The text of the declaration would not make sense. They want to extend Directive 2006/24/EC to search engines. But if you read the text of that Directive (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006L0024:EN:HTML) it is absolutely unclear how this could help their cause, as the directive only requires the retention of dates, times, telephone numbers, other identification items. And Article 5 (2) clearly says "No data revealing the content of the communication may be retained pursuant to this Directive."
So under the proposal of the Declaration they would get the times I accessed Google & Co. Big deal. This is how serious this declaration is.
So far the European Parliament has been relatively good at handling issues of freedom and civil liberties (this is why the national governments quickly passed the SWIFT agreement with the US before the new Lisbon treaty came into force which would have required the approval of the European Parliament). Therefore I trust them (for now) that they would not change the meaning of Art. 5 (2) of the aforementioned directive.
In Brussels, Belgium, the local public transportation company STIB/MIVB used to not like links to their site either: Until about a year ago when you visited their website, you were greated with a popup, which told you that you may not link to their pages without their explicit consent. Only when you accepted this, were you allowed to use the website... I don't know why a service provider such as a public transportation company would ever want to be not linked to...
I noticed this apalling gap some years ago, when my (European) company wanted to buy a copy of Acrobat. The discovery of the huge price difference for the same English-language product from the same Adobe online store made me chose another company and product. We are now happy users of Foxit Sofware.
Can we assume that some of the Vista team were not surprised at all? And if they weren't: Should we be surprised to see more of these bugs in the near future...?
How about this: George Lucas created THX sound as a standard for movie theatres. As far as I know they give out clear specs for what can/should be used as hardware and then if the theatre passes a final check they get the only one piece of hardware (I forgot what exactly it was), which puts them apart from the rest, which you cannot buy anywhere else.
This could work for Apple as well: They give out clear requirements, test the Dell, HP, and whatever hardware and then give them the one thing that is missing (the 'Altivec-Unit' or something similar).
This way they would still control the 'experience' and make money on the tests/licensing of approved hardware and the one piece of hardware that sets them apart from the mass PCs.
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The text of the declaration would not make sense. They want to extend Directive 2006/24/EC to search engines. But if you read the text of that Directive (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006L0024:EN:HTML) it is absolutely unclear how this could help their cause, as the directive only requires the retention of dates, times, telephone numbers, other identification items. And Article 5 (2) clearly says "No data revealing the content of the communication may be retained pursuant to this Directive."
So under the proposal of the Declaration they would get the times I accessed Google & Co. Big deal. This is how serious this declaration is.
So far the European Parliament has been relatively good at handling issues of freedom and civil liberties (this is why the national governments quickly passed the SWIFT agreement with the US before the new Lisbon treaty came into force which would have required the approval of the European Parliament). Therefore I trust them (for now) that they would not change the meaning of Art. 5 (2) of the aforementioned directive.
In Brussels, Belgium, the local public transportation company STIB/MIVB used to not like links to their site either: Until about a year ago when you visited their website, you were greated with a popup, which told you that you may not link to their pages without their explicit consent. Only when you accepted this, were you allowed to use the website... I don't know why a service provider such as a public transportation company would ever want to be not linked to...
I noticed this apalling gap some years ago, when my (European) company wanted to buy a copy of Acrobat. The discovery of the huge price difference for the same English-language product from the same Adobe online store made me chose another company and product. We are now happy users of Foxit Sofware.
Can we assume that some of the Vista team were not surprised at all? And if they weren't: Should we be surprised to see more of these bugs in the near future...?
How about this: George Lucas created THX sound as a standard for movie theatres. As far as I know they give out clear specs for what can/should be used as hardware and then if the theatre passes a final check they get the only one piece of hardware (I forgot what exactly it was), which puts them apart from the rest, which you cannot buy anywhere else. This could work for Apple as well: They give out clear requirements, test the Dell, HP, and whatever hardware and then give them the one thing that is missing (the 'Altivec-Unit' or something similar). This way they would still control the 'experience' and make money on the tests/licensing of approved hardware and the one piece of hardware that sets them apart from the mass PCs.