Tag: digital economy

DigitalOutbox Episode 41
In this episode the team discuss Digital Economy Bill, IE9, CashGordon and the iPad cometh.

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Shownotes
0:55 – Digital Economy Bill Rushed Through Lords
– What is this? Covers broadband, dig radio, spectrum etc
– Clause 17 – enable govt to change copyright law without parliamentary approval – now scrapped
– Ammedment 120a – Lib Dems – Gives high court ability to serve an injunction against web site or ISP to stop serving copyrighted material
– DMCA in America enables takedown of content – the UK amendment takes down the whole site!
– Now Lib Dems want to change it and govt also want to make their own changes to the amendment
– Next stop commons
– Being rushed through
– Labels already know that this won’t be debated in commons
– http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/label-bosses-warn-debate-could-cost-the-disconnection
-[MPs] will have minimum input … from this point on. … John Whittingdate MP [DCMS committee] … has said this week it [the Bill] could be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it. Whist true in constitutional terms, the hard politics of the situation makes it seem unlikely … Come the week of 29th March the main political focus is likely to be on the … Budget”
– This will allow all the decisions to be made in dirty last minute deals behind closed doors between the party whips in what they call “wash up”.
– This way, disconnection penalties could be agreed with no democratic scrutiny whatsoever.
– No debate.
– The memo, published by Cory Doctorow, shows BPI lobbyist Richard Mollett, who hopes to become a Labour MP at the next election, telling music bosses that if MPs do their job and debate the Bill, the BPI’s disconnection proposals may face defeat.
– E-petition – http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/?
– Panorama this week – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rl4dl/Panorama_Are_the_Net_Police_Coming_for_You/
6:19 – 02 condemns lawyers targeting alleged file sharers
– O2 condemned the attempts “by rights holders and their lawyers to bully or threaten our customers”.
– The row centres around UK law firm ACS:Law and its client DigiProtect, a anti-piracy firm which represents a series of content owners.
– The firm is in the process of contacting thousands of alleged UK pirates and offers them the chance to settle out of court for around £500 per infringement.
– 02’s broadband customers are among those sent letters. “Where we are legally obliged to provide information and the correct paperwork is presented, we will comply with the law,” said an O2 spokesman. “But we prefer the ‘win-win’ approach of encouraging the development of new business models that offer customers the content they want, how they want it, for a fair price,” he added.
– ACS: Law says it has so far identified around 60,000 different UK IP addresses, which reveal the identity of individual computers. Expects to get 400 actual physical addresses for every 1000
– Experts argue that an IP address cannot be used as evidence in court because it is not proof that the owner of the PC was actually responsible for the downloading.
– Hundreds of people have complained to consumer watchdog Which?, saying that they have been wrongly accused, including pensioners who claim they don’t know how to download content. It has caused distress to some of the accused, particularly as some of the content they are accused of downloading is hardcore pornography.
– Law firm declined to identify any of the clients represented by DigiProtect, beyond saying “there are a variety, some in music, some computer games and some in adult content movies”.
9:55 – CashGordon
– http://www.flickr.com/photos/meg/4453821027
– Tories launch a campaign – tweet with the tag ‘cashgordon’ and it will appear on our homepage
– Now, what could possibly go wrong…
– Flickr image tells the story…
– Now spinning that CashGordon was hacked by Labour stooges….in the Telegraph
– http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100030915/cashgordon-com-is-hacked-by-labour-stooges-the-online-election-gets-nasty/
– Wasn’t hacked, just poorly implemented as it didn’t block HTML or Javascript
14:29 – Windows Phone 7 Series
– Silverlight, XNA, Blend
– Developer tools available now
– Future looking really bright for MS with this updated platform
– But wait…….
– No copy and paste
– LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Suck it Windows fanboiz – http://blog.chrisgran.de/post/455131811/paul-thurrott-on-windows-phone-7-series
– Paul Thurrott on iPhone 1.0 on 2007 – And what’s up with the lack of cut/copy and paste? This is a basic OS feature that Apple included in the first Mac OS almost 25 years ago. It’s inexplicably missing from the iPhone, unavailable in any application or the wider system itself. Unreal.
– Windows Phone 7……There have been weird complaints this week, and you can almost feel the anti-Microsoft brigade chipping away at the patina of perfection that Microsoft has tried to erect around its new baby. The multitasking is limited. Users will only be able to get apps from the Marketplace, and not from third parties. Gasp! Is it true that there’s no copy and paste?
– No matter. Windows Phone combines those very few things that were right about Windows Mobile—primarily some business functionality—with a much wider set of new functionality that is exciting in both scope and possibility.
18:22 – IE9
– http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/ie9-may-actually-be-a-great-browser/
– Focus on performance and wait for it….HTML5
– Platform preview available today
– CSS3 features such as opacity, rounded corners, and selector APIs. SVG is now supported, something of a surprise given the company’s efforts to promote its Silverlight plug-in for rich graphics in the browser. It is not yet clear, however, whether the Canvas element is supported.
– Support for the audio and video tags is also promised, though it is not in the current preview. Microsoft showed H.264 720p video running directly in the browser.
– Same as chrome and safari – firefox video support of ogg theora only is looking like an isolated stance
– New javascript engine – better than Firefox, slightly behind other 2
– 6 times better than IE8
– IE9 also makes full use of hardware acceleration, speeding up HTML and graphics rendering, including that for the new SVG support.
– Throwing dev code, resource and testing behind JQuery
– MS supporting open source and open standards. Nice. Well played MS
– One more thing……
– No XP support
22:20 – Germans Running out of Browsers
– German government has issues warning that people shouldn’t be using Firefox…
– Browser security issue has come to light that Firefox are currently fixing.
– Following similar advice regarding IE, Germans are a little short of options for browsing!
24:05 – Opera Downloads Doubled
– Opera says their browser downloads have doubled since MS introduced the browser selection screen
– Not just Opera….
– http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62L1KE20100322
– IE down 1% in UK, Italy by 1.3% and France 2.5% in March compared to Feb
25:25 – Google TV
– Google, Intel and Sony working on Google TV
– Bring web to living room through set top box
– The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications
– Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers.
– The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.
– Imagine a version of google TV setup to auto download, unpack and move to the correct folder TV and Films
29:03 – iPad is coming
– Kindle for iPad…exept it’s Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers including the ipad
– Won’t be ready for April 3rd
– Will allow for browsing/buying books from Kindle store
– Supports read on one device, continue on another
– Bookmarks, notes, annotations
– Customise screen fonts, brightness, layout etc to suit your needs
– Barnes & Noble also coming to iPad, and many magazines too
– http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/first_looks_magazines_on_the_ipad.php
34:11 – Football Real Kick
– Plays football by blowing air out of the iPhone
– Hilarious!
35:28 – 17 Month Old baby using iPhone
– Even a 17 month old baby can use it

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