Posts by Doctor Syntax 40413 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Tarrifs higher on parts than finished goods for many years to protect useless to non-existent parts makers."
As far as I know that's still in place as an EU thing. I wonder if that's at our insistence in which case the EU'll probably be able to get rid of it.
You can add in nuclear energy and TSR2.
But since it will be foreign companies they will succumb to the "Buy American Act"
And the existing big US companies will succumb to the "Don't buy American Movement". There's a lot more of the planet outside the US than in it (one of the disadvantages of living in a large country may be that you don't notice that) which means that the multinationals risk losing out on a large market. They might start to think the unthinkable: moving nevertheless out of the US except for a small subsidiary to service that particular market.
"I am actually in favour of people rooting their phone and running any software on it they like. Provided they sign a contract that says that if they are responsible for a malware outbreak they will fund the entire cost of cleanup and a brand new phone for anyone else affected."
Why don't the existing phone/phone OS vendors take on that responsibility for their existing products?
"Free as in speech means that some organisation has to shoulder the administrative and support burdens associated with the OS or every phone manufacturer will have to provide in-house that support or someone somewhere runs an operation that charges the phone manufacturers a licence fee or support fee. Ultimately that's not going to look too different to Android."
An alternative would be a collaborative effort between H/W manufacturers to build a common OS. It would work out cheaper than each building their own. They could actually have done that without needing to get a return by continually leaching on their customers with walled gardens or data slurping if they'd been content with simply getting the return by using it as a vehicle to sell H/W.
So it could have looked different to Android, IOS or Windows. However I suspect that they'd have simply jumped on the bandwagon of selling the H/W and then monetizing the users in one way or another (or in as many ways as they could manage). However, as Google got in first with Android it didn't happen.
"Free Software needs a generous sugardaddy, willing to spend loads and get nothing but the general feelings of love from the community in return. That's not going to happen."
Actually what free software needs is a route to making money other than from licensing it.
That route actually does exist for general purpose Linux distros: it's adding value via support so the likes of Red Hat & Suse are able to support development in order to have a product that they can sell.
The unfortunate thing as far as phones and tablets are concerned that isn't a workable option. The route chosen there seems to have been monetizing the users. It would have been better if it had been hardware vendors getting together to develop their own OS collaboratively as something to enable them to sell H/W. Unfortunately they gave in to the easier route of signing a contract which lets them have the OS in exchange for access to those users.
A phone is just an appliance, where's the need for a "free" ToasterOS or FridgeOS or even SmartTV OS?
Frankly I don't want a ToasterOS or a FridgeOS at all. Come to that I don't want a smart TV either. But as soon as a phone's capabilities get to be equivalent of a general purpose computer it becomes more than just an appliance and it seems to be irresistible to vendors to use those capabilities to monetize the user. I have no desire to be monetized but I would like a phone which has more capabilities than my old Symbian. In short, I'd like a phone that I can trust with at least a basic repertoire of applications that I can also trust and I can't see a non-free OS being trustable. Sadly, for reasons already discussed, it seems unlikely that this is going to happen because it requires commercial vendors to facilitate its being loaded on the phone.
Actually the free smart TV OS is easier: a dumb TV and a PC running something like MythTV on Linux or BSD.
"@ Doctor Syntax. I would disgree if only to say it gives you some protection while you get your FU money,"
Note the "IME" at the start of the post. It was a total waste of money paid to a union which did absolutely nothing for any of its members at my establishment and ended up with the official who came to visit us getting a very rough ride in a meeting.
"That used to be the case before Blair started filling it ex-MPs that were past their sell by date."
It wasn't Blair who started that. It's been the case from way back.
What I'd like to see would be ex officio membership for the heads of a few specific bodies such as the Royal Society, the various chartered professional institutes, Royal Colleges in the medical professions etc.
"yeah, thats just not how government works"
Actually both models apply. People on the ground have ideas that could be useful, some happen, many get shelved because getting the funding takes longer than losing the will to live. In the meantime vast amounts get spent doing nothing, or at least, doing nothing useful.
"Among other things it is expected to include a plan for the Government Digital Service, which was awarded £450m in November 2015 but still has no road map for how that cash should be spent."
This seems extremely unlikely given that a real plan works in exactly the opposite direction:
We need {whatever}
Work out what it will cost
Ask for money
(Plan usually stops at this point).
"Like a lot of UI these days though, it's not a simple problem to solve given the complexity of software these days."
Not so much the complexity as some disastrous design conditions behind it. e.g. "I'm sure it's not easy to determine whether the user explicitly requested fullscreen mode or not when trying to detect such things."
If you don't make the provision for the user to explicitly indicate this then no, it isn't easy to determine. So the design decision was wrong.
The root cause of so many security issues is valuing user convenience over security. And you know what? Once the security fails to prevent an attack it suddenly becomes very inconvenient indeed.
"Seems you don't like full-screen ANYTHING"
Maybe you missed the significance of "when I tell it to". If the user controls full screen full screen is not forbidden.
" Seems you don't like full-screen ANYTHING, which puts you in the majority that find the browser's UI elements annoying. And they OUTVOTE you."
??????
This raises an interesting point. If {$VENDOR}CE certification earns $VENDOR substantial amounts and given levels of certificate holders are necessary for a company to do business with $VENDOR then in effect it's a bribery system which isn't likely to get the attention it perhaps ought from the relevant PTB.
"People who independently pay for certs? I view them with suspicion. How have you managed to have the time and money to get a cert but not be working in IT for an employer who would send you on it?"
You may be confusing "people who independently pay for certs" with freelancers who own their own company which employs them and pays. That puts them in your second category.
As to why they might do that? They probably want gigs with ISO9000 companies where the piece of paper is essential, ISO9000 being essentially a standard of paperwork shuffling. In such circumstances it doesn't matter how good you are, you need the piece of paper.
"Only when shops can recognise people by their faces will they enable full monetisation of a customer's data."
They'll still fail because they'll not be able to work out what you actually want. Their best guess is what you bought before.
Milk? Probably likely you'll buy more.
Big value items such as a new TV? How many do you think I'll buy?
"I wonder what would happen if very large numbers of their customers sent them Data Access requests for all the information being held on them?"
They'd pocket the tenner & ensure they could get the data out to you for less. Probably outsourced to an Indian company who therefore also has the data, no scruples and no inconvenient DPA.
"much more time on their hands."
Too much time. Way too much.
I know it seems a way out idea but have they ever thought of offering good customer service, competitive prices, well stocked stores and good quality stock kept in good condition e.g. premix concrete hasn't gone hard in the bags? It might get better results than creeping out customers by spying on them.
"People really seem to have forgotten what version numbers are actually FOR these days - they're to communicate that something significant has changed and this new version might break stuff"
The other side of that coin is that if version numbers aren't being changed they've decided to stop breaking stuff. We can always hope...
" but the loyalty that XP still seems to have (especially seen as though XP was a pain in the arse) baffles me."
Time to do some hard thinking.
Imagine you have some extremely expensive piece of kit, say a million or so of your favoured currency units. When bought it had a projected life of 20 years. A replacement would cost at least 50% more than the original, isn't in your budget and not likely to be within the next few years.
This very expensive item is working hard. You can't afford not to have it. But it's controlled by software written for XP. It's proprietary code and you don't have source. The company that wrote it is long gone. There's a regulatory requirement that the entire installation have a specific certification which the original installation has.
Do you
(a) kill the PC because it's running XP, scrap the kit which is no longer able to work because you can't run the S/W, close down the service you were providing with it and sit on you backside doing nothing for several years until you can afford to replace it?
(b) reverse engineer the S/W kill the PC, get the program rewritten for a different OS and in the meantime close down the service you were providing and sit on your backside soing nothing whilst the program is rewritten and recertified at considerable expense over the course of a year or so?
(c) protect the PC from the net and carry on?
Are you still baffled?
"look to Tory austerity, the foolish deregulation of banking"
Would that be "foolish deregulation of banking" have anything to do with Brown's having the BoE set interest rates based on a metric which ignored house-price inflation and a huge appetite for personal debt in response to the consequent low interest rates. After that bubble burst there was little alternative to austerity - we're still paying for that excess.
"Scotland is not England and was only part of Great Britain from maybe 1707"
Shame to spoil your post with an inaccuracy. It was always part of the island of Great Britain (unless you go a good way back into geological time). It wasn't part of the United Kingdom until the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. In fact the UK was his idea. That's right, the UK was a Scottish invention.
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