1. You assume every TV channel operates a website with a reasonably sensible, parseable TV listings page. 2. You assume that the number of channels you'd have to maintain awk scripts for is relatively small. Once it gets beyond a certain size, you'll spend longer maintaining the awk scripts to account for every change than you will watching the TV.
That may be the case in some countries, but here in the UK (and I suspect the US, probably to a greater extent), TV is becoming very fragmented with so many different channels which tend to have only a couple of good shows each so you'd have a lot of work to do.
What would happen eventually is various ifs, buts and maybes would have to be added to the system. There are thousands of corner cases in real life which it's really very hard to nail down.
So if you found yourself in court, you'd probably want to find someone who had experience with this kind of thing to advise you. Sooner or later a group of these people would get together, maybe form a professional body and set up exams necessary to become a member - and you'd be back where you are today.
The problem is that the media doesn't understand ANY of this and that the categories aren't all mutually exclusive. This is a trojan & backdoor that spreads via dumb users executing attachments they shouldn't.
If a company sells a hairdryer which, under some circumstances, will explode without warning as an intended part of the design, is the user dumb for buying it or is the manufacturer dumb for selling it? What if there's only one company which makes 90% of the worlds hairdryers?
Perhaps allowing executables to go through email was a bad idea in the first place...
If I am worried that the police may come in when I am absent, then rewire the home alarm system to the thermite fuse. Nothing really hard. If someone gets to the room the alarms goes off, and instead of the siren going off, it ignites the fuse initiating the thermite reaction... melting it down, while the feds are still searching in the house for people and the computer.
That will get really annoying the first time you have a false alarm.
Typical software that runs typical computers is now a commodity, downloadable for free over the Internet, and modifiable by all comers. The business world must adapt to this change, and re-define the software industry in terms of it, while finding a way to maintain their revenue streams.
The OS and a few applications may be a commodity, however a lot of applications certainly aren't. Accounting and payroll are the first most obvious that spring to mind, though there are many others.
That being said, very large chunks of the IT business have been making money either with non-typical software or consulting to tweak typical software to non-typical needs since the dawn of the industry itself.
All joking aside: how many other music/video players are there on the market with 160GB hard drives, 40 hours battery life (audio), 7 hours battery life (video), 13.5mm thick and weigh less than 170g at ANY price point?
I'm happy to go with whatever product I think is best for a purpose, but TBH I think that Apple deserves the strong position they're in because their product is actually pretty damn good.
Actually, you don't. The GP is correct, but only as far as relatively ancient history goes.
The RM Nimbus was an overpriced PC clone which sold because it was accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!" (and RM still exist today, selling overpriced PC clones accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!". You'd be amazed how effective such a business plan is in the UK).
The BBC computer was commissioned by the BBC to go with a series they were making about computers. It wasn't PC compatible, mainly because the PC didn't exist at the time. The time was 1981. It was produced by a then little-known Cambridge company called Acorn, who went on to develop the ARM processor and a number of computers based on it called the Archimedes (later versions dropped the "Archimedes" moniker in favour of model numbers of the form Axxxx). Both the BBC computer and the Archimedes were very popular in UK schools - but Acorn went out of business in the late 1990's as UK schools started to look more closely at the PC.
Since then, UK schools have been more or less universally migrating in the direction of the PC. Microsoft's school contracts have something to do with this - they offer a substantial discount even compared to volume licensing prices but according to the license you're supposed to include EVERY x86 compatible system you have in the license, not just those which run Windows.
What's happened in the last 10 years is that schools no longer consider computers to be strange objects which you teach the children because you feel you should, not because you actually want to. They're now fairly universal, and it's not unusual to find all sorts of technology such as digital whiteboards, projectors and such in many classrooms. As an observer, I'd say they're throwing technology at schools in order to try and improve teaching standards - yet I have yet to speak to a teacher who thinks you can turn a bad teacher into a good one with technology.
There's only one way I can make sense of this entire debacle: there was never any real intention to make it cross platform.
Let's see:
1. The "requirement" that it be cross-platform is 2 years, replaced with a 6-monthly audit. Come on, this is a media player FFS. And it's not as if it will have to play 101 different types of media. The problem is reasonably well understood - using cross platform libraries a rough beta could probably be thrashed out inside 2-3 months.
2. The initial beta on the BBCs website was lashed together with VB. How platform-specific can you get exactly?
3. Linux doesn't offer anything like the options to make moderately effective DRM easier to write than Windows. IIRC, Windows can block userland applications from reading the video directly from video memory, can make it hard for applications to debug each other and various other tricks which simply don't exist in Linux (and even if they did, could easily be worked around).
Yet the BBC seldom holds every single right to every single program it produces - that's why they have to implement DRM in the first place. They're certainly not stupid enough to imagine that a half-arsed attempt at DRM on a platform which is actively hostile to DRM would stand up in court if it came to that.
Bet you anything you like they spend the rest of time saying at every 6 monthly audit "Well, we've got a system more or less together on Linux but unfortunately Linux is still open source so it's trivially easy for someone to see what is happening in the various OS calls we make and work around it."
They VOLUNTARILY subjected themselves to federal jurisdiction, and after that the normal procedural rules apply. Specifically, the rules regarding default judgements when a party is non-responsive.
Yes, but my argument is "if they have no business within the US, no intention of visiting, and there is no US/UK agreement whereby civil cases brought in the US may be followed up in the UK, who or what is going to stop them voluntarily un-subjecting themselves to federal jurisdiction?"
And one can't make an argument that jurisdiction doesn't apply after a ruling goes against you.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that where you're named as the defendant in a civil case taking place in another country, you can pretty much decide to do what you like with the judgement, including wipe your bottom with it.
Problems only start if you wish to travel to that country at a later date.
If enough people bought these "generic drugs" and didnt actually get them, they might care enough to complain to the supplier.
This is only a wild guess, but I'd imagine someone that's too embarrassed to ask their doctor for viagra is hardly going to write a letter of complaint to (or, indeed, telephone) a total stranger and say "Dear Sir, I can't get it up".
Sue the damn pharmaceutical companies for allowing their advertisers to break laws.
Seeing as Viagra is still very much under patent protection, I think it's safe to say that any "generic" alternative on general sale in the Western world is likely not an alternative at all, and may contain pretty much anything.
Now I think of it, I'm pretty certain rat poison (at least as sold in the UK) has a distinct blue colour. I wonder....
Germany, IIRC, still has food purity laws. You can't sell a product as "beer" unless its only ingredients are water, yeast, hops, malt and barley. Sausages must be 100% meat from a named part of the animal (and the animal should not have been named "Fido").
Spam, I suspect, would fall under the category of "cheese".
Scientology extorts the money up front, over a long period of time, before you're allowed full access to the church's teachings.
Another point to note is that (more or less uniquely among religions) scientology actively discourages members discussing the church's teachings amongst themselves.
Combine that nugget of information with the funny looks John Sweeney was getting when he interviewed celebrities about scientology (in the BBC panorama documentary) and asked them about Xenu, they honestly seemed to have no clue what he was on about. Yet several of them were at relatively advanced levels.
The conclusion I draw from that is that there are actually several versions of scientology, and the version you get fed depends entirely on how wealthy/high profile/gullible you are judged to be. That's my opinion, take it or leave it.
I'd like to believe that, but I suspect that they will market Office as "Saves to OOXML, a format which is in the process of being ratified as an ISO standard" indefinitely, in the hope that "in the process of being ratified" is enough.
Do they not understand word-of-mouth? Have they no sense at all?
Word of mouth is slow and it's hard to quantify its effectiveness. Neither of which are a good thing in an industry dedicated to getting the next big thing out fast, and wanting complete control over the market.
Laptops tend to do that kind of thing because (certainly older laptop LCDs) didn't tend to adjust their display size to account for the mode that was being sent to them.
The thing which I cannot understand is that this has been possible for years. There's been a basic VESA X driver for as long as I can remember, and I first set X up in about 1997. And I'm sure many Linux installers have been using it since the advent of graphical installers.
Why is this such amazing news now? Has Canonical only just realised that they're never going to be able to guarantee that every graphics card, including some that haven't been released, will function under Ubuntu without VESA drivers?
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Two minor problems with that:
1. You assume every TV channel operates a website with a reasonably sensible, parseable TV listings page.
2. You assume that the number of channels you'd have to maintain awk scripts for is relatively small. Once it gets beyond a certain size, you'll spend longer maintaining the awk scripts to account for every change than you will watching the TV.
That may be the case in some countries, but here in the UK (and I suspect the US, probably to a greater extent), TV is becoming very fragmented with so many different channels which tend to have only a couple of good shows each so you'd have a lot of work to do.
Nah, "Sonic Heroes" postdates Sega giving up the console business and just developing games for other people's consoles. It's on the XBox and PS2.
What would happen eventually is various ifs, buts and maybes would have to be added to the system. There are thousands of corner cases in real life which it's really very hard to nail down.
So if you found yourself in court, you'd probably want to find someone who had experience with this kind of thing to advise you. Sooner or later a group of these people would get together, maybe form a professional body and set up exams necessary to become a member - and you'd be back where you are today.
Who the fuck are you, & who the fuck is "Team Fury" ?
Wasn't that one of the teams you could play as in the game "Sonic Heroes"?
The problem is that the media doesn't understand ANY of this and that the categories aren't all mutually exclusive. This is a trojan & backdoor that spreads via dumb users executing attachments they shouldn't.
If a company sells a hairdryer which, under some circumstances, will explode without warning as an intended part of the design, is the user dumb for buying it or is the manufacturer dumb for selling it? What if there's only one company which makes 90% of the worlds hairdryers?
Perhaps allowing executables to go through email was a bad idea in the first place...
If I am worried that the police may come in when I am absent, then rewire the home alarm system to the thermite fuse. Nothing really hard. If someone gets to the room the alarms goes off, and instead of the siren going off, it ignites the fuse initiating the thermite reaction... melting it down, while the feds are still searching in the house for people and the computer.
That will get really annoying the first time you have a false alarm.
Typical software that runs typical computers is now a commodity, downloadable for free over the Internet, and modifiable by all comers. The business world must adapt to this change, and re-define the software industry in terms of it, while finding a way to maintain their revenue streams.
The OS and a few applications may be a commodity, however a lot of applications certainly aren't. Accounting and payroll are the first most obvious that spring to mind, though there are many others.
That being said, very large chunks of the IT business have been making money either with non-typical software or consulting to tweak typical software to non-typical needs since the dawn of the industry itself.
All joking aside: how many other music/video players are there on the market with 160GB hard drives, 40 hours battery life (audio), 7 hours battery life (video), 13.5mm thick and weigh less than 170g at ANY price point?
I'm happy to go with whatever product I think is best for a purpose, but TBH I think that Apple deserves the strong position they're in because their product is actually pretty damn good.
Actually, you don't. The GP is correct, but only as far as relatively ancient history goes.
The RM Nimbus was an overpriced PC clone which sold because it was accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!" (and RM still exist today, selling overpriced PC clones accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!". You'd be amazed how effective such a business plan is in the UK).
The BBC computer was commissioned by the BBC to go with a series they were making about computers. It wasn't PC compatible, mainly because the PC didn't exist at the time. The time was 1981. It was produced by a then little-known Cambridge company called Acorn, who went on to develop the ARM processor and a number of computers based on it called the Archimedes (later versions dropped the "Archimedes" moniker in favour of model numbers of the form Axxxx). Both the BBC computer and the Archimedes were very popular in UK schools - but Acorn went out of business in the late 1990's as UK schools started to look more closely at the PC.
Since then, UK schools have been more or less universally migrating in the direction of the PC. Microsoft's school contracts have something to do with this - they offer a substantial discount even compared to volume licensing prices but according to the license you're supposed to include EVERY x86 compatible system you have in the license, not just those which run Windows.
What's happened in the last 10 years is that schools no longer consider computers to be strange objects which you teach the children because you feel you should, not because you actually want to. They're now fairly universal, and it's not unusual to find all sorts of technology such as digital whiteboards, projectors and such in many classrooms. As an observer, I'd say they're throwing technology at schools in order to try and improve teaching standards - yet I have yet to speak to a teacher who thinks you can turn a bad teacher into a good one with technology.
There's only one way I can make sense of this entire debacle: there was never any real intention to make it cross platform.
Let's see:
1. The "requirement" that it be cross-platform is 2 years, replaced with a 6-monthly audit. Come on, this is a media player FFS. And it's not as if it will have to play 101 different types of media. The problem is reasonably well understood - using cross platform libraries a rough beta could probably be thrashed out inside 2-3 months.
2. The initial beta on the BBCs website was lashed together with VB. How platform-specific can you get exactly?
3. Linux doesn't offer anything like the options to make moderately effective DRM easier to write than Windows. IIRC, Windows can block userland applications from reading the video directly from video memory, can make it hard for applications to debug each other and various other tricks which simply don't exist in Linux (and even if they did, could easily be worked around).
Yet the BBC seldom holds every single right to every single program it produces - that's why they have to implement DRM in the first place. They're certainly not stupid enough to imagine that a half-arsed attempt at DRM on a platform which is actively hostile to DRM would stand up in court if it came to that.
Bet you anything you like they spend the rest of time saying at every 6 monthly audit "Well, we've got a system more or less together on Linux but unfortunately Linux is still open source so it's trivially easy for someone to see what is happening in the various OS calls we make and work around it."
Hard to take special safety measures when you're not even aware of what you're carrying.
Purely out of morbid curiosity, what special safety measures would you take when transporting nukes?
"Captain, this flight is classed as requiring level 1 safety"
"Level 1? 'Please do not crash, no, we really mean it'? Sure thing."
Why? Because although "the government" may know a lot about you, it doesn't know all of that in any one place.
That, however, can soon be arranged (initially on an individual basis) courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood branch of the FBI.
They VOLUNTARILY subjected themselves to federal jurisdiction, and after that the normal procedural rules apply. Specifically, the rules regarding default judgements when a party is non-responsive.
Yes, but my argument is "if they have no business within the US, no intention of visiting, and there is no US/UK agreement whereby civil cases brought in the US may be followed up in the UK, who or what is going to stop them voluntarily un-subjecting themselves to federal jurisdiction?"
And one can't make an argument that jurisdiction doesn't apply after a ruling goes against you.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that where you're named as the defendant in a civil case taking place in another country, you can pretty much decide to do what you like with the judgement, including wipe your bottom with it.
Problems only start if you wish to travel to that country at a later date.
If enough people bought these "generic drugs" and didnt actually get them, they might care enough to complain to the supplier.
This is only a wild guess, but I'd imagine someone that's too embarrassed to ask their doctor for viagra is hardly going to write a letter of complaint to (or, indeed, telephone) a total stranger and say "Dear Sir, I can't get it up".
Sue the damn pharmaceutical companies for allowing their advertisers to break laws.
Seeing as Viagra is still very much under patent protection, I think it's safe to say that any "generic" alternative on general sale in the Western world is likely not an alternative at all, and may contain pretty much anything.
Now I think of it, I'm pretty certain rat poison (at least as sold in the UK) has a distinct blue colour. I wonder....
Germany, IIRC, still has food purity laws. You can't sell a product as "beer" unless its only ingredients are water, yeast, hops, malt and barley. Sausages must be 100% meat from a named part of the animal (and the animal should not have been named "Fido").
Spam, I suspect, would fall under the category of "cheese".
Scientology extorts the money up front, over a long period of time, before you're allowed full access to the church's teachings.
Another point to note is that (more or less uniquely among religions) scientology actively discourages members discussing the church's teachings amongst themselves.
Combine that nugget of information with the funny looks John Sweeney was getting when he interviewed celebrities about scientology (in the BBC panorama documentary) and asked them about Xenu, they honestly seemed to have no clue what he was on about. Yet several of them were at relatively advanced levels.
The conclusion I draw from that is that there are actually several versions of scientology, and the version you get fed depends entirely on how wealthy/high profile/gullible you are judged to be. That's my opinion, take it or leave it.
If you want to watch porn go home, don't do it at your church, right?
Where's the fun in that?
And so you think every PC in Cuba and Syria is running Linux?
I'd like to believe that, but I suspect that they will market Office as "Saves to OOXML, a format which is in the process of being ratified as an ISO standard" indefinitely, in the hope that "in the process of being ratified" is enough.
If it's being reported in a proper journal, do we have a link to the journal itself rather than something from the Daily Hysteria?
The Daily Mail is famous for blowing medical reports out of all proportion - they "cure cancer" an average of 2 or 3 times a year.
Solaris isn't really being aimed at the hobbyist crowd.
Most major Linux developments these days are sponsored, and so I would expected it to be with OpenSolaris.
Do they not understand word-of-mouth? Have they no sense at all?
Word of mouth is slow and it's hard to quantify its effectiveness. Neither of which are a good thing in an industry dedicated to getting the next big thing out fast, and wanting complete control over the market.
Laptops tend to do that kind of thing because (certainly older laptop LCDs) didn't tend to adjust their display size to account for the mode that was being sent to them.
The thing which I cannot understand is that this has been possible for years. There's been a basic VESA X driver for as long as I can remember, and I first set X up in about 1997. And I'm sure many Linux installers have been using it since the advent of graphical installers.
Why is this such amazing news now? Has Canonical only just realised that they're never going to be able to guarantee that every graphics card, including some that haven't been released, will function under Ubuntu without VESA drivers?