Posts by Paul Ellis

Amazon Prime Air flight crashes in Texas after 6,000ft nosedive

Re: I'm going to speculate...

Sort of. It's called a Continuous Descent Approach, and is done to save fuel and minimise noise. Its only problem is that the engines cool off and can take longer to spool up for a go-around, if needed.

Dratted hipster UX designers stole my corporate app

Bollocks. Read this: https://amzn.to/2V4Geo7

- and then get back to us. OK?

Peak Apple: This time it's SERIOUS, Tim

Re: The current iPhone lineup is wrong

Have an upvote. I can afford a top-end iPhone XS. I don't want one because I'd be frightened of dropping it; I don't want to become mugger-bait; and because it won't comfortably fit in my trouser pocket. I want something SE-sized, or perhaps, at an absolute stretch, iPhone 7 sized, but even that's bigger than I'd like and I see no reason to shell out today's money for 2-year-old tech.

So Apple is unlikely to get any more of my money until they make another phone of the size I want.

I saw a while back someone commenting here that, essentially, computers and phones were *done*, several years ago. Correct. Few people need the peripheral gewgaws and tiny, incremental improvements since then, and most of us dislike the current emphasis on corporate lock-in.

What do we really want? Actually, something that magically gets bigger when we use it, if we want it to, so that we can see big screens and use big buttons, and then equally magically shrinks again when we trouser it. *That* would be an upgrade worth having. So come on, materials scientists: I'll have that before my flying car, please.

Smartphone industry is in 'recession'! Could it be possible we have *gasp* reached 'peak tech'?

Peak tech? Hell, I hope so

It'd make a change to see a young person without head bent, lost in a little screen in front of them, but heads-up and paying attention to what's around them.

One upon a time - until around Jobs's death - a new Mac OS was to be looked forward to for its useful new functionality. Now, with a 'new' OS every year, the first questions are: "What won't work now? What functionality have they removed that I rely upon"?

I saw someone comment here a while back that computers were 'done' about 10 years ago, and developments since then have been distracting and unnecessary. Certainly, all Apple has done since 10.7 is dig the iCloud tentacles more firmly into the guts of the OS. Now, new developments are all for Apple's benefit, not the user's. And Microsoft, with its telemetry and constant auto-updates?

I rest my case.

Dudes. Blockchain. In a phone. It's gonna smash the 'commoditization of humanity' or something

Phil Chen?

I thought that was Rod Stewart's bass player. Met him once. Sterling chap.

Call your MEP! Wikipedia blacks out for European YouTube vote

Ah! A thumb-down for recounting a story of Aesopian proportions concerning being careful of what you wish for.

There's none as blind, etc.

@James 51

I'm sure you've all heard the story of the great copyleft activist Cory Doctorow's wife, who had a photo of hers used by the Daily Mail without her permission. She went ballistic and wanted it taken down, and how was that to be achieved? By the use of... existing copyright law.

Re: The problem I have so far...

@Tony Paulazzo

"Do you object to me, and people like me, actually making a living from our work?

No, it's more like your great great great grand children still earning a living from your work and the utter destruction of the Public Domain.

Get Copyright back in balance and then we can talk, Mickey (the Mouse)."

You have a point there. The Disney-driven extensions of copyright term are a pork-barrel embarrassment. 50 years after publication or death of author are sufficient.

As far as legacy goes, we're allowed to leave physical property to our descendants and their ownership of it never expires. Most people seem not to object to that, even though it means the public will never get its hands on those assets.

Yes, the Public Domain is important but I notice that the world is full of in-copyright images, films, music and text which nonetheless I am able to see, hear and read, often free of charge or at very low cost, and from which I can learn and culturally enrich myself. I don't live in a cultural desert as a result of copyright 'locking away' works, even 'orphan works', as Cory Doctorow, Mike Masnick and other Google shills would have us believe.

If any of my work has lasting economic value at my death I'm damned sure I want my child to benefit, in the same way any other parent does with their estate. Then, I'm content for it to fall into the Public Domain after 50 years. The exceptions to this stance are well up the Pareto curve, and as we all know, hard cases make bad law, eh Mickey?

Re: The problem I have so far...

Ah, at last a downvote. What's up? Do you object to me, and people like me, actually making a living from our work? And if you do, how, prey, are we to make a living?

Re: The problem I have so far...

@Killfalcon

"It's just... if you're strongly asserting the rights of artists, then that *has* to interact with the practice of slapping dumb jokes on random photos someone else took, right?"

Yes. Most of us like a laugh, and few of us object in practice to people *having a laugh* with our work. There's even a UK copyright exception - the Parody exception - legalising this, which was introduced in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright#parody-caricature-and-pastiche

When, however, people start to make money off our work without our permission or paying us a bit if we ask for it, or using our work without our permission to promote ideas or organisations we object to, then we tend to get a bit shirty and need legislative tools with which to put a stop to it.

Those of us whose entire income is based on licensing the copyright works we create - i.e. the work was only created in the first place to provided us with an income stream, not just for fun or 'art' - are particularly sensitive to this. We don't want rich internet corporations or pompous, self-righteous, deluded 'academics' from syphoning off part of our potential income. We can't afford it.

If you want to use my work and ask me nicely first I am likely to say yes, and make it affordable for you. If you just arrogantly use it without asking first, because 'remix culture', 'open culture' or 'digital democracy', I'm likely to take the hump. I'm a bit old-fashioned that way and tend to think: 'It took me 10,000 hours to learn to do that. If you can't ask me nicely first you can fuck off and make your own.'

I think this attitude is not unreasonable.

HMRC opens consultation to crack down on off-payroll working in private sector

"However another consultation will only actually help anything if HMRC do what they didn't last time, which is actually listen to what people are saying."

Oh, come on. Have you actually been part of any HMG consultative process? I have. Consultations take place so that the "we've had a consultation" box can be checked. The civil servants listen only insofar as what they hear enables them to carry out their masters' wishes within the law. None I have met were actually interested in what I had to say for its own sake. Certainly, none of them was prepared to countenance any kind of challenge to the prevailing groupthink orthodoxy.

Been there, done it. Downvoters: don't you dare unless you have equivalent direct experience.

Nice little Nesta egg: Former lottery quango took cash from Google

Re: Always the bribes made, never the bribed

None of them have the same track record for lobbying, and corrupting academics, that Google has. If they did, the the Campaign for Accountability would have pointed that out.

Sacre bleu! Apple's high price, marginal gain iPhone strategy leaves it stuck in the mud

Re: £1,149

Veblen goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Monkey selfie case settles for a quarter of future royalties

Re: Interesting principles behind this

Sanity. Thank you.

Dear do-gooders, you can't get rid of child labour just by banning it

Re: flawless logic

@ST

'- before the enactment of child labor protection laws, we did not have a good grasp of the extent of child labor exploitation, simply because, it not being illegal, it was not measured accurately, or at all?'

Doers it matter? Because also fact: there are laws against child labour, yet child labour persists. So, the laws might have reduced child labour, or increased it - perhaps we don't know - but they certainly haven't eliminated it. So what will? Laws by themselves clearly have failed; we still have child labour.

If the primary goal of a child labouring is to feed itelf, and if that goal is met by a free school meal, plus the schooling itself potentially offers a way out of the poverty trap, I think it's reasonable to expect a significant uptake of the offer, with a commensurate reduction of child labour.

Support that, would you?