do these dinosaur publishing businesses still manage to thrive despite the Internet?
Because nobody has yet invented the book equivalent of "a ubiquitous drive which will read the raw data at high speed with 100% accuracy (or as near as makes no difference) without damaging the storage medium".