"The bottom line is that technology is volatile and that makes related careers volatile. I remember after the Dot-Com crash things were rough for unemployed computer programmers on the west coast."
Only shit ones, and therein lies the problem, in every field you get two types of people, you get the people who are in that field because they love it and are passionate about it, and invest in learning more about it in their spare time, and then you get the other type of people who are in the field because they couldn't be bothered to think too hard about what they wanted to do with their life and heard that field x was profitable right now, so jumped on the bandwagon, doing the bare minimum they needed to get a job during the boom.
The problem is that the bare minimum you need to get the job during a boom, generally translates to "completely unemployable due to being far too inept when not in a boom". These are always the people who suffer but it's not a bad thing because it means that when an industry returns to post-boom health it's filled by people who know what they're doing. Even if you were a new programmer when the bubble popped as long as you'd spent your teenage years sat behind a computer programming in your own time simply because you fucking loved it then there was no problem getting a job.
You don't need to save up if you've bothered to find a field you love, and you work hard to stay ahead in that field because you love it, because that way you can guarantee your employability. The only exception is in genuinely dying industries (like British coal mine workers under Thatcher to cite an example relevant to recent media stories) and at that point you need to find another industry. IT isn't going anywhere though any time soon - ultimately if unemployment reaches even 10% in a particular field, all that means pretty much is that you need to make sure you're in the top 90% (well, maybe top 80% when you consider that at least some of the lower 10% will be fortunate enough to keep their jobs), which really isn't that hard.
"Except Nokia is doing better than most Android manufacturers"
By what metric? I'm not sure with a $4bn+ loss last year that they're really doing better than anyone, few companies in few industries can claim that kind of massive loss, they really have entered "Most failed company in the world" territory.
About the only metric by which they can determine "success" is total phone shipments, but seeing as the vast majority of those are feature phones or dumb phones to places like Africa that have insanely low margins as to be unprofitable I'm not sure what value that metric serves.
Even HTC and Blackberry which are often deemed to be struggling made roughly $1.2bn profit each last year.
So no, it wouldn't be a bad move for Nokia, the current status quo for them is disastrous and given that they made such a brutal loss last year. They turned a profit in the final quarter, but nearly all of that came from their networking equipment arm (selling deep packet inspection equipment to oppressive regimes mostly). Their current strategy is a complete failure of mind blowing proportions, there have been few tech failures in history as disastrous to a company as the current path they're pursuing.
Had they instead used their talent in hardware design to build Android handsets, it'd almost certainly be the case that right now they'd be sat up their alongside Apple and Samsung, not down the bottom way beneath Samsung, Apple, Sony, Blackberry, ZTE, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, and pretty much anyone else in the mobile phone market. People say companies like Nokia can't differentiate themselves in the Android market - obviously that's bollocks given that that's exactly what Samsung did. Nokia could have too, it still could if it wasn't just a defacto branch of Microsoft thanks to Elop.
"An IP address does NOT constitute unique identification."
He's right. Although a public internet facing IP address will normally uniquely identify some attached device you can't preclude the fact that some network along the way will be misconfigured to route an IP to the wrong place.
Consider the scenario where this person's ISP's DHCP server has assigned her a new IP and the logs updated as such, but a faulty or misconfigured router has cached assignment of her IP to the destination of the previous owner for some period such that any attempts to communicate with the new owner instead remain routed to the previous owner.
In this case who does the IP identify? the person it's actually assigned to or the person it's routed to?
What if some network along the way outright has a system with a duplicate IP setup, perhaps even internally due to bad network design/setup? What if the ISPs DHCP provider is just faulty and assigns a duplicate?
There are still many things that can go wrong along the way such that an IP cannot be guaranteed to correctly identify the owner of a net facing device at a certain point in time.
"So why hasn't someone developed some true competition for the Battlefield series? Or if they have, why isn't it popular and why haven't I heard about it?"
Call of Duty? Activision is as bad, or worse than EA though.
The problem is that these games cost a lot of money to make, and afaik they even have some of the elements locked down to an extent. People want real vehicles and real guns and I believe these are licensed. From what I understand the reason that Battlefield 3 didn't have the MP5 (iirc the closest it had was the UMP-45) was because Activision got signed a fairly exclusive license to it for their Call of Duty series.
So not only do you need a fortune to even make the game - the game itself will cost 10s, possibly hundreds of millions to make, but also you need to be able to negotiate licenses for all the military hardware if you want realistic weapons and you need the money to pay licenses for that.
No he's arguing that due to companies like EA holding important patents, and licenses to culturally significant IP and so forth that even if they have to fire all their development teams, they'll still be crawling round like a legless zombie annoying the hell out of everyone with lawsuits and strong arming for license fees.
The problem is that companies can continue to exist nowadays even if they have nothing productive to offer to society, even if their only business model is suing people over bits of paper that assign them some intangible rights.
It's probably because the idea of a government framing a freedom fighter for a sexual crime sounds just a little too close to the Julian Assange story.
It's hit and miss, I quite like the US version of The Office, but it only works because it's a completely different show to the original in large part due to the fact that it has had such a long ongoing storyline relative to the original UK version which meant it has had to diverge and be original.
I tried watching the US version of The Inbetweeners though the other week, and it's an exact copy seemingly word for word of the British version, but with actors that just don't fit the roles and is a prime example of something that should never have been remade in America.
FWIW I didn't even know there was a US version of Red Dwarf until I saw this thread. The idea of that alone is enough to make me die a little inside, there are some shows that are so sacred that a remake should never be attempted no matter how awesome a producer you think you are and how awesome a cast you have assembled for the effort.
"yes, it was the over reliant of imagery that had my daughter crying, and me come down with a sudden case of 'hay fever' at the end of the pond story line."
I've not been able to get into modern Doctor Who, despite having tried a couple of times and it's for the reasons the GP states. Sure some people can still get into the plot of modern Doctor Who, and it no doubt has a wide fanbase, but I think when you compare it to the older series of Doctor Who it is a completely different show, and it's that that's put me off.
Doctor Who used to be quite dark and creepy because it used real locations - it used remote British villages and terrain on grey and foggy days, it used isolated beaches, and abandoned structures such as old military defences left to rot and rust. These are the sorts of places that made for a creepy setting because it was quite believable that bad things could happen there, and in some cases did (the moors murders). It wasn't believable in the sense that it made people believe Daleks were real, but it was believable in the sense that it was filmed in places where bad things could, and to some extent did happen - that meant people could relate to and associate with the darkness of it. That gave people an association with it and level of believability that special effects really just can't achieve, and in fact, often act counter to.
Fast forward to modern Doctor Who and you have these pretty colours, and flashing lights everywhere, you have settings and stories so fantastical and so out of this world (literally) that that there is no way anyway can relate to even the locations and hence have any kind of feelings of believability in them - it can literally only be taken as fantasy in it's entirety and nothing else.
As an aside, I've also always felt that the acting in modern doctor who looks like it's straight out of an amateur dramatics production, and that the costumes were so poor that even on screen it just felt like you were watching a person in a costume rather than an actual alien (which you were of course, but good costumes, good animatronics etc., and good acting should make you feel otherwise - I never felt that the aliens in the Alien series of films were just blokes running round in suits or whatever when I watched them for example, slightly less so for the alien in Predator, but that was in the 80s, there's no excuse for it nowadays). It's like they blew the special effects budget for Doctor Who on the creation of fantastical settings, lots of sparks, explosions and so forth and then ran out of budget for the costumes.
But hey, it's just my personal take on a topic that is entirely subjective. Given the general lack of good SciFi nowadays full stop I can appreciate why Doctor Who does have such a following, it's just not my cup of tea and what the GP above says it part is a major reason - too much focus on imagery (but not enough where it matters for a modern production - the characters) and a loss of the believability factor of the original settings and locations.
"Try using a run-of-the-mill Android thing without first signing up with Google. It's not that pretty. It's the first thing you see when you turn on your nice new shiny toy and by jove, sign up you will."
I guess you've never used a Kindle fire then.
The only Android phones where what you describe happens are phones where the manufacturer has paid up for integration with Google's services.
This doesn't mean an Android manufacturer has to integrate with Google's services however, Android works just as well without it, you just don't get Google's apps.
It's no secret that Google's apps need an account, but you don't have to use Google's apps.
"Now I'm pretty sure iThings greet you similarly wot with this iTunes thing, but iTunes is not the behemoth that Google is. And that's what this is about."
With an iPhone/iPad you HAVE to register it with Apple, it's not optional as it is with Android. If you think Apple/iTunes aren't as big as Google you must've been living under a rock for what, 8 years? iTunes has had a near monopoly on digital music for quite some time.
"So that's one million "dark lightning" incidents every year, and how many global aircraft flights? Avoidance of thunderstorms or not, odds are it's been happening and we didn't know to look for symptoms until now."
You can't just dismiss avoidance of thunder storms, have a look at this map:
You're far more likely to be close to a lightning strike led in your bed at night, than you are in a plane on a transatlantic flight or whatever because as the map shows, there's very little lightning over the atlantic and so forth. By far the vast majority of lightning occurs in the Congo which isn't exactly known as one of the most common flight paths on Earth.
Taking an average of about 8 lightning strikes per square kilometre per year from the graph at the above link, it seems that across the whole of Europe these sorts of strikes would occur about once per year for every 125 square kilometres of land mass. The chance of a plane being in exactly the right spot at the right time of year in that 125 square kilometre area to be hit by one of these "dark lightning" bolts is pretty negligible.
The risk is obviously a bit higher in the Americas, much of Africa, and South East Asia, but even in these places I'd be inclined to agree with the GP, this seems to be a non-issue in practice. Unless you're flying a little Cessna around over the Congo below or at cloud level for a combined few weeks a year then I can't see you have much to worry about.
P.S. Damn you data and facts for taking the fun out of films for me, having spent 5 minutes gazing at that interesting lightning map now, each time I watch a film where the protagonist is stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, Pacific, or wherever with a raging thunderstorm going on with lightning hitting everywhere, instead of taking in the awe of the dramatic effect and fearing for the safety of said protagonist I'll instead be thinking "What a load of bollocks, the chance of one lightning strike, let alone many like that hitting in that part of the world is basically non-existent". That's another not uncommon plot line ruined then.
Regarding the sheep thing he's suggesting the islands have no value apart from sheep. This is a rather ignorant view though, it's easy for Eddie Izzard to say this sat in the comfort of his multi-million pound house in the UK, but ask the people who live there and whose families have lived there for over 300 years if the islands have no value. The islands are their home and that's really what it was about, besides, if we hadn't fought to get the Falklands back it's likely that other British citizens across the globe could've faced being forced out of their homes - it wasn't out of the question for example that Spain would've taken back Gibraltar by force leaving the British citizens there homeless too.
His comment about Prince Andrew was because Prince Andrew fought in the Falklands, he was a helicopter pilot IIRC and so it meant he got a lot of good press at home as the "warrior prince" just like Prince Harry nowadays has had for fighting in Afghanistan. It's petty populism on behalf of our media and royal family.
My personal view (to disclose my bias, I'm British) I don't doubt that politicians on both sides find the Falklands a convenient cause for stirring up popular support, but on the human side of it real actual people live there, people whose family homes and family ties have existed there for hundreds of years, and I don't think that can simply be ignored. It's not fair for someone like Kirchner to just dismiss them as invaders - some of them have family ties to those few rocks that stem back before Argentina even existed as a nation and cohabited on the islands with the predecessor Spanish colonies there.
On that note I think Britain and the islanders would actually be happy to be handed over to Argentina for what it's worth if it was of benefit to them. But they're never going to accept that whilst Kirchner follows a policy of bullying and attacking them, rather than courting them and giving them reasons as to why they'd want to become part of Argentina. I think our government is genuine in saying that if the Falklanders ever want to become Argentinian, then Britain will indeed give up the islands, but that the choice of the islanders has to come first - it's their home, and has been for way longer than Kirchner or her family have been Argentinian.
"But she did science and technology no good - in fact she seemed to have it in for them. This has been psychologically explained along the lines that, having changed career she needed to justify having changed. Never having had time to rise in her first career, can you imagine her having to make the tea in the lab where she worked, and her later resentment of this time."
Can you please stop parroting this lie given that it's demonstrably false by the fact she gave IT pride of place more so than any government before or since (she had a minister of IT for crying out loud), and that she moved our country from one of digging up rocks, hammering shit together, growing corn, and milking cows to one of services such as IT and scientific research?
I replied to you in more detail already, but I think you really really need to rethink this point as it screams that you have no idea what you're on about. The UK being a world leader in medical research today for example is a direct product of Thatcher's policies.
Hate her for all the other stuff fine, god only knows I hate her for giving birth to xenophobic euroscepticism, but at the very least please stop outright lying about this.
One thing she absolutely wasn't is anti-technology, on the contrary it was her scientific background that made her feel that the way forward for the UK economy was to focus on science and technology and she pursued this to the detriment of manufacturing and mining (in reality, you need at least some balance).
"Strange to see this comment on a techies' site because the "shift" you praise was away from technology, in which the UK had excelled since the industrial revolution, to "service" industries."
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, what's strange on a techy site is that you got modded up given this fact.
You know that the service industries include pretty much all the technology industries like IT, engineering, robotics, medical research, media, communications, etc. right? The idea that a move to services is a move away from technology is inconsistent, it makes absolutely no sense, the two things are in complete conflict given that the service sector includes the technology industries.
"Mrs T came from a tech background herself, but having changed careers she had it in for it"
Which is why of course she created a Minister for Information Technology in 1981 and made 1982 the year of IT, whilst also providing funding for computers in schools and the NHS in the early 80s, she supported all this because she had it in for technology. Right.
"This was before the internet allowed many service industries (apart from the most crappy things like washing up) to be outsourced"
Only the low paying ones like call centres, and even that's been unsuccessful given that most companies have moved their call centres back now. Certainly outsourcing of software development in the UK is dead in the water, I'm not even aware of any companies still doing it since that turned out also to be a complete failure.
"My own industry - railway engineering - was decimated by Mrs T"
Have you considered that maybe this has completely distorted your view on her, which would explain the irrationality in your comments that I described above such as your nonsensical suggestion that moving to services was a move away from technology and that she hated technology both of which couldn't be further from the truth?
I agree with you and sympathise with you over her destruction of the railways for what it's worth, I think that was a travesty and that we're worse off for it.
"It is a mystery to me what we live on now in the UK. Everyone I know is basically shifting paperwork around and is, metaphorically speaking, taking in each others' washing. The shit is starting to hit the fan now though."
Many sites on the internet can tell you this, but to save you the trouble our economy is made up of things such as financial services, IT services, pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, high tech manufacturing (such as putting together jet engines), high tech design engineering (designing vehicles, equipment) and tourism. We don't manufacture simple things because this is a globalised world now and we can't compete with somewhere like China on price due to the fact we have minimum wages, pensions, decent healthcare and that sort of thing, hence why it makes sense that the manufacturing we do do is the stuff that requires our better educated workforce because it's more complex.
No offence, but I don't think you're really well placed to be writing about her economic theories if you don't even have a grasp of what the service sector comprises, or what our economy consists of now. Nor do I think it's particularly healthy that you make absurd claims such as suggesting she hated technology when it's pretty well documented that she was actually way ahead of her time on this, particularly IT. She was the reason the current round of late 20 somethings and early 30 somethings grew up with BBCs and Acorns in school which allowed us to have such a healthy IT industry today.
"There are still whole cities that have never recovered from the death of manufacturing. Service sector jobs simply don't pay as well, and there aren't as many to go around."
You know the services sector includes things like Finance, IT, engineering, health, education, media right? I don't think factory workers and miners do get paid better than IT workers, financiers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and journalists somehow. Service sector jobs pay the most of any.
I know the towns that were the centre of anti-Thatcher protests very well having previously lived in such areas and still having many friends there and I can assure you ability to recover has little to do with anything Thatcher did and is entirely about the social attitudes of people who live in these places. Many of the old mining towns in West and South Yorkshire, such as Hemsworth, Fitzwilliam, Grimethorpe, Goldthorpe and Shafton have had millions poured into them, by way of investment including shiny new doctors surgeries, dentists, learning centres offering free training, local railway stations that link them to the UK's 3rd and 4th largest cities (Leeds and Sheffield) such that all those cities in South/West Yorkshire have a train station, or are at worst, a 10minute bus/car journey from one, and then only take 30mins at most to the above mentioned major cities.
But the state of each couldn't be more different, take two neighbouring villages, Shafton and Grimethorpe, only a few minute drive from each other, but the other side of Grimethorpe to Shafton you have a number of large employers with warehouses - companies such as ASOS, the major online clothes retailer for example. Grimethorpe has the advantage of being slightly closer to the employers than Shafton and Grimethorpe also has had more money poured into it (it has a medium sized ASDA, it has a massive brand new doctors clinic, it had a brand new learning centre that for the last decade has offered IT training- CCNAs and so forth), it has more new affordable housing developments, and yet despite these two neighbouring villages having come from the same background Grimethorpe is an absolute shit hole, full of criminal chavs with arsonist children, whilst Shafton has really picked itself up and whilst it has some way to go the place is much better looked after, people have gone to the far side of Grimethorpe and taken all the job opportunities that have come up.
So here's the thing, I know it's easy for them to keep blaming Thatcher and so forth and yes there's no doubt she was the nail in the coffin that triggered these villages problems from the start, but that was over 30 years ago now, and to say their problems are still all her fault is ridiculous when you compare different cases. Grimethorpe has had more money and more opportunities thrown at it than Shafton as it became obvious it wasn't improving like Shafton and other towns were but it's still not going anywhere.
The problem hasn't been Thatcher for a long time, when you have so many of these villages that have been all treated equally but where some have become quite nice, and quite modern, whilst others are still complete shit holes the only thing you can sensibly blame is the people that live in them. It's pretty clear that people in towns like Hemsworth and Shafton were keen to work, keen to pick themselves up and get on after the pits were closed, it's also clear that people in places like Grimethorpe and Goldthorpe had an entitlement attitude - they felt they were entitled to a job in the mines for life even when that became unprofitable, and they still to this day feel they're entitled to do what they want and have everyone else pay for it. The problem isn't Thatcher now, the problem hasn't been Thatcher for about 20 years, the problem is lazy people, who want a free ride in life. It really is night and day between the villages that have taken the effort to pick themselves up, and the ones that haven't.
FWIW I'm with you on the current muppets in government:)
"And WWI was great for the defense industry, not so great for those sucking mustard gas...your point?"
My point? Your point? What the fuck are you on about. What has WWI mustard gas got to do with Thatcher?
It seems you're trying to play devil's advocate for the mere sake of playing devils advocate but the problem is you're simply highlighting your lack of knowledge on the topic.
Unproductive work was precisely the problem Thatcher dealt with, that's kind of the whole point - the miners weren't able to keep their industry profitable and so would've required a state subsidy to keep going, it's meaningless keeping a job going if it's a net burden on the state, if it's cheaper to let the industry fail and pay unemployment you might as well do that even.
Unemployment increased under Thatcher but the economy grew, that suggests that whilst she got rid of failing industries, which increased unemployment, the jobs that were there, and that were created were massively more productive - they had to be else the economy couldn't have grown.
Your second paragraph is mostly just populist tosh, you can only be misled by figures if you let yourself be misled by figures. I studied for a second degree in my spare time in Statistics precisely because I did want a better understanding of when studies and political statements are a load of bollocks. The figures I looked at are from the UK's Office of National Statistics, an independent organisation that allows access to raw data without interpretation, in fact, it's boss even told the Prime Minister off the other week for claiming the statistics they provide say something that they do not.
If all you listen to are hacks then of course you can't trust the rubbish they spew - but this is precisely the problem I was getting at, most of the vitriol against Thatcher is just subjective complaint, very little of it is based on the actual facts and figures that underlay her period as PM.
I'm not a complete fan of her, I really hate euroskeptics because their complaints seem to almost entirely be born out of xenophobia and racism and rarely do they provide a rational and honest reason why Europe is bad for the UK, similarly I she's the reason the UK press became dominated by Murdoch and other right, borderline far-right media outlets like The Daily Mail. But I'm one for facts and honesty, I think just because someone has done bad, doesn't mean we should rewrite history and pretend they never did anything good either - I think the revisionism that most of Thatcher's detractors wish to carry out by pretending her achievements weren't hers is an affront to reason and rationality and is as bad as any right wing Daily Mail/Murdoch FUD piece.
Yes she destroyed communities that were dependent on state subsidy, yes she was a xenophobe, and yes she allowed people like Murdoch to gain too much press influence, but she also took us from being a failed state like Greece to being an economic powerhouse like Germany. She was important in enabling the UK to become a great place for IT workers to thrive and was way ahead of her time in this respect - for example she wanted nationwide fibre rolled out in the frickin' 80s, and had a minister for IT as early as 1981, something we've never seen since, see here for further information:
I know her policy of BBCs in schools certainly helped me with an early interest in computers at least.
Governments since have been successively anti-IT with bills such as RIPA, The Digital Economy Act, and the various attempts at digital content surveillance systems and so on so from an IT perspective we've not had anyone as good for us as her since, and there's no one on the horizon either.
Even using that logic she's still the most popular leader in many many decades - Tony Blair's Labour by 2005 had dropped to only 35.2% so no one else can claim such high support for so many elections.
That's right, the Falklands conflict lasted 3 whole elections and even backtracked in time before she was elected the first time.
Wait no, the Falklands affected at most one election, and that's it.
You can pretend it's something else all you want, but the fact is that most people were glad that the UK economy had gone from something that needed an IMF bailout, to something that was not just self sustaining, but one of the top 5 in the world.
IIRC she also wanted to give BT the go ahead to roll out a national fibre optic network in the 80s too, but was defeated by a legal ruling from the competition commission.
We'd have been so far ahead of our time if she'd got her way on that one.
I think you have to take into context the starting point, and that was that the UK had had to go to the IMF for a bailout. Also, 11 years is a reasonable enough time span to expect that it was at least in part due to political policy, were it only say, a 4 year run you could indeed reasonably argue that political policy hadn't had enough time to take effect to be relevant.
But however you look at it, it's still going to be better than completely subjective opinion which has as much validity as me claiming that Thatcher was in fact an alien from outer space who came here for no other reason than to troll humans by making a nation divided over her. Certain facts, such as the fact she was elected 3 times, are pretty hard to dispute, especially so when you look at the percentages of popular vote of her party vs. Labour at the time:
1979: 43.9% vs. 36.9% 1983: 42.4% vs. 27.6% 1987: 42.2% vs. 30.8%
Those are some pretty damning majorities against the idea that she was universally horrible and hated.
This is really the problem you have with judging Thatcher.
On one hand you have people telling us she's the devil, modding troll and flamebait left and right because she kicked their puppy when they were young or whatever.
Then on the other you have facts and statistics showing that Labour previous to her actually shut down more mines, that manufacturing actually increased under her, that the economy very clearly improved under her, that British political clout on the world stage massively strengthened under her (which was no mean feat given that since World War II Britain's post-imperial influence had been in free-fall until she came along), and perhaps most importantly, she was elected 3 times which suggests that actually most people did prefer her to the alternative.
It's kind of hard to reconcile the two, but ultimately the former is subjective, and the latter is objective. I'd much rather put faith in objectivity than subjectivity.
I think you have a rose tinted view of what the unions were offering (or in fact, still achieve today in public sector). Public sector unions are still fairly strong, and as someone who has worked in public sector (for 6 years) and took the time to get involved with Unison, including striking with it, I can assure you that it's not as rosy as you think.
Unions have this horrible habit of protecting their members no matter what, you may argue they have a duty to do so, but it ultimately means that no matter how in the wrong a member is they will waste an organisations time and money fighting them tooth and nail over something their member is guilty of that is completely indefensible (such as simply not turning up to work for 6 months but also refusing to get a doctor's note as evidence of some sickness - a real example witnessed first hand). Worse than this, these sorts of lazy people often then go and apply to be union stewards and so forth because they can't be bothered to do their own job and it's a good excuse to get out of it now and again. This means they get time out of their job to spend with the unions at the tax payer's expense, due to them having contact with union staff they often have a greater influence on policy and sometimes even get given jobs there meaning the unions are built up of the worst, the laziest, most inept members of society which results in a repeat of the cycle of them then going on to defend more lazy inept people. They don't care about the average Joe, they don't care about genuine injustice, it's a scam - it's all about minimising their personal responsibility in life.
On another note I think you're misguided regarding inequality. One of the times I went on strike, related to pay the government pay offer was something like 3% for the lowest paid workers and 2% for the highest paid workers (i.e. public sector executives and service directors) at a time of around 5% inflation. The lowest paid would normally be the ones that went on strike, the execs would never go on strike, so anyway the low paid workers went on strike for 2 days, giving up 2 days wages for their belief that the pay offer was too low, the government came back with a new offer which the unions accepted immediately - 3% across the board.
So there you have it, the low paid workers, the union lackeys give up their wages to go on strike so that the union negotiators can get an extra 1% pay rise for the high paid execs that gave up not a single day of wages for the effort.
It took me some years to grow up and realise in hindsight what the unions were about, how they really worked, but eventually I did. The people at the top of unions are no different from people like Rupert Murdoch - they don't care about you or I, they don't care about the workers, about increase their wages, they want one thing and one thing only - they want power to influence policy their way. Dave Prentis, the current boss of Unison, do you know what he earns? almost as much as the prime minister, he earns £127,000 and he holds so much sway in the Labour party that he can potentially determine a prime minister - it was him as much as anyone who managed to get Ed rather than his infinitely more fair and competent brother Dave as leader of the opposition right now. You really think with his salary, with the power he wields, that it's really about you, the worker?
Unions in the UK have long lost their way, they have little relevance to the mythical ideal people hold about them and one of my biggest regrets in life was ever believing the lies and funding such a corrupt organisation. They're as much an affront to classical union ideals such as those you mention as bankers are to corporate responsibility.
This is partly true but the alternative, the status quo was a country that leaned too far in the other direction - too many people wanting an easy ride, too many people with an entitlement attitude and an unproductive economy as a result, or to give a real world comparison, without her changes we'd have been more like Greece where personal accountability (as opposed to corporate accountability) went out the window instead such that people weren't paying taxes owed, were retiring incredibly early, were working short weeks, which all sounds great, until you realise there's no way to pay for it and it all comes crashing down.
The fact is, healthy economic policy needs balance between these two extremes, on one hand people need to be able to live healthy happy lives which means increasing corporate responsibility and accountability, but on the other you can't have people completely taking the piss else your companies and economy doesn't function.
I think it's definitely a fair assessment to say that Thatcher went just a bit too far in the direction of fat cats and exploitative companies, but on the other hand someone had to drag us away from the other extreme which was laziness and the sense of selfish entitlement many had (i.e. the miners expecting everyone else to subsidise them to continue as miners when it turned out their industry was no longer profitable and because they were all too lazy to retrain into any other profession).
Part the issue is the UK's electoral system encourages what is mostly a two party system, such that you end up with two parties who tend towards each extreme. The Lib Dems are centrist and would definitely create a fairer state but they are hopeless at countering Tory/Labour propaganda against them and have made enough blunders of their own to remove the chance of them ever seeing government again.
Yes, but the question is why. If nothing good has come out of there for a while then was it simply because management were doing an EA/Activision and only interested in churning out the same old rehashed boring FPS type games or whatever with no innovation? The point is, did the whole studio need to be axed? or did management just need replacing with people with a little more vision.
Maybe they did the right thing, maybe they did evaluate thoroughly what talent there was left and felt there was indeed nothing of value there, but given the nature of a company like Disney I'd be surprised. I'd wager this is less about getting rid of an under performing unit and more about making their money from simply selling licenses of to the franchises to anyone willing to pay if it means bringing some money in which makes an internal development company for use of these licenses pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
"The bottom line is that technology is volatile and that makes related careers volatile. I remember after the Dot-Com crash things were rough for unemployed computer programmers on the west coast."
Only shit ones, and therein lies the problem, in every field you get two types of people, you get the people who are in that field because they love it and are passionate about it, and invest in learning more about it in their spare time, and then you get the other type of people who are in the field because they couldn't be bothered to think too hard about what they wanted to do with their life and heard that field x was profitable right now, so jumped on the bandwagon, doing the bare minimum they needed to get a job during the boom.
The problem is that the bare minimum you need to get the job during a boom, generally translates to "completely unemployable due to being far too inept when not in a boom". These are always the people who suffer but it's not a bad thing because it means that when an industry returns to post-boom health it's filled by people who know what they're doing. Even if you were a new programmer when the bubble popped as long as you'd spent your teenage years sat behind a computer programming in your own time simply because you fucking loved it then there was no problem getting a job.
You don't need to save up if you've bothered to find a field you love, and you work hard to stay ahead in that field because you love it, because that way you can guarantee your employability. The only exception is in genuinely dying industries (like British coal mine workers under Thatcher to cite an example relevant to recent media stories) and at that point you need to find another industry. IT isn't going anywhere though any time soon - ultimately if unemployment reaches even 10% in a particular field, all that means pretty much is that you need to make sure you're in the top 90% (well, maybe top 80% when you consider that at least some of the lower 10% will be fortunate enough to keep their jobs), which really isn't that hard.
"Except Nokia is doing better than most Android manufacturers"
By what metric? I'm not sure with a $4bn+ loss last year that they're really doing better than anyone, few companies in few industries can claim that kind of massive loss, they really have entered "Most failed company in the world" territory.
About the only metric by which they can determine "success" is total phone shipments, but seeing as the vast majority of those are feature phones or dumb phones to places like Africa that have insanely low margins as to be unprofitable I'm not sure what value that metric serves.
Even HTC and Blackberry which are often deemed to be struggling made roughly $1.2bn profit each last year.
So no, it wouldn't be a bad move for Nokia, the current status quo for them is disastrous and given that they made such a brutal loss last year. They turned a profit in the final quarter, but nearly all of that came from their networking equipment arm (selling deep packet inspection equipment to oppressive regimes mostly). Their current strategy is a complete failure of mind blowing proportions, there have been few tech failures in history as disastrous to a company as the current path they're pursuing.
Had they instead used their talent in hardware design to build Android handsets, it'd almost certainly be the case that right now they'd be sat up their alongside Apple and Samsung, not down the bottom way beneath Samsung, Apple, Sony, Blackberry, ZTE, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, and pretty much anyone else in the mobile phone market. People say companies like Nokia can't differentiate themselves in the Android market - obviously that's bollocks given that that's exactly what Samsung did. Nokia could have too, it still could if it wasn't just a defacto branch of Microsoft thanks to Elop.
When you say "checks and balances" are you sure you don't mean "cheques and bank balances"?
He said:
"An IP address does NOT constitute unique identification."
He's right. Although a public internet facing IP address will normally uniquely identify some attached device you can't preclude the fact that some network along the way will be misconfigured to route an IP to the wrong place.
Consider the scenario where this person's ISP's DHCP server has assigned her a new IP and the logs updated as such, but a faulty or misconfigured router has cached assignment of her IP to the destination of the previous owner for some period such that any attempts to communicate with the new owner instead remain routed to the previous owner.
In this case who does the IP identify? the person it's actually assigned to or the person it's routed to?
What if some network along the way outright has a system with a duplicate IP setup, perhaps even internally due to bad network design/setup? What if the ISPs DHCP provider is just faulty and assigns a duplicate?
There are still many things that can go wrong along the way such that an IP cannot be guaranteed to correctly identify the owner of a net facing device at a certain point in time.
"So why hasn't someone developed some true competition for the Battlefield series? Or if they have, why isn't it popular and why haven't I heard about it?"
Call of Duty? Activision is as bad, or worse than EA though.
The problem is that these games cost a lot of money to make, and afaik they even have some of the elements locked down to an extent. People want real vehicles and real guns and I believe these are licensed. From what I understand the reason that Battlefield 3 didn't have the MP5 (iirc the closest it had was the UMP-45) was because Activision got signed a fairly exclusive license to it for their Call of Duty series.
So not only do you need a fortune to even make the game - the game itself will cost 10s, possibly hundreds of millions to make, but also you need to be able to negotiate licenses for all the military hardware if you want realistic weapons and you need the money to pay licenses for that.
No he's arguing that due to companies like EA holding important patents, and licenses to culturally significant IP and so forth that even if they have to fire all their development teams, they'll still be crawling round like a legless zombie annoying the hell out of everyone with lawsuits and strong arming for license fees.
The problem is that companies can continue to exist nowadays even if they have nothing productive to offer to society, even if their only business model is suing people over bits of paper that assign them some intangible rights.
It's probably because the idea of a government framing a freedom fighter for a sexual crime sounds just a little too close to the Julian Assange story.
It's hit and miss, I quite like the US version of The Office, but it only works because it's a completely different show to the original in large part due to the fact that it has had such a long ongoing storyline relative to the original UK version which meant it has had to diverge and be original.
I tried watching the US version of The Inbetweeners though the other week, and it's an exact copy seemingly word for word of the British version, but with actors that just don't fit the roles and is a prime example of something that should never have been remade in America.
FWIW I didn't even know there was a US version of Red Dwarf until I saw this thread. The idea of that alone is enough to make me die a little inside, there are some shows that are so sacred that a remake should never be attempted no matter how awesome a producer you think you are and how awesome a cast you have assembled for the effort.
"yes, it was the over reliant of imagery that had my daughter crying, and me come down with a sudden case of 'hay fever' at the end of the pond story line."
I've not been able to get into modern Doctor Who, despite having tried a couple of times and it's for the reasons the GP states. Sure some people can still get into the plot of modern Doctor Who, and it no doubt has a wide fanbase, but I think when you compare it to the older series of Doctor Who it is a completely different show, and it's that that's put me off.
Doctor Who used to be quite dark and creepy because it used real locations - it used remote British villages and terrain on grey and foggy days, it used isolated beaches, and abandoned structures such as old military defences left to rot and rust. These are the sorts of places that made for a creepy setting because it was quite believable that bad things could happen there, and in some cases did (the moors murders). It wasn't believable in the sense that it made people believe Daleks were real, but it was believable in the sense that it was filmed in places where bad things could, and to some extent did happen - that meant people could relate to and associate with the darkness of it. That gave people an association with it and level of believability that special effects really just can't achieve, and in fact, often act counter to.
Fast forward to modern Doctor Who and you have these pretty colours, and flashing lights everywhere, you have settings and stories so fantastical and so out of this world (literally) that that there is no way anyway can relate to even the locations and hence have any kind of feelings of believability in them - it can literally only be taken as fantasy in it's entirety and nothing else.
As an aside, I've also always felt that the acting in modern doctor who looks like it's straight out of an amateur dramatics production, and that the costumes were so poor that even on screen it just felt like you were watching a person in a costume rather than an actual alien (which you were of course, but good costumes, good animatronics etc., and good acting should make you feel otherwise - I never felt that the aliens in the Alien series of films were just blokes running round in suits or whatever when I watched them for example, slightly less so for the alien in Predator, but that was in the 80s, there's no excuse for it nowadays). It's like they blew the special effects budget for Doctor Who on the creation of fantastical settings, lots of sparks, explosions and so forth and then ran out of budget for the costumes.
But hey, it's just my personal take on a topic that is entirely subjective. Given the general lack of good SciFi nowadays full stop I can appreciate why Doctor Who does have such a following, it's just not my cup of tea and what the GP above says it part is a major reason - too much focus on imagery (but not enough where it matters for a modern production - the characters) and a loss of the believability factor of the original settings and locations.
Microsoft has a store on it's phone too. Microsoft and Apple also now have stores on their desktops.
They couldn't single out play even if they wanted to, precisely because they already mimic it.
"Try using a run-of-the-mill Android thing without first signing up with Google. It's not that pretty. It's the first thing you see when you turn on your nice new shiny toy and by jove, sign up you will."
I guess you've never used a Kindle fire then.
The only Android phones where what you describe happens are phones where the manufacturer has paid up for integration with Google's services.
This doesn't mean an Android manufacturer has to integrate with Google's services however, Android works just as well without it, you just don't get Google's apps.
It's no secret that Google's apps need an account, but you don't have to use Google's apps.
"Now I'm pretty sure iThings greet you similarly wot with this iTunes thing, but iTunes is not the behemoth that Google is.
And that's what this is about."
With an iPhone/iPad you HAVE to register it with Apple, it's not optional as it is with Android. If you think Apple/iTunes aren't as big as Google you must've been living under a rock for what, 8 years? iTunes has had a near monopoly on digital music for quite some time.
"So that's one million "dark lightning" incidents every year, and how many global aircraft flights? Avoidance of thunderstorms or not, odds are it's been happening and we didn't know to look for symptoms until now."
You can't just dismiss avoidance of thunder storms, have a look at this map:
http://geology.com/articles/lightning-map.shtml
You're far more likely to be close to a lightning strike led in your bed at night, than you are in a plane on a transatlantic flight or whatever because as the map shows, there's very little lightning over the atlantic and so forth. By far the vast majority of lightning occurs in the Congo which isn't exactly known as one of the most common flight paths on Earth.
Taking an average of about 8 lightning strikes per square kilometre per year from the graph at the above link, it seems that across the whole of Europe these sorts of strikes would occur about once per year for every 125 square kilometres of land mass. The chance of a plane being in exactly the right spot at the right time of year in that 125 square kilometre area to be hit by one of these "dark lightning" bolts is pretty negligible.
The risk is obviously a bit higher in the Americas, much of Africa, and South East Asia, but even in these places I'd be inclined to agree with the GP, this seems to be a non-issue in practice. Unless you're flying a little Cessna around over the Congo below or at cloud level for a combined few weeks a year then I can't see you have much to worry about.
P.S. Damn you data and facts for taking the fun out of films for me, having spent 5 minutes gazing at that interesting lightning map now, each time I watch a film where the protagonist is stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, Pacific, or wherever with a raging thunderstorm going on with lightning hitting everywhere, instead of taking in the awe of the dramatic effect and fearing for the safety of said protagonist I'll instead be thinking "What a load of bollocks, the chance of one lightning strike, let alone many like that hitting in that part of the world is basically non-existent". That's another not uncommon plot line ruined then.
Regarding the sheep thing he's suggesting the islands have no value apart from sheep. This is a rather ignorant view though, it's easy for Eddie Izzard to say this sat in the comfort of his multi-million pound house in the UK, but ask the people who live there and whose families have lived there for over 300 years if the islands have no value. The islands are their home and that's really what it was about, besides, if we hadn't fought to get the Falklands back it's likely that other British citizens across the globe could've faced being forced out of their homes - it wasn't out of the question for example that Spain would've taken back Gibraltar by force leaving the British citizens there homeless too.
His comment about Prince Andrew was because Prince Andrew fought in the Falklands, he was a helicopter pilot IIRC and so it meant he got a lot of good press at home as the "warrior prince" just like Prince Harry nowadays has had for fighting in Afghanistan. It's petty populism on behalf of our media and royal family.
My personal view (to disclose my bias, I'm British) I don't doubt that politicians on both sides find the Falklands a convenient cause for stirring up popular support, but on the human side of it real actual people live there, people whose family homes and family ties have existed there for hundreds of years, and I don't think that can simply be ignored. It's not fair for someone like Kirchner to just dismiss them as invaders - some of them have family ties to those few rocks that stem back before Argentina even existed as a nation and cohabited on the islands with the predecessor Spanish colonies there.
On that note I think Britain and the islanders would actually be happy to be handed over to Argentina for what it's worth if it was of benefit to them. But they're never going to accept that whilst Kirchner follows a policy of bullying and attacking them, rather than courting them and giving them reasons as to why they'd want to become part of Argentina. I think our government is genuine in saying that if the Falklanders ever want to become Argentinian, then Britain will indeed give up the islands, but that the choice of the islanders has to come first - it's their home, and has been for way longer than Kirchner or her family have been Argentinian.
"But she did science and technology no good - in fact she seemed to have it in for them. This has been psychologically explained along the lines that, having changed career she needed to justify having changed. Never having had time to rise in her first career, can you imagine her having to make the tea in the lab where she worked, and her later resentment of this time."
Can you please stop parroting this lie given that it's demonstrably false by the fact she gave IT pride of place more so than any government before or since (she had a minister of IT for crying out loud), and that she moved our country from one of digging up rocks, hammering shit together, growing corn, and milking cows to one of services such as IT and scientific research?
I replied to you in more detail already, but I think you really really need to rethink this point as it screams that you have no idea what you're on about. The UK being a world leader in medical research today for example is a direct product of Thatcher's policies.
Hate her for all the other stuff fine, god only knows I hate her for giving birth to xenophobic euroscepticism, but at the very least please stop outright lying about this.
One thing she absolutely wasn't is anti-technology, on the contrary it was her scientific background that made her feel that the way forward for the UK economy was to focus on science and technology and she pursued this to the detriment of manufacturing and mining (in reality, you need at least some balance).
"Strange to see this comment on a techies' site because the "shift" you praise was away from technology, in which the UK had excelled since the industrial revolution, to "service" industries."
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, what's strange on a techy site is that you got modded up given this fact.
You know that the service industries include pretty much all the technology industries like IT, engineering, robotics, medical research, media, communications, etc. right? The idea that a move to services is a move away from technology is inconsistent, it makes absolutely no sense, the two things are in complete conflict given that the service sector includes the technology industries.
"Mrs T came from a tech background herself, but having changed careers she had it in for it"
Which is why of course she created a Minister for Information Technology in 1981 and made 1982 the year of IT, whilst also providing funding for computers in schools and the NHS in the early 80s, she supported all this because she had it in for technology. Right.
"This was before the internet allowed many service industries (apart from the most crappy things like washing up) to be outsourced"
Only the low paying ones like call centres, and even that's been unsuccessful given that most companies have moved their call centres back now. Certainly outsourcing of software development in the UK is dead in the water, I'm not even aware of any companies still doing it since that turned out also to be a complete failure.
"My own industry - railway engineering - was decimated by Mrs T"
Have you considered that maybe this has completely distorted your view on her, which would explain the irrationality in your comments that I described above such as your nonsensical suggestion that moving to services was a move away from technology and that she hated technology both of which couldn't be further from the truth?
I agree with you and sympathise with you over her destruction of the railways for what it's worth, I think that was a travesty and that we're worse off for it.
"It is a mystery to me what we live on now in the UK. Everyone I know is basically shifting paperwork around and is, metaphorically speaking, taking in each others' washing. The shit is starting to hit the fan now though."
Many sites on the internet can tell you this, but to save you the trouble our economy is made up of things such as financial services, IT services, pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, high tech manufacturing (such as putting together jet engines), high tech design engineering (designing vehicles, equipment) and tourism. We don't manufacture simple things because this is a globalised world now and we can't compete with somewhere like China on price due to the fact we have minimum wages, pensions, decent healthcare and that sort of thing, hence why it makes sense that the manufacturing we do do is the stuff that requires our better educated workforce because it's more complex.
No offence, but I don't think you're really well placed to be writing about her economic theories if you don't even have a grasp of what the service sector comprises, or what our economy consists of now. Nor do I think it's particularly healthy that you make absurd claims such as suggesting she hated technology when it's pretty well documented that she was actually way ahead of her time on this, particularly IT. She was the reason the current round of late 20 somethings and early 30 somethings grew up with BBCs and Acorns in school which allowed us to have such a healthy IT industry today.
"There are still whole cities that have never recovered from the death of manufacturing. Service sector jobs simply don't pay as well, and there aren't as many to go around."
You know the services sector includes things like Finance, IT, engineering, health, education, media right? I don't think factory workers and miners do get paid better than IT workers, financiers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and journalists somehow. Service sector jobs pay the most of any.
I know the towns that were the centre of anti-Thatcher protests very well having previously lived in such areas and still having many friends there and I can assure you ability to recover has little to do with anything Thatcher did and is entirely about the social attitudes of people who live in these places. Many of the old mining towns in West and South Yorkshire, such as Hemsworth, Fitzwilliam, Grimethorpe, Goldthorpe and Shafton have had millions poured into them, by way of investment including shiny new doctors surgeries, dentists, learning centres offering free training, local railway stations that link them to the UK's 3rd and 4th largest cities (Leeds and Sheffield) such that all those cities in South/West Yorkshire have a train station, or are at worst, a 10minute bus/car journey from one, and then only take 30mins at most to the above mentioned major cities.
But the state of each couldn't be more different, take two neighbouring villages, Shafton and Grimethorpe, only a few minute drive from each other, but the other side of Grimethorpe to Shafton you have a number of large employers with warehouses - companies such as ASOS, the major online clothes retailer for example. Grimethorpe has the advantage of being slightly closer to the employers than Shafton and Grimethorpe also has had more money poured into it (it has a medium sized ASDA, it has a massive brand new doctors clinic, it had a brand new learning centre that for the last decade has offered IT training- CCNAs and so forth), it has more new affordable housing developments, and yet despite these two neighbouring villages having come from the same background Grimethorpe is an absolute shit hole, full of criminal chavs with arsonist children, whilst Shafton has really picked itself up and whilst it has some way to go the place is much better looked after, people have gone to the far side of Grimethorpe and taken all the job opportunities that have come up.
So here's the thing, I know it's easy for them to keep blaming Thatcher and so forth and yes there's no doubt she was the nail in the coffin that triggered these villages problems from the start, but that was over 30 years ago now, and to say their problems are still all her fault is ridiculous when you compare different cases. Grimethorpe has had more money and more opportunities thrown at it than Shafton as it became obvious it wasn't improving like Shafton and other towns were but it's still not going anywhere.
The problem hasn't been Thatcher for a long time, when you have so many of these villages that have been all treated equally but where some have become quite nice, and quite modern, whilst others are still complete shit holes the only thing you can sensibly blame is the people that live in them. It's pretty clear that people in towns like Hemsworth and Shafton were keen to work, keen to pick themselves up and get on after the pits were closed, it's also clear that people in places like Grimethorpe and Goldthorpe had an entitlement attitude - they felt they were entitled to a job in the mines for life even when that became unprofitable, and they still to this day feel they're entitled to do what they want and have everyone else pay for it. The problem isn't Thatcher now, the problem hasn't been Thatcher for about 20 years, the problem is lazy people, who want a free ride in life. It really is night and day between the villages that have taken the effort to pick themselves up, and the ones that haven't.
FWIW I'm with you on the current muppets in government :)
"And WWI was great for the defense industry, not so great for those sucking mustard gas...your point?"
My point? Your point? What the fuck are you on about. What has WWI mustard gas got to do with Thatcher?
It seems you're trying to play devil's advocate for the mere sake of playing devils advocate but the problem is you're simply highlighting your lack of knowledge on the topic.
Unproductive work was precisely the problem Thatcher dealt with, that's kind of the whole point - the miners weren't able to keep their industry profitable and so would've required a state subsidy to keep going, it's meaningless keeping a job going if it's a net burden on the state, if it's cheaper to let the industry fail and pay unemployment you might as well do that even.
Unemployment increased under Thatcher but the economy grew, that suggests that whilst she got rid of failing industries, which increased unemployment, the jobs that were there, and that were created were massively more productive - they had to be else the economy couldn't have grown.
Your second paragraph is mostly just populist tosh, you can only be misled by figures if you let yourself be misled by figures. I studied for a second degree in my spare time in Statistics precisely because I did want a better understanding of when studies and political statements are a load of bollocks. The figures I looked at are from the UK's Office of National Statistics, an independent organisation that allows access to raw data without interpretation, in fact, it's boss even told the Prime Minister off the other week for claiming the statistics they provide say something that they do not.
If all you listen to are hacks then of course you can't trust the rubbish they spew - but this is precisely the problem I was getting at, most of the vitriol against Thatcher is just subjective complaint, very little of it is based on the actual facts and figures that underlay her period as PM.
I'm not a complete fan of her, I really hate euroskeptics because their complaints seem to almost entirely be born out of xenophobia and racism and rarely do they provide a rational and honest reason why Europe is bad for the UK, similarly I she's the reason the UK press became dominated by Murdoch and other right, borderline far-right media outlets like The Daily Mail. But I'm one for facts and honesty, I think just because someone has done bad, doesn't mean we should rewrite history and pretend they never did anything good either - I think the revisionism that most of Thatcher's detractors wish to carry out by pretending her achievements weren't hers is an affront to reason and rationality and is as bad as any right wing Daily Mail/Murdoch FUD piece.
Yes she destroyed communities that were dependent on state subsidy, yes she was a xenophobe, and yes she allowed people like Murdoch to gain too much press influence, but she also took us from being a failed state like Greece to being an economic powerhouse like Germany. She was important in enabling the UK to become a great place for IT workers to thrive and was way ahead of her time in this respect - for example she wanted nationwide fibre rolled out in the frickin' 80s, and had a minister for IT as early as 1981, something we've never seen since, see here for further information:
http://www.ukauthority.com/tabid/64/Default.aspx?id=4092
I know her policy of BBCs in schools certainly helped me with an early interest in computers at least.
Governments since have been successively anti-IT with bills such as RIPA, The Digital Economy Act, and the various attempts at digital content surveillance systems and so on so from an IT perspective we've not had anyone as good for us as her since, and there's no one on the horizon either.
Even using that logic she's still the most popular leader in many many decades - Tony Blair's Labour by 2005 had dropped to only 35.2% so no one else can claim such high support for so many elections.
That's right, the Falklands conflict lasted 3 whole elections and even backtracked in time before she was elected the first time.
Wait no, the Falklands affected at most one election, and that's it.
You can pretend it's something else all you want, but the fact is that most people were glad that the UK economy had gone from something that needed an IMF bailout, to something that was not just self sustaining, but one of the top 5 in the world.
IIRC she also wanted to give BT the go ahead to roll out a national fibre optic network in the 80s too, but was defeated by a legal ruling from the competition commission.
We'd have been so far ahead of our time if she'd got her way on that one.
I think you have to take into context the starting point, and that was that the UK had had to go to the IMF for a bailout. Also, 11 years is a reasonable enough time span to expect that it was at least in part due to political policy, were it only say, a 4 year run you could indeed reasonably argue that political policy hadn't had enough time to take effect to be relevant.
But however you look at it, it's still going to be better than completely subjective opinion which has as much validity as me claiming that Thatcher was in fact an alien from outer space who came here for no other reason than to troll humans by making a nation divided over her. Certain facts, such as the fact she was elected 3 times, are pretty hard to dispute, especially so when you look at the percentages of popular vote of her party vs. Labour at the time:
1979: 43.9% vs. 36.9%
1983: 42.4% vs. 27.6%
1987: 42.2% vs. 30.8%
Those are some pretty damning majorities against the idea that she was universally horrible and hated.
This is really the problem you have with judging Thatcher.
On one hand you have people telling us she's the devil, modding troll and flamebait left and right because she kicked their puppy when they were young or whatever.
Then on the other you have facts and statistics showing that Labour previous to her actually shut down more mines, that manufacturing actually increased under her, that the economy very clearly improved under her, that British political clout on the world stage massively strengthened under her (which was no mean feat given that since World War II Britain's post-imperial influence had been in free-fall until she came along), and perhaps most importantly, she was elected 3 times which suggests that actually most people did prefer her to the alternative.
It's kind of hard to reconcile the two, but ultimately the former is subjective, and the latter is objective. I'd much rather put faith in objectivity than subjectivity.
I think you have a rose tinted view of what the unions were offering (or in fact, still achieve today in public sector). Public sector unions are still fairly strong, and as someone who has worked in public sector (for 6 years) and took the time to get involved with Unison, including striking with it, I can assure you that it's not as rosy as you think.
Unions have this horrible habit of protecting their members no matter what, you may argue they have a duty to do so, but it ultimately means that no matter how in the wrong a member is they will waste an organisations time and money fighting them tooth and nail over something their member is guilty of that is completely indefensible (such as simply not turning up to work for 6 months but also refusing to get a doctor's note as evidence of some sickness - a real example witnessed first hand). Worse than this, these sorts of lazy people often then go and apply to be union stewards and so forth because they can't be bothered to do their own job and it's a good excuse to get out of it now and again. This means they get time out of their job to spend with the unions at the tax payer's expense, due to them having contact with union staff they often have a greater influence on policy and sometimes even get given jobs there meaning the unions are built up of the worst, the laziest, most inept members of society which results in a repeat of the cycle of them then going on to defend more lazy inept people. They don't care about the average Joe, they don't care about genuine injustice, it's a scam - it's all about minimising their personal responsibility in life.
On another note I think you're misguided regarding inequality. One of the times I went on strike, related to pay the government pay offer was something like 3% for the lowest paid workers and 2% for the highest paid workers (i.e. public sector executives and service directors) at a time of around 5% inflation. The lowest paid would normally be the ones that went on strike, the execs would never go on strike, so anyway the low paid workers went on strike for 2 days, giving up 2 days wages for their belief that the pay offer was too low, the government came back with a new offer which the unions accepted immediately - 3% across the board.
So there you have it, the low paid workers, the union lackeys give up their wages to go on strike so that the union negotiators can get an extra 1% pay rise for the high paid execs that gave up not a single day of wages for the effort.
It took me some years to grow up and realise in hindsight what the unions were about, how they really worked, but eventually I did. The people at the top of unions are no different from people like Rupert Murdoch - they don't care about you or I, they don't care about the workers, about increase their wages, they want one thing and one thing only - they want power to influence policy their way. Dave Prentis, the current boss of Unison, do you know what he earns? almost as much as the prime minister, he earns £127,000 and he holds so much sway in the Labour party that he can potentially determine a prime minister - it was him as much as anyone who managed to get Ed rather than his infinitely more fair and competent brother Dave as leader of the opposition right now. You really think with his salary, with the power he wields, that it's really about you, the worker?
Unions in the UK have long lost their way, they have little relevance to the mythical ideal people hold about them and one of my biggest regrets in life was ever believing the lies and funding such a corrupt organisation. They're as much an affront to classical union ideals such as those you mention as bankers are to corporate responsibility.
This is partly true but the alternative, the status quo was a country that leaned too far in the other direction - too many people wanting an easy ride, too many people with an entitlement attitude and an unproductive economy as a result, or to give a real world comparison, without her changes we'd have been more like Greece where personal accountability (as opposed to corporate accountability) went out the window instead such that people weren't paying taxes owed, were retiring incredibly early, were working short weeks, which all sounds great, until you realise there's no way to pay for it and it all comes crashing down.
The fact is, healthy economic policy needs balance between these two extremes, on one hand people need to be able to live healthy happy lives which means increasing corporate responsibility and accountability, but on the other you can't have people completely taking the piss else your companies and economy doesn't function.
I think it's definitely a fair assessment to say that Thatcher went just a bit too far in the direction of fat cats and exploitative companies, but on the other hand someone had to drag us away from the other extreme which was laziness and the sense of selfish entitlement many had (i.e. the miners expecting everyone else to subsidise them to continue as miners when it turned out their industry was no longer profitable and because they were all too lazy to retrain into any other profession).
Part the issue is the UK's electoral system encourages what is mostly a two party system, such that you end up with two parties who tend towards each extreme. The Lib Dems are centrist and would definitely create a fairer state but they are hopeless at countering Tory/Labour propaganda against them and have made enough blunders of their own to remove the chance of them ever seeing government again.
Yes, but the question is why. If nothing good has come out of there for a while then was it simply because management were doing an EA/Activision and only interested in churning out the same old rehashed boring FPS type games or whatever with no innovation? The point is, did the whole studio need to be axed? or did management just need replacing with people with a little more vision.
Maybe they did the right thing, maybe they did evaluate thoroughly what talent there was left and felt there was indeed nothing of value there, but given the nature of a company like Disney I'd be surprised. I'd wager this is less about getting rid of an under performing unit and more about making their money from simply selling licenses of to the franchises to anyone willing to pay if it means bringing some money in which makes an internal development company for use of these licenses pointless.