Umm Microsoft PPC's could do that three years ago, ok I don't think Google Maps was around then but I could google a resturant find its location and make a phone call to it with a few clicks of a pen, my phone from three years ago also had windows media player which (if you had a big enough memory card) can play video files that you make, if you owned the original priates of the carribean DVD and it was legal to rip it to xvid/divx where you are, you could conceivably watch pirates of the caribbean (the second wasn't out three years ok) get hungry so open internet explorer (and connect through GPRS, or Wifi if it were availiable and you had a WiFi phone/card) choose local listings on the google page enter "calamari restaurant" and your location in the second box then magically a series of sites will appear with phone numbers I believe the local listing options has been on google for 3 years.
Right now I have a O2 XDA Mini S, I happen to have "Snatch" on the 2GB memory card while watching this I'm connected to my homes wifi network. While watching the film I have a sudden need for Calamari so without using the pen I've just done the above google returned a resturant called "The Oyster Shack" about 1 mile from my current position with the phone number on the screen, pressing the down arrow selects the number clicking the central button opens up a screen with "Verify the nubmer is correct" with the nubmer and the options to "call" or "menu" (which includes add to contacts, send a text message and cancel.) My current phone was released about a year ago the phone mentioned above (which required a pen to do the same thing) is a Orange m500 (the Orange m1000 could also do this and is about 4 years old.)
I pretty certain that any Windows Mobile 2002 (and newer) PPC has the capability to do the above as long as a web service's like google maps or just Google's local listings feature have been able to do what was described. Windows Mobile 5 devices have a nice UI which can be used with one hand without the need for a pen (although unless you have my HTC model with a built in keyboard you will need a pen to enter text.)
You almost have it, what you need to ask yourself is, "How can I DRM tabs so they become incredibly inconvinencing to the consumer?"
The next step is to offer "DRM free" tabs at a higher price, afterall your doing the consumer a favour.
Me thinks your overly suspicious, MCE comes as standard with Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premimum. I've used XP's MCE 2005 and Vista's MC and the key difference is the updated theme. Firstly I'm guessing he was trying to do a fair comparison (I doubt there was a linux version of the software) by comparing the standard offerings from each OS. The only advantage third party applications have is that they record the show in a non DRM format. Personnally even through I lose the S-Video connectivity by using Windows Media Centre its a nice enough application that I use it over Avermedia's software. I've owned a variety of TV cards and usually hated the accompanying software (ATi I'm looking at you in particular.)
I have no opinion on MythTV I haven't yet used it (a bit of a Linux Newbie) and my own gripe with Vista's Media Centre is also drivers> I can watch a show and record it, however Media Centre adds DRM to the recording. Creatives sound drivers don't support audio DRM layers yet and so when I play back the recording I get no sound, meaning I have to strip off the DRM to rewatch my shows. I have a XP MCE 2005 machine hooked up to the main television and it does a fantastic job with the UI working well on a standard TV.
Could it be that your just bitter that a supposed Linux fan choose a Microsoft product over a Linux one?
The BNP pose a serious threat, their thugs and many of the leaders have been convicted of racisim (and they still carry on making the same remarks.) The UKIP is again anouther 'dangerous' party which gained a seat or two in the last election, the BNP has five or six seats. If you were going to shut down a party you'd shut down the BNP because due to the huge influx of foriegners there is a wave of dislike for anyone not british in the country. The BNP are sadly a party which is going to grow in strength for a number of years to come. Perhaps the racisim charges were spurious? Umm no, I've meet several BNP party members and their views (which make me think of a generalised KKK) shouldn't be encouraged. Look at the UK system and parties before you spout this nonsense.
This is all a lovely idea but you need to think about a few things first.
1.Do CCTV camera's effect People's reactions?
While they do generally stop thugs and chav's do they stop me acting like I normally do? The answers no, the only time I'm even aware of the things is when I'm walking through a rough area and I'm glad to see them. For the rest its like the security camera's in a shop, while people know they exist their not aware of them.
2. Camera's are watching everyone all the time!
Obviously false I've heard about my local CCTV monitoring rooms, considering the number of camera's in the city its amazing that a dozen or so people monitor them all.
3.Going against the Government
Well last time I checked I could stand as an independent if I wanted, without hassle and I used to know two people who have since run as independents (didn't win, but one was running with BNP motives and the other can only be described as 'strange' so that wasn't a shocker.) As for protests they are still allowed and I do agree the law banning protests outside of parliament is wrong I have done my bit to see if I can get it repealed. Do I support terrorism similar to the "V for Vendetta" film? Well the UK's not a dictatorship and blowing stuff up and killing people is bad, so I guess I can forgo that 'liberty'.
4. "Arrested with a bogus crime"
Claims like this make me wonder if you have even met a British police officer? My experiences with them have been nothing but positive, my friends experiences with them have sometimes been frustrating (bouncer pulled friend aside and nutted him, while CCTV showed him disappear and reappear with a bloody nose, there is no evidence so they couldn't do anything) I've yet to see the police behave unjustly (there are bad ones but I always find out about them from reading the paper.) Night Club bouncers worry me as they are becoming increasingly arrogant and violent (tip to Oceana bouncers when I'm sober and handing you my ID and inquiring if there is a age sting going on (out of curiosity) don't get aggressive and try to deliberately provoke me) If you were really going to take a person down you would let the tabloids do it. This is moot anyway, since important members of government http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm are the ones telling us we have entered a surveillance society.
5.Data rentention
Most of the CCTV recordings are kept for 3 weeks to 3 months, unless your profiling a specific individual there's no way you could do this on a mass scale (currently.)
6. "Group Infilitration"
The Uk system has alot of different parties from the thuggish appearing BNP, the more right wing than the tories "New Labour" and my personal favourite the Monster Raving Looney Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Ravi ng_Loony_Party if the OMRLP can exist within the system then I really don't fear for our democracy.
Whips are something which have been in the government for hundreds of years, you may want to read up on them before you start saying how 1984 we are going.
Rather than sensationalise the fact that the UK (as advertised on Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4 News and BBC News) that the UK is now in a surveillance society. Lets find out why there is apathy about the issue and why those who are aware generally don't think its a bad thing.
I've had expearence with installing vista on four machines (all four had net connections) when Vista first booted it it went online downloaded all the drivers installed them and asked me to restart. These machines were all less than a year old and I agree on older machines you would be less likely to have a driver (i'm talking three or four years old.) Sure Vista sucks for out of the box driver support but this great thing called the interweb means it auto-installs alot of newer drivers. XP is not in the same league as Feisty Fawn and Vista for this, yet Feisty fawn lacks my web camera and tv card divers (which XP and Vista have.)
This works well with those annoying people in the street who ask if you "have time for a survey" I discovered it by accident one day when I was walking through town in a bad mood with a A Level projects questionaire in my pocket. It been four years since one of those companies asked me questions and they still avoid me in the street.
This is coming from The Sun, one of the nations gossip 'newspapers'. Doctor Who is made by the BBC, considering how this latest series of Doctor Who has talked to BBC first I find it slightly suspicous, I mean the qoutes not even from Davies:
A source said: "The heavy workload -- nine months of 16-hour days every year -- has started to take its toll. It was decided the best thing for the show was go out at the top next year."
I'm betting this is anouther in a long line of Sun articles designed to sell newspapers which is based on gossip, when the BBC says there will be no more Doctor Who I'll believe them. As it standard Doctor Who is the BBC's most popular show so even if Davies were to quit I doubt they would axe the show.
Ready for this...
People's expectations increase, games are advertised on TV and some of them are looking extremely good. PS3 and Xbox360 have the potential to offer photorealistic looking games. If you think it won't matter why is there a Gameboy Advanced or Gameboy Advanced SP? Why is there DS? While the DS gives an interesting input, the advanced releases were merely updated forms of the Gameboy Colour in different packaging.
What I think will happen over the next three or four years the PS3/Xbox360 price will drop, as the gap between the Wii, PS3 and Xbox360 decreases the reason for a Wii decrease and the differences will as well. To believe that MS and PS3 won't heavily invest in more casual games (considering the trouncing their getting) is pointless. Once those consoles have better casual gamer expearence you start taking away its advantages, the biggest disadvantage will be its graphics.
An ancedote, The PSP has always been far more expensive when compared to the DS, in the recent bank holiday the place I work we had a PSP (+game) for £129.99 and a DS (+game) for £99.99 we sold five or six PSP's but no DS's. I think the Wii will feel the same effect is Sony and Microsoft can start competing with it on price.
As I said previously Kudo's to Nintendo for selling so many units
There is no news here, analysts have long bashed the Wii because its graphics aren't that great and for the moment their aren't any games. They do have a point after two or three years the Wii is going to be seriously outdated (graphically) while there could be some really great games over the next year or two. But I get the feeling that Nintendo will release an updated Wii (Wii Advanced? Wii Advanced SP?) to compensate. Kudo's to Nintendo for selling so many units but just how long is your product aimed to last? I know a PS3 will still be around in ten years (aparently.)
The comments that Sony and Microsoft don't get the casual gamer market are laughable, Sixaxis was an attempt to steal the WiiMotes thunder. Buzz, Singstar, Guitar Hero and Eye Toy are all products on the PS2 for the casual gamer and they sell really well. What Sony/Microsoft lack are mini games, to think they won't see that they need is to expand their casual game base of course they don't know that (*cough* XboX360 has Guitar Hero *cough* Singstar downloads for PS3 *cough.)
4.Force user to use a webpage to upload/download music
5.Place adverts on every single webpage
6.Allow users to only share music they 'own'
7.Watch as users flock to your "YouHear" website
8.Be bought up by google
9.Profit!!!
4.Create a HTML interface (so users goto a website to upload/download)
5.Place adsense or other adverts on uploading/downloading pages
6.Allow Users to share their uploaded 'music' (as long as its not copyrighted *cough* *cough*)
7.Call service "YouMusic"
8.Profit!!
To be more helpful read "FUP - Fair Usage Policy" sections. This FUP (as its often referred to) on unlimited broadband offers (in the UK) specifies that if you use your connection heavily then the ISP holds the right to restrict your connection. The problem with this they don't specify what heavy usage is. A friend of mine tells me Orange's broadband unlimited plan will enforce the FUP when 2GB is used (a month) I've found that Tiscali see 4GB a month as heavy usage. 2GB and 4GB's is not 'unlimited' a few years ago these companies would just disconnect you from the network and refuse to reconnect you. Today Tiscali are better they just block all ports except FTP and HTTP ports, although I've heard of others still being permanently kicked off the system for several days.
One of the best ISP's I've ever used is Tesco's http://www.tesco.net/ They offer packages without a FUP and while not competitive as Tiscali, Bt etc.. you will always get the bandwidth you paid for, unlimited does mean unlimited with them. (note I am not currently with them but I wish I was, also I don't work for them and when I left their customer service sucked but I only used it once)
Doesn't work, take a online game http://www.mystonline.com/ when the forums first went up a fan purchased http://www.mystlive.com/ you would be surprised at the number of people who thought this was an offical page by Cyan/Gametap. People will give importance to domain names and companies do need to protect the associated with themselves (the more global they are the more they need.)
What we need is for ICANN to creates rules which state a domain name can't point to a place with more than 50% of the page devoted to adverts. If a page was so ad intensive then the domain name would be revoked, (with a ability to report a page to ICANN.) This would hopefully allow us to reclaim domain names back and start to make cybersquatting unprofitable, if we can do that then we've won.
Read, most people are using alot more gadgets in the home but greenhouse emissions have fallen below 1990 levels for the uk. We will be missing our carbon emission target but the usuage hasn't gone up in the last fifteen years. Its possible but it involves forcing things in america which are unpopular. An idea which occurs to me is increasing the fuel tax, as it would encourages people to own fuel efficent cars. In the uk the land rover doing 17MPG is a disgrace, 30MPG is low and most people (I know) own or try to own 50-60MPG cars. Suddenly your dropping carbon emissions because cars don't require as much fuel. Then you have a surplus of money (from increased fuel tax) which you spend on enviromental incentives (changing cars over to gas, subsidising solar panels,etc...)Thats just an idea of the top of my head and probably has some holes in it.
The point is decreasing greenhouse emissions doesn't mean a decrease in energy, it means a more efficent use of the resource generating that energy and it means using newer technologies which use alternative processes/fuel that don't produce greenhouse gases.
No their waste relocation engineer's. Personnally I'd prefer to see an increase in Trash Management Experts compared to Waste Relocation Engineer's. Hopefully then we'll see Computer Repair Managers and then when i tell people I'm doing a Computer Engineering degree they won't instantly assume I'm one of the guys who 'fixes' PC's.
How did that monstrosity of a controller get third place? I used to get hand ache and callus's if I spent more than an hour playing that controller and I wasn't the only person I know who suffered problems with it.
SNES controller over the Mega Drives? The SNES controller was ok, but the Mega Drives was built in your hand shape and when your ten you can hit all the buttons without having to re-adjust your grip. But I'm guessing it comes down to nostalga in the SNES's controller.
Personnally I'd have the PS2 controller first, its comfortable very versitile and just a nice controller I think the PS3 controller is a backwards step (wifi good but its too light.) But thats a personal preference thing.
Seriously did people like the N64 controller, the way you would have to completly readjust your grip to go from the analogue stick to digital, the way the c buttons were out of a normal person's thumbs reach, the fact that digital play removed the ability to use the Z button. It was never a good controller just a copy cat of the PS2 one.
You are miles out of touch with 'the average user', Linux's biggest issue is the command line and no GUI interfaces. Users don't care about security and they don't want to know enough to use a command line. Its a box, you turn it on it plays games, surfs the internet, makes word documents and then lets you pick up your email. It does this by clicking on big friendly buttons. Most users know enough about computers to change their desktop background.
I've been using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn alot because those guys understand this. In Edgy Eft, I had to discover this thing called terminal, download something called packages then run this install. It wasn't explained very well and worse it took time to google and do. Feisty sets things up, you go into desktop effects, turn them on and a popup box appears asking if you want to install the propriety nvidia driver, a popup asking for your admin password appears, you enter it and you hit yes the installation restarts. That is what the average user wants, beryl is moving on the right track, following the install instructions for beryl was a nightmare. Now the isntructions tell you to copy and paste into terminal, I currently don't have the talents but the design of a script which a user can download and run those commands from would make beryl extremely user friendly.
There is no reason to expect a high level of profieceny to make Linux work, its been suffering because people like yourself are elite and don't understand that presenting the user with information in a graphic form and not make them jump through hoops is a good thing.
Tesco I was with tesco broadband there was no fair usuage policy, I got (on my 512kbps line) a constant 50Kb download and always had a good (very low latency.) I am waiting to go back to them their doing a great deal for £24.95 of unlimited (and they actually mean unlimited) broadband which goes at the rate your line can provide (8Mbps for me.)
Currently I'm with Tiscali, 5GB is what they actually mean (you get FUP'd here) latency is often 180ms and above and between 16:30 and 23:30 they shut down all but the http and ftp ports, killing HL2, bittorrent and any other game you might like.
Your after a good supplier make sure theres none of this 'Fair Usuage Policy' stuff in the contract, hopefully if enough of us avoid it we can get every ISP to drop it.
Recently I has the misfortune to come accross Zango (was looking for a video codec) I'm running a Vista PC so Zango refused to install and yet windows defender still picked up the three applications it installed on my system. These three programs were left on ther system after Zango had informed me it can't install. Spybot identified two of the applications as Adware and the final as Malware.
When your programs isntallation puts three unwanted applications on a PC even when it fails to install causing a owner to install a Anti-virus package because their concerned with what else it might have put on there then your company doesn't have a reputation worth anything and if Spybot, Microsoft and every AV/Anti-Spyware company wants to black list you power to them.
Oh this was yesterday afternoon and while I don't keep A/V software running I'm very pro firewalls
Their stopping software piracy, piracy is illegal and actually a bad thing in many cases. I'm with people who want to revolt over Digital Restriction Management and the insane prices of Movies and CD's, while I don't pirate myself I can fully understand and agree with people who pirate DVD's and CD's.
Software piracy is a mixed bag, things like MS Office are insanely overpriced (in my opinion getting outlook, word and excel should not cost £270) while the gaming market has the huge development budgets of most films (thanks to the 360 and PS3) and doesn't have the advantage of the cinema to create revenue, there are a bunch of other costs (support,servers,licensing) which also drive up cost.
This modification allows people to pirate, it may well have other applications but at the end of the day its eating directly into Microsofts and third party developers 'potential' income. Now I'm not saying that they would get alot more income but that alone should have been enough for this type of crackdown. I'm betting Microsoft were prepared for x number of Halo 3 beta players based on sales of crackdown but got y number of sign ups where y was significantly higher than the number of sales of crackdown. Banning consoles which play pirated discs is a good idea by playing Live your costing Microsoft money and not contributing anything to them (much like a leecher on bit torrent.)The second hand games market is strong and easily accessible (not met a game store yet which doesn't have second games for sale) if you can be bothered to pay for a legal copy then why should you be allowed to play the game?
While modififying your Xbox360 could have uses, like bittorent I'm guessing that 90% of the modified Xbox's were modded just to play pirated games. Rather than leave openings and allow legal uses (because you know someone is going to figure out how to abuse that) they have taken the simplier option of simply banning any console which doesn't conform.
What gives people the right to breech the Terms of Service agreement and expect Microsoft to hold up its end?
Your missing the important thing, MP3 players while small still aren't that big. Most people I know either own a Ipod Nano or a generic MP3 player (around 1GB memory.) Sure you can fit alot of songs onto a 4GB nano, but you find people prefer hundreds of songs over dozens.
I have a WM5 phone with a 2GB memory card it shuffles its way through 10GB of 192kbps quality MP3's. If I could I would own a 10GB memory card, because I own low quality headphones i downgrade the MP3's to 128Kbps. For most people that isn't an option, or something their even aware off. To explain to a girl (over the phone) how to rip a CD to MP3 (using Itunes) so they would go on her MP3 player took me 25 minutes. So the idea of having a master MP3 and copying lower quality versions of it really is a no no unless Itunes and WMP improve the setup wizards.
Once MP3 players like the Nano start coming in 10/20GB models and the cheap alternatives are 10GB/20GB's then you'll start seeing a drive to quality because people will reach the point where all the music they want to ever listen to is on the device. I still doubt that OGG or Flac will make much headway because everyone knows about MP3's and saying something is an Ogg player will confuse most people for a while.
For me atleast they last far longer, I have alot of wireless devices most of which aren't placed in chargers (like my mouse and keyboard) over the last year I get the following battery lifetimes (In my Microsoft Intelimouse Explorer 2.0):
Duracell : 3 months
Woolworths : 3 Weeks
Energiser : 2 weeks (any of the varities)
Rechargeables : 4-6 months
GP rechargeable will last you forever and the charge doesn't degrade I'm using a set of GP's from 4 years ago which still last longer than my new Panasonic rechargables. Their the most expensive (two AA GP rechargeable were twice as expensive as 6 AA Panasonic's) but why non rechargable batteries are still sold is beyond me. Duracell make the best batteries but I've never come accross a rechargeable by them.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm Microsoft PPC's could do that three years ago, ok I don't think Google Maps was around then but I could google a resturant find its location and make a phone call to it with a few clicks of a pen, my phone from three years ago also had windows media player which (if you had a big enough memory card) can play video files that you make, if you owned the original priates of the carribean DVD and it was legal to rip it to xvid/divx where you are, you could conceivably watch pirates of the caribbean (the second wasn't out three years ok) get hungry so open internet explorer (and connect through GPRS, or Wifi if it were availiable and you had a WiFi phone/card) choose local listings on the google page enter "calamari restaurant" and your location in the second box then magically a series of sites will appear with phone numbers I believe the local listing options has been on google for 3 years.
Right now I have a O2 XDA Mini S, I happen to have "Snatch" on the 2GB memory card while watching this I'm connected to my homes wifi network. While watching the film I have a sudden need for Calamari so without using the pen I've just done the above google returned a resturant called "The Oyster Shack" about 1 mile from my current position with the phone number on the screen, pressing the down arrow selects the number clicking the central button opens up a screen with "Verify the nubmer is correct" with the nubmer and the options to "call" or "menu" (which includes add to contacts, send a text message and cancel.) My current phone was released about a year ago the phone mentioned above (which required a pen to do the same thing) is a Orange m500 (the Orange m1000 could also do this and is about 4 years old.)
I pretty certain that any Windows Mobile 2002 (and newer) PPC has the capability to do the above as long as a web service's like google maps or just Google's local listings feature have been able to do what was described. Windows Mobile 5 devices have a nice UI which can be used with one hand without the need for a pen (although unless you have my HTC model with a built in keyboard you will need a pen to enter text.)
You almost have it, what you need to ask yourself is, "How can I DRM tabs so they become incredibly inconvinencing to the consumer?"
The next step is to offer "DRM free" tabs at a higher price, afterall your doing the consumer a favour.
Me thinks your overly suspicious, MCE comes as standard with Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premimum. I've used XP's MCE 2005 and Vista's MC and the key difference is the updated theme. Firstly I'm guessing he was trying to do a fair comparison (I doubt there was a linux version of the software) by comparing the standard offerings from each OS. The only advantage third party applications have is that they record the show in a non DRM format. Personnally even through I lose the S-Video connectivity by using Windows Media Centre its a nice enough application that I use it over Avermedia's software. I've owned a variety of TV cards and usually hated the accompanying software (ATi I'm looking at you in particular.)
I have no opinion on MythTV I haven't yet used it (a bit of a Linux Newbie) and my own gripe with Vista's Media Centre is also drivers> I can watch a show and record it, however Media Centre adds DRM to the recording. Creatives sound drivers don't support audio DRM layers yet and so when I play back the recording I get no sound, meaning I have to strip off the DRM to rewatch my shows. I have a XP MCE 2005 machine hooked up to the main television and it does a fantastic job with the UI working well on a standard TV.
Could it be that your just bitter that a supposed Linux fan choose a Microsoft product over a Linux one?
The BNP pose a serious threat, their thugs and many of the leaders have been convicted of racisim (and they still carry on making the same remarks.) The UKIP is again anouther 'dangerous' party which gained a seat or two in the last election, the BNP has five or six seats. If you were going to shut down a party you'd shut down the BNP because due to the huge influx of foriegners there is a wave of dislike for anyone not british in the country. The BNP are sadly a party which is going to grow in strength for a number of years to come. Perhaps the racisim charges were spurious? Umm no, I've meet several BNP party members and their views (which make me think of a generalised KKK) shouldn't be encouraged. Look at the UK system and parties before you spout this nonsense.
This is all a lovely idea but you need to think about a few things first.
i ng_Loony_Party if the OMRLP can exist within the system then I really don't fear for our democracy.
1.Do CCTV camera's effect People's reactions?
While they do generally stop thugs and chav's do they stop me acting like I normally do? The answers no, the only time I'm even aware of the things is when I'm walking through a rough area and I'm glad to see them. For the rest its like the security camera's in a shop, while people know they exist their not aware of them.
2. Camera's are watching everyone all the time!
Obviously false I've heard about my local CCTV monitoring rooms, considering the number of camera's in the city its amazing that a dozen or so people monitor them all.
3.Going against the Government
Well last time I checked I could stand as an independent if I wanted, without hassle and I used to know two people who have since run as independents (didn't win, but one was running with BNP motives and the other can only be described as 'strange' so that wasn't a shocker.) As for protests they are still allowed and I do agree the law banning protests outside of parliament is wrong I have done my bit to see if I can get it repealed. Do I support terrorism similar to the "V for Vendetta" film? Well the UK's not a dictatorship and blowing stuff up and killing people is bad, so I guess I can forgo that 'liberty'.
4. "Arrested with a bogus crime"
Claims like this make me wonder if you have even met a British police officer? My experiences with them have been nothing but positive, my friends experiences with them have sometimes been frustrating (bouncer pulled friend aside and nutted him, while CCTV showed him disappear and reappear with a bloody nose, there is no evidence so they couldn't do anything) I've yet to see the police behave unjustly (there are bad ones but I always find out about them from reading the paper.) Night Club bouncers worry me as they are becoming increasingly arrogant and violent (tip to Oceana bouncers when I'm sober and handing you my ID and inquiring if there is a age sting going on (out of curiosity) don't get aggressive and try to deliberately provoke me) If you were really going to take a person down you would let the tabloids do it. This is moot anyway, since important members of government http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm are the ones telling us we have entered a surveillance society.
5.Data rentention
Most of the CCTV recordings are kept for 3 weeks to 3 months, unless your profiling a specific individual there's no way you could do this on a mass scale (currently.)
6. "Group Infilitration"
The Uk system has alot of different parties from the thuggish appearing BNP, the more right wing than the tories "New Labour" and my personal favourite the Monster Raving Looney Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Rav
Whips are something which have been in the government for hundreds of years, you may want to read up on them before you start saying how 1984 we are going.
Rather than sensationalise the fact that the UK (as advertised on Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4 News and BBC News) that the UK is now in a surveillance society. Lets find out why there is apathy about the issue and why those who are aware generally don't think its a bad thing.
Tried Vista with an internet connection?
I've had expearence with installing vista on four machines (all four had net connections) when Vista first booted it it went online downloaded all the drivers installed them and asked me to restart. These machines were all less than a year old and I agree on older machines you would be less likely to have a driver (i'm talking three or four years old.) Sure Vista sucks for out of the box driver support but this great thing called the interweb means it auto-installs alot of newer drivers. XP is not in the same league as Feisty Fawn and Vista for this, yet Feisty fawn lacks my web camera and tv card divers (which XP and Vista have.)
This works well with those annoying people in the street who ask if you "have time for a survey" I discovered it by accident one day when I was walking through town in a bad mood with a A Level projects questionaire in my pocket. It been four years since one of those companies asked me questions and they still avoid me in the street.
This is coming from The Sun, one of the nations gossip 'newspapers'. Doctor Who is made by the BBC, considering how this latest series of Doctor Who has talked to BBC first I find it slightly suspicous, I mean the qoutes not even from Davies:
A source said: "The heavy workload -- nine months of 16-hour days every year -- has started to take its toll. It was decided the best thing for the show was go out at the top next year."
I'm betting this is anouther in a long line of Sun articles designed to sell newspapers which is based on gossip, when the BBC says there will be no more Doctor Who I'll believe them. As it standard Doctor Who is the BBC's most popular show so even if Davies were to quit I doubt they would axe the show.
Ready for this...
People's expectations increase, games are advertised on TV and some of them are looking extremely good. PS3 and Xbox360 have the potential to offer photorealistic looking games. If you think it won't matter why is there a Gameboy Advanced or Gameboy Advanced SP? Why is there DS? While the DS gives an interesting input, the advanced releases were merely updated forms of the Gameboy Colour in different packaging.
What I think will happen over the next three or four years the PS3/Xbox360 price will drop, as the gap between the Wii, PS3 and Xbox360 decreases the reason for a Wii decrease and the differences will as well. To believe that MS and PS3 won't heavily invest in more casual games (considering the trouncing their getting) is pointless. Once those consoles have better casual gamer expearence you start taking away its advantages, the biggest disadvantage will be its graphics.
An ancedote, The PSP has always been far more expensive when compared to the DS, in the recent bank holiday the place I work we had a PSP (+game) for £129.99 and a DS (+game) for £99.99 we sold five or six PSP's but no DS's. I think the Wii will feel the same effect is Sony and Microsoft can start competing with it on price.
As I said previously Kudo's to Nintendo for selling so many units
There is no news here, analysts have long bashed the Wii because its graphics aren't that great and for the moment their aren't any games. They do have a point after two or three years the Wii is going to be seriously outdated (graphically) while there could be some really great games over the next year or two. But I get the feeling that Nintendo will release an updated Wii (Wii Advanced? Wii Advanced SP?) to compensate. Kudo's to Nintendo for selling so many units but just how long is your product aimed to last? I know a PS3 will still be around in ten years (aparently.)
The comments that Sony and Microsoft don't get the casual gamer market are laughable, Sixaxis was an attempt to steal the WiiMotes thunder. Buzz, Singstar, Guitar Hero and Eye Toy are all products on the PS2 for the casual gamer and they sell really well. What Sony/Microsoft lack are mini games, to think they won't see that they need is to expand their casual game base of course they don't know that (*cough* XboX360 has Guitar Hero *cough* Singstar downloads for PS3 *cough.)
that's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft
2007 is the year of Linux on the desktop
Some might say that Dell selling Linux machines caused it but no it was.....
XBMC!
I'm not American But I can see the profit!
4.Force user to use a webpage to upload/download music
5.Place adverts on every single webpage
6.Allow users to only share music they 'own'
7.Watch as users flock to your "YouHear" website
8.Be bought up by google
9.Profit!!!
I'm not American but I can see the profit
4.Create a HTML interface (so users goto a website to upload/download)
5.Place adsense or other adverts on uploading/downloading pages
6.Allow Users to share their uploaded 'music' (as long as its not copyrighted *cough* *cough*)
7.Call service "YouMusic"
8.Profit!!
To be more helpful read "FUP - Fair Usage Policy" sections. This FUP (as its often referred to) on unlimited broadband offers (in the UK) specifies that if you use your connection heavily then the ISP holds the right to restrict your connection. The problem with this they don't specify what heavy usage is. A friend of mine tells me Orange's broadband unlimited plan will enforce the FUP when 2GB is used (a month) I've found that Tiscali see 4GB a month as heavy usage. 2GB and 4GB's is not 'unlimited' a few years ago these companies would just disconnect you from the network and refuse to reconnect you. Today Tiscali are better they just block all ports except FTP and HTTP ports, although I've heard of others still being permanently kicked off the system for several days.
One of the best ISP's I've ever used is Tesco's http://www.tesco.net/ They offer packages without a FUP and while not competitive as Tiscali, Bt etc.. you will always get the bandwidth you paid for, unlimited does mean unlimited with them. (note I am not currently with them but I wish I was, also I don't work for them and when I left their customer service sucked but I only used it once)
Doesn't work, take a online game http://www.mystonline.com/ when the forums first went up a fan purchased http://www.mystlive.com/ you would be surprised at the number of people who thought this was an offical page by Cyan/Gametap. People will give importance to domain names and companies do need to protect the associated with themselves (the more global they are the more they need.)
What we need is for ICANN to creates rules which state a domain name can't point to a place with more than 50% of the page devoted to adverts. If a page was so ad intensive then the domain name would be revoked, (with a ability to report a page to ICANN.) This would hopefully allow us to reclaim domain names back and start to make cybersquatting unprofitable, if we can do that then we've won.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/glo batmos/gagccukem.htm
Read, most people are using alot more gadgets in the home but greenhouse emissions have fallen below 1990 levels for the uk. We will be missing our carbon emission target but the usuage hasn't gone up in the last fifteen years. Its possible but it involves forcing things in america which are unpopular. An idea which occurs to me is increasing the fuel tax, as it would encourages people to own fuel efficent cars. In the uk the land rover doing 17MPG is a disgrace, 30MPG is low and most people (I know) own or try to own 50-60MPG cars. Suddenly your dropping carbon emissions because cars don't require as much fuel. Then you have a surplus of money (from increased fuel tax) which you spend on enviromental incentives (changing cars over to gas, subsidising solar panels,etc...)Thats just an idea of the top of my head and probably has some holes in it.
The point is decreasing greenhouse emissions doesn't mean a decrease in energy, it means a more efficent use of the resource generating that energy and it means using newer technologies which use alternative processes/fuel that don't produce greenhouse gases.
No their waste relocation engineer's. Personnally I'd prefer to see an increase in Trash Management Experts compared to Waste Relocation Engineer's. Hopefully then we'll see Computer Repair Managers and then when i tell people I'm doing a Computer Engineering degree they won't instantly assume I'm one of the guys who 'fixes' PC's.
How did that monstrosity of a controller get third place? I used to get hand ache and callus's if I spent more than an hour playing that controller and I wasn't the only person I know who suffered problems with it.
SNES controller over the Mega Drives? The SNES controller was ok, but the Mega Drives was built in your hand shape and when your ten you can hit all the buttons without having to re-adjust your grip. But I'm guessing it comes down to nostalga in the SNES's controller.
Personnally I'd have the PS2 controller first, its comfortable very versitile and just a nice controller I think the PS3 controller is a backwards step (wifi good but its too light.) But thats a personal preference thing.
Seriously did people like the N64 controller, the way you would have to completly readjust your grip to go from the analogue stick to digital, the way the c buttons were out of a normal person's thumbs reach, the fact that digital play removed the ability to use the Z button. It was never a good controller just a copy cat of the PS2 one.
You are miles out of touch with 'the average user', Linux's biggest issue is the command line and no GUI interfaces. Users don't care about security and they don't want to know enough to use a command line. Its a box, you turn it on it plays games, surfs the internet, makes word documents and then lets you pick up your email. It does this by clicking on big friendly buttons. Most users know enough about computers to change their desktop background.
I've been using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn alot because those guys understand this. In Edgy Eft, I had to discover this thing called terminal, download something called packages then run this install. It wasn't explained very well and worse it took time to google and do. Feisty sets things up, you go into desktop effects, turn them on and a popup box appears asking if you want to install the propriety nvidia driver, a popup asking for your admin password appears, you enter it and you hit yes the installation restarts. That is what the average user wants, beryl is moving on the right track, following the install instructions for beryl was a nightmare. Now the isntructions tell you to copy and paste into terminal, I currently don't have the talents but the design of a script which a user can download and run those commands from would make beryl extremely user friendly.
There is no reason to expect a high level of profieceny to make Linux work, its been suffering because people like yourself are elite and don't understand that presenting the user with information in a graphic form and not make them jump through hoops is a good thing.
Tesco I was with tesco broadband there was no fair usuage policy, I got (on my 512kbps line) a constant 50Kb download and always had a good (very low latency.) I am waiting to go back to them their doing a great deal for £24.95 of unlimited (and they actually mean unlimited) broadband which goes at the rate your line can provide (8Mbps for me.)
Currently I'm with Tiscali, 5GB is what they actually mean (you get FUP'd here) latency is often 180ms and above and between 16:30 and 23:30 they shut down all but the http and ftp ports, killing HL2, bittorrent and any other game you might like.
Your after a good supplier make sure theres none of this 'Fair Usuage Policy' stuff in the contract, hopefully if enough of us avoid it we can get every ISP to drop it.
Recently I has the misfortune to come accross Zango (was looking for a video codec) I'm running a Vista PC so Zango refused to install and yet windows defender still picked up the three applications it installed on my system. These three programs were left on ther system after Zango had informed me it can't install. Spybot identified two of the applications as Adware and the final as Malware.
When your programs isntallation puts three unwanted applications on a PC even when it fails to install causing a owner to install a Anti-virus package because their concerned with what else it might have put on there then your company doesn't have a reputation worth anything and if Spybot, Microsoft and every AV/Anti-Spyware company wants to black list you power to them.
Oh this was yesterday afternoon and while I don't keep A/V software running I'm very pro firewalls
Their stopping software piracy, piracy is illegal and actually a bad thing in many cases. I'm with people who want to revolt over Digital Restriction Management and the insane prices of Movies and CD's, while I don't pirate myself I can fully understand and agree with people who pirate DVD's and CD's.
Software piracy is a mixed bag, things like MS Office are insanely overpriced (in my opinion getting outlook, word and excel should not cost £270) while the gaming market has the huge development budgets of most films (thanks to the 360 and PS3) and doesn't have the advantage of the cinema to create revenue, there are a bunch of other costs (support,servers,licensing) which also drive up cost.
This modification allows people to pirate, it may well have other applications but at the end of the day its eating directly into Microsofts and third party developers 'potential' income. Now I'm not saying that they would get alot more income but that alone should have been enough for this type of crackdown. I'm betting Microsoft were prepared for x number of Halo 3 beta players based on sales of crackdown but got y number of sign ups where y was significantly higher than the number of sales of crackdown. Banning consoles which play pirated discs is a good idea by playing Live your costing Microsoft money and not contributing anything to them (much like a leecher on bit torrent.)The second hand games market is strong and easily accessible (not met a game store yet which doesn't have second games for sale) if you can be bothered to pay for a legal copy then why should you be allowed to play the game?
While modififying your Xbox360 could have uses, like bittorent I'm guessing that 90% of the modified Xbox's were modded just to play pirated games. Rather than leave openings and allow legal uses (because you know someone is going to figure out how to abuse that) they have taken the simplier option of simply banning any console which doesn't conform.
What gives people the right to breech the Terms of Service agreement and expect Microsoft to hold up its end?
Your missing the important thing, MP3 players while small still aren't that big. Most people I know either own a Ipod Nano or a generic MP3 player (around 1GB memory.) Sure you can fit alot of songs onto a 4GB nano, but you find people prefer hundreds of songs over dozens.
I have a WM5 phone with a 2GB memory card it shuffles its way through 10GB of 192kbps quality MP3's. If I could I would own a 10GB memory card, because I own low quality headphones i downgrade the MP3's to 128Kbps. For most people that isn't an option, or something their even aware off. To explain to a girl (over the phone) how to rip a CD to MP3 (using Itunes) so they would go on her MP3 player took me 25 minutes. So the idea of having a master MP3 and copying lower quality versions of it really is a no no unless Itunes and WMP improve the setup wizards.
Once MP3 players like the Nano start coming in 10/20GB models and the cheap alternatives are 10GB/20GB's then you'll start seeing a drive to quality because people will reach the point where all the music they want to ever listen to is on the device. I still doubt that OGG or Flac will make much headway because everyone knows about MP3's and saying something is an Ogg player will confuse most people for a while.
For me atleast they last far longer, I have alot of wireless devices most of which aren't placed in chargers (like my mouse and keyboard) over the last year I get the following battery lifetimes (In my Microsoft Intelimouse Explorer 2.0):
Duracell : 3 months
Woolworths : 3 Weeks
Energiser : 2 weeks (any of the varities)
Rechargeables : 4-6 months
GP rechargeable will last you forever and the charge doesn't degrade I'm using a set of GP's from 4 years ago which still last longer than my new Panasonic rechargables. Their the most expensive (two AA GP rechargeable were twice as expensive as 6 AA Panasonic's) but why non rechargable batteries are still sold is beyond me. Duracell make the best batteries but I've never come accross a rechargeable by them.