"fastest broadband of any major European country"
Does that mean they are going to ignore countries like Sweden where 1Gbit connections are quite common these days?
35 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2007
This argument is rubbish. I'm an ex-pat living in Sweden and where I live in the winter, at it's worst, the sun doesn't rise until 09:30 and then sets at 14:30. Builders don't stop work here just because it's winter and it's dark (they're building a new 18 storey appartment block across from where I work and they've been working all winter), and there are no significant increases in traffic accidents just because it's dark (there are more due to the onset of winter weather but not because of the dark). As I said this argument is rubbish.
In the debate currently on-going in the House of Commons it was just established that Ofcom can intervene in the application for a broadcast license at any time if they have evidence or believe that the organisation or person making the application is not of good standing.
Ofcom just needs to grow a pair and tell Murdoch to get lost,
It's nice that it's so thin, but how are you supposed to hold it without touching the screen? This seems to be a recurring problem with all these new tablets. You need a bezel at least 1.5cm - 2cm around the screen in order to have something to hold that is not the screen itself.
It's all just a bunch of excuses to cover up for their incompetence and lack of investment.
Fact: Stockholm's Arlanda airport has never in it's 50 year history closed because of snow. They have the infrastructure to clear all three runways in about 20 minutes. Snow fall is common in that area of Sweden any time between mid-October and mid-April.
I'm almost sure that Heathrow generates more money per passenger than Arlanda. They should use this money to invest in some better infrastructure instead of just lining the pockets of shareholders.
I think this is only true for EEA member states that have adopted the Schengen Agreement...
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement)
Which the UK has not. What you say is completely true if travelling from, for example, Sweden to Spain. But travelling from the UK to anywhere or from anywhere to the UK requires a valid passport as I understand it.
It's plain to see that the Swedish legal system has been hijacked by the media industry.
Typical fines dished out recently by the courts in Sweden..
Murder: 75000kr (£6825)
Rape of a 14 year old girl: 50000kr (£4550)
Pirate Bay fine for aiding Copyright infringment: 46000000kr (£4.1 million)
I agree that the European Parliament seems to be very good at representing out interests. I'm more worried about the European Commission which appears to be unelected, accountable to no one and can just tell the European Parliament to get lost when ever it likes. Can someone explain to me what the European Commission is for?
I don't know if it's different in different countries (I'm in Sweden) but the 2.1 update left all data and applications intact on my Hero. The email, contacts and calendar data was wiped but, as already pointed out, these all sync automatically from the cloud again when you connect. The only thing that was lost was the "Scene" data i.e. the layout of of widgets and icons on the 7 virtual home screens. This had to be manually restored.
As an ex-pat living in Sweden, may I just say I'm glad I don't have to pay the crazy prices you appear to have back in Blighty these days.
I have a HTC Hero Android smartphone that I paid cash for and then bought a subscription separately. I have a mobile subscription with Telia in Sweden. I opted for the cheapest voice subscription that they have (since I use my phone mainly for e-mail and surfing the internet and streaming music via Spotify), and then added an "unlimited" data package. I pay £2.50 per month subscription with no free minutes or included sms or data. Calls cost 2.5p to all mobiles and landlines and SMSs cost 2.5p a pop. I then added "unlimited" data for around £17 per month this gives me 10GB data per month and access to all Telias wi-fi hotspots. There is no limits on tethering, VOIP calls via 3G or anything and I can even connect my laptop to a wi-fi hotspot while using the phone on 3G data. Plus they have just upgraded their network so the maximum theoretical speed is now 10Mb/s using UMTS. O2's price of £60 per month for just 1GB is crazy.
You're wrong. Bittorrent is hyper efficient. I'm an ex-pat living in Sweden and I have a 100Mbit connection at home. I don't download music or films but I download lots of UK TV programmes using Bittorrent. Most programmes run to about 200-250MB for a half hour programme or 400-500MB for an hour long programme. I can usually download at sustained downloads speeds of 5-10Mb/sec which means bittorrent works almost as an on-demand service for me with even hour long programs taking under 10 minutes to download. The uploaders are very dedicated as well, I can for instance download an episode of Top Gear only an hour after transmission in the UK.
Bittorrent is more efficient than you give it credit for and you should not judge the rest of the world against the crappy broadband speeds you see in the UK.
I'm an ex-pat living in Sweden and what most people here don't seem to realise is that this is quite a clever move on the part of the Pirate Party in order to raise their profile ahead of national elections here in September. They would just love for the music or film industry to try to take them to court over this as they know there would be a big enough backlash to almost certainly gain them a place in parliament at the next elections. The impressive number of votes they got in the last European elections was connected directly to the public's discontent at the Pirate Bay trial. The Pirate Party would have a field day if the music and film industry were to try taking them to court as it would be possible for them to move the whole debate from just a copyright issue to one of political censorship and an attempt by the industry to suppress a legitimate political party.
My guess though, is that you will see the music and film industry taking a rather low profile and not rising to the bait. They know it would be a disaster for them if the Pirate Party actually got seats in parliament. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the coming months.
Lots of people are willing to pay but aren't able to due to the fact that paid apps are only available in 13 countries. Piracy is bound to be rife in the Android world given this environment.
The problem is compounded by the fact that it's not only bad for consumers, but for developers as well. If you live in a country which doesn’t have paid apps then, as a developer, you also cannot sell your apps to anyone anywhere in the entire world, even to the countries that do have paid apps. You can only give them away for free.
The Android Market will never compete with the iTunes Store until it is available in all the same countries.
This is not exactly true. If you move to another country (I live in Sweden) your UK license is still valid as long as it is valid in your home country. However the DVLA do not allow you to update the address to an address outside of the UK. I have a written reply from the DVLA stating that in the case that you move to another EU country it is accepted that the address on your license will be incorrect.
I also use my UK license (with the incorrect address) to rent a hire car each time I travel back to UK. I explain the situation to them and they just ask me to write down my actual address, no fuss or suggestion that anything is wrong.
I'm an expat living abroad in Sweden and I would happily pay the whole of the license fee to receive all the BBCs UK channels streamed live. I'm sure there are many others who would also be willing to do this. Why isn't this even being considered? It's completely crazy. It's exactly the same as the situation with streaning music. Give customers what they want and they will pay. Give them something inferior, useless and too expensive and they will resort to piracy. It's as simple as that. Until media companies final understand how to use the internet piracy will always reign supreme.
Threats of exactly this kind of surveillance is the main reason that the Pirate Party in Sweden polled over 7% in the recent European elections. The file sharing issue is bottom of the list of issues that the Pirate Party campaigned on, personal integrity in the digital world is the top of their list followed by copyright and patent reform.
The U.K. needs it's own Pirate Party to let the politicians know that the electorate really care about these kind of issues. I know it's more difficult to make an impression in the U.K. since you don't have proportional representation. But the whole point of a one issue party like the Pirate Party is just to make the established parties change their policies as they realise the electorate aren't happy. The press in Sweden have been critical of the Pirate Party saying that they won't be around after the next European elections, but the leaders of the Pirate Party have always said they only exist to make the established parties change their views, they don't want to govern. They have said that if the government change their policies they won't be needed any more.
So vote Pirate Party at the next local, European or general elections if they are available on the ballot paper and if you care about your privacy on the internet!
As the leader of the Pirate Party has said "The government thinks the internet is just some video game that they can take away from us when we are naughty." and "If privacy in real life was treated in the same way by the government as they want to treat privacy on the internet then the postal service would be up in court as the country's largest narcotics supplier.".
Vote Pirate Party! (from a UK ex-pat living in Sweden)
My Favourite Tofflor - (Tofflor is Swedish for slippers so 'My Favourite Slippers')
Suddenly Sibylla - (Sibylla is a famous chain of hot dog stands)
Ramlösa - (Ramlösa is a popular brand of mineral water)
....I'll get my coat
I'm an expat living in Sweden and I have a 100Mb/sec connection from Bredbandsbolaget (one of the larger ISPs here in Sweden) for 320sek per month (£26.60 - using the latest conversion from google). Just another case of rip-off Britain I suspect. I can't see how they can justify prices that are more than double the price of a country like Sweden where most things normally cost slightly more than in Britain, not more than 50% less.
At almost exactly the same time as the first region in Britain switches off their analogue TV signal, Sweden completed their complete changeover to digital TV with the closure yesterday of the analogue signal in Skåne in southern Sweden. The transition from analogue to digital TV in Sweden began in September 2005 and was due to finish in February 2008, but with typical Swedish efficiency they completed the job early.
I wonder if the changeover in Britain will go as smoothly as in Sweden?
(Steve - From UK but currently residing in Sweden)
What will the creationists in the current US government think. I thought that they believed that the whole Earth is only 6000 years old. They're not going to take too kindly to their tax dollars paying for NASA to do research that disproves their creationist beliefs. :-)
As I understand it (I am English but I live in Sweden) under Swedish law any evidence, not matter how it was obtained, is admissible. The judge will be made aware of how it was obtained and this may or may not affect the case, that's up to the judge. If the evidence was found to have been obtained illegally then a completely separate case will be opened to deal with this and the parties that obtained the evidence may be prosecuted. The successful or unsuccessful prosecution of whoever obtained the evidence can in no way affect the outcome of the other case where the evidence is being used.