Posts by Gareth Ward
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I was fourteen in 2001.
http://www.xkcd.com/647/
And even that was two years ago... -
Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Fooman,
They're not allowed to refuse, are they?
Legally I THINK they can't - there are a limited set of countries that let the Crown withhold Royal Assent and I don't think we're one of them?
Regardless, practically they wouldn't as I don't believe internet copyright arguments really come close to constitutional crisis... -
So what do we expect will be the processing fee applied here?
Copyright holders spend offensive amounts of money on this - that processing fee is going to have to be pretty freakin significant to phase them, especially if the invoice arrives at the same time as their Russell McVeagh one!
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Many wiser heads on this subject here than me, but given that global copyright holders already have significant tracking over the "mass-market" illegal file sharing (I'm sure there's crazy backdoor techy shenanigans that let you avoid it, but I'm talking about Googling "Harry Potter torrent" here) why would they NOT just gather up those IP addresses and have the ISPs send warning letters for what will surely be a fairly small "processing fee" (what does it cost to send a letter?).
They clearly believe (rightly or wrongly) that this is a significant problem, and given their legal bills just to get this far, a mass-mail campaign seems insignificant cost. They'll quickly get a big pool of "double-warned" people that they can choose to take into the Tribunal as they see fit - with a subsequent lobbying campaign pointing out how under-resourced this Tribunal is. -
Hard News: Like being there, in reply to Matt Crawford,
Elegant and cheap: Apple's new direction?
Given the scale they're getting, plus the additional revenue stream that app stores represent, this is quite possible, at least in their consumer devices. Apple are rumoured to be purchasing $8BILLION worth of LCD screens and memory from Samsung, and it's this purchasing ability that seems to be the main reason why they can offer a tablet device so much cheaper than their competitors.
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Hard News: Like being there, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
How is this different to watching a live concert on telly?
Not having to negotiate broadcast rights, timeslots, licensing etc etc with every TV station in the world I suspect. One deal, with YouTube and blam, anyone with teh interwebs can watch it.
And re Apple holding back features to force upgrades - I know this is the standard meme but I'm not sure I buy it. If it IS true then their competitors are even more hopeless than I thought - a company can really be releasing products lacking must-have, readily-available feature sets and still monster the competition?
I think some tech-focussed folks overestimate either the average user desire for some of these things or the fact that Apple obsessively require UI perfection if it's to include them. To address the things you raise:
- USB: The iPad doesn't work on a file structure whose contents you access - it works from the app, which in turn manages it's own files. It's painful (for example if I want to reply to an email from a customer and attach a couple of files for their reference I can't) and needs to get worked out, but it is how it operates so access to external file structures simply wouldn't help most people.
- SD: Similar argument to above, unless you're talking about in a "load photos from a camera" sense - but why? These are flash storage driven with limited storage so why bulk transfer photos to them? Not what it's about
- HDMI: Personally I really can't understand plugging some long cable from a tablet device into a TV - the "dongle" they've released to do that strikes me as absurd - so again I fail to see the must-have, constant use case for it.
- Cameras: Even now the cameras on there are limited because Apple (and I) think taking photos or video with a tablet is absurd. They've added the ones they have to run video calling but their version of it wasn't even in the market when iPad 1 was released.Apple have an approach that says keep it super simple, only put something in if it is seamless and control the user experience to keep it simple and seamless. For a lot of tech heads that's understandably frustrating and I don't blame them for not buying - but for a huge percentage of people that's what they're after. There's definitely a business model side to that as well and it's made them insanely rich but I really don't think it's about consciously holding back features only because you want to encourage upgrades 12 or 24 months down the track.
And yep, I've unwittingly become a locked in Apple guy - started with an iBook about 7 or 8 years ago and now run an Apple laptop, phone, wireless router (Airport may not be a better router but as the heart of wireless music distribution for my stereo setup it's amazing!) and tablet. That's solely because I enjoy the ID, the "ecosystem" works nicely together and I've never come across something I wanted to do that I couldn't (or, at least, something I could do on another platform but not on OSX/iOS). And while they tightly control apps that can be loaded natively to their devices, they run very open standards when it comes to deploying web apps to the device.
Apple don't make the most technical function-rich stuff, they don't play at the cheap end of a market (tablets excluded), they enforce strict control over all aspects of the UI (be it third party or their own) and they've created a long-tail locked-in content distribution model that makes them uber rich. But for a lot of people that's just fine.
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I kinda wish that the Daft Punk rumour had materialised such that Daft Punk actually were Playing at My House. Either way I didn't catch the show as I was away for the weekend and not inclined to stream 3.5 hours of video over a 3G network...
Airplay/AppleTV are interesting in that they're somewhat contrasting approaches to stuff-from-the-Internet-onto-your-TV. The former treats the TV as a dumb screen and sends stuff to it from proper Internet devices, while the latter attempts to make the TV an Internet device unto itself. Given the recent dev path of AppleTV I wouldn't be that surprised to see the device discontinued and AirPlay licensed directly into TV sets themselves
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I like me a good sweeping, unwarranted statement.
Yep it certainly was, and tbh I'm not placing your arguments within that sweep. But it's generally rarer to find people making consistent complaints about voter engagement and media coverage regardless of which "side" is benefitting. There are a few more to be found here given the broader interest in the political game*, but as a general statement I find most people complaining about voters not engaging or biased media coverage to be pretty partisan based - the switch in narrative between KB and the Standard being a clear example
[*and an interest and understanding well beyond my own]
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I'd take all the "the media and the voters have significant responsibility for the position we're in" folks much more seriously if I believed they all said exactly the same thing after the 2002 election.
However I suspect that when "your side" isn't getting favourable coverage or reaction it's because the people just aren't getting the message; and when the "other side" aren't it's because of the insight of the people and balanced accurate reporting. -
Surely Peter Dunne should be the one to address the intergenerational and ageing issues we face, given that he will continue to live amongst humanity for many of those coming generations, and was exposed to similar issues during his time in 11th Century Mesopotamia...