ShitChat

So Apple are now suing HTC as well as Nokia over patent infringement.

You can bet big money if Microsoft had cloned the Mac OS, like it did many years ago, today, Apple would be far more successful in suing than it was in the ‘look & feel’ case.

It’s sad that laws and mechanisms designed to protect the small man against big business have been corrupted so badly that big business can now effectively lock up huge parts of knowledge, culture and society, forever.

These companies are so big and so wealthy now it’s time to turn off the antiquated laws they are using.

Any copywritten works should become pd on the death of the creator, patents in the modern world should last 5 years at most, but if you make profit within the 5 years it expires – you should already have market dominance by then and that is not good for consumers.

The flipside and path we are on, big rich companies getting bigger and richer and more controlling of our lives.

Don’t believe me? Go use a custom icon theme on your iPhone…

Firstly, this is an opinion piece so you can expect certain assumptions to be made. The first of these is that the primary reason a voter chooses to vote SNP is their backing of independence, or at the very least a referendum on the issue. As the Scottish Government is broken down as

SNP 36.4% (47 Seats)
Lab 35.7$ (46 Seats)
Lib Dem 12.4% (16 Seats)
Con 12.4% (16 Seats)
Green 1.6% (2 Seats)
Independent 0.8% (1 Seat) – Though Ms. McDonald is an SNPer at heart

The Presiding Officer is a special case, a Conservative, who has had to resign from the party, but still has any necessary casting vote.

A bit of adjusting, placing Ms. McDonald in with the SNP and the PO with the conservatives, leaves us with a similar position. 37.2% of the Scottish public who would vote for independence. That is a pretty solid assumption, one that Alex Salmond could stand up and say he spoke for that % of Scotland. On the flip side, we have the opposition parties, who do claim to speak for their % of the population without actually consulting them.

As safe as it is to assume that SNP voters favour independence, you can’t say the opposite assertion holds true, a vote for Labour, Lib Dem, et al, does not equate to a ‘no’ vote. It equates to people who do not place independence as the #1 issue at the polling booth. It is safe to assume that there are opposition voters for, against and undecided against independence. With that in mind, there is a good chance some opposition voters would vote yes to independence. The metric for this, is where the sticking point will be.

I assert, that as 37.2% of Scotland as a whole voted SNP, 37.2% of all opposition voters may vote yes.

If we crunch the numbers we get :

60.57% Yes vote for independence

39.43% No vote for independence

That is a big assumption, but even if we adjust that so that we only take half the % of SNP voters of all Scotland and extrapolate from the opposition vote, we get

48.89% Yes vote for independence

51.11% No vote for independence

Which is too close to call.

Of course, political times have changed since the parliament was elected and the seats may not be representative of current voting trends, also, in a purely independence driven vote, we could expect a very different result from that of a parliamentary election. That said, the underlying conclusion I draw from this,

The opposition parties cannot claim to speak for any % of the Scottish people on independence, and they are running scared of a referendum as they know it is likely to be close, or they will lose. That is the real reason behind their stance.

I personally think they should follow John Major’s line “Either put up or shut up”, as a lost referendum for the SNP would reduce their support, so if the opposition really think they can win, it is in their interests, but most of all, it is such a big issue, the people should have the voice, the not people falsely claiming to speak for them.

So the Jesus slate has landed with Steve Jobs declaring it a third type of device. Oft have I longed for a bigger, less easy to carry iPhone, which doesn’t have a phone or camera or indeed proper software.

Yet this turkey will sell like it’s Christmas. I’ve been a fanboy but increasingly Apple is behaving like Microsoft, new models every 12 to 24 months, OS upgrades where the ‘insides’ are improved but it’s really a way to cut G5’s from the support loop and force upgrades, and the headline that no-one seems to have noticed,

YOU can only run what APPLE says you can on the iPad

Yes it is variant iPhoneOS, so you can expect the same level of lockdown. That means Apple controls the platform. Yes you can set a wallpaper, but a ftheme? 5-row keyboard?

This is an inkling into Apple’s future plans, devices controlled by them (even down to the chips) with no adobe installing flash, no Microsoft word, but probably Apple versions at added cost.

It will still just work, with the just meaning ‘only just’. Prepare to adopt the Jobs doctrine as MacOS is heading out the back door, it will be knocked down the OS pecking order by it’s younger brother on iLocked devices.

In terms of control of your apple products, less is more.

It has been two years, give or take a day or two, since I was last employed by a company which mandated Microsoft products.

As a Mac owner this is not surprising, but increasingly Microsoft has been seen as an IT standard.

My question is why?

Office is a good product, but so is Apple Pages and the ubiquitous OpenOffice. Why spend $ on MS office when OpenOffice is far more than adequate? Does your office really use an MS office specific feature? the answer is no btw.

Exchange, this is a bloated behemoth of crud. I could forgive people who install it, if it was either a breeze to use or a breeze to administer. Neither apply and plenty of free and open alternatives exist AND (this is key) there are inter-operable alternatives. You CAN have outlook interface with mail and calendars and address books without exchange. You can share files without exchange, and in much simpler ways to implement and administer.

Windows, if your users are now using OpenOffice and exchange has been replaced with other elements, is there a need for windows? Probably not. Most Linux desktops are now mature enough for daily use, and easy enough to switch as a lot of bad ui decisions have crept in from windows and macos.

So, what do you get for ditching MS?

$ $ $ and lots of $ $ $

No cost for Os licenses on desk or server.
No cost for office software.
No cost for server software.

Support costs may be *slightly* higher as Linux admins aren’t as easy to find as MS (not worth the paper) certified people.

However, the running costs will be far lower, a New Zealand school recently defied government by going all open source, that’s 4 servers in a room with rackspace for 40, anecdotaly much cheaper to run.

There will be much less downtime thanks to viruses and spyware too.

Of course MS knows this and is tackling FOSS from the inside and offering huge discounts to bulk buyers, knowing full well that vendor lock-in is hard for business men to overcome.

That company I used to work for were pushing profit away on renewing licenses and updating to keep service contracts active, the reason they wouldn’t switch? They wanted to get their monies worth of existing software!

MS pr is also very good, but not very accurate in the information.

It’s not often consumers pay for similar or inferior products that are free, but they are with the most common MS products.

Computing with very little energy consumption.

I’m about to start using my tonido plug now that I’ve managed to get HFS drives working with it.

Thanks to @plugapps on twitter, I was told to do the following :

cd /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc6/kernel/fs/

mkdir – p hfsplus

cd hfsplus

wget http://localhostr.com/files/abb292/hfsplus.ko

insmod hfsplus.ko

So it was Izzys first Christmas.

I still hate Christmas and she was far too young to know what was going on.

Maybe next year, bah humbug!

Once again Gruber gets it so wrong my eyes bled.

There have, and always will be, 3 types of web developer :

1. The purist – only using strict standards code
2. The uncaring (with MSCE certs) – just getting something up, stop when it works in ie
3. The pro – someone who gets the job done well and without moaning, the site will work in 90% Market share

Gruber is 1, and you can’t be a pro if you are in 1. I’ve discussed the problem with standards before but Gruber’s rant on the video tag not only shows him up for the arse he is but proves why standards will never work.

Browser vendors will only follow a standard spec while there is little or no hinderence to them. Crying about autoloading being optional in the spec is stupid, they can’t mandate it because vendors will walk.

Gruber’s lack of willing to use workarounds simply do not fly, his eventual solution is quite appropriate and echos the sane way of web developing over the last 15 years.

Things are not going to change anytime soon.

I was going to write a big long post, but can’t be arsed to waste my time, yours and our collective bandwidth.

Some small spider has crawled up his japs eye now that Google is offering free public DNS.

It’s not Google he’s upset about but OpenDNS, a similar service that has been going for a while.

His problem : OpenDNS redirects you if you make a mistake.

Why he’s an arse :

1. Make a simple error and OpenDNS corrects it for you and you get what you expected.

2. If it can’t correct it, it performs a search and returns a lot of results, usually adverts – This isn’t a problem arse gruber – I made an error and instead of a bollocks error screen ive been given some help – OBVIOUS help – you can’t mistake the openDNS search for anything else.

3. Google’s DNS hasn’t even been fully tested yet, it might just die under pressure or evil script kiddies – openDNS has been around for ages – tried and tested

4. OpenDNS have a privacy policy, using Google as a DNS means pretty much all your Internet usage will be to Google’s knowledge.

Nice job, feels like he’s been rimming a dog and needed to take it out on someone.

This is one of the solutions I thought about, but dismissed as the logistics are fairly difficult. Extra group games, means extra staff and ticket sales, not likely to happen.

One commenter on the BBC said

The score was only 1-1 anyway, why should they [the Irish] go to the World Cup on the basis of a draw

He was a chelsea fan. I’m only saying that because he’s clearly missed the point that if you take the ‘Hand of Frog’ away from the match, France got through for a draw.

I doubt FIFA care anymore, they will get their World Cup with or without cheats, and Henry may still get a ban, but I wish they would do something about it. Have the replay at the World Cup, that would be one extra game, then the winning team stays on for France’s place (the draw being made on Friday).

In any case, the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys are going to get roundly booed anyway!

FIFA have a very real problem whether they act on the France v Ireland result or not.

Quite simply put, they are choosing which rules and regulations to apply, and which to ignore. The World Cup, including qualifiers is governed by the regulations of the tournament, in this case the South Africa World Cup Regulations (here).

The points to note, Article 5.4.g

On entering the competition, the participating member associations and their players and officials automatically undertake to:

[..]

g) observe the principles of fair play.

Article 10.3 in full

3. In addition, the players agree notably to:

a) respect the spirit of fair play and non-violence;

b) behave accordingly;

c) refrain from doping as defined by the FIFA Doping Control Regulations.

And, Article 13.6

No protests may be made about the referee’s decisions regarding facts connected with play. Such decisions are final, unless otherwise stipulated in the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

Here FIFA hide behind Article 13.6. They want football to decide winners and losers, and the referee has sole authority on that matter. (We’ll ignore the one time they ruled against this because a referee had given a free kick instead of a penalty, and invalidated a whole 2-leg World Cup qualifying tie) They don’t want to set a precedent.

However, by, in their opinion, not setting a precedent, they in fact have set a very serious one. Thierry Henry has admitted he handled the ball, using his “I am not the referee” defence. It is an admission of guilt, of unfair play. This breaches Articles 5.4.g and 10.3.a . His national association by taking no action against him have also breached 5.4.g.

FIFA have chosen, for no apparent reason, to ignore 5.4.g and 10.3.a (arguably 10.3.b too), and favour another Article 13.6. Who, then, decides which of FIFA’s articles are to be implemented in a given situation? What is the point of publishing a list of rules, to only selectively apply them?

Look closely though, 10.3.c tells footballers to refrain from doping. FIFA have, actually set such a dangerous precedent by ignoring Article 10.3, that they have effectively allowed doping. Presumably as long as you do it on the field of play and the no-one catches you.

Of course, the common sense resolution is simple, but probably doesn’t help the commercial interests of FIFA and the World Cup OC. The result stands as the referee officiated it. Thierry Henry is found guilty of a breach of 5.4.g and 10.3 and banned from a number of games, possibly the World Cup as a whole. France, for taking no independent action against Henry are also found guilty of 5.4.g and excluded from the World Cup. Ireland, as their losing playoff opponents are invited to compete under Article 6.5.

That would apply all of FIFA’s own regulations with the equal merit, and set no precedent of ignoring rules which don’t suit the commercial benefits of FIFA.

Update

Well done donal, what you have done there is, not read the article and then made yourself look like a fucknut by posting a point which is made and dealt with in the article. You have a job at the Guardian anytime you want it.

Update 2

Not often I have to write a second update. Anyway, Donal spectacularly misses the point AGAIN. He also, wrongly assumes that the laws are above the tournament regulations, but that’s so obvious it shouldn’t need calling BS.
In any case it seems the whole point of the blog post needs pointing out for some poor unfortunate readers, or tards as they sometimes get called.

FIFA have already set a prescedent (sp?) over the issue of the referee being sole arbiter of a match – as pointed out. Aside from that we have 2 regulations (and whilst I could go check the laws of the game, I won’t, but do know there are remarks about fair play there too) about fair play.

These regulations and laws are being given less authority than regulations and laws allowing the referee to make incorrect decisions without access to the full information. This is bad a) who picks which rules are given priority over others and b) where is the accountability? Without it referees are open to corruption and have no task to answer under your precious quote.

After all, if this were a game of football and I was the referee, I could send you off (ban you from posting, which I haven’t done) for the sole reason of being an asshat – under your rules you have no right to reply or appeal, the record shows you are an asshat.