"The company is still going to be run by John Carmack"

Everyone company that gets sold to another company says things like this. My question is, "The company is still going to be run by John Carmack" ... yes, but for how long? ... I've lost count of the number of companies who say this sort of thing and then a year or two later their founders leave saying they are going to pursue new business avenues and new opportunities etc..

Which leaves ID high speed easy to control style of games and ID's attitude to open software exactly where? ... Somehow I don't see their new owners being so open with source code and as for game designs, its easy to make yet another FPS but its hard for the bosses of games companies to see what makes a good FPS more like a sport than a game. The way Quake 3 and 4 games play online are effectively more like sporting games than just FPS games. How many other companies have failed to create such successful online FPS games ... far more fail than succeed. So any company change which risks new management forcing their ideas into games is a bad thing.

"fair minded policies"

You have got to be joking to apply that to this political move. BT are going to gain £170M+ per year from this scam, and in return they are going to give 2Mbit connections! ... and then the directors take the rest of the profits. Compare that with the Broadband in other countries now, let alone where they will be in 3 years from now. 2Mbit connections is pathetic. Its a poor cheap product and then they take the rest of the profits. They are barely giving anything to the people.

I can accept concepts of fair mindedness but this isn't one of them cases, even though they are trying to imply it is in an attempt to convince and condition people into accepting another £6 loss per year. BT will pocket tens of millions out of this after under investing in the phone network infrastructure for decades. Compare South Korea with the phone network in the UK. Compared even just French Broadband speeds with the UK. The UK is charing a lot of money, giving poor product in return, and then taking huge profits. Now the government wants to give them a few hundred million more over the next few years. Wonderful. Thanks.

As for Internet TV good luck with convincing people 2Mbits is good enough to replace even just analogue TV with it let alone trying to compete with HDTV quality. (Also thats before you get into the new mine field of the government then wanting and being able to profile each and every TV show you watch to identify anyone who may dare to commit a thought crime against them by thinking the government is greedy self serving arrogant control freaks. Thats a far better reason for the Government to give people Broadband so they can use it to monitor people more closely. They can then gain even more control over people. But hey lets keep giving the people in power ever more power to monitor and then suppress anyone who opposes them. Its not as if they are robbing everyone blind of hundreds of billions of tax payers money to prop up their greedy friends and then coming back again to find even more ways to rob people again. Then they try to say they are doing it to help and clearly some fools even believe them. Hey, if you ever get mugged, remember you are helping them and their way of life.

"A third possibility might be that the last mile infrastructure is communally owned"

A fourth possibility is they pay for it out of the cost to the people who need better connections outside of the major cities.

Getting others to pay for it is nuts. Also where does this thinking end? Can the government simply choose ever more ways to tax people to give to yet more companies to partially fund what the company should be earning from the sale of its products.

Also they are selling a rubbish product. 2Mbits is obsolite now. So do they then come back in a few years time, to take even more money to pay to upgrade it to say 8Mbits ... then come back again and again taking ever more money every few years. Each time taking millions more to pay for incremental upgrades.

What is it with the current UK government. Their greedy corrupt control freak attitude seems to have no end. I love how they spin it as (implied *just*) 50p-per-month levy. That sounds so much better than £6 (about $10) extra tax per year. The UK Government gives hundreds of billions to their rich banker friends and then their friends in telecoms also want some free extra money, so the Government decides to take some more money from people. Haven't they given enough already this year?!?. £6 may not be much when you have a job, but its a lot for the elderly on a pension. Also if someone walked up to you in the street and just tried to take that amount of money off you, everyone would complain about it, yet this government can just decide to take it wherever they wish.

Its not as if BT are short of money... "BT to freeze pay of 100,000 employees" ... while "Ian Livingston, the chief executive, stands to make more than £6 million in bonuses this year if performance targets are met. This is on top of his basic salary of £850,000." ... Its a corrupt arragant UK government giving millions more to an arragant corrupt boss treating his staff with contempt. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article5890128.ece

Also if you're only counting Wars, then you haven't really been paying attention.

Governments compete for resources in more ways than simply wars.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Application_outside_the_military

Which is why this thinking from the title info is flawed (when applied to Governments) ...
"You can give $10 billion to a company to squander or you can invest $10 billion into a battery research and just give the findings to the whole of the US industry for free."

Governments compete for resources and use (and work with) businesses to compete for resources. Therefore they are more likely to want to protect what they give to a business by making it closed information that prevents competitor (countries as well as) businesses just taking and using it to compete against them. Governments are playing effectively giant chess games with their resources trying to out smart their opponents at every turn.

Its a nice sharing world idea to just give the information away and then everyone benefits from it but the current world doesn't work that way.

Governments are exceptionally competitive in their outlook as they are filled with very competitive people all trying to climb up to ever greater levels of political power. Its no wonder then that they apply that same competitive thinking to everything they do. The same is true of high up corporate people in big businesses so its no wonder they want to work with politicians. Money and power used to make more money and power.

Our world throughout history has been composed of people holding one of two Utopian views which are ironically mutually exclusive. What some people want other people don't want and so we get two opposing groups each wanting something the other doesn't want.

Therefore if you want a sharing world, you will not get that by appointing competitive political suits to the role of managing the world as they don't want a world where everything is shared out. They don't even want to compete. They simply want to be in control and won't let others have a chance to compete if they can at all avoid it. (Meanwhile they will happily use divide on concur on all they wish to control). The rules they use to maintain control vary around the world, but ultimately they are still in control. So their thinking centers around means of maintaining control. Concepts of sharing are wrong as far as they are concerned, as they could then inadvertently be helping their competitors. Its therefore no wonder they so often bias towards seeking means of control.

Its for this reason I find our current time of witnessing the earliest moments of the growth of the Internet is utterly fascinating The Internet is growing out of the concepts of sharing knowledge. Its mutually exclusive to the concepts of control and yet its clear the majority of people around the world want to be able to sharing knowledge. (Exactly what they appointed politicians (and big business) doesn't want, but try ever getting that straight answer out politicians ... they will twist and turn words for hours before ever finally admitting its what they really think, yet they prove it throughout their actions not their words).

Its fascinating that we are watching the world trying to come to terms with the concepts of sharing knowledge. Open source is another one of these battle ground areas where some think it should be closed and so they can maintain control over it (and want to maintain control over it).

I think we really are at a turning point in human history. Which way it goes who knows, but I can't help thinking the people in power don't want the Internet the way it is and would sooner use it to find new ways to control.

"remember it was Disney and Pixar making the first ones"

It was Pixar making the first films, with Disney as the distributor *. They had some input but not that much. Even back then, like most creative teams find, Pixar found Disney's commercial overview input irritating at times, which is why Buzz Lightyear has Copyright Disney on his butt as an in-joke about their control. Now Disney own Pixar they can do what they like. So there is reason to be concerned about Disney corporate thinking blocking creativity.

(* - When the distribution deal with Disney was nearing its end, Pixar was ready to walk away from Disney as each of their films were very successful and any company would have loved to have worked with or even owned Pixar. It was at this point Disney decided to buy Pixar for $7.4bn because Pixar was financially beating everything Disney's own studios were producing).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4642116.stm

I'm also getting this problem with Slashdot, but only on some pages. (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10)

The work around for now is to use CTRL + A to highlight everything, because the text is drawn white on a white background! (due to the main dark green title bar missing with only its left hand edge dark green graphics image visible).

Ironically speaking about Firefox (the browser) the article reminded me of the brain control technology in the film Firefox ... as they say in the film, "Think only in Russian!" ... (In that case, I guess you could say, with this article, Firefox browses you!).

Murdoch does see the Internet as harmful to his news organization. That's why he wants to change News Corp's strategy and more to the point why he has to change News Corp's business strategy.

He also wants other news organizations to follow him into charging for content (and he wants to scare them into following him by implying the "malfunctioning" business model is harming their business). The fear theme of change in the media industry has been discussed a number of times in that industry. The media industry is uncertain of its future, as that Murdoch article highlights.

Your comments show a narrow sighted thinking and then attempting to attack it on that basis. That's a straw man argument.

For a start, you need to take a broader view point to see each example of their behavior and then to (over time) extract the repeating aspects of their behavior. This in effect distills down to the core driving behaviors that define and dominate their core personality. People like Murdoch and the Sony CEO conform to a very recognized personality group. Once you find that underlying pattern of behavior, it provides a model to check against each example of their behavior. It also shows how they will react to given situations. It also explains why they behave the way they do and highlights the goals they seek. In a sense, you end up profiling them. So over time the more they say the more they reveal of themselves to help strengthen the profile. They conform to a very recognizable pattern of behavior.

Murdoch's arrogant, self centered, self serving, manipulative behavior provides very good warning signs of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder which is a common behavior in many high up business people. Narcissistic behavior provides a competitive advantage in highly competitive environments, such as business and politics, (especially as NPDs lack a lot of empathy to others, as they are so focused on their own needs and so manipulate others to enhance their own needs). So on average, they tend to fight more easily to the top of any group of people. Ideal behavior for business and politics. Their behavior gives them a competitive advantage. This same pattern of behavior can also been seen repeating throughout history.

"On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed"

Its the same thinking as Rupert Murdoch, i.e. "News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites

Rupert Murdoch and this Sony CEO are the same type of person. People like them don't get to become high up in corporations without being power seeking control freaks. Their ruthless arrogant self serving behavior provides them with a competitive advantage which allows them to fight their way high up the corporate hierarchical power tree structures to gain power over others. This is why their kind of personality type feature so prominently in very competitive environments like business and politics.

So its no wonder the people at the top of these corporations think in terms of how to apply pressure to control others. They do that in their jobs to stay at the top so its no surprise they apply that same kind of thinking to the Internet.

For so many decades these control freak kind of people ruled over the old school media to control what people could see and when they could see it and for how much. These control freaks can't cope with a new open world where people can choose what they want to see and when they want to see it and even see it for free. Its an alien world to the control freaks. They want to be in power, to control others, they don't want open sharing of information.

The new and media companies are not going to die. Its simply evolving into media outlets that provide content that attract like minded people around open information that appeals to this group of people. The companies that work like this will gain advertising and other incomes like in some cases merchandising and cross promotional incomes etc.. while the old control freak media companies will die out as they fail to control what people can see and do.

The sooner the better.

"Good thing the FCC isn't in the UK"

The direct equivalent of the FCC in the UK is Ofcom.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

That securedhome.co.uk article has nothing to do with the scope of Ofcom or FCC as both are about enforcing adherence to legal broadcasting. (I seem to remember there is something in the broadcasting act to allow entry into homes to check equipment, (e.g. to stop pirate radio stations), but even if they cannot there are many other organisations in the UK that can enter the home for many reasons).

As for organisations who have the right to enter UK homes, the number of them is growing all the time...

e.g.
Parking bailiffs may win right to enter homes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548145/Parking-bailiffs-may-win-right-to-enter-homes.html

Bailiffs may get extra powers to enter homes
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bailiffs-may-get-extra-powers-to-enter-homes-1206531.html

Official snoopers get extra powers to enter homes as 13 new laws 'boost Big Brother state'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-513973/Official-snoopers-extra-powers-enter-homes-13-new-laws-boost-Big-Brother-state.html

That's just a few examples in the UK. Just look up anything Jacqui Smith is behind, because she is at the centre of the growing Police State in the UK.

"slow as dogs balls"

I wasn't aware dogs balls were a standard unit of speed? ... These SI units get more eccentric every year.

"Also, neither would you. Hence, rendering the whole facility useless, and causing you extra inconvenience."

Not really, he just keeps OIYNTDttye7it867t&%&^%&^T( in a text file near his root directory called passwords.txt ;)

"If Mozilla really hates the way the default tabs function, they need to start looking at Tree Style Tabs for a replacement."

I wish they could just *let users choose* which way *they wish to work*.

For example, I use tabs a lot. I don't want tree tabs on by default, its as bad as grouping on the task bar (which is off on any machine I have to use). I want a minimalist user interface, I don't want any more levels of indirection added. (e.g. Each tree click etc.. forces more interactions). But even if I do want grouping, I can do that now. I hit CTRL-N and I've got a new group of tabs, which I do sometimes already use.

Keeping it minimalist makes it easier to use, a smaller download and faster to learn. We want more people to move onto Firefox. Adding ever more complexity risks alienating ever more non-technical users. If people want additional extra complex functionality, then let them have the ability to choose to add it in a modular way. (Again that idea of user choice).

If they want to improve peoples work flow, they would do far better to fix these kinds of bugs:
(1) drag and drop into sub folders can sometimes fail due to boundaries of sub-folders being outside folders and so windows close and sub folders get lost, before drop operation can complete.

(2) Creating new bookmark folders sometimes fails to allow drag and drop into them, as if they are not there (work around is CTRL-N and then drag and drop into new version of bookmark folder lists).

(3) Creating new bookmark folders some times gets duplicated.

(4) Sometimes fails to hold open selected currently opened main bookmark folder. This has the effect of again droping windows when cursor moves left/right even within opened list window.

I could go on, but these bugs have been there for a long time and each slow up work flow.

If they want to improve peoples work flow, they would do better to fix these kinds of bugs rather than find new ways to complicate the design, but then almost all programmers know its so much more fun to writing new functionality than it is to fix existing bugs.

"you can go around all the famous places from the comfort of your PC"

That's not going to stop tourism. If anything its going to greatly encourage tourism. I've just been driving down a road in Rome, then I jumped to Paris and crossed the Seine. All within a few minutes. My first thought was I wish I was there for real.

I can understand Greek fears of wanting to maintain privacy of buildings and routes behind buildings etc... Although that is security through obscurity, which is a very weak form of protection. If anything if crooks can find a way in via Street View its stress testing houses to become physically more secure.

Also all privacy is ultimately an attempt at protection against exploitation. So privacy isn't such a problem, its how it can be exploited. I think how someone can exploit a new technology gives a clear distinction of if its a good or a potentially bad new technology to implement. I don't think all Big Brother technology is a bad thing. (I would say that Big Brother technology that can cause greater political and/or commercial corruption to grow is bad, as that opens up ever greater exploitation of people without power to resist or stop being exploited or outright abused (e.g. Phorm and all DPI technology is a good example of an outright violation of privacy for the financial gain of just the few who run and control that technology). However I don't think Street View is such a technology. Sure it could be exploited by someone looking to break in, but security through obscurity is already a weak protection. Crooks have found it no trouble to break into houses for centuries. Better to stress test building security now and sort it out.

Also I think one of most important aspects of Google Street View is its historical importance. Imagine say in 100 years from now the historical importance of being able to view cities all over the world as they were once decades before. It'll obviously take decades to build up such a detailed history of changes, but future generations are going to love being able to see how previous generations lived. I wish I could view my city decades or even centuries ago. (Imagine for example future Google searches back through all this data to dig up views of a house you are interested in buying back throughout its entire existence, from the moment it was built right up to the present day).

Future generations are going to be able to look back like never before with Google Street View data. I think its utterly fascinating just how much potential this data has to allow future generations to look back at us and how we live now.

The way you wrote "as far as *the abuse* can go." made me think at first it was a quote of what I said, but I see I didn't say that. :)

Anyway even though the people in power use their terrorist 'Wild Card' whenever they want to bring in yet more Big Brother moves, its not just about terrorists etc... For example, in the UK they had the IRA attacking for years and doing far more damage than any current terrorist, yet the UK lived happily without the need for the police state they are building now. Its not about terror. It hasn't been for years. Its now an outright power grab by the political elite in power, as they seek ever more ways to grab ever more power. (But then even terrorists want to be in charge and force others to follow their ways, so they also are acting ultimately out of a desire to be in power). The political elite constantly seek power over others, that's ultimately why they want to work in politics. They wouldn't last long in their jobs if they didn't seek power over others, as other people who do seek power, would undermine them in such a competitive environment. That means the most power seeking people tend toward the top in politics and they are the ones who dictate the rules and changes to laws etc..

It seems month by month the UK is becoming one of the the fastest growing police states in the world. Judging by the rampant self serving corruption in the UK government, its a warning to the rest of the world. For example:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=6430&edition=1&ttl=20090512154613&#paginator

There is growing anger in the UK against their ever increasingly corrupt leaders. Its getting to the point where everyone needs to stand up and say no more to the current political elite. But the problem is this slip into a global Big Brother police state is happening all around the world, just at different speeds to the UK. Its just most evident in the most politically corrupt countries like the UK, but this same slide is happening in every country at different speeds as their political elite see new ways to gain ever more power. Its eventually going to take everyone in every country to stand up to their leaders and say no more abuse of technology for ever more power.

But getting people to stop the political elite is being slowed up by their politicians game of making people believe they are powerless, so they cannot do or say anything to oppose their leaders. They want to promote division between groups. Its rule by divide and conquer. Small groups can't stand up to a government. But remember the people in power are very much a small minority of the population and while the government think they run it all, if the general population decides to stand up and say no more, every government has to listen. (This divide and conquer tactic of slowing up attempts to oppose them, is ironically helping to build greater anger in societies, who are being made to feel ever more unfairly treated and so its building ever greater anger and pressure for change against the current system, until it does eventually explode in their faces).

We have two problems remaining before people will stand up and say no more. The first is the technology is beyond the understanding of the majority of non-technical people. That could be solved if the technically minded people gave a coherent message of anger against the technology. But the second problem is ironically caused by technologically minded people getting distracted by in-fighting about inefficiencies between communications of Big Brother technology. The Nazis had huge communication inefficiencies, but that didn't stop them making a horrific world.

All the in fighting plays into the hands of the political elite as they want divide and conquer arguments to divide groups. We technically minded people need to get past the in-fighting and arguing about technology and focus on the big picture of where we are all heading if this rampant abuse of all new technology continues without any coherent opposition.

To quote, "With great power comes great responsibility" - while thats just a quote, morally it makes a lot of sense, but a lot of the political elite keep showing around the world that they lack empathy towards others. A lot of them have their own interests at heart. This same behavior has been shown throughout history. They can't be trusted to be fair. They spend their lives seeking new ways to gain power over others. They are determined to abuse technology as far as they can and in doing so, will and are abusing everyone they have power over. There has to be limits. Currently the feature creep is so vast that we get news of yet more moves towards Big Brother in some part of the world, just about every other day at the moment. There has to be limits and some fairness or we are going to walk into a nightmare world where a minority in power totally abuse the majority of people, without limit, for their own gain. Knowledge is power and the polticial elite are determined to seek ever more power.

"Because we can (ab)use this technology"

They seem determined to abuse technology as far as it can go. They need to learn that just because we now have ever more technology to abuse peoples privacy, that doesn't mean that's the right thing to keep on doing ever more. For example, just because we have the technology to knock down everyone's door, drag the people out of the house and strip search them in the road, that doesn't mean that's what everyone wants them to do. If they are just allowed to keep abusing technology as far as it can go, then we are walking into a horrific world. This abuse has to stop.