Their proposals for TV channels are that two of the private broadcasters (most likely Channel 4 and 5 in the UK) should merge to become another public broadcaster to compete with the BBC.
I have to agree, this is probably the only positive thing in the report regarding the UK's internet future.
I'm not sure how it'll work though, there's talk of the minimum required net access being 2mbps. My ADSL syncs between 1.8mbps and 2.2mbps. It's not because I'm too far from the exchange or anything like that, it's simply because the phone lines are crap.
I'm intrigued to know whether the fact my connection sometimes drops below 2mbps means BT would have to replace the lines. Funnily enough, if this is the case it would push me much closer to the 8mbps speed cap on ADSL Max because it really is only quality of cables that's the issue in my area.
I think that's probably being a little hopeful though, realistically I think they'd just push ADSL2 out quicker and then I'd get maybe 3mbps instead. This is perhaps why a minimum wouldn't work well, because they could fulfil the 2mbps obligation at the same time everyone else has jumped from near 8mbps to near 24mbps. I'd argue they should set the cap higher else this legislation is going to become dated quickly as things change much faster in the technology world than they do in the political world.
"There remained major concerns how consumer protection would be properly addressed, while developing the self-regulatory aspect through a code of practice raised significant questions on how to accommodate other rights holders, the smaller ISPs and consumer bodies."
That's a breif mention of that very problem. Basically it remains unaddressed, they simply have absolutely no idea how to deal with smaller rights holders and smaller ISPs that can't afford the massive costs of user surveillance, but they're going to do it anyway.
Copyright stuff starts at page 36 of the document (page 41 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering) and the above stuff is on page 49 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering.
If these politicians are corrupt, and their actions and comments suggest very strongly that they are (either that or they're immensly stupid and ignorant but I'd at least like to give them the benefit of being intelligent and not simply call them that) then they need to be called out on it. Just like the Bush administration, Labour in the UK has had too much power for too long and they're drunk on it, they feel they can do whatever they wish regardless of how morally, ethically, and sometimes legally wrong this is.
Do you really believe it's better to allow corruption to go ignored and unquestioned? The very fact Carter has contradicted himself in his own report again means one of two things, he has a personal agenda, which again means corruption or he's immensly stupid. Certainly there is no reason whereby you can give benefit of the doubt because the contradictions simply do not make sense. Unfortunately the only explanations are rather negative in their form so it really is a case of either ignore them or call them out on it and show that it's not acceptable.
"Isn't the BBC almost entirely funded by taxing everyone in the UK with a TV? How is this any different?"
It's very different, firstly even people who don't share are going to have to pay it- that's the same as if people who didn't have a TV had to pay a TV license.
Secondly, it doesn't legalise P2P. The tax is there to create a new government department whose aim is to assist the music industry in bringing lawsuits against file sharers.
Well here's the relevant section of the report in full:
"We also intend to require ISPs to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders together with personal details on receipt of a court order."
A court order is required, but that's meaningless here in the UK, the courts just order it handed over without the defendant getting chance to point out how useless their evidence is. They literally ask the court "Can we have this data?" and the court says yes without question. Effectively, so far the courts might as well be removed from the process anyway as they have absolutely no positive effect in ensuring a valid claim for personal information because the orders the courts have given so far have been based on evidence that doesn't prove in any way whatsoever the actual person whose details they're asking for has done anything wrong, only the IP address attached to the internet connection that person pays for.
Are you suggesting the personal data will be anonymised and passed to the music industry as a hash then it's up to them to decide if they want the linked personal information? Or is the anonymised data simply data on what has been shared? If it's anonymised then I don't see how it's admissable in court at least. The text doesn't seem clear on that, it sounds like some anonymised data and personal information is passed over only after receipt of a court order. Quite what the anonymised data is if personal information is handed over anyway I'm still not sure.
The report also kills off any hope of seeing net neutrality laws in the UK under a labour government. Not only have they said they don't want laws for net neutrality, they've outright said they believe it's the wrong thing to do and that ISPs should be able to pick and choose what to transfer, for who and at what cost.
This was supposed to be a report for the UK's digital future but coupled with this, my above post and the fact they're referring to things like DRM that even the music industry now accepts is a failure as solutions to piracy then it sounds more like a report for a draconian broadband dark age.
Nothing in this report bar the idea of universal broadband access can help the UK's technology sector. Despite accepting that it's worth £50bn they've put what they also accepted was only worth about £3bn - the creative industries above it. This report is out and out going to destroy any chance of the UK ever catching up to the world technology leaders if the actions included are carried out. Again, the fact Carter can put a £3bn industry above a £50bn industry suggests Carter is corrupt to the core and is putting his personal agenda above the health of the country's economy. Just as Labour gutted the UK's science research, they're now gutting the rest of the technology futures in the UK.
The tax is to pay for a new government department that will aid lawsuits file sharers and hold anonymised information that can be used to identify repeat infringers.
And yes, I know anonymised information to identify people makes no fucking sense, but that's how the report phrased it. I'm still trying to figure out how it can be both anonymous and used to identify too.
I've not only read TFA but I've read the actual interim report too and the whole thing was simply non-sensical. If you read the section on copyrights etc. the first few pages are really quite good- they make comments along the lines of "We realise file sharing is something that's widely done and widely accepted and that people have come to accept. It is clear therefore that in this case it is perhaps the laws and business models that need to change". But then after the first few pages the mood changes completely and they outright contradict statements such as the above by mentioning they intend to introduce a new department and so on to protect failing business models and not change the laws.
I find this particularly interesting because they've clearly put it into the report to make it sound like they care about the other side of the argument, but more importantly- it shows they understand the problem in it's entirety. If they understand it but are contradicting their understanding of it anyway then frankly there's only one possible explanation I can come up with for this obscure situation- corruption. I can simply see no other reason why they'd accept they're fighting the unfightable but going to do it and appease the music and movie industry anyway.
Some of snippets that were interesting were statements that the UK is the world's biggest exporter of culture. That seems rather unlikely to me, certainly compared to the US' McDonalds, Hollywood, RIAA affiliated companies etc. I can't see that we come close.
The only upside of the report I can see is that they have at least done away with the idea of three strikes and intend to follow the lawsuits based approach. This is good because unless the UK courts are equally corrupt as Lord Carter clearly is then this should be shown up to be a massive waste of money. The RIAA's evidence doesn't stand up in court at the end of the day because there is still no way to attach file sharing to a particular person (only to a particular IP) other than literally sitting looking over their shoulder and watching them do it.
The irony of the proposed tax is that it's actually worse for everyone than if it were a tax to legalise P2P. If it were for that then more people would be happier, the music industry would be netting in a small fortune, file sharers would be paying a not unreasonable amount. The people who would lose out are those who don't file share but still have to pay the tax. As it stands though the proposed solution only gives the music industry a load more unwinnable cases, the tax payer is funding another ultimately useless government department and ISPs have to bear the cost of dealing with the situation.
The final report is still to come, and hopefully MPs will realise the idiocy behind all this. Certainly the Conservatives seem to realise the idiocy of a tax-based approach, even if they as a party support prevention of file sharing through equally unworkable methods. The problem is of course, Labour can do what they want, and if they crack the whip it doesn't matter what the other parties want, it doesn't matter what the MPs themselves want, all that matters is what the Labour niche- Brown, Burnham, Carter and probably Smith want.
I hate a lot of teachers as much as the next person. Having done a few years of IT support in education I know all too well how dire some of them can be especially when it comes to computers.
But there has to be a realisation that not all teachers need to use IT to teach their subject and more importantly, to them, knowledge of open source software is completely and utterly irrelevant knowledge for what they need to do their job. There's a lot of things that different people suggest teachers need an education in but at the end of the day, they're only human and only have so much time and capacity for knowledge. After all, the RIAA wanted teachers to have an education in how bad copyright infringement is to pass onto the kids too but I'm sure many will agree here that's a waste of teacher's time.
An attitude whereby people in the OSS community demand teachers be given an education doesn't really sound much different from the idea of political re-education forced upon people by repressive regimes around the world through the years. It's also like the idea of Jehova's witnesses visiting my door every Sunday peaching their ways because apparently I need an education in religious rubbish too according to them. I know the people making these claims that OSS is superior believe this is true and it's an opinion I share at least in some product areas but it is just opinion and you can't "educate" people with opinion if they don't share it or simply aren't interested in it.
If OSS wants to break further into education it has to provide products that fill a niche or do a better job of existing proprietary solutions focussed on teachers needs. I have witnessed this as being successful in that when a few teachers I've dealt with encountered products such as Audacity, MIT's Scratch and so on they were then led to enquire a little more about this open source thing and stumbled across more products in the process. We were fortunate enough that one of these people was an IT coordinator and so the school now, 5 years on since first discovering OSS still afaik runs Linux which they switched to around 3 years ago, but this is still unfortunately only one school in the 153 we supported.
OSS isn't going to win the battle for hearts and minds as it were by thrusting knowledge onto people in such an agressive sounding manner, many of whom it's irrelevant to. It needs to do it by simply beating the competition, and if it can't, then well, that's tough- at the end of the day there's no god given right that OSS should be chosen if better properietary solutions exist and educational institutes are willing to pay.
Where pushing the OSS agenda could come in useful is at PTA/school board meetings and the like, if the advantages are spelt out well there then that's where real progress can be made. There is no room for zealotry when doing this, it requires people with a level head who can address concerns and accept valid criticisms but also offer where possible, solutions to those criticisms. One things for sure though, pushing the agenda on to teachers forefully will only increase resentment against the community, they need to find it for themselves which they will do if it's there and most importantly- if it's relevant to them.
Bear in mind the Gower's report on copyright terms that was an independent review on what was best for the country. The report fed back that 50 years as is is fine, but less would be better.
Both the Conservatives and Labour outright ignored this independent report that they commissioned in the first place and still decided to push for 70 years.
This could just as well end up the same. Unfortunately common sense holds no place in the corrupt halls of British parliament. Why follow the recommended route and gain nothing when you can just vote for harsh punishments and get all sorts of goodies and incentives from the music and movie industry? That's how most of them see it. It aint just the Lords that's corrupt, I felt David Cameron's comment the other day that he'd put someone from the creative industries (music, movies, books, advertising) in charge of Britain's broadband future quite telling- I mean really, what the hell qualifications do the creative industries have for solving what are basically technological problems?
What's perhaps more interesting is that nowadays even hobbyists can build UAVs as an extension of the radio controlled aircraft hobby.
Stuff like that in the article can be built by even hobbyists thanks to the few open source autopilot projects out there and the decreasing price and shrinking size and weight of digital cameras, wireless technology and other relevant components. I'm mostly interested in swarm robotics at the moment, but I must admit I'm somewhat tempted at having a go at building one myself, although I'm not sure what the legality is in the UK. Certainly in the US it seems to be legal at least if you stay within the altitude limits and such for RC aircraft.
It's always interesting when the more cool military tech that is often seen as state of the art for the military can be developed both by mega-corps and also on a smaller scale by hobbyists.
Perhaps someone should build a fleet of them and keep a constant monitor on Jacqui Smith streamed to the web to make a point of how surveillance is a bad thing. Right now she keeps implementing or pushing to implement surveillance laws simply because as an MP they don't effect her so she can't possibly know why people dislike them.
Perhaps the reason they haven't managed to shoot one down is because there's nothing physical there to shoot down and they're just visual tricks created by natural phenomena?
Not meaning to ruin anyones UFO fantasy or anything but there are still perfectly earthly explanations for these sorts of events.
You've missed the massively damaging effect this would have on Earth's flora who have had millions of years to adapt to the light levels and wavelengths they get they get and require to thrive and the resulting dmaage this would have on countless ecosystems if it were suddenly changed.
You can't just change something like that without there being knock on effects which could be equally devastating, you have to calculate all the factors in including the side effects of any proposed solution- it's not just a case of cooling the planet in any way possible.
This is why perhaps the best solutions are those that concentrate on simply fixing what we've broken in the existing natural systems such as preventing further rainforest devastation, decreasing the CO2 imbalance we've created and so on because we know that fixing these systems wont break something else as that's how they were and worked fine before we broke them.
I'm not sure even this is ideal though, browsers wont be gaining market share based on their merit, but equally based on being all given equal priority at the top.
This would then also lead to support nightmares, if everyone had Firefox because it was seen as the best that would be okay, similarly if everyone had IE because it became the favourite then fine, or in a scenario like now where you have only 3/4 main browsers okay. But what happens if every joe can create their crappy little modified version of Firefox and have it on the list? Hardware manufacturers would realistically have to either refuse to support certain browsers (isn't this somewhat equally unfair?) or just drop support for internet issues altogether. Right now it's easy to support internet access because the chance of someone downloading those other crappy little browser is slim unless people already know what they're doing and don't need support. If they're thrust in front the user at the top of a list and they just click it because it's first on the list then they'll end up with it.
Also it's not like a lot of Linux distros are any better, they nearly all install optional others but they still default to Firefox at the end of the day so should Linux change to? What about Apple with Safari? Why not just get Microsoft to stick Firefox and Opera in the default install too- that would certainly not leave it any worse than MacOS or Linux in terms of forcing a specific browser by default.
It depends what you want to do with AI, it's a wide and varied subject.
If you want to develop robots like in the article, then yeah you'll need to become an academic.
If you're not too picky about what AI techniques you use, then you don't so much look for a job that says "We want someone who understands AI" as you do look for a job, where you know you'll be able to do things better with AI.
This is the path I ended up going down, I simply looked for a software engineering job at a firm that was willing to nurture innovation. I've been given the opportunity to experiment with different techniques and come out with solutions that were far superior than anything we had before to solving certain engineering problems and that are far superior to anything our competitors have.
You've got to avoid the trap I see many people who like maths fall into- "I can't find a mathematics job, I've looked everywhere and none are advertising for mathematicians", that's completely the wrong approach, very few places actually advertise for mathematicians and those that do are generally places like the NSA or GCHQ in the UK. You've got to look for a job where you can apply maths, you wont necessarily see it advertised as such and it's the same with AI, it's about knowing where and how your subject can be applied and applying it. I'm fortunate to be working somewhere where both my AI and Maths tastes are satisfied but I don't think my job is unique in that respect.
Learn your subject, learn how and where it can be used, look for a software engineering job at a firm that will seem happy to support innovation. Again though, this wont be advertised, you'll likely only figure this out at interview stage so just go for all software engineering jobs, at the interview point out you're capable of implementing some pretty powerful and complex solutions that might have otherwise been overlooked if no one currently at the firm is aware of AI techniques and if you feel the guy doing the interview is really someone who would be willing to allow you to try these new techniques then take the job. One final note though is that following this path, or in fact as just good advice in general, realise that you'll need more than just AI, AI is just another set of techniques for your toolbox even if it's the primary set of techniques you wish to actually use and you'll find this working in academia because even AI code generally needs to work with other code if it's anything other than just a proof of concept for a new technique and if that's what you want to do rather than using AI to solve real world problems then you need to be looking to work in academia anyway.
I actually disagree with this idea that it makes it unstoppable, it just means more things need to be done to stop it.
There's no point stopping the ice caps melting if the rainforests continue to be burnt down for example. It's a truly global problem and if it's to be solved the solution involves reversing the damage to all these systems and not just one which is what too many "solutions" focus on.
You can't create a local solution to a global problem like this, it needs a truly global solution. That's not to say for example Obama's latest endeavours and quest for energy independence are pointless of course, because when the benefits of that are realised (energy independence means no more being held to ransom by Venezuela, Russia etc.) then other nations will follow. Local solutions can lead to global solutions then, but there has to be better realisation that global solutions need to be the end goal.
I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.
The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.
The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.
If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.
When you're getting more feedback (good or bad) than you can ever possibly trawl through, or when you're getting 50,000 reports about the same few items over and over.
Yeah, I certainly don't disagree that it's a difficult problem. Moving to more efficient nuclear platforms is certainly my preferred option too.
One thing I do think for sure though is that it's not a cost that should continue to be ignored- certainly that has been the case when it comes to the manufacture, distribution and eventual disposal of these things for example, even if it's a much more grey area when it comes to the actual power costs. I'd say perhaps disposal is the biggest problem of the last 10 years out of all of it- when you look at the dumps in Africa, that have cost little to dump but are causing uncountable amounts of damage in environmental effects and even poor health for the people who live in those areas I'd say it's certainly a big issue still.
But there isn't a shortage of power here so that argument is entirely irrelevant. The problem is about cutting out electrical usage that is wasteful by replacing it with greener options where possible- this is something we can do with TVs, it's something we can do with fridges. The goal isn't to cut the things people use electricity for, it's to cut the electricity that is used for the things people use it for which is quite different.
The parent suggested we should just up the cost of all electricity but this goes against the goal of the kind of laws mentioned in this article, which is to cut existing items usage of electricity rather than to cut the things people use electricity for.
The parents suggestion fits if we're trying to just reduce electrical costs overall including what people use it for as does yours but that isn't the goal of these laws. There is a realisation that going green isn't going to get public support if it means the public have to make sacrifices - taking their TV away is going to piss them off and destroy public support for cutting carbon emissions, preventing them buying an inefficient TV in the first place is a whole different story. It's about making people more green without them even realising it.
That's completely counter-productive when we're talking about taxes designed to cut electricity usage to make people be more green. It'd be far less environmentally to send those plants from a warmer climate to the colder climates than it would to just maintain them where they are. Many plants wont survive shipping journeys by sea so would have to be sent by air, which is going to up costs drastically, and increase pollutants used in getting them to the buyer.
I suppose technically you're right I am wrong in there being no alternative, what I should've said is there's no better alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Their proposals for TV channels are that two of the private broadcasters (most likely Channel 4 and 5 in the UK) should merge to become another public broadcaster to compete with the BBC.
I have to agree, this is probably the only positive thing in the report regarding the UK's internet future.
I'm not sure how it'll work though, there's talk of the minimum required net access being 2mbps. My ADSL syncs between 1.8mbps and 2.2mbps. It's not because I'm too far from the exchange or anything like that, it's simply because the phone lines are crap.
I'm intrigued to know whether the fact my connection sometimes drops below 2mbps means BT would have to replace the lines. Funnily enough, if this is the case it would push me much closer to the 8mbps speed cap on ADSL Max because it really is only quality of cables that's the issue in my area.
I think that's probably being a little hopeful though, realistically I think they'd just push ADSL2 out quicker and then I'd get maybe 3mbps instead. This is perhaps why a minimum wouldn't work well, because they could fulfil the 2mbps obligation at the same time everyone else has jumped from near 8mbps to near 24mbps. I'd argue they should set the cap higher else this legislation is going to become dated quickly as things change much faster in the technology world than they do in the political world.
"There remained major concerns how consumer protection would be properly addressed, while developing the self-regulatory aspect through a code of practice raised significant questions on how to accommodate other rights holders, the smaller ISPs and consumer bodies."
That's a breif mention of that very problem. Basically it remains unaddressed, they simply have absolutely no idea how to deal with smaller rights holders and smaller ISPs that can't afford the massive costs of user surveillance, but they're going to do it anyway.
The report is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/29_01_09digital_britain_interimreport.pdf
Copyright stuff starts at page 36 of the document (page 41 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering) and the above stuff is on page 49 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering.
"What is more, going around calling government minsters corrupt really doesn't engage with the process, now does it..."
Why? It's not as if it's far fetched:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7849594.stm
If these politicians are corrupt, and their actions and comments suggest very strongly that they are (either that or they're immensly stupid and ignorant but I'd at least like to give them the benefit of being intelligent and not simply call them that) then they need to be called out on it. Just like the Bush administration, Labour in the UK has had too much power for too long and they're drunk on it, they feel they can do whatever they wish regardless of how morally, ethically, and sometimes legally wrong this is.
Do you really believe it's better to allow corruption to go ignored and unquestioned? The very fact Carter has contradicted himself in his own report again means one of two things, he has a personal agenda, which again means corruption or he's immensly stupid. Certainly there is no reason whereby you can give benefit of the doubt because the contradictions simply do not make sense. Unfortunately the only explanations are rather negative in their form so it really is a case of either ignore them or call them out on it and show that it's not acceptable.
"Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions."
Yeah, that's how I feel about the music industry too.
Oh, wait, what? You were talking about consumers??? So which one do you work for then, Sony BMG? Universal?
"Isn't the BBC almost entirely funded by taxing everyone in the UK with a TV? How is this any different?"
It's very different, firstly even people who don't share are going to have to pay it- that's the same as if people who didn't have a TV had to pay a TV license.
Secondly, it doesn't legalise P2P. The tax is there to create a new government department whose aim is to assist the music industry in bringing lawsuits against file sharers.
Well here's the relevant section of the report in full:
"We also intend to require ISPs to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders together with personal details on receipt of a court order."
A court order is required, but that's meaningless here in the UK, the courts just order it handed over without the defendant getting chance to point out how useless their evidence is. They literally ask the court "Can we have this data?" and the court says yes without question. Effectively, so far the courts might as well be removed from the process anyway as they have absolutely no positive effect in ensuring a valid claim for personal information because the orders the courts have given so far have been based on evidence that doesn't prove in any way whatsoever the actual person whose details they're asking for has done anything wrong, only the IP address attached to the internet connection that person pays for.
Are you suggesting the personal data will be anonymised and passed to the music industry as a hash then it's up to them to decide if they want the linked personal information? Or is the anonymised data simply data on what has been shared? If it's anonymised then I don't see how it's admissable in court at least. The text doesn't seem clear on that, it sounds like some anonymised data and personal information is passed over only after receipt of a court order. Quite what the anonymised data is if personal information is handed over anyway I'm still not sure.
The report also kills off any hope of seeing net neutrality laws in the UK under a labour government. Not only have they said they don't want laws for net neutrality, they've outright said they believe it's the wrong thing to do and that ISPs should be able to pick and choose what to transfer, for who and at what cost.
This was supposed to be a report for the UK's digital future but coupled with this, my above post and the fact they're referring to things like DRM that even the music industry now accepts is a failure as solutions to piracy then it sounds more like a report for a draconian broadband dark age.
Nothing in this report bar the idea of universal broadband access can help the UK's technology sector. Despite accepting that it's worth £50bn they've put what they also accepted was only worth about £3bn - the creative industries above it. This report is out and out going to destroy any chance of the UK ever catching up to the world technology leaders if the actions included are carried out. Again, the fact Carter can put a £3bn industry above a £50bn industry suggests Carter is corrupt to the core and is putting his personal agenda above the health of the country's economy. Just as Labour gutted the UK's science research, they're now gutting the rest of the technology futures in the UK.
The tax is to pay for a new government department that will aid lawsuits file sharers and hold anonymised information that can be used to identify repeat infringers.
And yes, I know anonymised information to identify people makes no fucking sense, but that's how the report phrased it. I'm still trying to figure out how it can be both anonymous and used to identify too.
I've not only read TFA but I've read the actual interim report too and the whole thing was simply non-sensical. If you read the section on copyrights etc. the first few pages are really quite good- they make comments along the lines of "We realise file sharing is something that's widely done and widely accepted and that people have come to accept. It is clear therefore that in this case it is perhaps the laws and business models that need to change". But then after the first few pages the mood changes completely and they outright contradict statements such as the above by mentioning they intend to introduce a new department and so on to protect failing business models and not change the laws.
I find this particularly interesting because they've clearly put it into the report to make it sound like they care about the other side of the argument, but more importantly- it shows they understand the problem in it's entirety. If they understand it but are contradicting their understanding of it anyway then frankly there's only one possible explanation I can come up with for this obscure situation- corruption. I can simply see no other reason why they'd accept they're fighting the unfightable but going to do it and appease the music and movie industry anyway.
Some of snippets that were interesting were statements that the UK is the world's biggest exporter of culture. That seems rather unlikely to me, certainly compared to the US' McDonalds, Hollywood, RIAA affiliated companies etc. I can't see that we come close.
The only upside of the report I can see is that they have at least done away with the idea of three strikes and intend to follow the lawsuits based approach. This is good because unless the UK courts are equally corrupt as Lord Carter clearly is then this should be shown up to be a massive waste of money. The RIAA's evidence doesn't stand up in court at the end of the day because there is still no way to attach file sharing to a particular person (only to a particular IP) other than literally sitting looking over their shoulder and watching them do it.
The irony of the proposed tax is that it's actually worse for everyone than if it were a tax to legalise P2P. If it were for that then more people would be happier, the music industry would be netting in a small fortune, file sharers would be paying a not unreasonable amount. The people who would lose out are those who don't file share but still have to pay the tax. As it stands though the proposed solution only gives the music industry a load more unwinnable cases, the tax payer is funding another ultimately useless government department and ISPs have to bear the cost of dealing with the situation.
The final report is still to come, and hopefully MPs will realise the idiocy behind all this. Certainly the Conservatives seem to realise the idiocy of a tax-based approach, even if they as a party support prevention of file sharing through equally unworkable methods. The problem is of course, Labour can do what they want, and if they crack the whip it doesn't matter what the other parties want, it doesn't matter what the MPs themselves want, all that matters is what the Labour niche- Brown, Burnham, Carter and probably Smith want.
I hate a lot of teachers as much as the next person. Having done a few years of IT support in education I know all too well how dire some of them can be especially when it comes to computers.
But there has to be a realisation that not all teachers need to use IT to teach their subject and more importantly, to them, knowledge of open source software is completely and utterly irrelevant knowledge for what they need to do their job. There's a lot of things that different people suggest teachers need an education in but at the end of the day, they're only human and only have so much time and capacity for knowledge. After all, the RIAA wanted teachers to have an education in how bad copyright infringement is to pass onto the kids too but I'm sure many will agree here that's a waste of teacher's time.
An attitude whereby people in the OSS community demand teachers be given an education doesn't really sound much different from the idea of political re-education forced upon people by repressive regimes around the world through the years. It's also like the idea of Jehova's witnesses visiting my door every Sunday peaching their ways because apparently I need an education in religious rubbish too according to them. I know the people making these claims that OSS is superior believe this is true and it's an opinion I share at least in some product areas but it is just opinion and you can't "educate" people with opinion if they don't share it or simply aren't interested in it.
If OSS wants to break further into education it has to provide products that fill a niche or do a better job of existing proprietary solutions focussed on teachers needs. I have witnessed this as being successful in that when a few teachers I've dealt with encountered products such as Audacity, MIT's Scratch and so on they were then led to enquire a little more about this open source thing and stumbled across more products in the process. We were fortunate enough that one of these people was an IT coordinator and so the school now, 5 years on since first discovering OSS still afaik runs Linux which they switched to around 3 years ago, but this is still unfortunately only one school in the 153 we supported.
OSS isn't going to win the battle for hearts and minds as it were by thrusting knowledge onto people in such an agressive sounding manner, many of whom it's irrelevant to. It needs to do it by simply beating the competition, and if it can't, then well, that's tough- at the end of the day there's no god given right that OSS should be chosen if better properietary solutions exist and educational institutes are willing to pay.
Where pushing the OSS agenda could come in useful is at PTA/school board meetings and the like, if the advantages are spelt out well there then that's where real progress can be made. There is no room for zealotry when doing this, it requires people with a level head who can address concerns and accept valid criticisms but also offer where possible, solutions to those criticisms. One things for sure though, pushing the agenda on to teachers forefully will only increase resentment against the community, they need to find it for themselves which they will do if it's there and most importantly- if it's relevant to them.
Bear in mind the Gower's report on copyright terms that was an independent review on what was best for the country. The report fed back that 50 years as is is fine, but less would be better.
Both the Conservatives and Labour outright ignored this independent report that they commissioned in the first place and still decided to push for 70 years.
This could just as well end up the same. Unfortunately common sense holds no place in the corrupt halls of British parliament. Why follow the recommended route and gain nothing when you can just vote for harsh punishments and get all sorts of goodies and incentives from the music and movie industry? That's how most of them see it. It aint just the Lords that's corrupt, I felt David Cameron's comment the other day that he'd put someone from the creative industries (music, movies, books, advertising) in charge of Britain's broadband future quite telling- I mean really, what the hell qualifications do the creative industries have for solving what are basically technological problems?
I'm left speechless. It's as if someone with an ounce of intelligence has cunningly infiltrated their way in.
Someone in British government with a clue, this really should be headline news in every paper.
No doubt Jacqui Smith will implement emergency legislation and have him shot by firing squad ASAP on terrorism charges now however.
What's perhaps more interesting is that nowadays even hobbyists can build UAVs as an extension of the radio controlled aircraft hobby.
Stuff like that in the article can be built by even hobbyists thanks to the few open source autopilot projects out there and the decreasing price and shrinking size and weight of digital cameras, wireless technology and other relevant components. I'm mostly interested in swarm robotics at the moment, but I must admit I'm somewhat tempted at having a go at building one myself, although I'm not sure what the legality is in the UK. Certainly in the US it seems to be legal at least if you stay within the altitude limits and such for RC aircraft.
It's always interesting when the more cool military tech that is often seen as state of the art for the military can be developed both by mega-corps and also on a smaller scale by hobbyists.
Perhaps someone should build a fleet of them and keep a constant monitor on Jacqui Smith streamed to the web to make a point of how surveillance is a bad thing. Right now she keeps implementing or pushing to implement surveillance laws simply because as an MP they don't effect her so she can't possibly know why people dislike them.
Perhaps the reason they haven't managed to shoot one down is because there's nothing physical there to shoot down and they're just visual tricks created by natural phenomena?
Not meaning to ruin anyones UFO fantasy or anything but there are still perfectly earthly explanations for these sorts of events.
You've missed the massively damaging effect this would have on Earth's flora who have had millions of years to adapt to the light levels and wavelengths they get they get and require to thrive and the resulting dmaage this would have on countless ecosystems if it were suddenly changed.
You can't just change something like that without there being knock on effects which could be equally devastating, you have to calculate all the factors in including the side effects of any proposed solution- it's not just a case of cooling the planet in any way possible.
This is why perhaps the best solutions are those that concentrate on simply fixing what we've broken in the existing natural systems such as preventing further rainforest devastation, decreasing the CO2 imbalance we've created and so on because we know that fixing these systems wont break something else as that's how they were and worked fine before we broke them.
I'm not sure even this is ideal though, browsers wont be gaining market share based on their merit, but equally based on being all given equal priority at the top.
This would then also lead to support nightmares, if everyone had Firefox because it was seen as the best that would be okay, similarly if everyone had IE because it became the favourite then fine, or in a scenario like now where you have only 3/4 main browsers okay. But what happens if every joe can create their crappy little modified version of Firefox and have it on the list? Hardware manufacturers would realistically have to either refuse to support certain browsers (isn't this somewhat equally unfair?) or just drop support for internet issues altogether. Right now it's easy to support internet access because the chance of someone downloading those other crappy little browser is slim unless people already know what they're doing and don't need support. If they're thrust in front the user at the top of a list and they just click it because it's first on the list then they'll end up with it.
Also it's not like a lot of Linux distros are any better, they nearly all install optional others but they still default to Firefox at the end of the day so should Linux change to? What about Apple with Safari? Why not just get Microsoft to stick Firefox and Opera in the default install too- that would certainly not leave it any worse than MacOS or Linux in terms of forcing a specific browser by default.
It depends what you want to do with AI, it's a wide and varied subject.
If you want to develop robots like in the article, then yeah you'll need to become an academic.
If you're not too picky about what AI techniques you use, then you don't so much look for a job that says "We want someone who understands AI" as you do look for a job, where you know you'll be able to do things better with AI.
This is the path I ended up going down, I simply looked for a software engineering job at a firm that was willing to nurture innovation. I've been given the opportunity to experiment with different techniques and come out with solutions that were far superior than anything we had before to solving certain engineering problems and that are far superior to anything our competitors have.
You've got to avoid the trap I see many people who like maths fall into- "I can't find a mathematics job, I've looked everywhere and none are advertising for mathematicians", that's completely the wrong approach, very few places actually advertise for mathematicians and those that do are generally places like the NSA or GCHQ in the UK. You've got to look for a job where you can apply maths, you wont necessarily see it advertised as such and it's the same with AI, it's about knowing where and how your subject can be applied and applying it. I'm fortunate to be working somewhere where both my AI and Maths tastes are satisfied but I don't think my job is unique in that respect.
Learn your subject, learn how and where it can be used, look for a software engineering job at a firm that will seem happy to support innovation. Again though, this wont be advertised, you'll likely only figure this out at interview stage so just go for all software engineering jobs, at the interview point out you're capable of implementing some pretty powerful and complex solutions that might have otherwise been overlooked if no one currently at the firm is aware of AI techniques and if you feel the guy doing the interview is really someone who would be willing to allow you to try these new techniques then take the job. One final note though is that following this path, or in fact as just good advice in general, realise that you'll need more than just AI, AI is just another set of techniques for your toolbox even if it's the primary set of techniques you wish to actually use and you'll find this working in academia because even AI code generally needs to work with other code if it's anything other than just a proof of concept for a new technique and if that's what you want to do rather than using AI to solve real world problems then you need to be looking to work in academia anyway.
That was actually quite a good one and made me chuckle. It beats my rather more long winded attempt to explain her point ;)
I actually disagree with this idea that it makes it unstoppable, it just means more things need to be done to stop it.
There's no point stopping the ice caps melting if the rainforests continue to be burnt down for example. It's a truly global problem and if it's to be solved the solution involves reversing the damage to all these systems and not just one which is what too many "solutions" focus on.
You can't create a local solution to a global problem like this, it needs a truly global solution. That's not to say for example Obama's latest endeavours and quest for energy independence are pointless of course, because when the benefits of that are realised (energy independence means no more being held to ransom by Venezuela, Russia etc.) then other nations will follow. Local solutions can lead to global solutions then, but there has to be better realisation that global solutions need to be the end goal.
I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.
The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.
The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.
If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.
But whose browser goes at the top of the list of the package manager?
Which browser on the list do you think your average Joe will pick?
When you're getting more feedback (good or bad) than you can ever possibly trawl through, or when you're getting 50,000 reports about the same few items over and over.
Yeah, I certainly don't disagree that it's a difficult problem. Moving to more efficient nuclear platforms is certainly my preferred option too.
One thing I do think for sure though is that it's not a cost that should continue to be ignored- certainly that has been the case when it comes to the manufacture, distribution and eventual disposal of these things for example, even if it's a much more grey area when it comes to the actual power costs. I'd say perhaps disposal is the biggest problem of the last 10 years out of all of it- when you look at the dumps in Africa, that have cost little to dump but are causing uncountable amounts of damage in environmental effects and even poor health for the people who live in those areas I'd say it's certainly a big issue still.
But there isn't a shortage of power here so that argument is entirely irrelevant. The problem is about cutting out electrical usage that is wasteful by replacing it with greener options where possible- this is something we can do with TVs, it's something we can do with fridges. The goal isn't to cut the things people use electricity for, it's to cut the electricity that is used for the things people use it for which is quite different.
The parent suggested we should just up the cost of all electricity but this goes against the goal of the kind of laws mentioned in this article, which is to cut existing items usage of electricity rather than to cut the things people use electricity for.
The parents suggestion fits if we're trying to just reduce electrical costs overall including what people use it for as does yours but that isn't the goal of these laws. There is a realisation that going green isn't going to get public support if it means the public have to make sacrifices - taking their TV away is going to piss them off and destroy public support for cutting carbon emissions, preventing them buying an inefficient TV in the first place is a whole different story. It's about making people more green without them even realising it.
That's completely counter-productive when we're talking about taxes designed to cut electricity usage to make people be more green. It'd be far less environmentally to send those plants from a warmer climate to the colder climates than it would to just maintain them where they are. Many plants wont survive shipping journeys by sea so would have to be sent by air, which is going to up costs drastically, and increase pollutants used in getting them to the buyer.
I suppose technically you're right I am wrong in there being no alternative, what I should've said is there's no better alternative.