Posts by Andrew Orlowski

When Bell uses jargon in the AMA (which isn't very often) he explains what it means.

https://medium.com/i-have-no-idea-what-im-talking-about/i-have-no-idea-what-im-talking-about-microsofts-rumored-spartan-browser-5a046e3079b5

Re: Re: I don't get the hate

Speculative. The opposite was actually true, as we've reported.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/29/revealed_the_secret_apple_deals_that_squeeze_rivals_and_tax_you/

Nokia/Microsoft couldn't compete with the strongarm tactics of Apple, which had trouble shifting the 5c, and the spiffs that Samsung threw at the channel. Smaller vendors couldn't get release slots - literally.

Re: Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

Not really, the objection is at the B2B level.

Re: Re: How does this affect micro-businesses?

"No you don't have to sell to anyone - you just can't limit the license to certain eu countries."

Same difference. It means that in the EU you'll have to er, sell to anyone.

Even if I improve your shop analogy to say "I cannot charge French people more" it doesn't hold up, because by opening a shop you're obliged not to discriminate. Whereas price discrimination is absolutely essential in this market.

Probably because the headline is misleading - we'll fix it.

What's called (propaganda-friendly term) "geoblocking" really means "freedom of licensing". The EU wants to stop this.

Of course if you think Europe is one country with one language, it's logical. If you think Europe is lots of countries with even more languages, then the reform is coercive.

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

"...release the same content at a *lower* price in other parts of Europe, while keeping prices hiked up for the local audience? Then that's just market abuse."

No, it isn't. It's bog standard price discrimination. If you sold stuff then you'd want to do this too.

Re: I don't get it...

"Why would the removal of geo blocking hurt niche/local producers (which seems to be one of the arguments here). OK, they can't restrict which areas they sell their content to, but why does that hurt them?"

Because they can't maximise the price of their goods. If you RTFA it's quite informative - follow the link to the Rivers study for the European Commission, it's quite a readable analysis of price discrimination.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

"I'd feel more charitable if the Tidal crowd on that stage made music that I'd want to hear. Why would I want to encourage more of that that garbage?"

OK. We get it. But there are two things here, 1) liking/trusting the music that the people involved, and 2) the viability of their proposition that someone can do better than Spotify.

"How could I trust these identikit-surgeoned airheads to promote original bands?"

Because Jay Z has quite a good track record doing so?

I was watching Top Gear dubbed into Polish at a mate's house the other day. Poles here don't have any difficulty getting Polish cultural goods under the current system. It's all licensed.

Cyborg Ansip doesn't seem to have realised what he's stepped into.

The argument for enforcing a pan-European license is that the bigger market makes up for the lower returns from your home market. With some goods like football, this might be true. For others it isn't, for obvious reasons, mainly language. Your entire market for the Albanian equivalent of Sex Lives Of The Potato Men lives in Albania, pretty much.

The European Commission has just spent a few years looking at this. Barnier found that territoriality would diminish cultural diversity. Kroes leaked his report, then refused to endorse it. Juncker instructed Ansip to bring this regardless.

14 years ago a compromise was devised (see Santiago Agreement) which was a pan-European license but administered in the home territory. The EU didn't like it, and here we all are.

So you sacrifice cultural diversity for peace.

Can you explain how this works, exactly? I've never understood it.

Re: First part was better.

"Who are the new slaves?"

You are, obviously.

You can't own or control your own stuff. Which means there is no real functioning market for stuff. The terms of trade are set by others.

The tech oligarchs take the place of the market, set the terms, control the price, etc.

This has been their greatest achievement: persuading people to act against their own economic interests.

Re: Are people even reading the comments?

"ISPs are artificially creating service differentiation"

I can't think of a single instance of this ever.

"In summary, NN says paying more money should be about buying more infrastructure at the ISP end..."

That makes no sense at all. It's about paying for peering (what Netflix had to do, because it had tried to do OTT video on the cheap) vs. using a third party vs. building your own network (what Google does with YouTube).

You can monitor peering in real time:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/09/net_neutrality_explained_and_how_to_get_a_better_internet/

Your comment is a fantastic illustration of the ignorance often exhibited in such discussions.

Re: Semantic confusion

+1

I'm not sure a single constituency anywhere in the world would vote for or support "net neutrality" (defined for the sake of argument as pre-emptive technical regulation on speeds, services etc).

It's really only a minority within a minority within a minority who give a crap about this. 75 per cent of American voters have never even heard the phrase "net neutrality", and most Democrat voters care about the economy and jobs.

Unfortunately net neutrality activists live in a bubble world, and only ever meet people just like themselves.

Re: Re: Hmmm

"Bloke on the intertubes uses a deliberately emotive argument, however much he knows it's not really valid, to try to gain favour from the non-technical masses for his own agenda which is the sale of equipment to produce a tiered internet."

Maybe.

Or maybe the internet is already "tiered" (aka polyservice), was designed to be "tiered" from 1981, and so should be regulated using business and competition regulations rather some genius with dandruff trying to predict what will be "fair" in 20 years time?

Re: Corporate shill and blithering idiot.

"Net neutrality can accommodate protocol priorities"

Not by most definitions of net neutrality in current use by net neutrality activists. All packets must travel at the same speed, they insist. (Eg, Franken etc).

This isn't actually how things work, and if it was strictly imposed the internet would be a smoking heap.

Re: He seems to have failed to understand

"What net neutrality is. It does allow for the prioritisation of packets."

Not by Sen. Al Franken's definition. Or <insert idiot here>. When one packet is being prioritised, that means another packet is going slower, which means "discrimination" is taking place, which is evil, which means we need new laws to stop it.

"If VOIP packets get priority then ALL VOIP packets are treated equal, no matter where they came from."

Yes, that's what some people want, and it's marginally less bonkers than Franken/Public Knowledge's interpretation - but it still puts consumer Skype packets the same speed as real-time applications - in the same slow lane.

If you give a monkey a loaded machine gun, the chances are it will eventually shoot you. That's where the "net neutrality" debate has reached. The activists are complaining the monkeys have really bad manners.

Re: Preposterous

"Indeed, net neutrality doesn't stop ISPs from selling different speed, different contention, different download limit services even from the same service. "

That's exactly what net neutrality activists want to stop. You've summed it up nicely.

Re: yeah but, no but

" It's just a pseudo-random figure that some "experts" pulled out of their backsides"

No, the figure is the selling price of that data, in an open transaction. It's what people said they would sell for.

Like Tim, everything is for the best and you just don't want to look the Gift Horse in the Mouth. You do sound very eager to rubbish any evidence that might contradict this view.

My position is not that "Google is evil", but that there are also many costs to the enormous consumer surplus generated Silicon Valley companies giving away services (and other people's stuff) for free. They don't do it because they're nice, you know.

Nice analogy.

People don't think about the value of the data most of the time Have a look what happens when they do:

"Survey respondents said the most valuable data was personal income, followed by the email addresses of close friends and family. Demographic data is less highly valued, although it’s incredibly valuable to fraudsters. The total value however is significant: £140 (€170) per consumer"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/personal_data_priced_and_its_a_lot/

Tim doesn't want to look the gift horse in the mouth. But when we do just that, the proposition doesn't look like such a fabulous deal. And that's counting the opportunity cost of market destruction.

Re: Copyright contract with the public is broken.

Hello, Jeremy. Shouldn't you declare your own dirty secret? You failed to mention it in your post.

First off - as you and Eben told me many times, the GPL depends on strong copyright law. The GPL would not survive if property rights could not be asserted, then defended, in Court. The GPL survives because of the respect Courts have for property rights. You also need strong contract law, which you don't get in a banana republic - but you can't even get into court without the property right.

In fact, I think you were the first to point this out. Or Eben. I can't remember.

I can think of a "shittier situation for all concerned" - and it looks like individuals losing control of our pictures and words - so that only giant corporations can profit from our work. "Copyfighters" can whine all day about the length of copyright, but if it can't be asserted, the law is merely decorative. It doesn't matter if copyright terms are 1,000 years or a million years - if they can't be asserted, they are meaningless. If you can't assert (C), then pop goes the GPL. Along with much else.

The Public Domain Day backfired badly, because no matter how you slice it, it means privileged white college kids want to stop paying black people. Living black artists.

https://twitter.com/dgolumbia/status/550678771901427712

https://twitter.com/dgolumbia/status/550679167172636672

The dirty secret of "Jeremy Allison" these days is that he works for Google. A corporation worth $468bn. The biggest corporate lobbyist in the USA. A corporation built on not paying other people for using their stuff. So I think you need to put in a disclaimer when you comment on copyright issues.

"These views do not reflect the view of my employer. It's just a coincidence that my employer, Google, lobbies to destroy your digital property rights, and your ability to control your identity."

So, how is life on the plantation, Jeremy?

Re: Only in America

@ratfox

“In my 10 years as attorney general, I have dealt with a lot of large corporate wrongdoers. I must say that yours is the first I have encountered to have no corporate conscience for the safety of its customers, the viability of its fellow corporations or the negative economic impact on the nation which has allowed your company to flourish.”

Hood's letter to Larry Page, Google CEO; 27 November 2013.

Mississippi voters are entitled to vote who the hell they want as their prosecutor, and Hood is democratically elected.

Do you remember voting for Larry Page?

Do you see the problem here?

A powerful multinational corporation doesn't like other people making the law. Hood is the most effective lawmaker it has encountered.

So Google is prepared to use stolen documents to take him out.

Re: Also

Yes, you can hold down the shift and use the trackpad to select a sequence of emails. Then go back and unselect ones individual (trackpad click) you want to keep. Then hit Backspace to get shot of the others.

Re: That Thinkpad

Sorry, daft omission. It's an X230, so it's 12" wide.

Don't get me started on Lenovo ruining the Thinkpad X series...

Re: Why didn't they keep the keyboard curved?

It would be nice to have that shape, but in practice, I am finding this is the best keyboard ever on a BlackBerry. They've really nailed this one.

Re: Win

Exchange email support in BB10 is excellent, other parts could be better.

Specifically, it doesn't support Tasks as well as it should (Categories are ignored by Remember) and Contacts doesn't respect Exchange contact groups. Which is incredible, the old BlackBerry did.

Re: Re: Also

BB10 has done this from the start. Overall deleting emails s much easier now.

Re: Re: Is it reasonable ...?

"Also, anyone with any understanding of the law knows that "people who create content" do not in general "have ownership of that content". "

That's your problem right there, anon. The law ensures the individual owns what they create, via copyright, automatically, for a limited period. Everybody knows this and understands this, whatever normative and political views they draw from that.

You, by contrast, have built an entire worldview on deliberately misunderstanding the law and the purpose of granting temporary exclusive rights to people. Your politics is founded on getting it wrong.

(In Germany, you can't even assign that ownership to anyone else. All usage by anyone who isn't an owner is done by contract. The world hasn't fallen apart.)

As a result of insisting that up is down, and black is white,

1) your arguments have become hysterical eg:

..."government-funded gangs that kidnap people internationally"...

...and 2), ethically unsupportable. A twice convicted fraudster was arrested for perpetrating a serious economic crime. He profited from the work of others without paying them a penny. Since black is white, he becomes the "victim". He becomes poor victimised Kim...

The reason your arguments have become hysterical and morally dubious is because you've rejected the facts. Your political arguments aren't reality-based - they're based on a wierd sense of justice (a political foundation) and are then selectively chosen or misrepresented to support that judgement. Your political views *require you* to misunderstand the intent and expression of the law.

That way madness lies - and it sounds like you're halfway there.