Posts by Gulfie 749 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Aug 2007
I'm complaining because the choice of services is reducing and the number one choice invades my privacy too much.
I'm also complaining because Google's overwhelming might makes it nigh on impossible for start-ups to compete in any space where Google is established. They have to compete with bottomless R&D pockets even before they start to consider how to promote their services.
Whilst I wouldn'd dispute other's assertions that Google's services are excellent I would seek to remind them that many good services have withered and died due to insufficient marketing, something Google doesn't do in half measures.
If you control the world's #1 search engine and use it to promote your own products ahead of paid advertising for your rivals... it may be legal but sooner or later Google were always (if successful) going to end up being accused of antitrust.
All of their services are free (and the more of them you use, the better the experience, in exchange for all your innermost secrets of course), and have no doubt contributed to the demise of numerous free and charging equivalents. Their dominance of searchvertising gives them deep, deep pockets with which to expand into new territory without concern as to if the new service is sustainable in any normal sense of the word. More money than any venture capitalist could dream of having in his fund.
In many ways I think their behaviour now is much worse than Microsoft's, simply because of the breadth of their offerings, all paid for by searchvertising, and their ambitions to be present at every key point of the hardware and software chain. The eventual result will be an irreversible lock-in - Google becomes the internet (or at least all of its services worth mentioning), and the internet becomes Google, as its financial might allows it to best any company in its path.
Google has, is, and will continue, to distort who can afford to offer services on the internet - let alone make money from them. It is time to break the company up and attempt to redress the balance, before all everybody else is left with is the long tail of the internet service business - and we know how profitable the long tail is, don't we?
The DoS attack doesn't neccesarily come from the user that instigated it, it may come from a botnet. A better solution would be to whitelist the IP addresses of the players and other known legit in-game traffic and block the rest to stop DDoS combined with your suggestion to look for suspiciously high traffic from a whitelisted IP.
The omission of Flash is not a technology decision. Its a control decision. Allow Flash (and Java) and you cede control of the platform and lose control over what people can run on it.
When the iPhone App Store was launched, the line we were fed was about controlling the quality of product, giving us security, blah blah blah. As that argument got undermined (high quality products being barred for none of these reasons), others were trotted out and the old ones quietly forgotten.
Think for a moment - If you could cache and run Flash on the iPhone, most of the crappy games in the App Store wouldn't exist. And Apple would be collecting 30% of a lot less money.
It's wrong to argue about the technical merits or dismerits of Flash - But I'm sure Apple loves the continuation of the FUD it has started.
There is plenty of evidence that the end user cross-training costs are minimal for the majority of users. The government runs plenty of Unix systems already so admin training is not a big issue either.
If we accept that in the long run the local support costs remain more or less unchanged then the difference between running an OSS operating system and a Windows operating system is licencing cost.
Take that a step further. There are multiple versions of Linux that run the same or very similar GUIs. There are multiple large companies offering support. So you've gone from a single supplier scenario to a multiple supplier scenario and you can actually request competing bids for the maintenance contract. You can't do that with a single supplier - nobody can bid against Microsoft to provide source code level support and, critically, bug fixes.
And once switched away from Windows of course you can switch between Linux variants with minimal to no training at all.
Open source is a realistic alternative - even if you have to provide some MS-only software through Citrix or VMWare - FUD like yours is standard Microsoft propaganda trotted out on a regular basis to those who are not in a position to judge the honesty of what they are being told.
... a reason for not taking a particular route for our lords and masters?
Actually it sounds like an artificial deadline of the next election has been set. Wouldn't it be cheaper to pay Microsoft to extend support for another six months while a Windows 7 build is finalised?
Of course that would stop Microsoft double-dipping into the Government coffers - maybe herein lies the answer: the (soon to be ex) minster that approves the Vista-then-7 upgrade path gets a directorship at Microsoft for Christmas...
Just because they're not the government, doesn't mean you should trust them any more.
Google as network provider, browser provider, OS provider and content provider. No, that's not at all scary, is it?
Make no mistake. If Google is able to add a significant ISP presence to its business model, there are very few companies who will be able to compete on anything like a level playing field. Most companies 'dominate' in one area. Google is dominating, or attempting to have an influencing presence, in all the important areas of the internet: advertising, search, email, content, mobile devices, operating systems and browsers, the internet backbone and now the connection into the home.
A company that operates across all areas and uses revenues from one to strongarm its way into a dominant position in others - there's a name for that. Ask Microsoft.
Time for action, folks.
Apple still slow charge their batteries. My MacBook Pro is two years old and with daily use both on and off the charger the battery is still showing over 95% of original capacity.
When run down to near empty the battery takes a couple of hours minimum to fully charge, and when I was in Europe last week it took forever because, I'm guessing, of the lower voltage mains input.
eBooks are convenient but I won't go anywhere near them until I get a free 'e' copy with my paper copy.
First, I like reading a physical book. In technical books I'll actually write on the pages as well. Second, I like to be able to swap books with friends. Try doing that with an eReader. Third I like to recoup a small amount of my original investment by taking a bag of books to the local second hand bookshop every now and again.
Granted you might be able to make notes on a reader but with an eReader you're only buying the right to read, not the ownership of the file. I suspect at least half the reason for eBooks is that publishers hope to sell more in the long term because you're not able to lend or sell on.
Just like the music business though they insist on keeping prices (relatively speaking) sky high despite the savings in physical inventory. The only reason they're in a better place than the record companies is it is so much harder to digitise a book than a CD...
I agree with the general thrust of the article here, the majority of people will move to buying consoles for games (cheaper than a big grunt PC) and so you don't need a desktop machine in the house any more. As long as the laptop (of whatever flavour) does the job, people will buy them. Therefore it is logical that the majority of laptops will be of the cheaper variety - but still mainly running Windows.
I'm not buying any more desktops for my family - my wife has a laptop, I have one, the kids will eventually have one each, and I run a NAS on the home network which gives us all the storage we need. I do have two tower machines, one will be sold as soon as the kids have laptops, the other I will keep to continue playing my Windows games on. Eventually I will wave it goodbye, though. It's expensive and power hungry.
"iiNet customers were also accused of creating physical DVD copies of Hollywood films - but the court found that the only people who definitely did this were AFCT investigators"
Better get them into court quickly then, the studios don't like people who make copies of their films.
At last a country that takes the view that there are already perfectly good laws for policing copyright theft, and are making the studios use them, rather than going down the stupid 'three strikes' system, which requires no court-standard proof, or indeed a civil case, for people to be 'found guilty' and have their internet access restricted or terminated.
How exactly do you appeal a decision that has been made under this system? No court case to appeal. No court-standard evidence to test. And we all know how good ISPs are at keeping accurate IP address allocation records. I think what scares me most about this stupid, stupid system is lack of accountability that appears to be build in to it.
... failed to inspire because Microsoft just don't get that a move away from the desktop requires a change in the UI interaction model. And that interaction model has to be nigh on perfect for users not to become irritated by its shortcomings quickly. And as we know, while Apple does 'perfection', Microsoft does 'good enough'.
PS the same principal applies to touchscreen phones. Start button on Windows CE? Doh!
... is already required from my understanding of their aims.
Accurate IP address allocation records- We already know from attempts to track down P2P file sharers that ISPs have not got the most accurate IP allocation records on the planet. And even if they are accurate, it also assumes that all the associated data is accurate. Otherwise you end up associating the wrong IP to the wrong household, and all your intelligence is garbage.
And this is a specific dirty data issue. Data collected on this scale will be very, very difficult to verify and keep clean. More opportunities for garbage. And don't get me started on the invasion of privacy stuff.
I used to use eBay a lot to dispose of functional but surplus computer gear and other stuff we no longer needed. Since they changed their fee structure last year I've pretty much stopped, it simply isn't worth it. And if you try and point this out in the forums, your message gets deleted because it is viewed as violating message posting policy. Frankly I'm surprised that the posts saying that the changes work out more costly are still there.
The business model of this company appears now to be driven by absolute greed, pure and simple. Very sad.
When you take the ICO's quotes "CCTV operators should use appropriately trained staff to monitor images", "It is not appropriate to disclose images of identifiable individuals for entertainment purposes or to place them on the internet" and "If images are to be released for identification purposes, this should not generally be done by anyone other than the law enforcement agencies" you are left with a series of indisputable facts that blow a huge hole in the Internet Eyes business model.
They are putting stuff on the web, by somebody other than the police, and it is being 'observed' by untrained people you can only really describe as voyeurs.
So the note on their web site, "Due to further stipulations arising with the ICO we are delaying launch until these items are dealt with and approved. We take the ICO's views very seriously and are keen to work within their guidelines." needs a little re-writing:
"We were hoping to make a fast buck but the ICO has stuck their nose in where it doesn;t belong and blown our scheme full of holes. We're currently trying to find a way of continuing with our plans that allows us to ignore the ICO, avoid legal action and still coin it. First person to call in film of a copulating couple wins £10000"
There, that's fixed it for you.
Has the government taken into account the no doubt lengthy negotiations between suppliers, and between government and suppliers, to effect the common desktop? I foresee that suppliers will stiff the government for a modification of their contract. And that's before we touch on the technical aspects of the subtly different builds required and the security implications of adopting the lowest common denominator approach that will be required.
I can also foresee similar issues combining the data centres.
In summary, I suspect these savings are (a) over-hyped and (b) mostly not available anytime soon. Yes, you can set up a 'G-cloud' (what a name) quickly, but if you've not developed applications to run inside a standard 'containerised' environment, and not catered for the build and deployment of runtimes either, your cloud is going to sit idle for some months.
I feel an epic fail approaching...
As an ex-EDS employee I left the company in early 2008 when it was still very much not owned by HP, so the statement "taken over by HP in the first half of the 2000s" is more than a little inaccurate. I'm somewhat surprised that the proofreading let this through as later in the article your quote from an HP spokesman includes the phrase "acquired EDS in 2008".
C'mon, El Reg!
There IS a place for good quality NEWS that is properly investigated from a neutral standpoint. If there is a problem with that, it is that a large proportion of the population is too interested in celebrity, gossip and schadenfreude to have any concern about the quality of what they are reading.
I give you Metro as the perfect example of this. The 'news' content is produced for a very, very low cost and has almost zero value.
As an increasingly infrequent buyer of newspapers (pretty much just Private Eye these days) I don't buy them for the adverts. I buy them for the NEWS in whatever form it takes. Find me a newspaper where the majority of the people who pay for it in one way or another say they do so for the adverts. You won't find one.
I'm happy to accept the financial model you've laid out, but with the quality of journalism dropping the newspapers are entering a terminal spiral of their own making. Poor content leads to a drop in readership, which leads to a drop in both direct and indirect revenue, in turn leading to further cutbacks on the news desks, so quality drops further, and so on.
As has been written here before, the key is to build and maintain a team of people who are capable of (and I hate to put it this way) good old-fashioned investigative journalism. Give people high quality hard news and they will pay for it. I'm not interested in articles cobbled together from Wikipedia, Google and a few press releases, and without good news you won't get people buying the paper or visiting the web site, and your advertising revenue will continue to dry up.
I think some proprietors are too interested in their own political agendas, pursued and promoted through their media empires, to really understand and address the issues. The Times is talking about charging for some accessm but if the quality isn't there, people won't pay. Epic Fail all round.
Tabloid won't work in the UK, far too many negative connetations. Page three. Gutter press. Lies, damn lies and journalism... (sorry El Reg).
Also - Apple are busy registering iPad everywhere. As well as contesting the only pre-existing trademark application for iPad which is in the US.
Shame about the iPhone OS. I don't want a nailed-down device. I want OS X with touch capabilities. The other thing I'd like to see is a Mac dock so that I can use it as a second display.
I will start by agreeing that complex business documents/spreadsheets from Word/Excel frequently end up mangled in OO. However the other 90% of files work very well indeed. And 90% of business users would still do just fine with Office '97, let alone 2003.
I used OO for Mac for about a year and found it to be great except for the occasional printing problem - before I decided to move on to iWorks which again is not 100% perfect on Office conversion but is more reliable than OO - particularly on the printing front.
The fact that MS has modified their licence terms over the years so that a home user can get Word and Excel for < £100 is proof enough that Open Office is a lot more than empty rhetoric. If it didn't work we'd all still be paying > £300 for any copy of office.
it allows the Home Office to claim that 15,000 people who would have had their identity stolen previously, have not, because they lost their ID card (WTF, I am thinking).
Evidence of non-theft of ID? Since when has the ID Card propaganda worried about the evidence? Rates of ID theft from lost passports vs lost ID cards?
Best reply you can give, if asked, is that of the French knight in the Holy Grail: "no thank you, we've already got one, it's very nice!"
I'm sorry but if the technical facts are correct - this is an indexing service - then the guy no more deserves to be found guilty than Google deserves.
By all means pursue illegal file sharers within the laws of the land. But you can't choose to prosecute a niche search engine for making exactly the same material available as Google.
The word you are looking for is "Lytham" or, to give it its full name, "Lytham St Annes". Build largely on sand it is, big subsidence problems - whenever I think of it I'm reminded of the Holy Grail sketch: "People said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp..." and so on.
... traffic shaping is another entirely. I notice the BT don't give any QoS guarantee with this lightning fast connection. It'll be just like the M25 and M42 variable speed limit zones - completely jammed up and nobody getting anything quickly - or practically empty but traffic still 'shaped' down to something depressingly low.
Why do we make such a meal of providing _real_ high speed access compared to other 1st world countries? And Gordon wants high tech to lead us out of recession.
BTW if we all agreed to only sign up for packages where the QoS part of the terms and conditions were both clearly stated (hard facts please) and reasonable, maybe the ISPs would get the message. I'm still with Zen, have been for two years now. Not the cheapest but zero traffic shaping.
... but if I'm ever challenged for ID in relation to age restricted purchases it will simply prompt me to say 'no'. And leave without paying for anything.
I started drinking in pubs at 16 and was only ever challenged once - at age 24 by a doorman of a London 'over 21 only' pub. And, sadly, that was many years ago. I lived in the US for a short while and it drove me mad that as somebody in their 30's I still had to show my passport to get entry into bars (but only at the weekends, wierdly).
But seriously, there is such a thing as using your judgement when faced with somebody wanting to buy alocohol/tobbacco/knives/sniffable substances/peanut butter* - if the checkout staff can't exercise theirs, then I can't be bothered to give them my business.
*lethal in the wrong hands!
I don't disagree with your point of view (quite aside of the fact that I couldn't grok the original poster's example scenario too well). I think tablets will find their niche - the key as always is to look at the situations where people currently use clipboards, brochures etc and then postulate how the same activities can be performed on a tablet, in such a way that there are clear benefits from doing so.
So, instead of being handed an expensive glossy brochure when touring a new housing development show home I get given a tablet which guides me of a tour around the house, provides ancilliary information, allows me to enter some basic details of my requirements etc.
When I get back to the salesperson they can better tailor their sales pitch to the info I have provided. And they don't need to print so many glossy brochures - or can print details on demand instead. If you were to tour the estate itself, GPS can be used to present information relevant to the houses I am close to.
I can also see a tablet being useful in any situation where the shop has a limited sample of merchandise (furniture for example). As with any device its a question of understanding what it can do well, and how it can support/improve existing business processes.
You could even liken it to the goose that lays the golden eggs.
THREE BILLION apps downloaded in less than two years? And Apple keeps a third of all app sales revenues? And Apple captured over 99% of all mobile app downloads last year? (See http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?newsid=28372 for details). And the market just keeps on growing? I suspect that the iTunes store will be Apple's main source of income within three years.
The only questions in my mind - how long before there is a serious legal challenge to the closed store with its obfuscated approvals process and Apple self-protectionist practices? Competition is a good thing, application approval or rejection should be from a technical standpoint only (i.e. software using non-public APIs or working in a way that could cause the phone to malfunction). If you allow applications that compete directly with the Apple equivalents this can only be good for everybody.
My main thought is that if this new device is locked down as tightly as an iPhone then the cost will have to be close to, or on a par with, a good quality netbook or lower-end laptop to counter the lock-down issue.
One of the things that stymied Linux netbook sales was, allegedly, people trying to install Windows software. Imagine the potential return rate if it isn't explained to Joe Public that not only can't they install Windows software on the iThingy, but they can't in fact install any software, unless it has been blessed by the church of St Jobs, and downloaded direct through a secure channel from the internet.
Personally, if this is the case, the device is a non-starter for personal use. Although if this thing is half as good as I suspect it will be, I shall probably buy a couple anyway and start work on some applications. Point of sale software, and interactive brochures strike me as two very rich veins.
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