The Carter Report is a fatally compromised blueprint for subversion that attempts to extend government control into a surprisingly vast array of areas.
1. Television. The existing licence fee is an outrage when the BBC via BBC Worldwide make heaps of money and yet refuse to make available their back catalogue for the benefit of the entire nation (well, they do but for a steep price). The report suggests we preserve the licence fee but siphon more off to commercial and quasi-commercial broadcasters?! Insane. Cut the licence fee in half, force the BBC to sell off some channels, let the broadcasters who can't afford to broadcast go out of business forthwith, open the iPlayer to ANY AND ALL who wish to broadcast through it (or just give it up to iTunes and Apple).
2. Broadband. Universal broadband is a terrific notion, but a telephone tax seems grossly unfair when there are MANY ways to extend high-ish speed internet access to the masses outside the M25. Why not refund the spectrum auction billions to wireless providers and compel them to build-out LTE so that it covers the entire nation? Is that any less insane than the current proposal?
3. Internet privacy. I well understand the government sucking up to Big Content, but surely we have learnt from Sarkosy's defeat in France that a three strikes law would be nearly impossible to enforce without some serious violations of one's privacy. But it's ok if ISP's snoop and not the government? Disgusting and typical of the Labour government that brought us nearly indefinite detention without charge, a national identity register and ID cards, etc.
Oddly enough, pricing in the UK is terrific. I don't really witter on via telephone much, but I'm really quite pleased with my unlimited data, decent 3G coverage around London, 600 minutes (remember, we don't pay to receive calls), 500 texts and scads of hotspots (admittedly located in some really rather random spots) - for £35 each month. None too shabby, really.
I did have the opportunity to use my iPhone around Charleston, South Carolina last year and found MANY locations where I couldn't get reception of any kind. Rather scary...
After today's announcement (huzzah cut and paste and Bluetooth connectivity!) I am increasingly convinced that Apple is heading toward pushing the Macintosh off to the side and allowing iPhone OS to become the driver of much of its development efforts.
A lot of the Star Trek-ish utility of the new APIs really becomes laptop-killing functionality when you run this OS on, say, a 10-inch iPad or whatever the thing will be called. The larger form factor **should** negate **some** of the small-battery-killing radio and system activity by providing more space for a larger battery. Then again, Jon Ive does like his devices thin!
And this leaves the Mac OS X... ? Secure in its role as a desktop OS that runs apps like Photoshop and drives complex devices like scanners, printers, etc (for now). But surely Apple is heading back toward the original conception of the Macintosh way back in the 80's - a ubiquitous information appliance. In this case, it's an uber-device that interacts seamlessly with location-aware, contextual user inputs and communication of any sort.
Apple is carefully repositioning our expectations of what we do with our "computers" - and Microsoft doesn't even seem to care.
Thank you, Apple, for 25 years of brilliance
on
Happy 25th, Macintosh!
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I remember the first time I tried using a Mac - in a sort of technology "cave" in the J.C. Penny's in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania back in 1985. It felt so strange, but just seemed to make sense - especially when I went back to home muck about on my TRS-80 Colour Computer.
Flash-forward a few years later and I go to university and leave my beloved dot-matrix printer behind. I joined the newspaper and became very well acquainted by this application humorously called "Quark Xpress" and the Mac SE/80. Now this little thing seemed perfect - full WYSIWYG printing, networking, and fun version of Risk to while away the hours. After a little practice, I started to do things I never thought I could do...
That continued a few years later when I started investigating using my Mac at home for simple movie editing with this new piece of software called "QuickTime". Unfortunately for me, Dad had bought a Performa 450, so no movie editing for me!
After Windows 95 was released, I dated a Windows-using girl and drifted away from the Mac.
Then everything changed in 1997 and 1998. I finally began receiving a decent pay packet, moved in with the girl and splurged on a beige Mac G3 minitower (that I sold the next year to buy the Blue and White minitower).
I started doing things that I always wanted to do, but never thought possible - programming screen savers, scanning negatives and working on my photography, using a beta of this funny app from Macromedia called "FinalCut" to edit some commercials, then getting hired at a large publishing company because I was a paid-up member of the Apple club.
More than anything else (aesthetics, politics, etc), my Macintosh PC's have always enabled me to fully express my creativity with a minimum of fuss. Windows computers just give me headaches and have for years - and always seem to be working against me.
I hope the next 25 years (and pretty much the next third of my life if I'm fortunate) will be filled with Apple-creative things that similarly enrich and enable my creativity and make life all the sweeter.
... actually USE the products Apple make. He's the ultimate consumer who serves as the customer stand-in with the company and the things it produces. I love that Jobs is the customer advocate within the Apple.
I very much admire the uncompromising standards and (occasionally maddening) personal taste he applies to whatever Apple releases.
I love the way he reduces complex technologies down to something actually useful in my everyday life. I get the sense that they start with some pretty basic product development principles and then boil the technical gobbledygook down to - is this useful (to Steve)? Eight times out of ten I find it enables me to do something wonderful in a forthright, intuitive way.
I think Ballmer's bid for Yahoo! was little more than a high stakes game of chicken at best and at worst it was tantamount to corporate terrorism.
He really does make me sick.
search algorithm... it would certainly help make the "service" an actual service! Over the years I've watched as Microsoft has released meh product after meh product. Isn't that their real problem - when the vendor lock-in wears off, they have DAMN weak products.
I have never understood the popularity of Windows with consumers (beyond the obvious monopoly power they wield with personal computer manufacturers), I find their software mostly blech (frankly, anything NOT Word and Excel is just junk) and their online products and services NEVER work as advertised. NEVER.
If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers and not... well... whatever hellish alliance of businessmen, content producers and bean counters they're currently serving.
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft decided to try to get a final regulatory pass from the Bush administration before the inauguration of a less-sympathetic President in 2009.
This deal makes a lot of sense for Microsoft (sort of - I'm assuming Yahoo!'s ad business really is worth the cash), but I can't see how this is at all good for Yahoo! or the marketplace at large.
Is the plan to re-brand everything as Microsoft Live! (keeping the exclamation mark) - thus destroying pretty much the only thing Yahoo! has going for it - brand recognition?
I would be very sad to see Yahoo! and their odd collection of services get subsumed and destroyed in a merger with Microsoft. Yes, I'm assuming much of Yahoo!'s tech portfolio would be wiped away or left to die - this wouldn't be the sort of merger Adobe engineered with Macromedia by a long shot.
I left America several years ago to live in London and one of the few things I miss was the straight to the point of dull news from the New York Times and their thought-provoking columnists. Putting a third of the paper - and the most unique elements of the paper - behind a paid wall seemed to be a one-way ticket to irrelevance. I can read wire stories for free anywhere, but the editorial and op-ed pages really do influence the American national discourse - keep them open-access for all to read, discuss (or completely dismiss and ignore).
I really don't understand the economics and consumer dynamics around the printer market these days. Surely printer technology has reached a plateau for most normal people? Is that why some corporate madman decided to adopt a blades and razors approach to the consumer printing market? I know it's been a fixture of the corporate colour copier / printer market for a long while now... but... why not just charge the correct price for the printer and the consumables?
A what the hell are people printing so damn much of that the consumables business is sooooo lucrative?
I've never been all that into generating large reams of paper at home. For my day job, I print documentation, reports, manuscripts, etc at the office and lug it home when I want a hard copy of something I'm editing online.
For my photography, I send files to a lab and have my images printed. I've considered printing at home - but I would expect archival inks and decent papers to be pricey. I really don't know why I'd want to keep a printer in a corner of my room waiting for those three or four colour 4x5's that I just HAVE to print then and there - and which can't wait for Apple / Kodak / Peak Imaging to deliver to my door in a couple of days. Surely iPhoto or Picasa is a hell of a lot simpler than fiddling with inkjet printers?
When I was writing more long-form pieces, I had a Brother laser printer. Cost me $100 at the time and I could print books without running out of toner. The cartridges weren't that cheap, but it took a nice long while before I had to change them out.
Surely it makes sense for most people just to send their photos off to be printed and to keep a cheap laser printer around for text?
As has already been mentioned, the purpose of these laws is to generate revenue for the city and keep the sidewalk / pavement clear. The article mentions that two or more people who linger in a spot more than 30 minutes are subject to the new rules.
That doesn't sound terribly onerous - I recently took hundreds of photos in New York City and never once had a problem. I toted around an old Yashicamat 124G as well as a Hexar AF. Every so often someone would strike up a conversation about that "cool old camera", but I photographed traffic cops, people in the street, quietly inside shops, throughout museums without a fuss. The cameras are both fairly low-key and quiet.
I reckon if both my girlfriend and myself had lingered outside for more than 30 minutes and I was typically snapping photographs of strangers, THEN I would be in violation - but I think she'd smack me upside the head before the 30-minute mark would pass.
Now the issue about unflattering photographs of city police - that sounds more like something that requires clarification. It should never be illegal to expose abuse of power or malfeasance. And citizen journalism has provided vivid pictures of breaking news before the big news organisations can scramble their photographers.
There are rumblings of similar laws been enacted in Britain... which always strikes me as a wicked irony when you consider the vast amount of CCTV cameras there are.
... this really isn't a joking matter.
Yes, this is the desired behaviour and the desired outcome from all involved, save the consumer/customer. I really don't understand the value of Windows MCE if all you're going to get is a strange patchwork of rights.
It works fairly well, but what a bizarre hassle. No wonder Apple doesn't over-promise and is content to sell programmes outright and leave the PVR market to third-party manufacturers and let Microsoft take the heat for releasing crippleware.
Technology should make my life easier / simpler - should work FOR me - otherwise why the devil would I ever want to use an open platform like a PC to record television? I can do the same thing with a DVD recorder and organise everything in the real world on my bookshelf.
I'd like to think that the past seven years have been all about experimentation for Apple. When they binned OS 9, they also dumped the concordant HIG - and rightfully so. How we interact with computers should - no, must - evolve as computer literacy becomes ingrained in the culture. Just as we understand moving pictures rather better than the audiences of 1904 - we understand the evolved grammar of cinema - e.g., what do close-ups mean, how point-of-view is established and played with in a scene. And surely Edwardians would have seizures from the editing in Michael Bay movies?
We understand these things, so at some point people will just 'get' that a computer stores information in hierarchical files and folders and moving pictures around have some relationship to spatial distances in the real world.
So what comes next? How will we conceive of interacting with these boxes to do our work (and what will our work be)?
I'd fault Apple not for experimenting with a multiplicity of UI ideas, but for taking so bloody long to come up with the Next Big Interface Paradigm;-) They're clearly seeing what works and what doesn't in the marketplace, but it is taking quite the long while to get to a stable milestone UI upon which to base further work and research.
George should commission someone to totally recut and / or remake The Phantom Menace. Rather than expand the universe, perfect that first film. Amid some rather pretty scenery and effect, there are soooooo many cringe-worthy performances and moments.
Think The Phantom Edit - only more radical.
And for the love of The Force, get Portman to re-loop her lines.
Or perhaps he should turn over ALL the raw footage for Revenge of the Sith so a real editor can cut that film together properly. Let's all fire up FinalCutPro and have at it!
Sorry Ben - you're a damn good sound designer and a Friend of George, but... your editing powers are WEAK old man.
If I remember rightly, Darth Vader cruelly sliced Obi-Wan in half and the Jedi Master vanished to be one with The Force? Surely Vader's lightsaber cut through the cloth of the cloak?
Rather than generate controversy through a flame war about 'why I love operating system Q', they should review their support of Macintosh and Linux systems in their media distribution strategies.
I use a Mac so perhaps I'm more sensitive than most, but why the devil doesn't the BBC just distribute their content through iTunes? I know, I know... some podcasts are available, but their home-grown solutions have been terrible - iMP is a perfect example of their Windows-centric support pattern.
And I see this throughout European media - way, way too reliant on Microsoft-only solutions.
... thousands of them... MILLIONS of them!
At least that's what the estate agent, RM Renfield, had to say when I rang him about this the other day.
They also have a delightful property called Carfax Abbey over in Purfleet.
Isn't the closed Office file formats one of the things that keeps Office totally and completely locked into the worldwide corporation? I'm really thinking more of.xls than.doc, but they're both barely compatible between different machines to say nothing of different office suites or even types of application. Methinks this is another Google strike against Microsoft...
And on a more general note: data portability barely works WITHIN companies - to say nothing of making an effort to allowing customers to manipulate the data sold to them.
In London, TfL can track my movements for the past several years, but I do wonder how often people have their Oyster data swiped. Of course, what would the purpose be, really... use and abuse that season ticket? Hmmm...
I just wish TfL would get the bloody Silverlink / North London Line railways on the system rather than posting stormtrooper rent-a-cops at selected stations on random mornings. I actually do pay my fare, but I'm deeply distressed by the rudeness of some of the non-TfL staff. Treat customers not as potential fare-evaders but customers!
Since this is from a UK news source, let's just assume they have it in for the iPod. UK publications do, admit it. Whenever I open the Guardian / Times / Telegraph / etc I see yet another PR-planted story about the downfall of the iPod and iTunes.
It seems to me that the return to records really reflects the lack of excitement of redbook audio CDs as well as the onslaught of silly new disc-based media.
I **think** I've gone through something similar with my photography. I was there at the start of the digital revolution and now... well... I'm back to shooting film. Whereas I use digital technology to 'print' my negs now, the storage medium is analogue.
In a country where privacy is increasingly being surrendered voluntarily (and hey, my life is all over the net - 10 points for someone who can find out where I went to secondary school), I fear we're not having the debate about APPROPRIATE USES of this data. Shouldn't credit reporting data be used for... oh, decisions about extending credit? Codify that into law, asap.
The morality behind the use of a credit check in determining employability strikes me as Victorian at best and totally un-American at worst. I may have left America to live in another country, but I'm proud that HARD WORK regardless of past mistakes can be a viable road to financial success in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
The Carter Report is a fatally compromised blueprint for subversion that attempts to extend government control into a surprisingly vast array of areas.
1. Television. The existing licence fee is an outrage when the BBC via BBC Worldwide make heaps of money and yet refuse to make available their back catalogue for the benefit of the entire nation (well, they do but for a steep price). The report suggests we preserve the licence fee but siphon more off to commercial and quasi-commercial broadcasters?! Insane. Cut the licence fee in half, force the BBC to sell off some channels, let the broadcasters who can't afford to broadcast go out of business forthwith, open the iPlayer to ANY AND ALL who wish to broadcast through it (or just give it up to iTunes and Apple).
2. Broadband. Universal broadband is a terrific notion, but a telephone tax seems grossly unfair when there are MANY ways to extend high-ish speed internet access to the masses outside the M25. Why not refund the spectrum auction billions to wireless providers and compel them to build-out LTE so that it covers the entire nation? Is that any less insane than the current proposal?
3. Internet privacy. I well understand the government sucking up to Big Content, but surely we have learnt from Sarkosy's defeat in France that a three strikes law would be nearly impossible to enforce without some serious violations of one's privacy. But it's ok if ISP's snoop and not the government? Disgusting and typical of the Labour government that brought us nearly indefinite detention without charge, a national identity register and ID cards, etc.
I did have the opportunity to use my iPhone around Charleston, South Carolina last year and found MANY locations where I couldn't get reception of any kind. Rather scary ...
After today's announcement (huzzah cut and paste and Bluetooth connectivity!) I am increasingly convinced that Apple is heading toward pushing the Macintosh off to the side and allowing iPhone OS to become the driver of much of its development efforts.
A lot of the Star Trek-ish utility of the new APIs really becomes laptop-killing functionality when you run this OS on, say, a 10-inch iPad or whatever the thing will be called. The larger form factor **should** negate **some** of the small-battery-killing radio and system activity by providing more space for a larger battery. Then again, Jon Ive does like his devices thin!
And this leaves the Mac OS X ... ? Secure in its role as a desktop OS that runs apps like Photoshop and drives complex devices like scanners, printers, etc (for now). But surely Apple is heading back toward the original conception of the Macintosh way back in the 80's - a ubiquitous information appliance. In this case, it's an uber-device that interacts seamlessly with location-aware, contextual user inputs and communication of any sort.
Apple is carefully repositioning our expectations of what we do with our "computers" - and Microsoft doesn't even seem to care.
Flash-forward a few years later and I go to university and leave my beloved dot-matrix printer behind. I joined the newspaper and became very well acquainted by this application humorously called "Quark Xpress" and the Mac SE/80. Now this little thing seemed perfect - full WYSIWYG printing, networking, and fun version of Risk to while away the hours. After a little practice, I started to do things I never thought I could do ...
That continued a few years later when I started investigating using my Mac at home for simple movie editing with this new piece of software called "QuickTime". Unfortunately for me, Dad had bought a Performa 450, so no movie editing for me!
After Windows 95 was released, I dated a Windows-using girl and drifted away from the Mac.
Then everything changed in 1997 and 1998. I finally began receiving a decent pay packet, moved in with the girl and splurged on a beige Mac G3 minitower (that I sold the next year to buy the Blue and White minitower).
I started doing things that I always wanted to do, but never thought possible - programming screen savers, scanning negatives and working on my photography, using a beta of this funny app from Macromedia called "FinalCut" to edit some commercials, then getting hired at a large publishing company because I was a paid-up member of the Apple club.
More than anything else (aesthetics, politics, etc), my Macintosh PC's have always enabled me to fully express my creativity with a minimum of fuss. Windows computers just give me headaches and have for years - and always seem to be working against me.
I hope the next 25 years (and pretty much the next third of my life if I'm fortunate) will be filled with Apple-creative things that similarly enrich and enable my creativity and make life all the sweeter.
I very much admire the uncompromising standards and (occasionally maddening) personal taste he applies to whatever Apple releases.
I love the way he reduces complex technologies down to something actually useful in my everyday life. I get the sense that they start with some pretty basic product development principles and then boil the technical gobbledygook down to - is this useful (to Steve)? Eight times out of ten I find it enables me to do something wonderful in a forthright, intuitive way.
I think Ballmer's bid for Yahoo! was little more than a high stakes game of chicken at best and at worst it was tantamount to corporate terrorism. He really does make me sick.
search algorithm ... it would certainly help make the "service" an actual service! Over the years I've watched as Microsoft has released meh product after meh product. Isn't that their real problem - when the vendor lock-in wears off, they have DAMN weak products.
I have never understood the popularity of Windows with consumers (beyond the obvious monopoly power they wield with personal computer manufacturers), I find their software mostly blech (frankly, anything NOT Word and Excel is just junk) and their online products and services NEVER work as advertised. NEVER.
If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers and not ... well ... whatever hellish alliance of businessmen, content producers and bean counters they're currently serving.
I think the XBox 360 points the way, really ...
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft decided to try to get a final regulatory pass from the Bush administration before the inauguration of a less-sympathetic President in 2009.
This deal makes a lot of sense for Microsoft (sort of - I'm assuming Yahoo!'s ad business really is worth the cash), but I can't see how this is at all good for Yahoo! or the marketplace at large.
Is the plan to re-brand everything as Microsoft Live! (keeping the exclamation mark) - thus destroying pretty much the only thing Yahoo! has going for it - brand recognition?
I would be very sad to see Yahoo! and their odd collection of services get subsumed and destroyed in a merger with Microsoft. Yes, I'm assuming much of Yahoo!'s tech portfolio would be wiped away or left to die - this wouldn't be the sort of merger Adobe engineered with Macromedia by a long shot.
http://www.chessthemusical.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_(musical)
Fischer's quick descent into madness was repellent and so very, very sad.
I left America several years ago to live in London and one of the few things I miss was the straight to the point of dull news from the New York Times and their thought-provoking columnists. Putting a third of the paper - and the most unique elements of the paper - behind a paid wall seemed to be a one-way ticket to irrelevance. I can read wire stories for free anywhere, but the editorial and op-ed pages really do influence the American national discourse - keep them open-access for all to read, discuss (or completely dismiss and ignore).
I really don't understand the economics and consumer dynamics around the printer market these days. Surely printer technology has reached a plateau for most normal people? Is that why some corporate madman decided to adopt a blades and razors approach to the consumer printing market? I know it's been a fixture of the corporate colour copier / printer market for a long while now ... but ... why not just charge the correct price for the printer and the consumables?
A what the hell are people printing so damn much of that the consumables business is sooooo lucrative?
I've never been all that into generating large reams of paper at home. For my day job, I print documentation, reports, manuscripts, etc at the office and lug it home when I want a hard copy of something I'm editing online.
For my photography, I send files to a lab and have my images printed. I've considered printing at home - but I would expect archival inks and decent papers to be pricey. I really don't know why I'd want to keep a printer in a corner of my room waiting for those three or four colour 4x5's that I just HAVE to print then and there - and which can't wait for Apple / Kodak / Peak Imaging to deliver to my door in a couple of days. Surely iPhoto or Picasa is a hell of a lot simpler than fiddling with inkjet printers?
When I was writing more long-form pieces, I had a Brother laser printer. Cost me $100 at the time and I could print books without running out of toner. The cartridges weren't that cheap, but it took a nice long while before I had to change them out.
Surely it makes sense for most people just to send their photos off to be printed and to keep a cheap laser printer around for text?
As has already been mentioned, the purpose of these laws is to generate revenue for the city and keep the sidewalk / pavement clear. The article mentions that two or more people who linger in a spot more than 30 minutes are subject to the new rules.
That doesn't sound terribly onerous - I recently took hundreds of photos in New York City and never once had a problem. I toted around an old Yashicamat 124G as well as a Hexar AF. Every so often someone would strike up a conversation about that "cool old camera", but I photographed traffic cops, people in the street, quietly inside shops, throughout museums without a fuss. The cameras are both fairly low-key and quiet.
I reckon if both my girlfriend and myself had lingered outside for more than 30 minutes and I was typically snapping photographs of strangers, THEN I would be in violation - but I think she'd smack me upside the head before the 30-minute mark would pass.
Now the issue about unflattering photographs of city police - that sounds more like something that requires clarification. It should never be illegal to expose abuse of power or malfeasance. And citizen journalism has provided vivid pictures of breaking news before the big news organisations can scramble their photographers.
There are rumblings of similar laws been enacted in Britain ... which always strikes me as a wicked irony when you consider the vast amount of CCTV cameras there are.
... this really isn't a joking matter. Yes, this is the desired behaviour and the desired outcome from all involved, save the consumer/customer. I really don't understand the value of Windows MCE if all you're going to get is a strange patchwork of rights. It works fairly well, but what a bizarre hassle. No wonder Apple doesn't over-promise and is content to sell programmes outright and leave the PVR market to third-party manufacturers and let Microsoft take the heat for releasing crippleware. Technology should make my life easier / simpler - should work FOR me - otherwise why the devil would I ever want to use an open platform like a PC to record television? I can do the same thing with a DVD recorder and organise everything in the real world on my bookshelf.
I'd like to think that the past seven years have been all about experimentation for Apple. When they binned OS 9, they also dumped the concordant HIG - and rightfully so. How we interact with computers should - no, must - evolve as computer literacy becomes ingrained in the culture. Just as we understand moving pictures rather better than the audiences of 1904 - we understand the evolved grammar of cinema - e.g., what do close-ups mean, how point-of-view is established and played with in a scene. And surely Edwardians would have seizures from the editing in Michael Bay movies?
We understand these things, so at some point people will just 'get' that a computer stores information in hierarchical files and folders and moving pictures around have some relationship to spatial distances in the real world.
So what comes next? How will we conceive of interacting with these boxes to do our work (and what will our work be)?
I'd fault Apple not for experimenting with a multiplicity of UI ideas, but for taking so bloody long to come up with the Next Big Interface Paradigm ;-) They're clearly seeing what works and what doesn't in the marketplace, but it is taking quite the long while to get to a stable milestone UI upon which to base further work and research.
... to which I referred in my original post. It's not so bad ... but could be so much better if taken from the original elements.
For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit
George should commission someone to totally recut and / or remake The Phantom Menace. Rather than expand the universe, perfect that first film. Amid some rather pretty scenery and effect, there are soooooo many cringe-worthy performances and moments.
Think The Phantom Edit - only more radical.
And for the love of The Force, get Portman to re-loop her lines.
Or perhaps he should turn over ALL the raw footage for Revenge of the Sith so a real editor can cut that film together properly. Let's all fire up FinalCutPro and have at it!
Sorry Ben - you're a damn good sound designer and a Friend of George, but ... your editing powers are WEAK old man.
If I remember rightly, Darth Vader cruelly sliced Obi-Wan in half and the Jedi Master vanished to be one with The Force? Surely Vader's lightsaber cut through the cloth of the cloak?
Ahem.
Rather than generate controversy through a flame war about 'why I love operating system Q', they should review their support of Macintosh and Linux systems in their media distribution strategies.
I use a Mac so perhaps I'm more sensitive than most, but why the devil doesn't the BBC just distribute their content through iTunes? I know, I know ... some podcasts are available, but their home-grown solutions have been terrible - iMP is a perfect example of their Windows-centric support pattern.
And I see this throughout European media - way, way too reliant on Microsoft-only solutions.
... thousands of them ... MILLIONS of them!
At least that's what the estate agent, RM Renfield, had to say when I rang him about this the other day.
They also have a delightful property called Carfax Abbey over in Purfleet.
... disturbing. Which is what I think the Dark Lord of the Sith might retort.
Isn't the closed Office file formats one of the things that keeps Office totally and completely locked into the worldwide corporation? I'm really thinking more of .xls than .doc, but they're both barely compatible between different machines to say nothing of different office suites or even types of application. Methinks this is another Google strike against Microsoft ...
And on a more general note: data portability barely works WITHIN companies - to say nothing of making an effort to allowing customers to manipulate the data sold to them.
Of course, I found this interesting blog post from several years ago: http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2004/02/foiling_the_ oyster_card.html
I just wish TfL would get the bloody Silverlink / North London Line railways on the system rather than posting stormtrooper rent-a-cops at selected stations on random mornings. I actually do pay my fare, but I'm deeply distressed by the rudeness of some of the non-TfL staff. Treat customers not as potential fare-evaders but customers!
Surely Microsoft could use this to sift through such an vast quantity of code: http://www.google.com/codesearch
Just please don't start hurling chairs at my Karma!
Since this is from a UK news source, let's just assume they have it in for the iPod. UK publications do, admit it. Whenever I open the Guardian / Times / Telegraph / etc I see yet another PR-planted story about the downfall of the iPod and iTunes.
It seems to me that the return to records really reflects the lack of excitement of redbook audio CDs as well as the onslaught of silly new disc-based media.
I **think** I've gone through something similar with my photography. I was there at the start of the digital revolution and now ... well ... I'm back to shooting film. Whereas I use digital technology to 'print' my negs now, the storage medium is analogue.
Just an idea.
In a country where privacy is increasingly being surrendered voluntarily (and hey, my life is all over the net - 10 points for someone who can find out where I went to secondary school), I fear we're not having the debate about APPROPRIATE USES of this data. Shouldn't credit reporting data be used for ... oh, decisions about extending credit? Codify that into law, asap.
The morality behind the use of a credit check in determining employability strikes me as Victorian at best and totally un-American at worst. I may have left America to live in another country, but I'm proud that HARD WORK regardless of past mistakes can be a viable road to financial success in the US.