Posts by Paul Talbot

Wow

Way to go... Not only is this unworkable but it actually encourages other kinds of crime. A paedophile intent on 'grooming' kids online (still very rare compared to family abuse, etc. but an easy hot-button topic for clueless politicians) now has an incentive to attempt to steal another person's identity, or at least control their email address. Even without this, the sheer fact that any person can have any number of email addresses signed up with incomplete or inaccurate personal information makes this yet another waste of time.

It would be nice if the money wasted could be spent on educating children and their parents about online dangers and how to avoid and cope with them. It's a shame that realistic, intelligent, workable solutions are overlooked in favour of idiotic "let's look like we're doing something" schemes.

re: No I'm not finished

@ImaGnuber:

"Have you never seen the destruction of a friend or family member or whoever by drug use? Maybe you should get out into the real world."

Yup. Alcohol did that.

Oh wait, you're implying that the only drugs that can destroy families are the ones that our guardians have deemed illegal, and it's impossible for people to have a good time with no long-lasting effects with those drugs.

Maybe you're the one who should stop being foolish and stop trying to apply black and white morality to a complex subject. The real world is much more complex than that. Maybe you should get out into it a bit more.

If only...

If only they'd learn... the problem with OOXML isn't that people are worried about lawsuits, it's that they will make it a de facto standard in the same way as they leveraged IE. The binary element stops anyone other than Microsoft from leading the game and makes their products unfairly competitive. The exact opposite of ODF, which is fully documented, and anyone (even MS) can implement it to the same standard as any competitor.

If this somehow becomes a standard, it will become a joke, the same way as IE6-era web design was a joke with regard to standard, precisely for the same reasons.

Negitivity

Wow, so much hate. This is a decent minor update to a robust package. How so many people can complain about the look of a completely configurable icon set or the functionality of a non-Microsoft product with MS file formats (guess which company will always do best? *the one who makes the damn file format, which is why the independent ODF is so f***ing important*. Ahem), is beyond me.

It's an alternative. It's open source. It's free in both senses of the word. If MS Office does it for you fine. If you don't like OOo, fine. But FFS stop complaining about it. Don't have a particular function you want working the way you want - fix it. Submit bug reports. Get that beardy guy in your IT department to submit a patch. Otherwise keep paying your Microsoft tax or shut the hell up when some reasonable competition raises its head.

...and the negative comments come pouring....

Typical. Someone suggests a new, optimistic business model for the music industry and we get a "slightly missing the point" article with "freetards lol" comments.

Here's the thing. The original Kevin Kelly idea was about 1000 *true* fans. Not "someone who might buy the Cd when it's out if I like it". True fans. People who live, breath and love the music. People who evangelise the music to everyone they know, post blog, YouTube and forum articles about their music, buy concert tickets obsessively and wear the T-shirt as a second skin. Yes, it's difficult to get these fans, but the point of the original article was that if you concentrate on getting these fans rather than the 100,000 casual fans that the traditional music business tries to get, you'll be better off long term.

If a musician can cultivate these fans, 1000 is enough to sustain a living over the long term due to the promotional value to otherwise disinterested 3rd parties and directly generated revenue. Maybe Kelly is a little optimistic about the $100 per fan, but the fan promotion does make up for it.

I wish more people would see the opportunities with these kinds of ideas. Instead all we seem to get are comments from the likes of "censored" and Fraser above - "wah! the bands I know use the same promotional tactics as 100,000 other bands" (differentiate yourself, dumbasses) or "wah! recording music is expensive and I haven't got the imagination to work out how to do it without a record contract advance".

My 2 cents

One for the "but Linux sucked" brigade:

Around a month ago, I bought a new, cheap laptop with Home Basic on it, partitioned the hard drive and installed Mandriva in one portion. The Mandriva works fine, all the 3D effects that I didn't get with the Basic version of Vista work fine out of the box. I can also choose the language, unlike Vista which remains in Spanish 'cause I live in Spain and Microsoft want to force me to spend more than the price of the laptop to view English words. That's fine, I'm learning Spanish anyway.

However, the laptop was unusable for my needs in the Vista partition because my brand new, out of the box installation couldn't handle file copying across my home network. That seems fixed now with SP1 but don't know if it's caused me any new problems yet. I wouldn't use Vista if it weren't for the fact that I need to support this turd at work so need to become familiar with the way it works (or doesn't).

So, brand new laptop preinstalled with Vista = barely usable. New Linux installation on same hardware = perfection. I'd be mad but it was a cheap laptop (€400 before discounts).

Pricy?

The Asus 5315-101G08 is currently on sale in my local Carrefour here in Spain for €399 including an offer to get €75 back in store credit. Granted, the Eee doesn't seem to have surfaced yet but that seems to wipe out the price advantage that's one of the Eee's biggest selling points.

Try something else, perhaps?

Taxes on booze have gone up steadily for the last few decades and they haven't done anything to change behaviour. Maybe it's time for a different tactic?

@Jason Togneri

"In this day and age there's no such thing as "accidentally" viewing porn of any flavour - what with adblock, flashblock, and optional personal filters - so it should be down to the end user what to block and what to show."

If only everyone was both a) educated enough to know what those things were and b) not susceptible to media hype about sensitive subjects...

Unfortunately, most of the "great unwashed" neither understand how to use the internet nor have the common sense to see how government censorship is a bad thing.

Wii2?

So, from the looks of things the PS3 won't overtake the Wii until after people start chucking it out in favour of the next iteration of the Wii (which will presumably include all the HD / surround sound with tweaked controls all the fanboy bashers have been after). By which time the XBox 720 (or whatever it's called) will probably have been out for 6 months or so.

Does this just mean we'll be seeing the same battle again in a few years time between Xbox/Wii2/PS4?

Price and convenience

To even begin to justify buying either HD format, I've have to upgrade my TV to a large-screen HD (won't happen for a couple of years yet). Factor in the cost of replacing disks and the relative lack of genuinely attractive content (what can I get on a Blu-Ray disk that I can't get close to on an upscaled DVD without needing extra video/sound hardware?) and my interest is minimal. Add in the fact that I would also have to upgrade my laptop to watch movies on the go and the usual region coding / copyright bull that will stop me playing my legally imported disks on Linux and no sale.

Ironic?

I'm usually of the "most people who download wouldn't buy the music anyway" opinion so I think that the whole "losses to piracy" thing is over hyped.

However, consider this: before this story, I'd never heard of either the label or the bands listed in Wikipedia as being signed to that label. I have now tagged a couple of albums as being possible (legal, paid for) downloads from eMusic when my subscription refreshes at the weekend.

So, people pirating their albums may have led directly to some previously unavailable sales. As ever, if Dependent Records were losing sales, maybe it's their marketing that needs sorting out (or sales tactics - Dependent isn't listed as the label on eMusic nor are some of their acts, yet it's the only place I buy legal music from at the moment)?

re: OOXML FTW

"Maybe if ODF wasn't entirely controlled by $un Micro$y$tem$"

Erm, I'm getting a sarcastic tone from your message but maybe you'd like to revise that statement before being branded a shill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_standardization

Good

This is great news in a way. The content creators are the people trying to force DRM onto the rest of us. The more of them who have problems like this due to DRM, the more will hopefully realise what a waste and frustration it is, and abandon DRM altogether. Then maybe I'll be willing to buy digital content (I buy only non-DRM, not much choice right now in the movie/TV world).

Again?

I wish these kinds of surveys would stop now. Nobody's ever said that the Wii was a good substitute for proper exercise. All that's been said is that's it's much better than the traditional sitting-in-one-place-on-the-sofa style of gaming.

That's it. Anyone who thinks differently is pretty dumb and we don't need regular studies and surveys to prove the point. Want to lose weight or keep fit? Try real sports or the gym. Want a fun game that's better for you than sitting around watching TV? That's where the Wii comes in.

re: Can Microsoft ever win?

No, you're missing the problem a lot of us have with this.

Microsoft were invited to work on the ODF format and help create the new open standard. They refused, preferring to create their own format with obfuscated binary elements. Despite the complete specifications for ODF being available, they had to be bullied into creating any kind of support for it, which is available to some degree via a plugin, open sourced as 3rd parties got there first.

They've only agreed to open up OOXML to any degree due to the fact that customers were starting to adopt ODF over their own standard - a standard partially protected by patents they've threatened to use against competitors. Now, they're fighting to get their standard accepted as an ISO standard, and to help this they've decided to open up some of their old formats - formats, let we forget, that not even Micorsoft were ever interested in implementing to any degree of consistency (as evidenced by problems using old MS standards in new Office suites). I would suspect that opening old formats is a way of deflecting ongoing criticisms of antitrust and the like

No, this is Microsoft up to its old games. Of your 4 points, #1 would have been subject to lawsuits like the EU prosecutions that are happening at the moment, #2 required little extra work and has happened anyway with 3rd party pressure (plug ins exist for using ODF on Office), #3 wasn't a possibility as MS wanted a new format to overcome limitations and inconsistencies of the old formats, and #4 seems to be what they're trying to do, just forcing OOXML instead of an existing standard.

In short, the "easy option" would have been to play ball with everyone else and help shape ODF to their needs. MS didn't want to play nice and wanted its own format, which shows us doubters little reason to think they've changed their outlook in any way.

Really?

"ODF should be seen as more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection"

ORLY?

ODF is a standard that's been developed by a large consortium of large and small, public and private sector organisations, with the aim of creating a standard that will always be open and available to everyone - including Microsoft. There's many implementations of it (OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, etc. - even MS Office through a plug-in).

OOXML is the latest attempt to hijack standards by a company that has time and again proven to be unreliable with long-term availability of data (tried opening a complex Office 95/97 file with a recent version of Office?) and standards (IE vs everyone else), and has created a format with a binary component protected by patents (patents which it regularly threatens to use against free competitors). Oh, and only one program truly uses it at the moment (Office 2007).

How exactly would it be a bad technological or business decision to choose a format that can never be hijacked by a single organisation (and will always be available so long as demand persists) against a single-vendor controlled, semi-closed format from a company with a history of changing standards to meet its own needs to drive sales?

re: Go on my Son.

Yeah, I'm sorry but this is idiotic. I agree that the demonisation of smokers has gone a little bit overboard recently, but this is just as stupid. Because there happens to be a slight majority of smokers in an office, the non smokers must be forced to sit in an enclosed space full of carcinogenic smoke making their hair and clothes stink and making breathing more difficult (which I do find happens when I'm in a smoky room, and I don't even have asthma) - not to mention the increased health risks - simply so that a smoker can enjoy his habit without getting up from his desk?

I'm sorry, but while smokers have a habit that pollutes everyone else's environment, they should at least have some consideration for others. Why should others have to suffer for something you choose to do? If you're in an enclosed space, the comfort you get from being able to light up is at the direct expense of the comfort of the person next to you. Since you're the one choosing to light up, common courtesy dictates that you should take it outside.

No, Chris, no...

"Arguably, for most major BitTorrenters - who likely consider net access a very important service - losing net is a bigger deterrent than potential court fines, which rights holders have not sought en masse (in the UK at least, the US is a whole other story)."

Here we go, you seem to be falling for the old arguments hook, line and sinker. Let me just go through the problems with this one sentence alone:

* BitTorrent is a protocol, not an illegal substance. I'm a "bittorrenter", but I don't download illegal content. I use torrents for upgraded Linux distros (I usually install a new one every couple of months to test out new ones, upgrade, etc.), watch LEGAL downloaded material (e.g. using Miro (http://www.getmiro.com/), which uses a torrent-based backend) and to download WoW patches (Blizzard's downloader uses torrent traffic).

* Right holders have not sought fines in the US because they don't have to yet. They are prosecuting civil, not criminal, cases which have a far lower burden of proof. They don't want to start prosecuting criminal cases as they will then have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the people they are suing are guilty. They simply cannot do this with just an IP address, and they rarely have any more compelling evidence.

* Given both of these facts, why should I potentially lose my internet access because an ISP is "requested" to block me with no other evidence than the fact that my IP address has been transferring torrent traffic? If the aim isn't to block torrent traffic completely, how exactly can my ISP correctly determine which traffic is legal and which isn't (hint: they can't). Am I meant to abandon every useful service "just in case" some remote computer thinks I might not be following certain rules?

* The whole "sue people" actions are what are killing their industry at the moment anyway. I currently avoid RIAA music due to their actions, and I know I'm far from alone. The rootkits, DRM and actions of suing customers are the things that have lost them my money, not P2P.

All in all, this is doomed to failure, will result in large numbers of innocent people losing internet access and unjustly branded as criminals, and yet will not make a dent in the fall of CD sales. Movies will most likely follow suit if their representatives go down the same path.

Rubbish

Typical biased trash... Let's see:

* Concentrates on only the "illegal" aspects of P2P (no concession to the fact that it has many legitimate usages)

* Assumes that every P2P downloader is a teenager, who would pay for music if they only knew why the should (rubbish, this is just a modern version of taping songs from the radio which every 80s teenager did)

* Biased towards money and major labels (e.g. "Take a band like the Klaxons. They came up through the indie sector and their income was minimal until they won the Mercury when there was a step change.". Yeah, that's called getting public exposure and has bugger all to do with P2P either way.)

* Bandies around comparisons between physical pirate gangs and P2P downloading, which have bugger all to do with each other (hint: one involves money, the other doesn't.)

* No concessions made to other business models that involve free/cheap music (not just Radiohead, but eMusic, Magnatune, various experiments from Peter Gabriel, Michael Robertson and the like).

In other words, the same clueless rubbish we keep hearing from the major labels while they drive their own industry into the ground.

Meh...

Wake me up when they want to sell something I can use (Linux/Creative user)....

@ Marty

...and Linux users are generally fed up with people like you digging the boot in as a reaction to pro-Linux comments, using analogies and situations that are well out of date:

"I dont have the time to learn the ins and outs of linux"

Fair enough. But that doesn't mean it's not a better solution, it just means that it's not Windows. Same with OSX vs Linux, or OSX vs Windows. If you took the time to try running a live CD (no installation required, mess up the Linux system all you want without consequences), maybe you'd find that for most uses, there's not much to learn.

"its a pain in the arse to install hardware drivers..."

I can't remember the last time I had to install drivers separately. The newest version of Mandriva I recently installed picked up my brand new Olympus digital camera and wireless card straight away, no interaction required on my part (I had to install a CD for the wireless in XP before it would work). Just make sure you pick the distro version that includes proprietary (e.g. NVidia, etc.) drivers, and you're all set.

"software availability is a issue.... if i need a tool, it takes five min to find somthing for windows.... can i say the same about linux?"

Yes, as long as you're not a brand name junkie. Most distros have repositories of 2000-3000 free software programs in all areas, many of which are equal to or better than the quality of Windows alternatives. It's only when you get into the "I must have Photoshop, nothing else will do" kind of mentality that you run into problems.

"i cant see the point of a dual boot when i can do everything in windows that i can do in linux... and only half the things in linux i can do in windows."

I dual boot to accommodate the 2 or 3 programs I have that don't run in Linux, but use those rarely. At present, I'd be more concerned about losing my Linux partition and therefore access to my Amarok stats, KDE widgets and multiple desktops than any of the stuff I use in Windows. There's no specific task I can't do in Linux as well or better than I can in Windows, other than the occasional game and OU program.

"if Linux is the flavour of choice for you, good for you... leave me to my windows..."

Fair enough, you do the same. If you read a lot of pro-Linux talk, ignore it. The simple fact is that when most people shrug their shoulders and accept "computer problems", they don't realise it's Windows that's at fault, not the computer. So, when issues like the one in the article appear, some people feel compelled to point out that this kind of flaw is only possible in Windows (other OSes wouldn't let you run as root), and that you shouldn't have to reinstall your OS every so often just to get it running properly.

re: RE: Forget cyber terrorism

@system

Erm, yeah you've actually made the last guy's point for him. Linux/OSX users don't run every process as root, therefore it's actually very difficult for a process to delete core system files. They're not invulnerable (and anyone who claims as such is a fool), but this is the second time in as many weeks that we've heard of a userland app hosing Windows systems (the last one was the update for an MMORPG - can't remember which one - that removed boot files if you restarted after an update). It would be difficult for this to be replicated in the OSes, especially since the current favourite, Ubuntu, doesn't even allow root login in the standard way (everything's sudo-ed).

Most users aren't going to run bind or sendmail, but everyone in Windows land (including you I suspect) are running an AV checker like Kaspersky. Maybe you haven't got a virus, but how do you know that your virus checker won't do something like this next?

re: Cheap laptops

...and here we go. There's always one joker in these discussions who uses 5 years out-of-date, or fairly illogical, arguments about why Linux isn't feasible to the average person. Let's look, shall we:

"1. When you don't have to pay a Windows license it makes sense to get one of these laptops and bung on some dodgy version of Windows "borrowed" from a mate."

Yes, if you're installing Windows. Why would you specify Linux on a Dell laptop if you're going to install Windows? Maybe if you already have media, but otherwise why the hell would you buy one of these?

"2. Most laptop users I know will find the applications they generally want just aren't available for Linux. They'll spend a frustrating few hours trying to configure it to sync with their iPod, Palm, iPhone or whatever before binning it and reaching for the Windows XP CD (see borrowed copy above)."

That argument is tired and very out of date. Amarok works seamlessly with every iPod I've ever plugged into it. Apple tried locking Linux out with their last bunch of models, but that was easily fixed. Linux also works with my Creative Zen, both of my mobiles, my wireless network, my printer and my external DVD writer. All "out of the box" (with Mandriva in my case). The only hardware I've ever had problems with is my IR port, and I've never, ever needed to use that. Try installing a fresh non-OEM copy of XP and see how much of that works without the need for additional CDs.

"PS: I love all the Linux propaganda stories about nine year olds talking about Gnome, rooting the school IT system and how it runs spectacularly on obsolete hardware that should have been junked years ago. Unless you can come up with a better argument for using Linux other than some pseudo-religious/ideological bullshit that makes you sound like Scientologists, you'll continue to be mired in your hateful little enclave."

Yeah, and how hateful/ideological are you that statement? Linux users tend to point out the instances where it can work better than Windows (on older hardware), about how it educates and inspires kids (see the Gnome / rooting comments) and about how it is free to use and modify (in both senses of the word "free"). But, I can do anything with my laptop running Linux that I can in Windows except for games and/or specific utilities that are deliberately made incapable of being portable across multiple platforms (e.g. games that use DirectX instead of OpenGL, software such as MS Office and iTunes). Even then, most of that works in either Wine of Cedega (and there's usually viable open source alternatives if not), and no gamers are going to buy one of these machines anyway.

re: When will they learn

"Linux is simply too expensive to put onto desktops regarding end-user productivity, training and complexity."

Erm... yes and no. It depends on which apps are being used and how competent your admins are. If you have bespoke Windows apps and admins who know nothing about Linux, there's going to be a high cost. If your staff already use mainly open-source apps anyway and the admins are comfortable with Linux, you can skin KDE to look like XP and half the end users won't notice that anything's changed.

At the end of the day, it's all about the applications. Moves like this will help defeat the catch-22 deadlocks that are preventing desktop adoption of Linux (example: some companies won't consider Linux until they can run Photoshop on it, but Adobe won't bother making a Linux version until enough customers are running Linux).

re: what f**king innocents?!

@Rick,

Everything you have said is true - IF, and only if the person was guilty of the crime in question. I'm not sure exactly how many cases you have like the following we had in the UK, but check out the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and Derek Bentley for excellent examples from the UK (the first to jump to my mind).

The first 2 were groups of people who were wrongly imprisoned for terrorist attacks due to police corruption. They were released after 20+years in prison because the death penalty had already been removed due to a massive miscarriage of justice in the first case. Sure, they would have been better off without the 20 years in prison, but under your definition 10 families would have been told "erm, yeah, sorry about killing your husband/father/whatever" instead of being returned to live out some kind of life.

The problem with pro-death penalty people like you is that you always assume that just because a person has been convicted, he must be guilty even if a later appeal finds him innocent. What about these people who were guilty all along? I'm happy that my government no longer puts that kind of blood on my hands. It's a shame you're happy for these innocents to die needlessly, while the real culprits continue to live.

Meh...

I think that anyone buying a product remotely via eBay is taking their risks knowingly. Whatever protections eBay or PayPal profess to offer, ultimately it's only a step up from classifieds in the local AdMag. If you're going to buy a car for over $20K, I'd be wanting to physically check the car over for defects at the very least before handing over money.

That said, I've never had any problems with eBay auctions. I do tend to stick to smaller items though - usually under £50 - but occasionally buy other things. I've just bought a brand new Creative Zen 60Gb Vision:M, the new slimline model that's not out in Europe yet, for half the usual retail price from Singapore. It arrived in perfect condition, so no problems. I didn't get ripped off because I could spot the obvious scams, I researched the seller before bidding and I used a credit card which (should) protect me against fraud if it happened. It didn't, so I'll be saving cash again.

Moral of the story: if you buy a high priced item, be careful. Agreeing to buy something for thousands of dollars without having seen the item, then wiring cash to a complete stranger is asking to get ripped off. Be careful, you won't have problems.

"Inadvertently"???

If memory serves, wasn't Warner, under the leadership of Bronfman Jr., the company that kickstarted the whole RIAA "let's sue our customers" thing in the first place? That's hardly inadvertenly stepping into a war, that's declaring it.

Btw, I wish these guys would look at the damage they're really doing to themselves, even considering half-assed apologies like this. I don't use iTunes, I don't buy CDs and I now avoid RIAA labels like the plague. Yet, I still buy over £40 of music each month (thanks eMusic, Radiohead, etc.!). It's not the music industry that's in trouble, it's these thugs. Going after another locked-down platform (mobile/iPhone) won't help in the long term.

Counterproductive?

Erm, doesn't this BB tactic seem really counterproductive? After all, it wouldn't take a genius to work out that if there's enough demand to sell one every half an hour with a nudge, they must be able to sell more if they're on display. in that 40 minutes, how many people are going to look around, see there's no Wiis and go to another store?

By the way, to James Pickett above, I don't think he was complaining of the number being sold as such. Just that the ever-increasing demand makes it nigh-on impossible for them to judge production and get enough units out to meet that demand.

Zen isn't new you know...

Why all the musing over the player's name? Zen has been the brand name for all of Creative's players for at least 3 or 4 years...

DRM = no sale

@Dax Farrer, Paul:

Yeah we always get people like you, completely misunderstanding the concept of DRM-free on stories like this. The complaint isn't about the price - although that does seem rather extortionate for what amounts to a transcription job with few other overheads.

The complaint is that the resulting file is wrapped up in DRM to the point of uselessness, and we're apparantly expected to be OK about this due to a token donation included in the price. As ever with things like this, Captain Stewart's grandson has lost my money simply by putting the DRM onto the book. If the book was DRM free, preferably priced at the average paperback price or a little less, I'd buy it now. DRM? No sale.

It's a shame as it sounds like a very interesting account of the war. But, I don't expect to be treated as a criminal and fleeced of an unjustified sum of money for the privilege of reading it.

More support here...

I don't have a standalone DVD player connected to my TV, but I do have a PS2 and a Wii. The former is getting used less and less, and it would be relegated to the bedroom if only the Wii could play DVDs.

Oh, and to the people complaining about HD, etc - grow up FFS. The Wii is fine as it is, and if you want HD stop whining until the Wii 2 comes out in 4 years or use a console that has HD. You can't have both for now.

My thoughts

Can't read all of the comments so sorry if I'm repeating. Anyway, here's my thoughts:

I use Linux at home but have to use Windows at work. I currently only use the BBC site to read news during downtime at work, therefore the stats would read as 100% Windows. However, were I to be able to use the iPlayer, that would be accessed 100% via Linux as iPlayer content would be unsuitable for work, just as I currently have no need to access news from home.

There's also the question of how accurate these stats can be to make future decisions. Many people are in the same position as me - forced to use MS in one location but choose another platform at home. Many people use open source but have browser ID set to lie about the OS being used. Then, there's all the 'unknown' entries that crop up in logs. Obviously, the results are skewed.

Then, there's a question of existing functionality - if you have a choice and the current site content is broken in Firefox, OSX or Ubuntu, you're forced to use Windows/IE regardless of your preferred choice. Again, the results are meaningless if you're taking outdated information from a platform that's already skewed in MS's favour.

Huh?

How exactly can Facebook know if a person changes their number? I also noticed that nothing's mentioned about this woman contacting Facebook and asking them to stop before suing. i wouldn't be surprised if she didn't bother...

Oh, and to David Wiernicki above - if you're getting a lot of fake friend requests, you have a problem. I've never had a single one!

re: Daft buyers

Yeah, they wanted to get a home copy so they could slo-mo the action scenes and work out what was going on.