To be fair, I think things like Move and Kinect are really just ramping up for the next generation of console equipment that will have this stuff as standard. I doubt they're counting on doing anymore than breaking even, if that for now. Getting developers onboard and used to the tech so that they could really push it next gen is probably a good thing too- look how many 3rd party developers really struggled to take advantage of the Wii, most stuff that's been churned out since release has been utter crap, and it's taken a while to get some good 3rd party stuff out there.
There was a story some weeks ago about how Natal could previously even read sign language, and detect finger gestures, but to make the equipment fit in the $150 price range they switched to a lower resolution IR camera. I'd imagine they'll put the higher resolution back in for the next gen console so FPS players can issue commands with hand gestures and that sort of thing, which they could've done this time if they'd made Natal prohibitively more expensive. I guess the technology is too new and expensive to really push it to it's limits right now, but by the time the XBox 720 or whatever comes out it may not be.
I'm also not sure at least in the case of Natal (I don't know about Move) that the R&D will be wasted even if it flops in gaming. I'd imagine hands free interfaces are something Microsoft is hoping to capitalise on elsewhere in the future. It's like things like multi-touch and gesture recognition, it's not new, but it's really come into it's own in recent years finding it's way on mobile devices and becoming a must have feature. It may be that Natal wiill find it's niche in for example TVs, to provide hands free control of them or something like that.
No, re-read my post and have a look at the relevant legislation I linked. As I pointed out it's quite clear that the police have to have a good reason to believe you have the key in the first place. If they issue a notice without having enough evidence to demonstrate they had a reasonable belief that you have ownership of the key, then they would have not correctly followed procedure, and if you stood your ground you'd almost certainly get away with it on a technicality when it got to court in that the order was issued innapropriately in the first place. The point is they can't just demand the key without any real solid demonstrable basis for demanding it.
My analogy to search warrants holds quite well in this respect too- the police can't just raid a house without a warrant, and they can't get a warrant without having enough evidence to justify it. If they faked a warrant or lied to the courts to get one under false pretenses or whatever and searched based on that then their case would similarly fall apart in court.
We don't have enough information available on the relevant cases, but I would be willing to bet that this is why so many of the section 49 notices issued so far have not been pursued or have failed when the person refused to hand over the keys- because the police know full well that they didn't have valid grounds to issue the notice in the first place and were just hoping the people in question would just agree to hand them over. Of the initial 15 notices issued (which covers the first year of the relevant portion of the act being enforced), 11 refused to comply, 7 were charged and only 2 were ever convicted for refusing to comply, also of those 7 charged, we can't even be sure if they were charged under RIPA, and not something else because the information released by the previous government is so vague. This suggests that they're not going as well as the police like to claim, and it's why when one does succeed, as in this case, they make a big fuss over it to try and push the idea that it's a tool they can use largely without challenge as people like yourself believe, such that more people simply just hand them over when they don't actually have to because the notice wasn't legitimately issued in the first place. Another rather disgusting problem with the act is that part of the act makes a provision such that anyone issued with a section 49 notice may not be allowed to talk about it, which is why we haven't heard much about those cases that failed, or the cases where charges were never even filed against people refusing to adhere to the notice.
To date, a much larger percentage of people issued a section 49 notice have avoided handing over their keys, than have been convicted for not doing so, and this is quite telling. I'll also reiterate the point that those where the case has succeded to date, have always admitted having the key but refused to hand it over, rather than denying they have the key in the first place. Also, based on the most recent figures, the number of people convicted is still half the number of people issued a notice, who refused to comply, but who the police then backed down from pursuing under RIPA once they refused to comply.
Personally, I think this is just another good reason why the act should be abolished though- it clearly seems to be being used innappropriately as a tool to strong arm people whether guilty or not, and whether the police had valid grounds to issue a notice in the first place or not.
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
I've never historically been much of a console gamer, although did own a few consoles I never bought more than a handful of games for them until this generation. I've noticed XBox 360 games used to be £39.99 or thereabouts as standard on release, but nowadays they seem to be closer to £34.99 a lot of the time, sometimes only £29.99. Major releases are still usually higher, and Call of Duty tries to sell at £44.99 because Activision are a bunch of profiteering twats, but then, supermarkets in the UK Sold MW2 at £28 on release night so it shows it pays to shop around so you can avoid the Call of Duty tax if you buy it. Certainly the general trend seems to be that in the 5 years since release, 360 games are, on average, a bit cheaper now.
Of course there are stores that'll get you games a little cheaper than these prices, but I'm referring to the usual advertised price from the typical non-discount mainstream stores for the most part because it's hard to compare to the discounted prices when they vary so wildly from title to title!
Presumably that's the sort of thing you could argue in the face of a section 49 notice- if you had software to do just that on your computer, then that sort of argument might hold water. Who knows? It's a minefield- not as bad a minefield as the sensationalists make out, but a hell of a minefield all the same, and one that sadly puts completely innocent people at risk of a jail term.
I'm not sure it'll make much difference- wont most people he knows still think of him as being the guy that refused to do the thing that would prove his innocence? Most people will sadly assume because he is trying to keep the archive secure, that he has something to hide. Hasn't his name been dragged through the mud already in this respect by the very investigation itself and the publicity surrounding this story as is? If he had released the key and the police had found nothing incriminating there would be no trial for the tabloid press to talk about meaning the lasting damage would be merely the damage that's been done already rather than the addition of a full blown trial.
Like you point out though it doesn't work either way, it lets the guilty potentially get off lightly, and puts the innocent in the firing line of a jail term.
The only thing I will add is that the news stories about this have also reported that GCHQ are in the process of trying to break the encryption anyway so if he is guilty there's a chance he'll get a harsh sentence on top of this should they manage that. What intrigues me though is the possibility that he is innocent- if GCHQ break in and find nothing criminal in there, will he receive an apology and compensation? I doubt it, because unfortunately he did simply refuse to give the password over, rather than deny he knew it.
"See this doesn't work in Britain because they made it a crime not to provide the password period. If you fail to provide it, regardless of the reason, that's illegal. It was a specific law made for passwords. So can't remember? You are boned."
This isn't really true. The police have to have reasonable grounds to believe you have the information to be able to issue a notice- this may for example be as simple as getting computer forensicists to provide evidence that the encrypted content has been accessed recently, and that it's unlikely anyone else had access to it- if the file was for example, stored in a private documents folder specific to the user in question. See the relevant legislation, under 49.2 here which clearly states that someone pushing for a disclosure notice must have reasonable grounds to believe that person has it (part a) of 49.2):
It's also worth pointing out to date, that those convicted of failing to adhere to a section 49 notice have all actively refused to hand the key over, rather than claiming they have forgotten it. Of those that have claimed they're not in possession of the key, to date the case has either not been pursued, or the person in question has been charged/convicted for other crimes. This is a common story when it comes to computer crimes- many supposed attempts to prosecute based on new laws, or new twists on old laws don't actually succeed- look at the failure to succesfully prosecute the Oink admin, look at the fact that to date, file sharing cases in the UK haven't succeded in UK courts (although one supposedly won by default due to defendant not showing according to ACS:Law, there is no evidence that this is even true). Ultimately the police have to depend on either scaring people into accepting fault- i.e. if they say they've forgotten the password, reminding them that if they are found to be lying it could lead to an increase in their sentence, or depend on the person being stupid enough to incriminate themselves, or alternatively, for them to simply get caught for other crimes. The police mostly rely on ensuring people are confused about what the law actually says in the hope of making them waver and admit guilt or at least incriminate themselves- by touting convictions like the one in TFA as evidence of how you should always hand your key over without a fight, or without playing innocent they strengthen that idea amongst the public as to that's how it works. It's worth noting that in the words of RIPA itself if you can either demonstrate somehow that the police do not have reasonable grounds to require access to encrypted content (perhaps by use of a witness who would testify that the contents of that file were personal, or trade secrets maybe?), or if you can argue succesfully that giving access to the content is disproportionate to the crime with which they're attempting to charge you with, then you can also escape RIPA's clutch.
In these respects, RIPA is quite similar to a search warrant- the police can only get one if they have reasonable evidence to suggest they have a need to enter the premises, and if it's proportionate to the crime they're investigating. The actual text of the legislation also seems to suggest that providing the content in an unencrypted form is an alternative to producing the key under the RIPA also.
"However if you look in to it you discover that while there's little case law, indeed it HAS been ruled that that the 5th prevents you from having to give up a password. As such that will probably stay, in general courts abide by the rulings of other courts of competent jurisdiction."
This is true, but it's also true that much like with RIPA, a defendant can be compelled by a court to provide access to encrypted content if not provide access to the key itself, in this respect US case precedence is basically similar
Depends where you're calling, someone in the same country, on the same network as you, sure. But someone on a different network in a country over the other side of the closest ocean to you?
...it'll be a bit like a laptop, or a tablet then?
No really, I'll pass thanks. I'm actually quite content walking through the door after a long day at work, plonking myself in my comfy chair, picking up the controller, and going straight to playing games without having to fuck around for a little while.
Virgin were also considering their own content service, and part of their offering to the music industry to achieve favourable licensing for this service was to offer to deal with file sharers or hand their details over.
Virgin absolutely cannot be trusted, if not only because they too have a media arm which means, like Sky, have a vested interest in supporting the media industry. I wish people would stop putting them on their list of so called trustworthy ISPs. Virgin will be the first to sell your details off or punish you directly without fair trial if there's money in it for them. They're absolutely one of the worst ISPs to be giving your money to in this respect, but most people get blinded by their shiny 50mbps broadband package it seems when talking about them.
Even TalkTalk were considering Phorm, and it was only when BT got a shit load of bad PR for it that they really backed off of the idea of it. A certain degree of scepticism is needed when dealing with them, however their boss has at least been the most vocal and active in fighting the DEA measures.
This is the same BT whose PlusNet subsidiary e-mailed 400 customers personal details to ACS:Law in an unencrypted spreadsheet, and as such, who are themselves now under investigation for breach of the data protection act through not securely handling personal data.
This isn't about BT protecting customers, this is about BT trying to look good for the information commissioner when he comes knocking to see what the fuck they were playing at so that he can consider what sanctions/punishment to enforce against the company.
"I agree with your statement that in a perfect world communism would work quite well. But, in a perfect world, where everyone is wise and good, wouldn't capitalism or socialism also work?"
Yes, that's really the point- in an ideal world most political systems could potentially work okay. The problem is, why don't they work in practice?-
"As for communist countries not having money, I have never been to one, but I have met people who say they have, and according to them there is definitely money and a barter system going on. One guy sold several of his blue jeans and his rock and roll cassette tapes (this was the 70's)."
This is why, because although a system like communism could work in practice, true communism has never been implemented in reality which is why no communist nations have done away with currency (except possibly the Khmer Rouge?). As mentioned, under pure communism there is also no leader, but as you're no doubt aware all communist regimes so far I believe have had leaders. There's a fair argument then, that the reason communism has consistently failed, is simply because it's never been done properly, but it's a catch-22 situation, perhaps it's never been done properly because human traits prevent it ever working? Who knows.
Speaking of the Khmer Rouge:
"One difference is that Facists seem to kill everyone not identical to themselves. But didn't the Kumor Rouge in Cambodia also do that? Would they really be called Facist instead of Communist?"
The important point is to not get caught up too much on the killing itself when looking at political systems, and recognise the reasons for the killing. The Nazis killed people because they were different and because they believed they were inferior, the Khmer Rouge killed people not because they thought they were any different, but simply because those people wouldn't do as the leadership wanted. Even a democracy could potentially commit such atrocity, but I'm not sure of any off the top of my head- the former Yugoslavian countries might be a good example, but their government had fallen apart when masacres like Srebrenica happened in the 90s.
You're right to recognise that although these systems have notable differences in theory, implementations of them in practice also have a lot of similarities. However, you should be aware that even these minor differences should be enough to separate them, else you can equally say that capitalism is the same as fascism, and in fact, the irony is, some of the right wing tea party folk in the US for example actually do have more in common with the fascism they claim they hate because they link it to Obama, rather than the capitalism they think they associate with. Extreme nationalism (often sold as patriotism), treating of minorities as inferior (homosexuals, immigrants), strong will to use military force to protect or further national interest- all these things are core tenets of fascism, rather than capitalism and they're all traits that can be identified strongly in the tea party movement. It looks relatively innocent, but so did the Nazis when they started their rise to power.
It's for this reason that many other countries in the world find the likes of the tea party and the furthest right Republicans pretty damn scary and why America gets such a bad reputation abroad- if you compare the political ideology of someone like Sarah Palin against that of past fascist leaders you'll note some rather disturbing trends. It's a shame, because in contrast John McCain is much more a true capitalist which is most likely why McCain and Palin didn't seem to bond too well as political partners, they both have fundamentally different ideologies, and whilst these ideologies share some concepts, they're quite different on others. This is also why some Republicans crossed the floor to put their support behind Obama at the last US elections- when you cut through the party polarisation in US politics you'll notice that the moderate Republicans have more in common with the moderate Democrats than
Yes, there are a number of reasons why this could reasonably be the case, particularly though we've had a couple of years of slow economic activity which has certainly had an effect on corporate upgrade cycles. Even then however there is still bound to be a good portion of systems bought prior to Windows 7's release that were specifically opted for XP over Vista.
So it's a little early to draw conclusions until Windows 7 has at least 3 years behind it which is when most upgrade cycles refresh. If at this point businesses are still opting for XP over Vista then certainly it would appear Windows 7 has been largely rejected like Vista.
This doesn't effect the overall trend of a decline in MS operating systems of course, but it does effect the ratio of Windows 7 to XP systems quite dramatically. There's no way many businesses were just going to switch over to Windows 7 on it's release for systems they had only just purchased new as XP (or Vista) a year or two before. This has never been the case, all MS OS' take a few years to take over from their predecessor.
It's also worth pointing out that Windows 7 has not yet reached service pack 1 either, which is a milestone that many people often wait for with Microsoft operating systems before adopting them both at home, and in the business world.
Effectively it comes down to fascists still believing in an economy as you and I know it- one with companies, one with currency, one with private property, whilst communists believe in eradicating currency, in state control of industry and agriculture, in extreme equality and everyone having the same right to resources and items.
On a social level, fascists do not believe equality is possible, under the Nazis this is most distinctly evidenced by their assault on the jews and the roma etc. They treated them as outright lesser beings.
Religiously communism is staunchly atheist, it's largely because the belief in equality means there is no room for worship of a higher diety, or a religious hierarchy, but of course even the USSR had the Russian orthodox church so wasn't able to abolish religion altogether, and of course they still had a government and leaders, and as such never really made it to the most pure definition of communism in this respect. In contrast, fascism strongly embraces religion, however it doesn't necessarily have to be a religion that you and I can recognise like Islam or Catholicism, the Nazis for example effectively created their own religious beliefs, based largely on paganism.
Pure communism is actually meant to be democratic, but with the USSR this is where the totalitarian side of things comes in although the USSR was borderline authoritarian rather than totalitarian but still primarily totalitarian. Interestingly pure forms of some demonised ideologies sound quite good on paper- there's nothing particularly evil as it were about the pure communist ideology in theory, in a perfect world there seems little reason why pure communism would be a bad thing as pure communism actually looks at removal of leadership altogether, where things are decided simply by majority vote, but as you're aware we don't live in a perfect world and there will always be self-interest corrupting such ideas. This is why of course, to date, I do not believe there has been a single good implementation of communism despite the fact that in that afformentioned theoretical perfect world, in it's purest form there's no reason why it should be inherently bad.
As you can see, socialism differs to both fascism and communism- certainly socialists have no interest in abolishing currency, and having every bit of industry and argiculture state owned, but also they don't deny equality like fascism does, but in socialist European countries they don't overly enforce it either. What they do do is ensure equality when it comes to key services- through the tax system they provide a state run healthcare system that ensures there is a minimum level of healthcare that everyone can access whoever they are in society. You might recognise that in this respect, the US itself is already socialist to some degree- law enforcement is after all provided equally for example. This is why equating actions such as a push for socialist healthcare in the US and similar by the Obama administration to attempts to pursue communism is a little irrational- if providing some service equally to all is socialism or communism then the US must already be socialist/communist by the fact it does just this with law enforcement, fire departments and so forth.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm not defending Obama, I very much dislike him, though my dislike is largely for other reasons- I think he is both arrogant and utterly incompetent when it comes to dealing with other countries, and his inability or lack of willingness to deal with the damage done to civil liberties by the previous administration leaves a lot of questions about his real belief and intentions.
Personally I don't think any single political ideology pushed to it's purest form is workable in the real world. I think a strong dose of democracy, with a sprinkiling of capitalism and socialism is the best mix we have found in practice to date, certainly pure socialism, and pure capitalism aren't as good as a healthy blend of the two. I think those who seek pure capitalism, those who seek pure communism, those who seek pure fascism and so forth are doomed to miss the good bits of other ideologies, whilst suffering to the extreme the negative parts of the ideology they pursue, as well as the positive parts it provides.
Yeah, Android will be fucked. I mean the ability to buy apps from a variety of sources completely and utterly destroyed the PC and Mac ecosystems. If only they'd been able to limit PCs and Macs to single stores to buy apps from, then nowadays we wouldn't be using the internet and having to work on...
Oh wait, nevermind.
BTW, I had no idea who John Gruber is, so I had to Google him. For anyone else wondering, apparently he's a blogger from Philadelphia, who graduated from Drexel University, and worked for Bare Bones software. Big names there, obviously a person that matters in the technology world.
The USSR was totalitarian-communist, not socialist, there IS a difference. A few European nations are socialist (democratic-socialist), and socialism can often be spotted by higher level of taxes, but great level of state provided benefits- in some European countries for example you get free child care, subsidised fuel costs and that sort of thing at the expense of higher taxes.
Nazi Germany was not socialist, it was totalitarian-fascist. Hitler was installed at the behest of the Germany people and so was a legitimate leader.
Present day China is less socialist than the US, because it offers little protection for the average person- companies can abuse them all they want, and if they struggle to provide and need help, well, tough shit. In the US workers have many more protected rights and some level of state benefits. China is more Capitalist than the US nowadays, the only difference is that China is staunchly authoritarian-capitalist. The US is, in contrast, loosely demoratic-capitalist.
Perhaps the most salient point though is that there's not actually anything wrong with socialism. For some reason Americans have been sold it and see it as some big evil bogeyman, and yet many European states are much more socialist than the US and yet their citizens are often also much happier, much healthier, and much better educated. Obama has certainly made a very loose push towards socialism, but it's hard to argue that it IS socialism, it's just heading in that direction. The problem is that some elements of US society have tried to link socialism and communism as being equivalent, and have then tried to imply that any move towards socialism is hence like moving towards USSR style communism. Clearly that's absurd, at best it means that Obama has tried to make the US a bit more like some of the European countries who have a healthy, thriving population without the gross disparity in wealth and the associated crime and health problems that come with it that the US has. Whilst you may personally not like that model (which is a perfectly fair and valid feeling on your behalf if it's the case), it shouldn't be hard to understand why he wants that model when it works so incredibly well elsewhere.
Demonising it as a move towards soviet or nazi style rule is just comical though, if you really believe that you should keep out of political debate until you're better educated. If you disagree with it, then come up with reasons why you disagrees- research the downsides of it and put those forward as reasoned arguments, weighed up against the upsides. Use other countries as case studies, see if it has worked elsewhere, see what the negative side effects have been.
It's probably a lot to ask, because the American public seem quite content basking in ignorance when it comes to political debate half the time resorting merely to dumbed down attacks on politicians of the "OMG SOCIALIST" type, but I'd absolutely love it if you'd go out and prove me wrong, and start engaging in more reasoned and intelligent debate about the issues with your fellow countrymen which yes, involves accepting that there are positive and not just negative sides to the opposition's proposals, whatever they may be. After all, even soviet style communism decreased income disparity, even if it fucked most other things up. It's just about weighing the good vs. bad and coming to a conclusion based upon that but I believe you'll have a hard time arguing that the US as a whole wouldn't benefit from a slightly more socialist stance to eliminate some of it's burning social issues, even if it may not benefit you personally.
I saw this when Slashdot posted it the other day, but a story I was reading today about Britain's defence review seems to shed light on why it's such a bad idea to be hiring military folk over geeks.
As part of our spending review, we're thinking about increasing the number of territorial army folk who are the part time volunteer soldiers that are drafted in from their real jobs when the army needs the numbers. The reason they've thinking about increasing this contingency is that they have found people who are normally bank clerks or similar to simply be more adaptable and more useful in situations like Afghanistan and Iraq- their skills from civvie street as it were are simply invaluable, perhaps the most interesting part of it all is that these comments came from a former SAS commander- someone who surely knows as well as anyone what works in a real war.
But the point was bolstered by another fact I was previously unaware of- most of the US' special operations in Afghanistan are apparently carried out by National Guard reservists because the US has also found them to simply be better at adapting to the unique situations in Afghanistan and being able to best make use of new equipment and such.
So whilst they weren't arguing that trained professionals are what you need against trained professionals - if the US was going toe to toe against Russia, their trained army would still matter for example - it seems that in some situations including those involved the frontline, civvies with a bit of military training are simply far better at doing the job than military trained soldiers with training in some particular technology.
With this in mind, it seems an absolute mistake to think that military elitism is the key to building a good cyber warrior defence. I would be willing to bet that digital warfare is something much carried out by a team of skilled civilian security experts with training in military terms and concepts, than a team of skilled military experts trained in security.
Apparently Intel's content protection department aren't aware of what the rest of the company does- produces processing equipment precisely so stuff like this can be done with ease.
On the contrary! I was being nosy and noticed the script right at the top in the opening body tag, hence why I asked why it tries to resize your browser.
OFCOM said some time ago that ISPs are free to prioritise protocols and such, but if they go so far as giving one company priority over another, they'll step in. They can deprioritise BitTorrent for example, but if they deprioritised BitTorrent for World of Warcraft's updates in favour of some theoretical competitor then they'd fall foul of what OFCOM has declared legitimate for them to do.
I'm not sure the BT execs saying this really know what they're saying, because it puts them in breach of OFCOM's viewpoint on the issue which could see them stuck in an expensive face-off against the industry regulator and I doubt they'd knowingly do that. I think they're just stating what they'd like to do if the opportunity arose, not what they actually do or are actually able to do for the above mentioned reason- it'd get them in shit, unless OFCOM has changed it's stance, but I do not believe it has.
This is why they're in breach of the data protection act on a massive scale. The hack wasn't the result of the leak of customer data, their incompetence and poor data protection practices were.
The information commissioner's comments were interesting on the news last night- he said something along the lines of "I don't have the power to shut a company down, but I can issue a fine of upto half a million pounds which can obviously have a devastating effect on a company of this size". His comment seems quite telling as to what he perhaps has in store for this company due to the fact they've breached the DPA on a massive scale.
What I'm not sure about, is whether private citizens have any legal recourse for compensation also- can the people whose details were leaked now sue the company for this? If they were not the ones who downloaded the materials can they sue under defamation laws or similar? I know if I was on those lists I'd certainly be exploring my options to give them a taste of their own tactics.
Hopefully this will be devastating for ACS:Law, and it might also be worth noting that under the DPA individual employees can be held criminally responsible for unauthorised release of data too such that for example, the IT guy there who put the personal data on the public web may face a personal fine or prosecution also.
It's nice that for once, a combination of incompetence and assholery may just be receiving the kind of response it deserves rather than simply being sweeped under the carpet. Partly because our information commissioner is more keen on punishing private sector breaches like this that fall under his remit than the police or government are over similar matters (e.g. Phorm) that fall under theirs. The only downside to the guy is he still seems to let public sector breaches go largely unpunished - i.e. the infamous HMRC 25 million record breach, although I suspect that's more a case of the government exerting influence on him (i.e. the threat of redundancy).
Microsoft's market cap is quite impressive, but still simply doesn't do them justice.
When you look at the important stats- their net income, then they're still pulling in around 3 times the amount of post-outgoings cash as Google and Oracle, and about twice as much as HP, and around 2.5 times as much as Apple. Their equity and assets trump pretty much all the other players as well. In comparison with Dell- a truly dying tech company, they've got a staggering 12 times the profit Dell has nowadays.
As you say the media interest doesn't matter, Microsoft is still by far the biggest tech company in the world, no other company comes close, and of course with Microsoft still reporting record profit year on year there's no sign of anyone catching up to them any time soon. Google and Apple's growth over the last decade has become phenomenal, no one can argue that, but even with their epic growth they've still not been able to reach half the size of Microsoft and their momentum has certainly slowed recently- certainly the rate of growth isn't close to what it was some years back so if they do catch Microsoft up, it's still going to be a long hard slog and take them an awful long time yet.
The other point is about the negativity of the articles too, certainly not all of the press Apple and Google have received has been positive- a company like Apple riding on a wave of positive publicity to drive sales of it's products is going to get hit much harder by negative stories than a company like Microsoft that's had pretty much nothing but negative publicity for the last 20 years, but still manages to thrive.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, I think things like Move and Kinect are really just ramping up for the next generation of console equipment that will have this stuff as standard. I doubt they're counting on doing anymore than breaking even, if that for now. Getting developers onboard and used to the tech so that they could really push it next gen is probably a good thing too- look how many 3rd party developers really struggled to take advantage of the Wii, most stuff that's been churned out since release has been utter crap, and it's taken a while to get some good 3rd party stuff out there.
There was a story some weeks ago about how Natal could previously even read sign language, and detect finger gestures, but to make the equipment fit in the $150 price range they switched to a lower resolution IR camera. I'd imagine they'll put the higher resolution back in for the next gen console so FPS players can issue commands with hand gestures and that sort of thing, which they could've done this time if they'd made Natal prohibitively more expensive. I guess the technology is too new and expensive to really push it to it's limits right now, but by the time the XBox 720 or whatever comes out it may not be.
I'm also not sure at least in the case of Natal (I don't know about Move) that the R&D will be wasted even if it flops in gaming. I'd imagine hands free interfaces are something Microsoft is hoping to capitalise on elsewhere in the future. It's like things like multi-touch and gesture recognition, it's not new, but it's really come into it's own in recent years finding it's way on mobile devices and becoming a must have feature. It may be that Natal wiill find it's niche in for example TVs, to provide hands free control of them or something like that.
No, re-read my post and have a look at the relevant legislation I linked. As I pointed out it's quite clear that the police have to have a good reason to believe you have the key in the first place. If they issue a notice without having enough evidence to demonstrate they had a reasonable belief that you have ownership of the key, then they would have not correctly followed procedure, and if you stood your ground you'd almost certainly get away with it on a technicality when it got to court in that the order was issued innapropriately in the first place. The point is they can't just demand the key without any real solid demonstrable basis for demanding it.
My analogy to search warrants holds quite well in this respect too- the police can't just raid a house without a warrant, and they can't get a warrant without having enough evidence to justify it. If they faked a warrant or lied to the courts to get one under false pretenses or whatever and searched based on that then their case would similarly fall apart in court.
We don't have enough information available on the relevant cases, but I would be willing to bet that this is why so many of the section 49 notices issued so far have not been pursued or have failed when the person refused to hand over the keys- because the police know full well that they didn't have valid grounds to issue the notice in the first place and were just hoping the people in question would just agree to hand them over. Of the initial 15 notices issued (which covers the first year of the relevant portion of the act being enforced), 11 refused to comply, 7 were charged and only 2 were ever convicted for refusing to comply, also of those 7 charged, we can't even be sure if they were charged under RIPA, and not something else because the information released by the previous government is so vague. This suggests that they're not going as well as the police like to claim, and it's why when one does succeed, as in this case, they make a big fuss over it to try and push the idea that it's a tool they can use largely without challenge as people like yourself believe, such that more people simply just hand them over when they don't actually have to because the notice wasn't legitimately issued in the first place. Another rather disgusting problem with the act is that part of the act makes a provision such that anyone issued with a section 49 notice may not be allowed to talk about it, which is why we haven't heard much about those cases that failed, or the cases where charges were never even filed against people refusing to adhere to the notice.
To date, a much larger percentage of people issued a section 49 notice have avoided handing over their keys, than have been convicted for not doing so, and this is quite telling. I'll also reiterate the point that those where the case has succeded to date, have always admitted having the key but refused to hand it over, rather than denying they have the key in the first place. Also, based on the most recent figures, the number of people convicted is still half the number of people issued a notice, who refused to comply, but who the police then backed down from pursuing under RIPA once they refused to comply.
Personally, I think this is just another good reason why the act should be abolished though- it clearly seems to be being used innappropriately as a tool to strong arm people whether guilty or not, and whether the police had valid grounds to issue a notice in the first place or not.
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
I've never historically been much of a console gamer, although did own a few consoles I never bought more than a handful of games for them until this generation. I've noticed XBox 360 games used to be £39.99 or thereabouts as standard on release, but nowadays they seem to be closer to £34.99 a lot of the time, sometimes only £29.99. Major releases are still usually higher, and Call of Duty tries to sell at £44.99 because Activision are a bunch of profiteering twats, but then, supermarkets in the UK Sold MW2 at £28 on release night so it shows it pays to shop around so you can avoid the Call of Duty tax if you buy it. Certainly the general trend seems to be that in the 5 years since release, 360 games are, on average, a bit cheaper now.
Of course there are stores that'll get you games a little cheaper than these prices, but I'm referring to the usual advertised price from the typical non-discount mainstream stores for the most part because it's hard to compare to the discounted prices when they vary so wildly from title to title!
Presumably that's the sort of thing you could argue in the face of a section 49 notice- if you had software to do just that on your computer, then that sort of argument might hold water. Who knows? It's a minefield- not as bad a minefield as the sensationalists make out, but a hell of a minefield all the same, and one that sadly puts completely innocent people at risk of a jail term.
I'm not sure it'll make much difference- wont most people he knows still think of him as being the guy that refused to do the thing that would prove his innocence? Most people will sadly assume because he is trying to keep the archive secure, that he has something to hide. Hasn't his name been dragged through the mud already in this respect by the very investigation itself and the publicity surrounding this story as is? If he had released the key and the police had found nothing incriminating there would be no trial for the tabloid press to talk about meaning the lasting damage would be merely the damage that's been done already rather than the addition of a full blown trial.
Like you point out though it doesn't work either way, it lets the guilty potentially get off lightly, and puts the innocent in the firing line of a jail term.
The only thing I will add is that the news stories about this have also reported that GCHQ are in the process of trying to break the encryption anyway so if he is guilty there's a chance he'll get a harsh sentence on top of this should they manage that. What intrigues me though is the possibility that he is innocent- if GCHQ break in and find nothing criminal in there, will he receive an apology and compensation? I doubt it, because unfortunately he did simply refuse to give the password over, rather than deny he knew it.
"See this doesn't work in Britain because they made it a crime not to provide the password period. If you fail to provide it, regardless of the reason, that's illegal. It was a specific law made for passwords. So can't remember? You are boned."
This isn't really true. The police have to have reasonable grounds to believe you have the information to be able to issue a notice- this may for example be as simple as getting computer forensicists to provide evidence that the encrypted content has been accessed recently, and that it's unlikely anyone else had access to it- if the file was for example, stored in a private documents folder specific to the user in question. See the relevant legislation, under 49.2 here which clearly states that someone pushing for a disclosure notice must have reasonable grounds to believe that person has it (part a) of 49.2):
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/III/crossheading/power-to-require-disclosure
It's also worth pointing out to date, that those convicted of failing to adhere to a section 49 notice have all actively refused to hand the key over, rather than claiming they have forgotten it. Of those that have claimed they're not in possession of the key, to date the case has either not been pursued, or the person in question has been charged/convicted for other crimes. This is a common story when it comes to computer crimes- many supposed attempts to prosecute based on new laws, or new twists on old laws don't actually succeed- look at the failure to succesfully prosecute the Oink admin, look at the fact that to date, file sharing cases in the UK haven't succeded in UK courts (although one supposedly won by default due to defendant not showing according to ACS:Law, there is no evidence that this is even true). Ultimately the police have to depend on either scaring people into accepting fault- i.e. if they say they've forgotten the password, reminding them that if they are found to be lying it could lead to an increase in their sentence, or depend on the person being stupid enough to incriminate themselves, or alternatively, for them to simply get caught for other crimes. The police mostly rely on ensuring people are confused about what the law actually says in the hope of making them waver and admit guilt or at least incriminate themselves- by touting convictions like the one in TFA as evidence of how you should always hand your key over without a fight, or without playing innocent they strengthen that idea amongst the public as to that's how it works. It's worth noting that in the words of RIPA itself if you can either demonstrate somehow that the police do not have reasonable grounds to require access to encrypted content (perhaps by use of a witness who would testify that the contents of that file were personal, or trade secrets maybe?), or if you can argue succesfully that giving access to the content is disproportionate to the crime with which they're attempting to charge you with, then you can also escape RIPA's clutch.
In these respects, RIPA is quite similar to a search warrant- the police can only get one if they have reasonable evidence to suggest they have a need to enter the premises, and if it's proportionate to the crime they're investigating. The actual text of the legislation also seems to suggest that providing the content in an unencrypted form is an alternative to producing the key under the RIPA also.
"However if you look in to it you discover that while there's little case law, indeed it HAS been ruled that that the 5th prevents you from having to give up a password. As such that will probably stay, in general courts abide by the rulings of other courts of competent jurisdiction."
This is true, but it's also true that much like with RIPA, a defendant can be compelled by a court to provide access to encrypted content if not provide access to the key itself, in this respect US case precedence is basically similar
Depends where you're calling, someone in the same country, on the same network as you, sure. But someone on a different network in a country over the other side of the closest ocean to you?
...it'll be a bit like a laptop, or a tablet then?
No really, I'll pass thanks. I'm actually quite content walking through the door after a long day at work, plonking myself in my comfy chair, picking up the controller, and going straight to playing games without having to fuck around for a little while.
A lot of people seem to be pimping Virgin as a safe option, but this is really ignorant:
http://www.out-law.com/page-9180
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/virgin_to_monitor_filesharing_in_uk.php
Virgin were also considering their own content service, and part of their offering to the music industry to achieve favourable licensing for this service was to offer to deal with file sharers or hand their details over.
Virgin absolutely cannot be trusted, if not only because they too have a media arm which means, like Sky, have a vested interest in supporting the media industry. I wish people would stop putting them on their list of so called trustworthy ISPs. Virgin will be the first to sell your details off or punish you directly without fair trial if there's money in it for them. They're absolutely one of the worst ISPs to be giving your money to in this respect, but most people get blinded by their shiny 50mbps broadband package it seems when talking about them.
Even TalkTalk were considering Phorm, and it was only when BT got a shit load of bad PR for it that they really backed off of the idea of it. A certain degree of scepticism is needed when dealing with them, however their boss has at least been the most vocal and active in fighting the DEA measures.
This is the same BT whose PlusNet subsidiary e-mailed 400 customers personal details to ACS:Law in an unencrypted spreadsheet, and as such, who are themselves now under investigation for breach of the data protection act through not securely handling personal data.
This isn't about BT protecting customers, this is about BT trying to look good for the information commissioner when he comes knocking to see what the fuck they were playing at so that he can consider what sanctions/punishment to enforce against the company.
That would get my vote, providing we can start with the pope.
I hope that's not intended to humour the druids, they're a bonafide religion now don't you know:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11457795
Making fun of them could now officially be classed as hate speech!
Equal rights for bearded stone henge botherers!
"I agree with your statement that in a perfect world communism would work quite well. But, in a perfect world, where everyone is wise and good, wouldn't capitalism or socialism also work?"
Yes, that's really the point- in an ideal world most political systems could potentially work okay. The problem is, why don't they work in practice?-
"As for communist countries not having money, I have never been to one, but I have met people who say they have, and according to them there is definitely money and a barter system going on. One guy sold several of his blue jeans and his rock and roll cassette tapes (this was the 70's)."
This is why, because although a system like communism could work in practice, true communism has never been implemented in reality which is why no communist nations have done away with currency (except possibly the Khmer Rouge?). As mentioned, under pure communism there is also no leader, but as you're no doubt aware all communist regimes so far I believe have had leaders. There's a fair argument then, that the reason communism has consistently failed, is simply because it's never been done properly, but it's a catch-22 situation, perhaps it's never been done properly because human traits prevent it ever working? Who knows.
Speaking of the Khmer Rouge:
"One difference is that Facists seem to kill everyone not identical to themselves. But didn't the Kumor Rouge in Cambodia also do that? Would they really be called Facist instead of Communist?"
The important point is to not get caught up too much on the killing itself when looking at political systems, and recognise the reasons for the killing. The Nazis killed people because they were different and because they believed they were inferior, the Khmer Rouge killed people not because they thought they were any different, but simply because those people wouldn't do as the leadership wanted. Even a democracy could potentially commit such atrocity, but I'm not sure of any off the top of my head- the former Yugoslavian countries might be a good example, but their government had fallen apart when masacres like Srebrenica happened in the 90s.
You're right to recognise that although these systems have notable differences in theory, implementations of them in practice also have a lot of similarities. However, you should be aware that even these minor differences should be enough to separate them, else you can equally say that capitalism is the same as fascism, and in fact, the irony is, some of the right wing tea party folk in the US for example actually do have more in common with the fascism they claim they hate because they link it to Obama, rather than the capitalism they think they associate with. Extreme nationalism (often sold as patriotism), treating of minorities as inferior (homosexuals, immigrants), strong will to use military force to protect or further national interest- all these things are core tenets of fascism, rather than capitalism and they're all traits that can be identified strongly in the tea party movement. It looks relatively innocent, but so did the Nazis when they started their rise to power.
It's for this reason that many other countries in the world find the likes of the tea party and the furthest right Republicans pretty damn scary and why America gets such a bad reputation abroad- if you compare the political ideology of someone like Sarah Palin against that of past fascist leaders you'll note some rather disturbing trends. It's a shame, because in contrast John McCain is much more a true capitalist which is most likely why McCain and Palin didn't seem to bond too well as political partners, they both have fundamentally different ideologies, and whilst these ideologies share some concepts, they're quite different on others. This is also why some Republicans crossed the floor to put their support behind Obama at the last US elections- when you cut through the party polarisation in US politics you'll notice that the moderate Republicans have more in common with the moderate Democrats than
Yes, there are a number of reasons why this could reasonably be the case, particularly though we've had a couple of years of slow economic activity which has certainly had an effect on corporate upgrade cycles. Even then however there is still bound to be a good portion of systems bought prior to Windows 7's release that were specifically opted for XP over Vista.
So it's a little early to draw conclusions until Windows 7 has at least 3 years behind it which is when most upgrade cycles refresh. If at this point businesses are still opting for XP over Vista then certainly it would appear Windows 7 has been largely rejected like Vista.
This doesn't effect the overall trend of a decline in MS operating systems of course, but it does effect the ratio of Windows 7 to XP systems quite dramatically. There's no way many businesses were just going to switch over to Windows 7 on it's release for systems they had only just purchased new as XP (or Vista) a year or two before. This has never been the case, all MS OS' take a few years to take over from their predecessor.
It's also worth pointing out that Windows 7 has not yet reached service pack 1 either, which is a milestone that many people often wait for with Microsoft operating systems before adopting them both at home, and in the business world.
Effectively it comes down to fascists still believing in an economy as you and I know it- one with companies, one with currency, one with private property, whilst communists believe in eradicating currency, in state control of industry and agriculture, in extreme equality and everyone having the same right to resources and items.
On a social level, fascists do not believe equality is possible, under the Nazis this is most distinctly evidenced by their assault on the jews and the roma etc. They treated them as outright lesser beings.
Religiously communism is staunchly atheist, it's largely because the belief in equality means there is no room for worship of a higher diety, or a religious hierarchy, but of course even the USSR had the Russian orthodox church so wasn't able to abolish religion altogether, and of course they still had a government and leaders, and as such never really made it to the most pure definition of communism in this respect. In contrast, fascism strongly embraces religion, however it doesn't necessarily have to be a religion that you and I can recognise like Islam or Catholicism, the Nazis for example effectively created their own religious beliefs, based largely on paganism.
Pure communism is actually meant to be democratic, but with the USSR this is where the totalitarian side of things comes in although the USSR was borderline authoritarian rather than totalitarian but still primarily totalitarian. Interestingly pure forms of some demonised ideologies sound quite good on paper- there's nothing particularly evil as it were about the pure communist ideology in theory, in a perfect world there seems little reason why pure communism would be a bad thing as pure communism actually looks at removal of leadership altogether, where things are decided simply by majority vote, but as you're aware we don't live in a perfect world and there will always be self-interest corrupting such ideas. This is why of course, to date, I do not believe there has been a single good implementation of communism despite the fact that in that afformentioned theoretical perfect world, in it's purest form there's no reason why it should be inherently bad.
As you can see, socialism differs to both fascism and communism- certainly socialists have no interest in abolishing currency, and having every bit of industry and argiculture state owned, but also they don't deny equality like fascism does, but in socialist European countries they don't overly enforce it either. What they do do is ensure equality when it comes to key services- through the tax system they provide a state run healthcare system that ensures there is a minimum level of healthcare that everyone can access whoever they are in society. You might recognise that in this respect, the US itself is already socialist to some degree- law enforcement is after all provided equally for example. This is why equating actions such as a push for socialist healthcare in the US and similar by the Obama administration to attempts to pursue communism is a little irrational- if providing some service equally to all is socialism or communism then the US must already be socialist/communist by the fact it does just this with law enforcement, fire departments and so forth.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm not defending Obama, I very much dislike him, though my dislike is largely for other reasons- I think he is both arrogant and utterly incompetent when it comes to dealing with other countries, and his inability or lack of willingness to deal with the damage done to civil liberties by the previous administration leaves a lot of questions about his real belief and intentions.
Personally I don't think any single political ideology pushed to it's purest form is workable in the real world. I think a strong dose of democracy, with a sprinkiling of capitalism and socialism is the best mix we have found in practice to date, certainly pure socialism, and pure capitalism aren't as good as a healthy blend of the two. I think those who seek pure capitalism, those who seek pure communism, those who seek pure fascism and so forth are doomed to miss the good bits of other ideologies, whilst suffering to the extreme the negative parts of the ideology they pursue, as well as the positive parts it provides.
Yeah, Android will be fucked. I mean the ability to buy apps from a variety of sources completely and utterly destroyed the PC and Mac ecosystems. If only they'd been able to limit PCs and Macs to single stores to buy apps from, then nowadays we wouldn't be using the internet and having to work on...
Oh wait, nevermind.
BTW, I had no idea who John Gruber is, so I had to Google him. For anyone else wondering, apparently he's a blogger from Philadelphia, who graduated from Drexel University, and worked for Bare Bones software. Big names there, obviously a person that matters in the technology world.
Everything you said is complete nonsense.
The USSR was totalitarian-communist, not socialist, there IS a difference. A few European nations are socialist (democratic-socialist), and socialism can often be spotted by higher level of taxes, but great level of state provided benefits- in some European countries for example you get free child care, subsidised fuel costs and that sort of thing at the expense of higher taxes.
Nazi Germany was not socialist, it was totalitarian-fascist. Hitler was installed at the behest of the Germany people and so was a legitimate leader.
Present day China is less socialist than the US, because it offers little protection for the average person- companies can abuse them all they want, and if they struggle to provide and need help, well, tough shit. In the US workers have many more protected rights and some level of state benefits. China is more Capitalist than the US nowadays, the only difference is that China is staunchly authoritarian-capitalist. The US is, in contrast, loosely demoratic-capitalist.
Perhaps the most salient point though is that there's not actually anything wrong with socialism. For some reason Americans have been sold it and see it as some big evil bogeyman, and yet many European states are much more socialist than the US and yet their citizens are often also much happier, much healthier, and much better educated. Obama has certainly made a very loose push towards socialism, but it's hard to argue that it IS socialism, it's just heading in that direction. The problem is that some elements of US society have tried to link socialism and communism as being equivalent, and have then tried to imply that any move towards socialism is hence like moving towards USSR style communism. Clearly that's absurd, at best it means that Obama has tried to make the US a bit more like some of the European countries who have a healthy, thriving population without the gross disparity in wealth and the associated crime and health problems that come with it that the US has. Whilst you may personally not like that model (which is a perfectly fair and valid feeling on your behalf if it's the case), it shouldn't be hard to understand why he wants that model when it works so incredibly well elsewhere.
Demonising it as a move towards soviet or nazi style rule is just comical though, if you really believe that you should keep out of political debate until you're better educated. If you disagree with it, then come up with reasons why you disagrees- research the downsides of it and put those forward as reasoned arguments, weighed up against the upsides. Use other countries as case studies, see if it has worked elsewhere, see what the negative side effects have been.
It's probably a lot to ask, because the American public seem quite content basking in ignorance when it comes to political debate half the time resorting merely to dumbed down attacks on politicians of the "OMG SOCIALIST" type, but I'd absolutely love it if you'd go out and prove me wrong, and start engaging in more reasoned and intelligent debate about the issues with your fellow countrymen which yes, involves accepting that there are positive and not just negative sides to the opposition's proposals, whatever they may be. After all, even soviet style communism decreased income disparity, even if it fucked most other things up. It's just about weighing the good vs. bad and coming to a conclusion based upon that but I believe you'll have a hard time arguing that the US as a whole wouldn't benefit from a slightly more socialist stance to eliminate some of it's burning social issues, even if it may not benefit you personally.
I saw this when Slashdot posted it the other day, but a story I was reading today about Britain's defence review seems to shed light on why it's such a bad idea to be hiring military folk over geeks.
As part of our spending review, we're thinking about increasing the number of territorial army folk who are the part time volunteer soldiers that are drafted in from their real jobs when the army needs the numbers. The reason they've thinking about increasing this contingency is that they have found people who are normally bank clerks or similar to simply be more adaptable and more useful in situations like Afghanistan and Iraq- their skills from civvie street as it were are simply invaluable, perhaps the most interesting part of it all is that these comments came from a former SAS commander- someone who surely knows as well as anyone what works in a real war.
But the point was bolstered by another fact I was previously unaware of- most of the US' special operations in Afghanistan are apparently carried out by National Guard reservists because the US has also found them to simply be better at adapting to the unique situations in Afghanistan and being able to best make use of new equipment and such.
So whilst they weren't arguing that trained professionals are what you need against trained professionals - if the US was going toe to toe against Russia, their trained army would still matter for example - it seems that in some situations including those involved the frontline, civvies with a bit of military training are simply far better at doing the job than military trained soldiers with training in some particular technology.
With this in mind, it seems an absolute mistake to think that military elitism is the key to building a good cyber warrior defence. I would be willing to bet that digital warfare is something much carried out by a team of skilled civilian security experts with training in military terms and concepts, than a team of skilled military experts trained in security.
Because using Word or Wordperfect generated HTML on a real internet facing website is a little bit like raping the internet. It's just wrong.
Yep, but I think this much was obvious anyway.
Apparently Intel's content protection department aren't aware of what the rest of the company does- produces processing equipment precisely so stuff like this can be done with ease.
On the contrary! I was being nosy and noticed the script right at the top in the opening body tag, hence why I asked why it tries to resize your browser.
Why does this site try to resize your browser Window? Is this Iran's attempt at getting back at us Westerners for Stuxnet or something?
I think it's all theoretical.
OFCOM said some time ago that ISPs are free to prioritise protocols and such, but if they go so far as giving one company priority over another, they'll step in. They can deprioritise BitTorrent for example, but if they deprioritised BitTorrent for World of Warcraft's updates in favour of some theoretical competitor then they'd fall foul of what OFCOM has declared legitimate for them to do.
I'm not sure the BT execs saying this really know what they're saying, because it puts them in breach of OFCOM's viewpoint on the issue which could see them stuck in an expensive face-off against the industry regulator and I doubt they'd knowingly do that. I think they're just stating what they'd like to do if the opportunity arose, not what they actually do or are actually able to do for the above mentioned reason- it'd get them in shit, unless OFCOM has changed it's stance, but I do not believe it has.
This is why they're in breach of the data protection act on a massive scale. The hack wasn't the result of the leak of customer data, their incompetence and poor data protection practices were.
The information commissioner's comments were interesting on the news last night- he said something along the lines of "I don't have the power to shut a company down, but I can issue a fine of upto half a million pounds which can obviously have a devastating effect on a company of this size". His comment seems quite telling as to what he perhaps has in store for this company due to the fact they've breached the DPA on a massive scale.
What I'm not sure about, is whether private citizens have any legal recourse for compensation also- can the people whose details were leaked now sue the company for this? If they were not the ones who downloaded the materials can they sue under defamation laws or similar? I know if I was on those lists I'd certainly be exploring my options to give them a taste of their own tactics.
Hopefully this will be devastating for ACS:Law, and it might also be worth noting that under the DPA individual employees can be held criminally responsible for unauthorised release of data too such that for example, the IT guy there who put the personal data on the public web may face a personal fine or prosecution also.
It's nice that for once, a combination of incompetence and assholery may just be receiving the kind of response it deserves rather than simply being sweeped under the carpet. Partly because our information commissioner is more keen on punishing private sector breaches like this that fall under his remit than the police or government are over similar matters (e.g. Phorm) that fall under theirs. The only downside to the guy is he still seems to let public sector breaches go largely unpunished - i.e. the infamous HMRC 25 million record breach, although I suspect that's more a case of the government exerting influence on him (i.e. the threat of redundancy).
Microsoft's market cap is quite impressive, but still simply doesn't do them justice.
When you look at the important stats- their net income, then they're still pulling in around 3 times the amount of post-outgoings cash as Google and Oracle, and about twice as much as HP, and around 2.5 times as much as Apple. Their equity and assets trump pretty much all the other players as well. In comparison with Dell- a truly dying tech company, they've got a staggering 12 times the profit Dell has nowadays.
As you say the media interest doesn't matter, Microsoft is still by far the biggest tech company in the world, no other company comes close, and of course with Microsoft still reporting record profit year on year there's no sign of anyone catching up to them any time soon. Google and Apple's growth over the last decade has become phenomenal, no one can argue that, but even with their epic growth they've still not been able to reach half the size of Microsoft and their momentum has certainly slowed recently- certainly the rate of growth isn't close to what it was some years back so if they do catch Microsoft up, it's still going to be a long hard slog and take them an awful long time yet.
The other point is about the negativity of the articles too, certainly not all of the press Apple and Google have received has been positive- a company like Apple riding on a wave of positive publicity to drive sales of it's products is going to get hit much harder by negative stories than a company like Microsoft that's had pretty much nothing but negative publicity for the last 20 years, but still manages to thrive.