Posts by Peter Galbavy 367 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Feb 2010
My Asus P1801 is a nice precursor to this, Android on the 18.4" tablet (with 5 hour battery life, and it is about that) and Win 8.1 on the base station. Does nicely for the living room PC.
However Asus are now reported as dropping dual OS support - and this kind of move my the Microsoft cartel may help to explain it. If they want the business building the reference platform.
They really don't*. BTs concern is month-on-month numbers and churn. They will only ever change anything if a minor percentage KPI moves the wrong way. Individual customers that aren't FTSE (or equiv) listed? You can ride the train to hell for all they care.
* Yes, the engineers who do the work on the ground (and under and over it) are usually great. The problem is that they aren't the ones you get to interact with.
Here, use our "free wifi" - just install some cookies, provide us your personal info, your phone number so we can send you an SMS to verify you're a chump for marketing and even a random app on your device for us to, ahem, ensure your secure browsing. Thanks, but no thanks.
In a number of other countries I have visited "free" means just that - many branded locations have a click-though page to accept T&Cs and will leave a cookie, it's true, but no hard sell and give-us-your-firstborn - and smaller non-chain cafes and shops don't even want that. The most complexity was in HK where many restaurants use their phone number as the access key, which seemed like a nice idea.
One of the biggest problems here is that the self-serving politicians have used the old screaming-from-the-rooftops excuse of "think of the children!" to conflate two technically completely unrelated issues - one of preventing under-age viewing of any material that is deemed unsuitable (porn being just the headline) and the availability of illegal content (again, child porn in this case just being the headline).
Any technical approach to either of these is, or at least should be, completely different - even if there is any real workable technical solution to either.
This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the real reason for this push, which as we should all be aware as somewhat more technically aware and possibly cynical than the general populace, is that installation of both process and capability to filter anything that the authorities of the time choose to filter.
The world is full of people who hide behind exactly the sort of whining that Tovalds is talking about. I am no great fan of his but the world moves on and I have had to wander away from the wonderful world of OpenBSD's deraadt and his similar approach - which again, gets results.
"Professional politeness" is very much a vehicle for faked mutual respect and exactly the passive aggressive "we have a problem which we need to talk about" crap that stop things getting done.
Megacops liks Samsung, LG, Sony etc. sort of miss the point (well, they don't really, they just buy the fledgling competition) but if they put any real resource into open-ended research & development on the software side then they would have products just as innovative and original as the companies they lust after. They seem to have great R&D in the hardware part but their software and the walled-garden eco-systems they insist on framing them in suck goats, most of the time.
I was in the process of leaving but Plusnet f****** up so badly I cancelled the cancellation. I didn't realise Plusnet were owned by BT else I would never have even started the process. Looks like I will be returning to Zen after many years, even for the premium, once I get back home for long enough to manage the process.
I have no objection to a standalone ID card that would carry a number of security features that DO NOT depend on a back-end database or the biometrics of the holder - only the card itself. In my mind the danger to liberty is in both the database holding copies of everything - because it suddenly becomes the data and the person is now just an instance of that data - and the ability of of others to legally demand presentation of such a card to receive services that otherwise the holder is entitled to. We have already given up on travel without ID so there's not much point fighting for that one.
I am continually astonished by the lengths that there, on the surface, rather simple enquiries take. 3-6 months for an initial report? Erm - how much is BT retail charging? How much does BT Wholesale (OR) charge? Subtract the two, divide into a percentage and see if it's fair. Even with a power point that will not take more than an hour as it's all pretty much public data.
I didn't see anyone mention forced advertising and Kinect integration ala http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/15/interactive-nuads-xbox-360-kinect/
That's why "always on" is going to be mandatory. DRM is already good enough against the majority of gamers.
Should be interesting to see how this goes down in the EU and other areas with some semblance of privacy protection.
There are a whole slew of challenges here. Amazon is only the largest player in a very rapidly growing market and will not necessarily still be number one in a few years.
I guess the most important choice is content. To me Amazon is the only commercial mainstream UK supplier of eBooks I found that is relatively device agnostic - or rather they supply software which works on all the current devices I want. Even as a seemingly Andoird fanboi I will not use Google Play as that's a real lock in and egenarlly more expensive. Must be the VAT dodge not working. Similarly for the other device tied UK sellers. When I fancy something independent I browse www.smashwords.com and I've actually spent money there on a regular basis for DRM-free titles.
What does get my goat, and Amazon whine it's the publishers but I don't believe them, is the complete lack of loan and resale facilities. If this DRM shit meant anything then it would mean that your books could be transferred securely from one account to another without the old copy being accessible. It's crazy when you can buy a new hardback from an independent reseller on Amazon for less than a fraction of the price of the ebook. It also makes sure the the consumer knows their place - they are renting the book, never ever owning it.
It doesn't do wind or rain and costs HOW MUCH?
I have a cheap FOSHK (CHinese company that makes all the Maplin and other cheap, "real" weather stations) from Signatrol and it does all this and UV/Lux levels and with pywws on a Linux box connected to the indoor unit uploads it all to Weather Underground so they can do the heavy lifting of display and recording. All that for £99 (plus the Linux server that's just a box, hanging around). Oh, WH-3080 for reference - it's cheap, probably only nominally accurate, but it's consistent.
If you're educating to create a workforce, regardless of industry, then there is one way to do it. If you're educating for the sake of knowledge and learning then there's another.
If you watch almost any of the lectures given with the late, great genius Richard Feynman you will get a sense of how to do the latter. He knew that making people understand was the key - if you get your point across as a set of first principles and teach people how to apply those and you manage to get your students to "get it" then you've won. Of course this only applies to those subjects that have a genuine basis from which those first principles come, so bollocks to the soft subjects.
Still haven't stopped laughing. A watchdog with no teeth barking at a lorry driving past the gate.
At least I'm more cheerful than before reading the article. The only downer is we pay for these morons to waste time making up pointless reports that will never be relevant.
In HK last year their train system had Wifi (and some 2G/3G) everywhere. Most shops and restaurants had genuinely free WiFi (most places used their phone number as the password or a number of the receipt - no capture of user details). One nice system from a local telco who's name now escapes me is free WiFi for all HK residents (using ID card numbers or whatever) and for us foreigners you sent a text from your foreign numbers mobe and got an access code back that lasted a week across all the APs.
In London all they need is leaky cables and tiny access points linked with nice thin fiber and voila! But no, not in this country/city.
Well, the BBC claimed it was patent free and open. Then, even with the advances in hardware mostly negating the performance overhead of encoding, they completely failed to use it in-house or promote it. Our tax money (yes, the TV license is a tax in all but name) not at work.
Back in the day (the late 80s AFAICR - the days are hazy now) the incentives were tax breaks for first-round VC funding and loan guarantees to banks for "risky" start-ups. It worked, mostly.
Now, it's about giving hipsters free money to chatter about marketing and "creative" shit - not technology.
Note that it's VAT that's low in Luxembourg and Corporation Tax that's low in Ireland. A clever company will use everything in it's power to lower it's tax liabilities - this way it can make it's prices lower and/or profit larger, helping it to out-compete the smaller companies that don't have the luxury of multiple national offices.
I don't agree with this un-level playing field but I do accept that it's 100% legal. All this slating of the companies rather than the tax laws stinks of diversions and conspiracy to me.
What is you wanted to loosen your ties with the EU and you didn't want to appear to be the party doing it, how would you whip up public opinion enough to seemingly force you to derogate your involvement in the free market or even more radically initiate leaving the EU in some way?
If you take a step back and look at the sequence of events over the past few years I starts to look a little like there is a big hot potato of corruption being batted between the press and the political elites. If you take the MPs expense revelations as a starting point - because you have to start somewhere even if the story is much older - then you can watch the tennis game playing. First, show up the MPs for the thieving scum, on the whole, that they are. Next some minor skirmishes and then the Milly Dowler story breaking when it very convenient for the anti-press/anti-Cameron layers. Conspiracies? Oh, most certainly. What's a challenge is to try not to look like a complete loonie when claiming is. Like me :)
Oh, IMHO any press regulation should be limited to offering a statutory (rapid and free or at least affordable) complaints process and fair right-to-reply that enshrines some kind of equitable (i.e. same place, typeface size, inches etc.) published response when things are found to be wrong (not false, just wrong). No limits on what can be published in the first place - that would be chilling.
The "problem" for society is not a simple one that simple economists can either understand or solve.
It is one of "fairness". If a small company sets up in their locality they are almost immediately disadvantaged against larger companies simply by the proportion of overheads. Assuming that the proprietor is willing to eat lower margins to be able to compete then in the current system that are still disadvantaged because as soon as they are successful they are immediately taxed to death. The large, established companies simply "move" (on paper only) to a more beneficial locale and base their operation from Luxembourg or Ireland or where-ever.
The trouble is if you remove corporation tax, which seemingly solves the above problem, you have to then impose this somewhere else. So now you move the taxation to the income of the sharholders / beneficiaries which in turn just encourages those who can afford it to move their personal tax affairs to a more conducive locale - and we're straight back to square one.
Those individuals or companies that can afford - through scale - to *evade* tax will do so leaving the rest of us to pay for their lifestyle. I use the word evade intentionally as regardless of the legal or illegal methods used they are simply evading their moral duty to pay up and share the collective burden.
I don't have a solution but it's very easy to see the problem.
Just thought I'd make the point that I have been lucky enough, although it's probably more through poor attitude toward them and stand-on-their-own skills and experience, I have never successfully got a role through an agency. While I have come across a few individuals who seemed human the overriding feeling I got was that I was one of herd they cultivated to get to market in time for a big fat profit. I'm now old enough with hopefully enough direct contacts that if and when in the future I need a new role I don't even have to consider the option.
I know this is the author's take on it, but: "These proposals turn international copyright protections for authors upside down, and permit the commercial exploitation of an unidentified work without the author's permission - if you haven't opted out." - this is the classic Catch-22 legalism. If it's unidentified how on earth can you opt-out of having it used?
It should also be noted however that not all works are automatically "copyright". There is a set of tests one of which is originality, or words to that effect. So if you take yet another picture of a famous landmark that lots of other people have done in the past then that image itself may not immediately qualify for protection even now.
For google, they can't ship anything remotely useful or capable in this space as they would not then get the nice juicy commercial deals with big media. As soon as they try to ship a media player that can play most formats from most sources then the media owners will walk away as they can't see the walled garden that makes them rich.
The hardware may be capable and there is software out there but it can't be official. This is why the non-brand media players and generic PC hardware rule the roost here. And one of the many reasons for UEFI (sp? no coffee yet) from M$.
Right, that's because - like I think Douglas Adams observed, perhaps in a Dirk Gently book - the English take a US idea like McDonalds and remove all the stuff that makes it different, like speed and price and then deliver what's left.
Mind, the US is better at hiding corruption in plain sight, hence the more polished appearance.
Apart from the secrecy around it's drafting and being presented to notional democracies as a fait acompli the biggest issues (IMHO) with most of it's flaws are that it is/was fundamentally inequitable. Most of the provisions are there to skew the power of the large commercial interests against smaller and individual creators and IP owners. It removes protection for consumers in the guise of protecting them by letting the big media interests run things.
Not yet read the proposals but it does sound like a complete nightmare.
Is there the option of anyone and everyone signing up as a licensing agency and then copying and distributing all the big media content until they finally lobby for a change or repeal? Surely a legal framework like this has to be equitable or somesuch to stand up to scrutiny? Or am I just too innocent?
While the US may not be the most genuinely democratic or open country in the world it is hand and feet above the ITU and their UN masters. If the ITU were serious above their claims of transparency and open process then they should be publishing a lot more in a transparent and open way. Instead there are spurious claims of commercial confidentiality and implications of security through obscurity and all the other excuses that most civil service organisations are proud of.
The IETF as was may have been subverted by the big players like Cisco et al. but at least most of it is aired in the open and, up to a point, anyone could join in - hence the reference to a "meritocratic democracy". Of course that became a fantasy towards the end of the last millennium but it's still far far better than what the ITU would do.
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