Re: Nevermind the gaps.
@Psyx - "You can't equate a number plate storage system to a police state"
It could, however, be a very useful tool of a police state. I don't see why we should risk giving them that tool.
Posts by The BigYin
3080 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2008
Page:
Number-plate spycams riddled with flaws, top cop admits
Wednesday 29th August 2012 09:56 GMT
Re: Do they think crims are stupid?
RFID are now standard fitment in the UK I believe (my latest plate had one - "had" being the operative word) and if not, they are certainly being rolled out.
You can get show plates and guess what - not road legal. Lucky for you that there are very few traffic plod left to spot it.
Wednesday 29th August 2012 09:20 GMT
Re: Nevermind the gaps.
To add to my previous - has anyone analysed same-cost alternatives?
Cost of total observation: £X billions
Savings per year (if any): £Y billions
Actual cost: X - Y = £Z billions
What else could Z be used for? What are the effects of Z being spent on (say) flesh-and-blood traffic plod? Or outreach projects? Or bringing back playing fields? Or community initiatives? Or improving the services prisons can provide (to cut recidivism)? Or any number of other thing.
Before we spunk £Z billions at this problem, I'd like to know we are spurting it n the correct direction.
Wednesday 29th August 2012 09:15 GMT
Re: Nevermind the gaps.
@Ken Hagan - I put it to you that the potential societal cost of a police state where the rule of law is applied absolutely and without humanity, far outweighs the cost of the very small number of toe-rags we have.
We seem hell-bent on sacrificing our own freedoms to catch (relatively) minor criminals, yet let big league criminals get away with it (money launderers, tax evaders etc). Maybe that's because those criminal operate in old-boy stratosphere where us peasants are meaningless trifles who should not have the temerity to object to our servitude?
If we store the data it will leak and it will be abused.
Wednesday 29th August 2012 08:54 GMT
Do they think crims are stupid?
Well, obviously some are. The ones who get caught. The smart criminals are either living free or in banking and politics. :)
Anyway, obscuring your plate by cutting in front of another vehicle is unlikely to work, due to the RFID chip embedded in the plates. One the RFID equipment is widespread, it'll just read that instead. You could, of course, just break the RFID chip, but that leads to a further complication.
The criminally minded could simply stick on fake plates (matching make and model if they have any sense). This would mean them having a plate that does not match its RFID, or has know RFID (due to it being broken). Either one would be a red flag (assuming the false positive level isn't high).
So what do the crims do? Well, they just fake-up the RFID into their fake plate and all is right with their world. Except it isn't. The police could know that a car cannot get from (say) Manchester to the City of London in 5 minutes. Odds are one of them is a "clone" and possibly up to no good.
But how would the police know all this? Simple. Monitor everyone. Only then will they know about cars jumping locations, plates with no RFID hwne they should have one etc etc.
I am all for catching crims, but not at the expense of my own freedom. The only way ANPR can work is mass, constant surveillance. Effectively treating everyone like a criminal until they prove their innocence.
UK kids' charity lobbies hard for 'opt-in' web smut access
Monday 27th August 2012 11:54 GMT
Re: Down to the parents....
@Ken Hagan - "Next stop, a country where you can end up on the sexual offenders register and have your kids taken away for not ticking the right boxes when you set up your internet connection."
And what, precisely, is wrong with this? You'll get in deep kaka if you don't ensure your kids are properly belted in a car. There's more do-do if you don't ensure your kids go to school. If you don't keep the booze under control and let your kids start necking slammers, you'll be up to your neck in it. Rinse and repeat.
Why is the Internet any different?
Because it is a "computer" and computers are big-n-scary and people don't know how they work? No excuse. If you are going to let your kids loose on something, you better have at least a passing knowledge of:
1) Do they need protected? and
2) How to protect them.
If kids start seeing porn on the house PC, the parents have no one to blame but themselves. If they don't understand, they can either learn or hire someone who does. Ignorance is no excuse.
There are two main differences between SPAM, malware and porn.
1) SPAM is an irritant at best, an attack on the recipient's naivety at worst and a strain on the ISP
2) Malware is an outright attack and may result in a strain on the ISP (e.g. DDOS zombie)
Porn is just yet another piece of content and getting at the content is what people pay for. It is not up to the ISP to censor or restrict people, only to protect itself and SPAM or malware really fall into that remit. This, of course, does not alleviate the responsibility of people to know what they are doing. We would have less SPAM and malware issues if people were not so monumentally ignorant and knew basics like "What's a file extension?", "Don't execute random guff off the interwebs", "What's a security update?" etc.
"support distributed porn nets" what the hell are you talking about? If you mean porn-bait sites used to distribute malware, that's one thing and I'm fine with an ISP blocking those. But not blocking porn (or pretty much anything else) in general.
Furthermore, we must consider the unintended consequences of the "opt-in" list. When that gets leaked to the press, how do you think people are going to feel when the gutter rags splash "Internet Perv Joe Miggins is Primary School Neighbour"? Not well at all.
Huawei, ZTE hit with ITC patent probe
Jury awards Apple $1bn damages in Samsung patent case
Sunday 26th August 2012 16:46 GMT
Re: Blind to the facts...
Yes, you are quite correct. I was trying to wedge the example into the whole Coke thing and goofed.
A better example would probably have been that a Coke advert is copyright, or the tune someone wrote for the ad. Although quite why one would want to start making copies of a Coke ad except for satirical purposes beats the heck out of me.
I guess this patent-rot has been around longer than I realised, I would not have considered the shape of the bottle to be patentable. The machine that made it (assuming said device machine innovation), sure. But not the bottle, it's just a variation of a thing that already exists.
The first bottle ever made? Patentable IMHO. But I think the poor fellow would have been time barred by the time they got the paperwork submitted. :-)
I still consider many of the Apple patents to be utter bollocks.
Sunday 26th August 2012 09:53 GMT
Re: Blind to the facts...
I'll elaborate on my last.
"Coca Cola" is a trademark.
Their bottle shape is a copyright.
Their patent is...well...nothing. But let's say making a curve bottle was very difficult, they might hold a patent on some device that allows them to make the bottle, but not on the bottle itself.
Now Apple.
"Apple" and "iPhone" are both trademarks.
Their shape, icons etc are all copyright.
Their patents are...what, precisely? They sure license a lot (Gorilla glass etc) but what is actually patentable about an iPhone?
Hardware-homkey? No, that's copyright.
Rubber-bounce? Copyright.
Shape? Copyright.
I know they hold patents on these, and that's the friggin' problem. They shouldn't because the patents should have been rejected. See my comments above.
Sunday 26th August 2012 09:36 GMT
Re: The real loser here
I don't normally respond to cowards - it's not like The Register has a real name policy or anything, so I assume that people only do it because they don't want their response tied to their profile because they know that their response is ill thought out.
But yours is so staggeringly off-base I'll make an exception.
The problem is, most of these patents are so broad or so obvious that people cannot innovate. There cannot be any progression unless it come from Apple; and Apple have no interest in such progression as once you are in their walled-garden, you are ripe for the plucking.
I'll give you one example: rubber bounce. How the shuddering hell is that patentable? Number one, it's software; that should discount it immediately. Number two, it's simply a feedback to the user through the device's response mechanism; in the real-world it might be force-feedback or something. It is not patentable!
But now anyone who tries to do any kind of user feedback that in any way looks even vaguely like rubber-bounce will have the Apple attack-dogs on their arse. This does not help innovation.
Then there's all the swipe to unlock bullcrap. Look at you hands. Look at your friends' hands. They look the same, don't they? So, and I realise this is a crazy idea, you and your friends will find similar actions equally hard/easy. Anyone doing a UI/device design will make actions easy for you and given that all hands are roughly the same, the set of answers it going to be pretty limited so everything is going to look pretty similar. And Apple has been given a patent on it! How the hell can they get a patent on something for which there is only one (or a small number) of answers? The shouldn't be able to.
Oh, and swipe to unlock? I've been doing that on my garden gate for years. It's is a known mechanism and on the phone screen it happens to be easy. Maybe you'd like it if Samsung patented "arc signature" to unlock, where you use one hand and you thumb to describe an arc (moving back and forth to enter your "pin")? Wow! Is that innovation or what? No it bloody well isn't! There's only so many answer with a set number of digits.
Innovation comes, not from brand-new ideas but from incremental steps and it's these stupid patents that stop these incremental steps. After enough steps, then you'll get a genuinely new idea and thus a paradigm shift.
Apple needs to protect it's profits; fine. But society needs to protect itself as well, and granting idiotic patents is not the way to go about it. The PC market only came about after the incumbent's stranglehold had been broken. That's a stranglehold Apple currently holds over smartphones and tablets, and it will hold us back until someone in power grows a pair and fixes the problem.
I'll give you one more example. Who invented the electric lightbulb? Edison?
Wrong. There were already lightbulbs.
What Edison did was figure out how to do it better than everyone else at the time, now imagine one of those inferior bulb-makers held broad enough patents to crush Edison, where would we be now?
Where would we be if other people if other people had not taken Edison's work and improved upon it again?
This is what overly-broad/stupid patents prevent.
This is what you wish to prevent.
Apple have had enough time to make a decent profit from there ideas, they have moved from being the "Edison" to the "shitty bulb maker"; to get a better bulb, society requires that their vice-like grip on innovation be broken. Because when the other players come in, Apple will be forced to up their game. Then the consumer wins.
And it's not just Apple; it's Amazon, Sony, Microsoft etc.
Saturday 25th August 2012 16:44 GMT 
The real loser here
Is the consumer through a lack of choice and the patent system stifles innovation. This lack of innovation and advancement hits the economy (and thus the consumer) again. The lock-in for various services lets incumbent gouge their users, hitting the consumer again. And so on and so on.
This should be the alarm call that the USA patent system needs a grassroots overhaul and lots of patents rescinded.
Apple can copyright their design, fine. That prevents passing-off.
They can patent truly innovative ideas/technologies, not some that is simple application of a business process or an existing real-world idea to an electronic device.
Everything else? Away and swivel.
Apple is the current whipping-boy for the shitting USA patent system but MS, Amazon etc are all equally guilty.
But, of course, we have been in this situation before. IBM thought it could keep a strangle-hold on PCs, it got raped by the clones. Apple's day will come and the same thing will happen. Then some other company will try the same thing (maybe a social media one) and they will become the latest whipping boy.
The cycle will repeat until someone fixes the problem, and the problem is in the USA and their abhorrent patents system. Their cancerous rot is spreading; it must be excised before we all suffer.
Boffins zapped '2,000 bugs' from Curiosity's 2 MILLION lines of code
Thursday 23rd August 2012 19:49 GMT
Re: WTF?
"Basing your measurement system on the genetic accident of how many digits you have on your hands is no way to go about things."
Whereas basing your measurement system on the genetic accident of how wide your thumb is makes *perfect" sense?
Any metric is superior to Imperial by the simple fact the scale is a consistent linear progression. Of course the current decimal metric is inferior to a duodecimal measuring system.
Thursday 23rd August 2012 07:32 GMT
Re: WTF?
@AC 14:28 (Why do people use AC? It's not like El Reg has a 'Real Name' policy!)
It (probably) has to happen sometime and I will agree that the cost will be huge if done overnight, so don't do it over night. Have a transition period. And that period will take many years.
Are there better things to spend money on? Not really. Oh wait, you're going to say "hospitals" and "teachers" aren't you? The money doesn't go to them though, it goes to the PFI providers (just ask the hospitals going bankrupt). And we probably need fewer hospitals anyway - concentrate all the knowledge down into a few centres of excellence to improve patient care; or would you prefer that children needlessly die because their surgeons do so few operations that they are verging on the incompetent?
Maybe you'd rather spend it on the military? Oh whoops! Won't go to the front-line troops. It'll be trousered in PFI. Again. Or wasted on jets that are massively over budget and decades behind in development. Or compensation for cancelled contracts that were failing to deliver, or...
Police? Maybe, but in a few years time that'll be a huge PFI hole as well.
Trains? HAH! Do not start me on that corruption which is supported by our spineless regulator.
I could go on.
So in summary...spending the billions of finalising this nation as metric is one investment that might actually do something and not just enrich the money laundering, tax-evaders in the City.
Investor pulls out of Facebook, pumps cash into pork-printing joint
Thursday 23rd August 2012 12:13 GMT
Re: Have you ever seen an animal butchered and the meat processed?
@LinkOfHyrule - You have seen the meat butchering and processing system they use in the USA? And you don't find it disgusting? You prefer the animals to suffer, for the carcasses to be cross-infected, for massive amount of chemicals to be used to deal with aforementioned infection vectors? And for the end product to be some over-sized, tasteless pap?
And you think the factory farming is somehow separate to the factory butchering?
Really?
That's why all the downvotes!
"Manmade meat" FFS. You think a broiler is natural? You need an education.
Work for the military? Don't be evil, says ethicist
Tuesday 21st August 2012 08:07 GMT
Re: Why doesn't he stop writing?
@Arthur 1 - I put it to you that the military would prefer a dead solider to a wounded one. A dead one only costs them the funeral. A wounded one needs medical treatment, potentially life-long support and can have a devastating morale impact on their comrades. This is why some weapons are deliberately design to maim rather than kill. It's a sick sad world.
As for this "douchebag" (nice ad hominem, by the way) it all depends on where you draw your moral line. There will be some jobs that would pay your mortgage which you would refuse to do on moral grounds; he's just asking you to think about where you draw that line.
Tuesday 21st August 2012 07:55 GMT
I guess the problem is the investment
The military pays for the development of the Remote Ultra-Kill 9000 Drone that can carry 14 Mega-death missiles and 5 Maim-o-matic bombs, plus laser targeting etc. It can fly for 24 hours and does not always need a remote pilot (it has UAV capabilities at auto-target recognition).
It is, in short, a very nasty piece of work and can wipe out entire villages without any help.
But...
It can carry a payload, fly itself and find "targets"...change the payload and change the purpose. Rebranded as Cuddles-From-Above its brethren are now sent out to scan remote area for lost skiers, hikers etc and drop aid to them, as well as report their position. They patrol the coast looking for oil spills, people in distress etc. Maybe they have "Don't panic" painted on their underbellies?
And that, unfortunately, is the problem. We are a potentially violent species, we elect/promote psychopaths to seats of power (no really, we do) and thus our ability for violence and domination is valued above our other traits. You can see this everywhere and in everything; short-term gain Vs long-term gain - short-term always wins. Even winning a war is a short-term gain because the cycle will repeat. I give you...well...the Middle East at the moment.
It would be nice to live in La-la-land, but we are stuck here in reality for just a bit longer.
Facebook facepalm: US judge tosses out 'sponsored stories' deal
Monday 20th August 2012 12:15 GMT
Non-FB user question
I thought that when you uploaded to FB you granted them an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (inwhole or in part) and distribute?
Given that is the case, why are people getting upset? FB is just using what they gave FB in a manner they agreed to in FB's T&Cs. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have agreed to the T&Cs.
Simple.
Ready to patent that 'new' invention? Google is here to dash your hopes
Friday 17th August 2012 11:09 GMT
Re: One simple answer for the tech world
@MrXavia - "and very complex algorithms I.E. Cryptology."
No. This is boils down to basic laws of physics or mathematical functions. You cannot patent these, or shouldn't be able to at least. Patents are a tool and unfortunately they are tool that is being badly misused at the moment. This is bad for society as there is a massive cost (through loss of innovation etc) and also a cost to those who have genuine things that are protected by patents as the patent system become devalued by utter crap.
"Look & Feel should definitely not be patentable or copyrightable"
Actually, I would say look&feel could be copyrightable as this would prevent people "passing off" a product as something it is not.
"Copyright IS important though, and personal copyright should last 50-70 years."
You are right about that being important, but I disagree over the term. 10 years is more than long enough. This does of course mean that the way artists are paid needs to change, no argument there; this is a change the media companies are still resisting as they know it is the end of their current business model.
Friday 17th August 2012 10:57 GMT
Re: One simple answer for the tech world
@ukgnome - Fetching data cannot be patented if it is done in software. End of discussion. Yes, it really is that simple.
Same goes for business processes.
In fact we can reduce the whole patentability test to two simple questions:
1) Is it new/innovative/non-obvious?
2) Can you lick it?
If the answer to either one is "No", then whatever it is cannot be patented.
Facebook shares hit all-time low
Friday 17th August 2012 08:58 GMT
Re: Yep.
"If a mistake was made in that example, please say instead of downvoting."
That's not how it works. If you speak out against Apple, MS or FB the shills/fanbois appear and just downvote. Don't expect much in the way of correction or discourse. The shills hold a point of view based on faith, not on facts.
Virgin Media SuperHub 'upgrade' hangs up on IP phone punters
Thursday 16th August 2012 16:20 GMT
Re: Can the SuperHub be flashed?
I know SSH/telent used to be open but got closed down.
I'd rather connect my own device as the VM Superhub looks f-ugly, has the cables in the wrong place and is generally a bit crap. For relative values of exceedingly pish.
Heck, a wee RasPi, few USB widgets/daughter-boards and you have a router which kick the living hell out of the Superhub (and probably most other consumer-grade routers too).
Thursday 16th August 2012 15:59 GMT
Can the SuperHub be flashed?
It's just a NetGear box after all - is there anyway to put an alternative firmware on there?
Or is it so stripped down and basic that there would be no real point?
It's a shame VM will not let you connect your own device to their cable. Would solve so many issues.
(Yes, I know about modem-mode; not good enough)
Cars, lorries stalked via GPS to create live traffic super-map
Tuesday 14th August 2012 10:33 GMT
Re: From the original article...
@Bainshie - "Excessive speed, lane hogging, tail gating. All easily spotable and enforceable with simple positional data."
Umm...no. Not unless the computer has full vision of the road, knows the conditions and has an AI. Staying in one lane (even the 'wrong' one) can sometimes be the right thing to do. But I don't think you understand that.
"It the middle of the night on a motorway? Increase the [speed limit] by 10MPH."
So at night (reduced vision) you want to increase the speed? You are assuming that the road ahead is clear, yet people have a reduced distance they can see ahead and thus less time to react; or does your wonder device also have active radar? You are clueless.
"No more hit and runs. Increase safety, insurance claims made a LOT easier."
Bollocks. Cloning/Hacking and you seem to forget that older vehicles won't have them. Oh wait, you want mandatory fitment don't you? Won't work you pillock. Never mind the sheer cost involved, some vehicles cannot have speed control etc. How are you going to manage that on a carb'd m'bike; hmm? And you do understand that m'bikes make active use of engine speed when cornering don't you? A sudden change in power could be catastrophic.
"Do you drive for the F1/other racing competition? Same answer."
Have you ever actually watched any motor-racing of any kind? Racers do not necessarily make safe drivers.
"Also I never get this 'Late at night' argument. Last time I checked hitting a kid at 50MPH, the physics involved doesn't give a damn whether it's light outside or not....If anything you're more likely to have a incident due to the reduced traffic inducing a level of false security, and the reduced vision (40% of all fatal and serious injuries happen during this time, even though there is a 60% reduction in traffic)."
Yet you advocate raising the limit at night. Make your bloody mind up!
"Stop being a arse before you kill someone. You are the reason this kind of system needs to be put in place."
Just because you are incapable of following the rule of the road does not mean the rest of us are. Yes there are idiots, but there will always be idiots and I'd like to retain at least some semblance of freedom and dignity if you don't mind.
If you are so obsessively concerned about safety, then sell your personal transport and use PT. Statistically it is much safer. Otherwise....do hush-up and go back to taking the meds.
Monday 13th August 2012 13:37 GMT
Re: From the original article...
@Bainshie
1) Cost of enforcement goes up you mean. Now each vehicle carries its own nanny-brain which will need servicing, will take energy to run and then you have all the infrastructure required for the massive surge in fines. Plus you still require Old Skool enforcement for older vehicles and those who by-pass your Orwellian wet-dream. Oh, and you have to pay for continual updates as the system gets hacked. Oh my yes, it sounds like a step-forward so far.
2) Indeed. So why don't we simply have more traffic police then? They are well known to catch more than just speeders (tail-gaters, lane hoggers, weavers, drunks, unsafe vehicles etc). Seriously, more traffic plod please!
And with a little imagination you wouldn't have to put use under the heel of the technocratic overlords.
We have these. They are called "trackers" (there's a variety of them). You know what they do? They track a vehicle when the owner wants it tracked. They are not spies.
People should already be driving to that they can stop in the distance they can see. You think a blip on the GPS will help? They'll just turn the stereo up. Increasing gadgetry does not increase intelligence. Also, we already have warning triangles etc and the brains to exit the vehicle and move to a safe location.
Monday 13th August 2012 11:06 GMT
Re: From the original article...
@Graham Marsden - Not so much that, but with the GPS data some suit will simply ask "Why don't we automatically fine people for speeding?", "Why don't we charge for actual road usage"?
These ideas have been kicked around before, and they will come around again. Ignoring the fact that we already pay for road usage (fuel duty) and that there are various questions over just how effective the draconian imposition of speed limits actually is.
First, Google goggles - now the world gets self-censoring specs
Google may face grilling by MPs over 'immoral' tax avoidance
Blinkbox to sell Game of Thrones series 2 by stream
Monday 13th August 2012 13:41 GMT
Re: Far too expensive
@mbdrake - Thanks. I am not familiar with the terms of Blinkbox and to me "stream" generally implies a one-time deal. The article made no mention of a license-in-perpetuity (as Ultraviolet grants).
Considering the other downsides of a stream-only option I still find it over-priced.
Microsoft: It's not Metro, it's Windows 8
Friday 10th August 2012 09:57 GMT
Re: It doesn't matter
@kb - If it bombs too badly people think "Sod this" and find something else. People are already getting bitten hard by lock-in (and one of those people is MS itself), so greater adoption of standards leads to portability.
New OS/Application/Widget doing your box in. Switch to one that behaves as you like.
There is a cost of switching obviously, but when pain-of-staying > cost-of-switching; then people switch.
And I think that will be the case for some folks who get lumbered with Win8.
Snap suggests Apple out to 'screw' hardware hackers
Friday 10th August 2012 08:39 GMT
Re: Assuming this is true...
@Nigel 11 - "That patent / copyright technique probably fails, for the same reason that anyone is allowed to make 3rd-party car exhausts that are (on the outside) exactly the same shape as the manufacturer's registered design. It's allowed, because no other shape is possible: if it were a different shape it would not fit the car."
It would be nice if such logic and common sense were applied to the world of IT. Unfortunately....
Thursday 9th August 2012 11:21 GMT
Re: Does it matter?
@P.Lee - "No, you buy premium and expect it to last longer without repair than non-premium."
This holds true if the premium being paid is for quality/durability. I don't think that is where the premium goes on Apple products. Instead it goes on design, marketing (selling you a lifestyle) and being a status symbol. It's the same reason (say) Gucci sunglasses cost way more than most other brands, despite the fact they do they exact same job and the other brands may be more durable/better made.
And it's the exact same with Ferrari - if you want durability, buy a Ford, Honda or Toyota. If you want a status symbol, buy the Ferrari.
Thursday 9th August 2012 10:27 GMT
Re: Time for a new law
We all love car/PC analogies, so here goes!
IMHO they should apply similar tests to cars, nothing it more annoying than being stranded because you need a garage to do what should be a simple job.
"Req 1: The driver must be able to change any bulb within 5 minutes. Only tools forming part of the standard toolkit may be used."
And so on.
For PCs/Laptops? How about something along these lines:
"Req 1: The owner must be able to replace the battery using standard, off-shelf tools within 10 minutes."
"Req 2: The owner must be able to replace the HDD with a standard driver within 10 minutes."
"Req 3: The owner must be able to upgrade/replace RAM within 5 minutes."
And then the kicker
"Owner repairs will not void any manufacturer warranty unless the manufacturer can prove that the owner acted below the level of a 'competent person'."
Or something along those lines at any rate. (Pretty much how it is with cars really)
A Dyson vacuum cleaner is expensive, but I can strip that myself to get at the offending part and replace it. No need for a repair engineer or anything.
Thursday 9th August 2012 09:55 GMT
Assuming this is true...
...there are two points to not.
1) Head. Sure, a small flat-head might do it, but all they would have to do is re-jig a few of the spokes or make the design more curved to solve that. It also looks rather shallow, so not much purchase.
2) Thread. It does not look like a convention screw, much more rounded. This means that is the screw were drilled-out it would be hard to replace as normal screws probably won't work/hold with that thread shape.
Ah - but what about the fakes/pattern parts. Simple. Patent and copyright that design, then sue that arse out of anyone who is selling them to non-Apple bods. Apple is highly, highly litigious; so this is probably the path they'd choose.
If I was renting and iDevice, I wouldn't really care. If I rent a TV, fixing it is not my problem. But if I buy an iDevice then is in mine and I can do what I want with it. Or I should be able to.
Time for the regulators/consumer protection bodies to have a word with apple.
If this is true of course.
Video shows armed assault on Kim Dotcom family home
Microsoft Surface slate: Acer, resellers predict a riot
Wednesday 8th August 2012 10:22 GMT
Re: Go MS! - Actually customers should come first
@Dave 142 "Well theoretically looking after the customers means they want to buy your product and then the shareholders are happy."
Indeed - now who are MS's customers? OEMs? Service Providers? Enterprise? The great unwashed (i.e. consumers)?
I put it to you that it's the first two, with "enterprise" some way behind and "the great unwashed" barely registering. Simply because consumers do not rush out and by "a Windows". They buy "an Acer/Sony/Toshiba/ASUS" that happens to run Windows. MS do advertise to consumers, but only to drive customers to towards OEMs.
By selling their own hardware, MS are basically shoving two-fingers up to their biggest customers and playing a dangerous game as they are already a convicted monopolist. And before the fanbois start; I have a fairly dim view of Apple, although that is "less bad" as they are not a monopoly and have never had OEMs (beyond cloners whom they crushed).
My genuine hope is that enough OEMs take umbrage at this and start to release some of their devices with a different OS. Not because I am a bleeding-heart penguin-ista, but because there is no competition within the consumer space and thus very little innovation. Apple stuck the cat amongst the pigeons simply because it was not MS/Windows and could do things in a new way.
A further advantage beyond innovation is interoperability. If there are enough users of alternatives, all players get forced to interoperate (i.e. conform to standards) and this massively increases customer choice as well as improve longevity. And by "standards" I mean "publicly available and patent/copyright free"
At the moment we are stuck in a world of false choice. We can change the badge on the car, but the chassis and engines are all the same.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
