Posts by Andrew Orlowski 1435 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2006
Your positing the hypothetical of ISPs choking startups against the reality of Google, Facebook choking startups. OK, then.
"If you're worried about Google's market share..."
Why the if? Is competition optional? The economic dominance by a few big players is not a trivial issue. There hasn't been a competitor emerge for over a decade. And where did your personal data go today? You do't know and neither do I.
Title II repeal keeps an easily distracted mob busy, while the Sans Culotte butcher "draws dotted lines on their hides".
No. A Government was lobbied by one massive corporation to shaft another massive corporation, and gave in. The ad market in India now belongs to Google: a monopoly, rather than the duopoly we have here:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/08/india_belongs_to_google/
It's called "crony capitalism".
No, Oracle isn't an ad-slinger. Oracle's bottom line would certainly benefit from a more diverse digital ad market, and this is why they're going after the Google-Facebook duopoly. Going after monopolies successfully usually does improve the market, with more new entrants.
Oracle's complaint expresses what pretty much everyone in the ad industry says, but won't point out in public, for fear of being (metaphorically) kneecapped.
You read right, Dave. Reviewers have had the device for days, which is plenty of time to find its flaws. We weren't permitted to disclose them until 2pm Monday GMT.
This is another unusual and suspect practice and it's not something we're comfortable with - as it involves deceiving the readers to some extent. What do you think?
"Right to be forgotten is a far too easy way for politicians and influential people to hide things about their activities that may look a bit iffy"
How, exactly? The politician would need to convince a court that there is no public interest justification for continuing publication of the material. There, a public interest defence can be advanced. Very few politicians or celebrities win these.
If it's "essential" do you mind that it's partial, and succumbs to corporate pressure? Or is "full of holes" good enough?
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/11/16/head_like_a_memory_hole/#c_3349090
"a religious cult which regards information as Divine "
The cult is contemporary and Swedish, but information worship goes back to Gnosticism. After Comte ("Religion of Humanity), there were a number of religions of positivism. One disciple was Teixeira Mendes who put "Order and Progress" on the Brazilian flag.
"We don't see people trying to modify the records that we've stored," Kahle told The Register.
Archive.org seems very happy to modify the record itself. How do I know?
Back in 2003, when Carly Fiorina as CEO, HP requested the deletion of material it found embarrassing, and Archive.org happily complied. I recall this made things difficult for us journalists to corroborate previous statements, and so hold the executives to account.
So I find the Memory Hole competition richly ironic. Archive.org *is* the memory hole.
Real archives have exceptions for copying and preservation, and the kind of threats HP made could be ignored. Don't mistake Brewster's collection for a real archive.
The Top 10%'s share of income has not changed since 1990. Income inequality has narrowed slightly in the past few years.
The change is within the Top 10%: the "super-rich" are racing away from the rest of the "rich" (£50,000-£150,000pa). You particular notice this in the money laundering capital of the world, Dubai-on-Thames.
You've defined liberalism. "Neoliberalism" can mean anything you want to mean. My friend the former Reg columnist who wrote a very big book on it has used it to include state expansion too.
"Neoliberalism" serves the same purpose as "New World Order" does for conspiracy theorists of the right. Fortunately, since only academics and other Dave Spart types ever use the N word, we can safely ignore it.
Me, I don't forget how awful WM, Symbian, the "web tablets" etc were at the time - I complained about them non stop. It's all here.
Only an outsider like Apple could have given the industry the kick up the bum it needed. (Sony couldn't). The idea of bundling a data plan together with the phone (gasp), so the punter didn't get bill shock, was also ground-breaking at the time.
But £1,149? For a thing that is stylistically and functionally equivalent to a £600 thing. Really? That isn't £1,000 leaving your wallet, it's £550 flying out of your wallet, then laughing at you as it sails off to that Heaven's Gate spaceship they're building out in Cupertino.
"Backpage aren't the bad guys"
I suggest you read the Doe vs Backpage case to see the lengths to which Backpage facilitated the underage prostitution. And also what constitutes red flag knowledge. It's remarkable how people can blind themselves to something they really don't want to see.
You're basically saying "the sky will fall" if anything at all happens to the CDA. However society needs a sensible legal framework for secondary liability, and this is no longer a credible position.
"further proof (as if any was needed) that Oracle is living in a parallel universe"
Um, really?
"Beginning at age 15, each of the appellants was trafficked through advertisements posted on Backpage. Jane Doe # 1 was advertised on Backpage during two periods in 2012 and 2013. She estimates that, as a result, she was raped over 1,000 times. Jane Doe # 2 was advertised on Backpage between 2010 and 2012. She estimates that, as a result, she was raped over 900 times. Jane Doe # 3 was advertised on Backpage from December of 2013 until some unspecified future date. As a result, she was raped on numerous occasions.3 All of the rapes occurred either in Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Sometimes the sex traffickers posted the advertisements directly and sometimes they forced the victims to post the advertisements.
"Typically, each posted advertisement included images of the particular appellant, usually taken by the traffickers (but advertisements for Doe # 3 included some pictures that she herself had taken). Many of the advertisements embodied challenged practices such as anonymous payment for postings, coded terminology meant to refer to underage girls, and altered telephone numbers."
[Backpage developed these codes and coached the advertisers how to evade safeguards]
US Criminal Code:
"(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal."
The Act to amend S.230 reflects widespread disgust that criminals can use the shield law. This fixes it. So it looks very much like you are in the parallel universe.
The problem with concepts like the Moto Mod is stability: the bulk of the mass is in the display, and yet when open, the device needs to be at a reasonable angle. The Mod approach reduces the amount of surface that can be used for a keyboard.
I have had a play with pre-production Gemini prototypes (story and pix imminent) and am only really starting to realise how clever the design is. The hinge increases the surface area, the keys are depressed when the case is closed, so the design remains slim and yet still has full travel keys. It helps that the mass is in the base, of course.
"this is the junk that's also running your magic-sensor car "
Not really, but then this is the tech industry's dirty little secret. Machine learning has its uses, but helping a self-driving car avoid hitting an old lady is not one of them. We should have a sweepstake on when the MSM will figure this out.
"I have been voted down before, because I pointed out that this hysteria over AI taking over is not just overblown but over-hyped."
Ignore the downvotes, lots of readers know this, particular those working in robotics and machine learning. The hype didn't actually start with the technology people, for once. Look at "thinkfluencers", "opinion formers", policy wonks, PRs, journalists instead.
And see the Comments here, they are very good:
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/01/02/ai_was_the_fake_news_of_2016/
MP3 isn't now "patent-free".
MP3 IP always had two parents: Thomson/Frauenhofer, and AT&T. Frauenhofer allowed its patents to lapse and mothballed the licensing program last month. Microsoft discovered the hard way a few years ago that Alcatel had a ton too. A few are still enforceable.
Charlie :-)
I thought the Galaxy S7 got almost everything right - there was no contest in that price category. If it was a boxing match the referee would have stopped the fight.
TouchWiz is not the problem with the S8, it's Blixby and all the other slurping. And the insane position of the fingerprint sensor. But I'll post the write-up soon...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
