Posts by Alexander Hanff 138 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
Wooweee 815 pounds? I will keeping an eye on the London Gazette to see when both those Solicitor firms go into receivership then! Might get some cheap kit when they have to liquidate all their assets!
Seriously though, no wonder everyone thinks ICO is a joke, this is bloody ridiculous.
"Because of the architecture that we use, the drive doesn't add any significant cost over traditional high-end flash drives"
This means we can get a 4GB for about 40 quid then eh? Forgive my scepticism but I suspect they will be 1000s of £/$ each despite their admission that they are almost as cheap to manufacture as flash drives.
Does this mean they are going to restrict this to just Apple products? That's what it sounds like. Would the author please contact Rose and ask if the new non flash format will be available to all and not be locked to only Apple devices? I ask because as a 64bit Linux user, I can't use the flash player since there is no 64bit plugin available from Adobe, so if the service with the new format is available to all, this will solve my access issues.
In the US the same is true I believe and the assets (not just the proceeds of the crime but all assets) can be seized by the feds on suspicion of being proceeds from a felony.
However, even though the feds would love their jurisdiction to reach globally, it doesn't; so unless the Russian government are going to allow this guy to be extradited then he is home and dry. Now just think about this for a moment, if you were the Russian Prez would -you- grant an extradition request from the US? I'd tell them in no uncertain terms to file their extradition request where the sun doesn't shine.
My point wasn't that the BBC have to make this "service" platform independent, I am fully aware that it is not funded solely by the tv license on this matter. My point was they -should- have. After all the bad press they have received over the iPlayer not being, making this latest move is basically just a slap in the face to everything we have been complaining about for the last 12 months (yes I have actually campaigned against the iPlayer decision as opposed to just sitting on my arse whining).
It was a bad choice on their part, the format is fine, the lack of drm is great, the delivery is taking the piss and if you can't see that then you are blind. This decision is as bad as their decision to go with Flash for the streaming iPlayer, sure many Linux users will sing it's praises because they can finally get -some- use out of the iPlayer but it was a terrible decision by the BBC because there is no 64bit Flash Plugin which leaves anyone with modern systems out in the cold. It shows a complete lack of understanding of the issues and their responsibility under their charter.
BBC = Epic Fail (a failure -we- are all paying for).
Forget CCTVs, forget Vehicle Tracking, forget number plate recognition, forget gait recognition, forget facial recognition, forget data retention and forget mobile phone logging. All of the above takes way to long, we have over half of the population exposed to ID theft purely from the government "losing" it.
Who needs all the big brother tactics when the government will just give it away. Hell why not just expose the other half of the population and be done with it, at least then everyone will be on an even playing field.
37M people's data "lost" in the last what 18 months? Outstanding job, they couldn't have done better if they had -tried- to give the data away, too much red tape and all that crap.
Revolution anyone?
Paris because the government has now officially fucked more people than she has.
Its a real shame I am boycotting the industry for trying to sue me for 150 million USD or I would actually be quite happy about this news. However, as it stands they need to do a great deal more to win me or my family over.
The price is not terrible but it is not good either and they are lacking a "preview" facility allowing you to listen to a sample of the song before you purchase it (which most high street music retailers provide nowadays).
Bring the price down to half what it currently is, offer a choice of formats (like allofmp3.com did) in either flac, ogg, wmv, aac or mp3 (should keep everyone happy I think?) and it will be a big improvement.
Of course a big fat "We're very sorry for alienating the majority of our consumers with our strong arm tactics, cartel like behaviour, price fixing, and yes we are very sorry for suing 30 000 people. Also we are sorry for lying to governments about how much we are losing to piracy, we are sorry for making you all endure the crap we have been trying sell for the past 20 years and finally we are sorry for not paying the artists fair royalties." wouldn't go a miss either.
All in all though, I give this a thumbs up, which as many of you know, coming from me is a pretty strong endorsement given my history with the industry. But like I said, my boycott remains strong until myself and my family receive a formal and written apology.
You should read the news more frequently your comment sounds like you believe this is a new trend when in reality it has been going on for years. How many hundreds of thousands of children are currently on the DNA database for no reason? Google has the answer (so does El Reg in a previous article).
Maybe, just maybe, the people that sound and look like Americans actually are Americans and maybe, again just maybe, these Americans are not actually being recruited by El Nasty but are in fact just ordinary American people who are pissed off with their "unelected" president and general state of their government???
Alien because they told me to write this...
Another point many people seem to fail to realise is that in the UK copyright law only covers copying of "original works". Therefore a copy of a copy under British Law is not illegal as it is not a copy of an original works. Of course it takes someone with balls to use this defence in court and of course requires that someone actually gets taken court for infringement so they can submit a defence.
As soon as someone rips a cd or dvd the resulting files are no longer original works and therefore dissemination/distribution of copies of this copy are not illegal and are certainly not covered by copyright legislation.
In reality, the only person liable for infringement is the person who originally ripped the content which to my understanding would be pretty much impossible to determine.
You forget one thing in your analysis of entrapment and that is the rights holders (or agents thereof) are not breaking the law when they download the content and therefore the evidence is admissible. Let me explain why:
1. Downloading is not illegal under British legislation, only uploading.
2. As the owners of the rights or agent for said owners, they can do what they like with the data (upload, download, put on a chip and place it under the ass hide of an elephant) and are breaking no laws.
Whereas I agree this whole argument from the BPI and the thought of government legislation to make big businesses even richer is ludicrous, we have to make sure we get our facts right about why it is wrong and the rights of the consumers.
We already have legislation in place to deal with copyright infringement, the victims can simply issue a lawsuit for damages. Why on earth Brown thinks he needs to introduce new legislation is beyond me.
Easy solution is everyone vote for the Green Party or the Lib Dems in the next election; the twat in number 10 at the moment shouldn't even be there anyway.
I say Green or Lib Dems because conservative are actually MORE in the pockets of of the Content Cocks than Labour are.
But the point is this currently only effects countries not in the VWP system and when it eventually does take over from VWP it is very unlikely Brown will be in number 10 it is equally more unlikely that Bush will be in the Oval Office. My point was Brown won't be involved.
On extradition, yes we have a treaty, but our Government don't like to abide by it for exactly the reasons I explained above. Of course my MP could have just been talking out of his jacksie.
I am not sure if you understand the article; the UK is already one of the countries eligible for the Visa Waiver so my understanding is this new move by the DHS would not have any effect or involve the UK in any way.
Also extradition-wise you will be hard pressed to find a significant number of extraditions from the UK to the US. In fact as someone threatened with extradition to the US (for an alleged civil offence as opposed to criminal I hasten to add) my government told me specifically that it would never happen and that in general the UK don't like to play extradition with the US because the US simply refuse to meet similar requests from the UK (or any other country for that matter). As far as the government are concerned (and yes I got this information directly from my MP on his House of Commons phone) until the US start playing fair and allow US citizens to be extradited to the UK, they have no interest in extraditing British citizens to the US. Of course this doesn't mean it never happens, but it is much less frequent than it could be.
Puhleeeeeese!
This is Intel we are talking about, outdone only by MS and the Content Cartel in the legendary world of anti-trust behaviour.
If there is any leaning from Dell towards Intel you can be damn sure that staff in retail will be leaning exactly the same way. It is more likely that the only reason they have AMD in retail in the first place is to make it -look- like there is nothing dodgy going on.
No NO and NO Again! The last thing you want to do is remove Joe Mickey Public's right to sue. The second you say people can't sue the council for not maintaining the roads and paving, the councils will simply stop maintaining them yet continue to put up council tax 10-20% per year to line the pockets of the consultancies which they happen to be on the board of directors for.
We are expected to abide by the law and meet our own liabilities so why shouldn't the middle/upper class and public sector? Your suggestion is basically saying "fuck the little guys its costing the big guys too much money".
Or are you perhaps saying it is OK for someone not to pay their mortgage or other debts because they got made redundant with no pay off because they hadn't worked there long enough? After all, shit happens, not the debtors fault; he/she is not responsible for losing their job, it is the way of the world. So surely the lenders should just write these debts off, after all, under your logic, shit happens and surely if they take the risk of lending the money it is there own fault should the borrower default?
I some how doubt you are saying the latter (no surprise there).
You just don't get it do you? --ALL-- iPhones sold in the US irrespective of where they are sold, are sold with an AT&T contract and consumer have the choice of activating the contract or not. So what is being said here is (and quite legitimately) AT&T are reporting significant differences in the number of consumer signed up to iPhone contracts compared to the number of phones Apple is claiming to have sold. Which is exactly why there is reference to the unlocked phone market in the article.
Secondly, the same is true in the UK. If you buy an iPhone you have one option; O2. You can buy from 3 different places (O2, Apple or CPW) but you can only use it on O2's network. However if the phone is unlocked and never activated on the O2 network then O2's figures won't tally with Apple's either.
The important thing here is Apple has signed deals with the network providers to take a fairly substantial cut of their revenue as a result of getting exclusive rights to iPhone customers. If a large portion of these phones are being unlocked this seriously undermines Apple's return and may even *potentially* turn the iPhone into a loss leader for Apple. I say loss leader because the phone is already failing to meet projected revenues which means only one thing; either stop producing it or cut the price.
I suspect rather a large number of UK iPhone sales are not real sales and have in fact either stayed in the storage room in O2/CPW stores or have been dished out to O2/CPW sales staff and managers to try and promote the gadget and increase sales through increased exposure. This is of course bad news for everyone involved in the deal, but great news for us Apple haters, of which I am proud to be one.
You can use Cams with Sky under Linux although in all the official forums/chatrooms for the various media center suites (such as MythTV) it is frowned upon to talk about it.
There is FOSS available which sets up virtual tv card devices, the Cam is linked directly to them (with your viewing card in) and then using software the stream is decrypted before sending it to MythTV. This method also allows you to have the equivalent of Sky+ on your computer since 1 Cam and Viewing card can be used for upto 4 tv cards (possibly more) giving you 4 independent channels available at any one time. Of course you need to run the lines from your LNB (the hardware on the front of your minidish) but that is just a case of buying cable and plugging it into the spare ports on the LNB, each one of these lines will be an independent stream. Most people who have had Sky installed in the past 5 years or so will normally have 4 ports on their LNB (some older systems only have 2 and some newer systems as many as 8 since SkyHD and Sky+ came onto the scene).
Ordinarily with Sky Multiroom you would need as many boxes+viewing cards as you want to have independent feeds, so if you have 4 feeds from your LNB you need either 2x 2 Sky+ boxes (which take 2 feeds each), 4x regular Sky boxes or any combination thereof. This is inefficient for a number of reasons;
1. You have to spend a lot of money on set top boxes (even on ebay they can get pretty expensive if you want 4 of them).
2. You need upto 4 viewing cards which until recently meant paying Sky and extra 10 quid for each "multiroom" card per month; although I just found out yesterday that this has been reduced to a £10 per month flat charge for any number of multiroom subscriptions, which I have to say is about bloody time but still expensive.
3. It is totally non carbon friendly. Running up to 4 set top boxes consumes considerably more power than running a single Cam and zero set top boxes.
So yes, you can get free multiroom and free Sky+ (no Sky+ box required). Granted, you lose the Sky+ software (which is crap anyway compared to MythTV) and if Sky change their encryption key (which does happen every now and again) you need to wait a couple of days for the new key to be cracked.
I should add I have never used this system myself as I am a poor student and can't justify the cost of the Cam and multiple TV Cards. However, I have been a MythTV user for several years now and have spoken to many other users in the UK who are using this system with no problems.
It's about time Sky were forced to release their keys to licensed Cam vendors simply on the energy issue alone.
Yeah I know all about ndiswrapper and I know it currently doesn't work from the Ubuntu repositories with the Adobe Flash plugin. Yes I could fiddle around with it a bit and probably get it working but I have 2 issues with that:
1. WTH should I have to install 32bit applications in a wrapper that don't work without some major fiddling just because Adobe are a bunch of tits and for no justifiable reason refuse to release a 64Bit plugin? The chap who produces Gnash (a open source alternative to Flash) is rumoured to have approached Adobe to write it for them and they told him to go away. There is no logic in refusing to support new technologies which are pretty much the default architecture for all new PCs (most new PCs come with 64bit CPUs).
2. The BBC should not have used Flash in the first place as it too is a proprietary application which is JUST as bad as them restricting the iPlayer download service to Windows XP and some other Windows OS that anyone with half a brain would never buy, I forget it's name but I believe I means something like an avenue or road usually flanked by tress on each side. Which is actually a good analogy for said POS OS as once you install it you can't see the fsckin woods for the trees. (There is so much shit dumped into V***A it isn't an OS anymore it is a Managed Content Vending Suite.
And to all you MS fanboys out there who think Linux users are insignificant, go take a flying fsck at a rolling doughnut; you self righteous, arrogant, ignorant pricks.
Michael,
Your assertation that the flash player works on all platforms is incorrect. It does not work on 64bit Linux due to Adobe's failure to release a plugin for 64bit Firefox. Given the number of machines out there now shipping with 64bit processors it is totally unacceptable that they are using a proprietary format which is not 64bit compatible across all 64bit operating systems. Especially when software exists for video streaming over the web, which are compatible.
Richard et al. obviously I pay a great more attention to grammar and spelling in a formal academic paper than I do posting a comment on the web. Which is why I am heading for a 1st class BSc. in Informations Systems and Applied Sociology (joint majors). The dissertation is for my Applied Sociology side of the course.
As for the chap who suggested I would plagiarise my paper through the use of copy and paste, that was nothing less than a mindless insult. I actually have a deep interest in what I am doing which is why I left a highly profitable 5 figure salary and 15 years work in the IT industry to go back to Uni. My work has included papers on the Digital Divide, Biometric Fingerprinting of School Children, Privacy in the 21st Century, DRM and the US TeenScreen scandal to name just a few.
My plan is to go on and do a PhD based around the sociological issues with technology and the relationship between technology and society. I actually have a clue about the stuff I am doing as opposed to just doing it because it might seem fashionable at the time.
I am currently working on my final year dissertation which is based on the negative impacts of a Microsoft centric public sector from many angles including education, industry and innovation, cost and sociological issues.
This news from Becta is a good thing and there reference to the digital divide is totally valid (and a surprise to see). Let's hope BECTAs future decisions are similarly sane.
They have been pretty much ordered to provide an open platform solution for iPlayer and still HAVE NOT. I see many people praising the BBC for setting up the flash streaming service and I don't understand why. I lead a letter writing campaign against the BBC because of the iPlayer last year and as a Linux user I still cannot use the service (styreaming or otherwise). Why? Because Adobe do not and will not provide a 64bit flash plugin for linux. Nuff said.
OK so we are all pretty much devastated by the news so here is my plan. Many people have mentioned buying new kit from Logitech before MS get in and ruin the game, so my idea is basically an extension of this.
Everyone who loves Logitech stuff go out and buy more. If all Logitech fans do this, it will force the share price up (due to a massive increase in sales), make the company more expensive for Microsoft to buy (or maybe even make Logitech realise they shouldn't sell). Then of course once MS buy Logitech for an inflated price, we all have our peripherals which we know will sit happily in their box for however many years we need them too and still work perfectly when we finally do need them. This of course means few people will be buying Logisoft kit because we already have our spares and we could be looking at a failure as monstrous as Vista for Microsoft.
You just had to try and set the benchmark for the worst news of 2008 didn't you? Couldn't you just have ignored this one so we never knew about it until was too late and thus ease the pain a little? No you had to torment us with advanced notice :/
Easily the worst news of 2008 so far. Lets take a great hardware company with a forward thinking attitude, excellent products at consumer friendly prices and DESTROY it.
Glad my new logitech wireless laser desktop arrived 2 days ago before MS got the filthy hands inside it.
Genuinly upset, RIP consumer choice.
Does this mean that ICO will now remove their fingers from their collective asses and actually help people enforce those rights, which so far they have failed remarkably at doing? Or will they simply continue as the useless and toothless organisation they always have been, slapping companies on the wrist or issuing non consequential fines.
The biggest problem with the protection of personal data in the UK is ICO themselves. Since they are nothing like part of the solution, clearly they are part of the problem.
I started a letter writing campaign against the decision to launch iPlayer for windows XP only. You can download template letters and send them to the 3 official bodies involved in this and a 4th for your MP from the following URL:
http://blog.paladine.org.uk/?p=14
I did send a press release to ElReg but in their divine wisdom they decided not to run it, go figure.
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