Posts by irg 12 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Apr 2019
Surely the CMA should be persuaded that if BT/Openreach "independence" is acceptable regarding the quasi-cornering of ISP provision, then a similar measure might be an acceptable one for Facebook?
Though, to be completely fair, at least BT plays along with the CMA. FB failing statutory reporting measures is an own goal deserving of a forced reversion of sale...
The whole TLD exercise has proven fruitless. Please just end new top-level .uk registrations, and only permit renewals.
Failing that, merge all the co,me&org .uk domain registries with the TLD, so that a single purchase buys&renews access to the four UK domains.
Either way, stop trying to sell us the same shit twice. There is practically no-one buying or using the TLD, and everyone was happy with the subdomain setup already
Nominet can't be trusted. Nominet works for itself. Nominet should be deemed unfit for its job by B(E)IS, the CMA, Ofcom and any other related regulating/governing entities.
It should probably be absorbed into Jisc/JANET, but from a general governance perspective, a better management/ownership model needs to be found regardless. It either needs to be better deciding what it needs to be, and how it should spend its money(if it should). Its hoovers up money and pisses it away. Its a member-led organisation of sorts, but it should probably become an actual co-operative, where its staff, domain owners and other stakeholders can speak up, too.
As regard to domains themselves, obviously Nominet's market management has been nothing short of horrific. It created new capacity in the form of the "main ".uk tld, gave away domains fully knowing that most would expire unused, pumped up domains prices, and enabled the mass-buying of expired domains by shady buyers. Nominet shouldn't ever be about increasing the quantity of domains sold, it should be about increasing the number of domains put to good use. In the last few years, Nominet has done more than enough to persuade(or further motivate) many website operators to move to non-geo ot other non-UK domains.
They could do with merging .uk/.co.uk/.org.uk/.me.uk listings in the very least, to rescue this shit show.
As ever regarding English identity/identification, regional identification tends be stronger than national at least . A .eng domain would only really come to fruition if there was a formal English Parliament or other England-specific legislature/governing body - but we'll save UK constitutional issues for another day.
I'd consider regional campaigns to have a higher chance of success - probably with Yorkshire and Cornwall towards the top of the list. Traditional County/Heptarchy identities might make sense for some places, but city names might be more popular where regional identity isn't so strong(Eg .brum/.birmingham over .westmidlands/.westmids).
The site does work, but C4 have made some poor choices. (Nearly?) Everything from Derry Girls to Spaced works On Demand, and live broadcast works as well, without flash. Android and IOS devices do get told to download the app(and seemingly are blocked from normal web player usage), simply pretending you're using a desktop will bypass it. The mobile block looks even more self serving when the site is already using a responsive layout.
Separately, Channel 4 has good IOS and Android apps, and a primitive Windows Store app which iirc lets you bypass the login requirement.
If Channel 4 had half the money the money the BBC spends on their website this clearly wouldn't be an issue. Ideally, the Beeb would let the other broadcasters use their platform for a nominal cost, so that we wouldn't have to deal with this.
One assumes that nobody at Ofcom uses a radio. DAB sounds like crap, and typically relies on a static and uninterrupted aerial placement. DAB signal is at its best in residential areas, poor on motorways and office/commercial sites. DAB could sound better, but the broadcasters & Ofcom have for quantity over quality with radio licenses. If music copied off someone's terrible YouTube re-upload sounds better than broadcast, I might as well stock up on MP3s.
To compare: FM is a better medium at home, work and on the move. Receivers are cheaper, and lower power(I had a little solar powered one). FM is clearly better for most listeners, even while it has been neglected by Ofcom et al.
Obviously, the DAB local broadcasting proposal is a laugh - national broadcasters can't be bothered with anything more local than existing broadcast regions, and it's even more digital competition. FM is obviously a better medium locally, not least because it is already regularly used for short range broadcasts of all sizes.
As ever, Ofcom display their incompetence and ignorance in equal measure. The idea that they any more than an extension of the DCMS is for the birds.
You can get adblock on Chrome, and plenty of other extensions. It has become a de facto default on desktop and on Android it is the actual default. I think the question you've got to ask is why would the average user look anywhere else?
Firefox is good, but it isn't special. I haven't *liked* a browser since the days when Opera had its own rendering engine and plenty of neat features.
The key thing isn't the 'non-core' or 'high-risk' points, its the 35% market cap. Huawei will get to make substantial sales, but Nokia and Ericsson each have the opportunity to make big bucks off UK mobile networks as well. Whether other European countries will make similar decisions or follow the more open German approach remains to be seen.
GOP politicians will complain, but they don't keep things in perspective - Huawei already serves networks and employs people in the UK, it's too costly and too late. FWIW, GCHQ & MI5 both seem happy enough for this compromise, likely because they get to keep an eye on Huawei without handing them the whole network. This compromise won't carry half the diplomatic upset a full ban would have done. Whether domestic politicians like Tory MP Tom Tugendhat can be pacified is another question entirely.
I'm not going to pretend to be surprised that ICANN is corrupt and useless - we all know that. The scale of this deal and the ability for it to occur in such secrecy is something that simply shouldn't be possible. The lack of regulation of domain pricing for the big ticket domains is another way to ruin the internet even more.
Things like this make me wish Nominet was regulated properly
Eh, personally I'd like to see OEMs not be mandated to ship Google play w/ Android on pain of death. Then we could see Lineage, Samsung and vanilla android devices shipped w/o a trace of Google in Europe, and Amazon wouldn't have to use minor device manufacturer partners.
It's truly anti competitive, even if it doesn't change the overall market outcome.
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