Posts by Red Bren 1649 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Oct 2007
What remedy will Sony be forced to make? A Norwegian-only version of firmware that re-enables the OtherOS option? Can they ensure only Norwegian-bought fat consoles can run that firmware? I doubt it.
Sony should give up and give us all back the functionality we paid for. If not, it would be a great legal precedent ensuring companies cannot remove functionality from a product that was present at the time of sale.
Mr Karl Benz was reportedly furious about a review of his new horseless carriage that compared it unfavourably with the immensly popular horse-drawn carriage. Listed amongst the drawbacks of this new mode of transport were the noise and fumes, the lack of range, no infrastructure to refuel the contraption with the highly explosive and rare petroleum distillate it required.
Attempting to answer these failings, Mr Benz claimed that advances in technology such as Ethyl Lead would deliver cleaner, quieter, more economical machines. Market forces would provide the incentive to build a worldwide network of refinaries, transporters and vendors to meet the demand for the vital fuel for his vehicle and incidentally provide a much needed boost to the makers of garden furniture, collectable glass tumblers and barbecue charcoal. Everyone looked at him like he was mad.
"people take eyeballs out in all sorts of weather conditions"
Actually, it could come in handy. Stuck behind a tall person at a gig, cinema or theatre? Take your iBall* out and hold it in the air. No need for a mirror when you want to do your hair/make-up. And when you realise you've wasted your life making stupid comments on the interwebs, you can take it out and have a long hard look at yourself...
* Give me a load of cash and you can have it Mr Jobs!
There have been scare stories about video game addiction since the invention of the video game.
What about these people who spend over 8 hours a day doing apparently repetitive actions in front of a flickering screen, ignoring mealtimes and being unsociable. Perhaps someone could study this addiction to work?
Yes, there would be a clear distinction between information that belongs in the public domain and information that needs to be kept secret. Sadly in the real world, there are those who aim to profit or cover their shortcomings by ignoring the distinction and hiding information that should be public amongst the secrets. For example, MPs' expenses, intelligence reports prior to sexing-up, coroner's report into whistle-blower's suicide. In order to liberate this information, other things that should be secret might get exposed. But it is the whistle-blowers that get called criminal/terrorist, rather than the those who hid the guilty secrets.
We really need an amendment to the Official Secrets Act that makes it treason to hide information that should be public.
I can't agree with your two example.
In your first example, Tom, Dick and Harry are effectively buying 3 different products. As an "early adopter", Tom is paying a premium to get the product on release day. Dick is paying standard price and the publisher still makes a profit. Harry may be rewarded for his patience with a discount, but only if the publisher wants to shift old stock at a loss to make for new, premium priced stock that Tom will buy. The segmentation is timing, which consumers can easily control, rather than location, which they can't.
Your second example is more compelling, but still misses the fundamental hypocrisy of "them corporates" that demand the right to impose trade barriers when selling their products, while simultaneously decrying any attempt to impose barriers/tariffs/restrictions on their ability to shop around globally for the cheapest materials/labour. Does the Indian student's father get paid more for the products he makes for the western markets or does the premium go straight to the western shareholders? Does the American student's father get made redundant because he can't compete with his Indian competitors, thanks to the "western premium" on his cost of living?
"Supposing I decide to sell my product at cost price to charities, or in developing countries..."
"Supposing I'm an ethical manufacturer and decide I don't want to sell my product to the military..."
You're using edge cases to justify mainstream market abuses. There is nothing ethical about selling your product at cost price to charities and developing countries if your long term plan is to undermine the competition and lock in your customers so you can gouge them once you have a monopoly. There's nothing ethical about manufacturing your products in countries with poor human rights records because you can pay the workforce a pittance and increase your margins.
Is it ethical to allow Megabucks Corp. to use £1=$1 when choosing the price point for their UK product range? Do you feel the US is a third-world country? Surely consumers have the right to buy goods at the lowest price they can find?
We are constantly bombarded with the message that globalisation is good for the economy, and by extension, good for us. This article highlights the hypocrisy of that assertion. Apple and others are quite happy to do their manufacturing in the cheapest location they can find and they kick up a huge stink if any government suggests imposing tariffs on their imports. But try to emulate them by sourcing products outside their regional pricing structure and they send in the lawyers.
Globalisation is there for the big players, not the little guy.
...you devalue the things that really should be kept secret. Too many "secrets" are really just things that embarrass or discredit those in power. Hiding them amongst genuinely sensitive information is the data equivalent of building your military bases next door to schools and hospitals, then crying, "Won't someone think of the children?!!"
If sensitive information is released along with incriminating evidence, is it the fault of those trying to expose corruption or the corrupt trying to hide their failings?
"Can't see the point in publishing that list at all."
I can. There seems to be three kinds of secret at stake here.
Things you don't want your enemies to know. Fair enough and I thought wikileaks was careful to redact information that might scupper operations.
Things you don't want your allies to know. It's highly embarrasing for your friends to find out you've been spying on them, or that you don't rate their capabilities to fight the wars you dragged them into. In the long run it may stop you going round picking fights if you know you won't have a "coalition of the willing" to give a veneer of international support.
Things you don't want your own people to know. It's funny how evidence of corruption or coercion during decision making gets covered by the national security blanket. Perhaps the risk that Wikileaks might obtain and release the evidence might keep politicians honest?
Could ICANN just declare that in 12 months time, they will start releasing the private /8 ranges and the root DNSs will start pointing to their new owners? The NAT will still stop access from the outside internet, but machines behind the NAT would not be able to route packets to the outside.
Or am I just showing my ignorance?
If you don't want to look at porn, then don't.
If you don't want your children to look at porn, then take the time to supervise them.
If you don't want anyone to look at porn, have the balls to stand up and say so, instead of hiding behind the "think of the children" argument!
If no one wanted to look at porn, no one would make it.
Perhaps ISPs should block all access to gov.uk for a few days, just to show what a double-edged sword this net censorship can be?
"Benefit processing systems are not designed in a way that allows simple changes to the screen display"
Well what a surprise. Big IT companies build overly complex systems that only they can support, keeping their snout at the government trough.
Perhaps Government IT should be done in house? Oh no, that would mean a bloated public sector paying market rates to their staff. What would the Daily Mail say?
At the very least, the government could give the work to companies registered in the UK for tax purposes, using local employees rather than those brought in through the intra-company transfer loophole. Base the work in regions suffering the highest unemployment and it could attract some EU funding. It might mean higher costs up front but the money stays in the UK, getting spent (and taxed) within the UK economy, stimulating employment and reducing the benefit bill.
Computers come with a built in authentication method. It's crap but its enough for any bean counter to say "Why do we need to spend money on something we already have?" The existence of the sticking plaster that is "strong" password policy makes it all the harder to argue for something better. "Ramping up security policy" often means insisting on longer, more complex password with a shorter expiry period and ordering more post-it notes.
The simple username/password combination is also easily shared amongst colleagues. Oh the Corporate Security Policy may forbid it, but when understaffed IT access teams take a couple of weeks to turn around new user requests, senior managers have this habit of telling you to ignore company policy and just effin' do it. What CIO is going to mandate a "Something I have and something I know" type authentication system if it means new starters sit idle waiting for their keyfob/smartcard to arrive?
Personally, I'd love to have a single sign-on username with PIN and key-fob for all the systems I access but I'm not holding my breath.
Another cheap & cheerless airline lets passengers take all shapes and sizes of hand luggage out of the UK but ruthlessly enforces the restrictions on return. So passengers have to choose between leaving their possessions behind or paying through the nose to put them in the hold.
"The dream is for airport displays to change as a passenger approaches, displaying information about their flight, or a targeted advert."
First we will have to watch the advertising, only then will we be shown the flight information. The amount of advertising will increase until they track your RFID to the duty free shop till and enough money gets spent.
In the past few years we've had upgrades from CRT to LCD & Plasma screens, analogue to digital terrestrial/cable/satellite, Standard Definition to HD Ready TVs that turn out not to be ready thanks to OFCOM's insistence on a new broadcast format for FreeviewHD. Oh and a recession. Perhaps people are just making do and waiting for a significant technological leap, such as holographic TV, before parting with their cash again?
How much are VM* going to charge a content generator to prioritise** traffic if it undermines their PayTV business? Are they really going to let customers stream quality TV channels for a reasonable price instead of having to subscribe to over-priced bundles stuffed with a load of crud?
* I don't mean to pick on VM, they just make a good example.
** prioritise == an offer you can't refuse. As in, "Would you like us to prioritise your traffic for a 'reasonable' fee? No? Oh well, you know how fragile these 1s and 0s are, it would be a real shame if your bits kept getting 'lost', wouldn't it?"
<-- Man delivering horse's head icon.
One of the biggest issues with consumer protection is that it only covers the relationship between the vendor and the customer. If you have a problem with the item you bought, you take it back to the shop. This model is increasingly out of step with the reality of owning electronic devices that receive updates from the original manufacturer. Should the manufacturer decide to remove a feature
The most obvious case is the Other OS functionality of the original Sony PS3. 3 years after I bought the console, partly because it had this feature, Sony decide to remove it and I have no legal redress. A similar situation exists with smartphones, where firmware updates can be used to disable functionality the manufacturer doesn't approve of or wants to monetize for themselves.
Consumer law needs to be extended to include the manufacturer and prevent this after-sales removal of original functionality.
"Though the governments, companies, trade bodies and consumer associations that responded did accept that ISPs had to engage in some "traffic shaping" to ensure a fair division of resources to users"
I don't accept this. UK broadband is sold purely on the basis of speed and advertised with the promise of enabling data intensive activities such as audio/video streaming and downloading. If everyone wants to use their connection to do the things they were promised it could do at the same time, then ISPs should either deliver the service as sold or change the way they sell it.
"Ofcom seem to have stymied the Murdoch attempts to take over UK broadcasting"
OFCOM's actions have helped tighten Murdoch's stranglehold on UK broadcasting. Don't forget, it was OFCOM that initially blocked HD on freeview, giving Sky a head start in that market. When they finally relented, they insisted on using a brand new standard (DVB-T2) that was incompatible with existing HD Ready Digital TVs and compatible kit was rare and expensive. Thanks to OFCOM's desire to sell off the old analogue spectrum and cram the digital spectrum with shopping channels and +1 repeats, there's only room for 4 or 5 HD channels. So given the choice* between a crippled Freeview service or Sky's superior offering, it has always been advantage, Murdoch.
* I'm ignoring Virgin as they just repackage Sky and don't provide universal coverage.
Of course it doesn't. Otherwise the public would see that OFCOM isn't there to protect their interests, only to ensure a level playing field and a government revenue stream. As long as everyone is ripping off the customer in the same way, OFCOM don't want to know.
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