For a man who’s title is currently Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, educated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and is hotly tipped to become a major part of the Lisbon-Treaty-generated-unelected-cou-detat-european-super-parliment, you’d think the power-addicted, peace-process screwing, ’shreud loaning‘ rat would leave well enough alone.
You’d be wrong.
Under the Digital Economy Bill, Peter… Sorry, BARON Mandelson has been given unlimited powers to extend penalties to (suspected, theres no real trials) illegal filesharers or copyright violators online. Similar to the much discussed and eventually culled french ‘three-strikes’ rule on filesharing (that Mr Sarkosy would fail), its once…twice…three times a bitch, as £50,000 fine would fall through your letter box (to be noted, this is per household, so thats one movie for mum, a e-book for dad, and a tune for Ann, and poor little timmy foots the bill). But Peter ‘The Baron’ Mandelson isnt done yet.
His powers, under this bill, are extended to that he can appoint whoever the hell he likes to keep an eye on you and your internet usage to catch right’s infringers (i’d say they should look inward for right’s infringement…) , and oust you from the network. No Trial, no Jury, hell, as far as I can read, you dont even need to know you’re under suspicion until your under-arrest. Then you don’t need to know exactly what your charged with, then you have no realistic way of knowing what potential punishment ‘The Baron’ will cook up.
And I mean ‘cook up’. In the bill there is no limit on fine amount or potential jail-time.
The icing on the cash-filled cake is that the the Government have already assured it’s success, by stating that ISP’s who are caught-not-catching copyright infringers will get (at least) £250,000 fines.
This kind of racketeering is shameful and pointless, and to add insult to injury to the internet-generation, the bill says nothing about providing computers for schools, guaranteeing broadband access for disenfranchised families and low-income areas, increasing governmental openess, adoption of Open Source Software in the public sector, cracking down on spams, scams, or credit card fraud. Nothing. Not a bit.
With such pressing matters already pushing Britian’s economy into the under-flab of international competition, what does this bill concern itself with? Ofcom is told to ‘observe’ more (umm, i thought that was their point?), Channel 4 gets public-service broadcast responsibilities (yay, more crap!), and expanding mobile broadband investment (because that’s going to be great for service in already served areas, such as LONDON).
And to finish the whole shambels off, a nice little ditty on compulsory age ratings on all video games…
why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?
This blog is starting to turn into a Lenovo ad, but this time, there are no good factors to my recent experience.
My X61 Tablet died, completly braindead, no power, no nothing.
Unfortunatly I left it a bit longer than was nessary due to home moving, going back to university, restarting and old job and starting a new one, aswell as becoming Design Editor for my university’s independent newspaper.
Eventually, I made the call to Lenovo, and they were great as always with dealing with my query. After posting off the laptop (the week of the 18th of October), minus hard drive and battery (call it paranoia), I waited. And two weeks-ish later, the laptop arrived (4th October), and all was well after a motherboard replacement.
Well, not really.
The laptop had been out of action so long that the Windows 7 RC that I had been using had been deactivated, so laptop was essentially dead until I re-jigged it (thankyouverymuch Queens University/Microsoft).
When I did, something wasnt right, the wireless wasnt working :S. Hooked up to my network, downloaded all the updates and firmware upgrades I could find. Still no joy. Now, to clarify, the wireless WORKS, but you have to have the accesspoint up ones backside for it to be detected, with one ‘bar’.
Of course, it doesnt take much to work out what happened; whoever replaced the motherboard, neglected to reattach the wireless antenna.
Not looking foward to sending it away for the sake of a few cables, I emailed lenovo the below;
Hello
I took delivery of this last week but haven’t had a chance to set it up since then, and lo and behold, my wireless is now broken. Not boken as in non function, the kind of broken where i have to sit on top of my access point (i mean this literally) to get a wireless signal.
Considering the repair docket states that the motherboard was replaced, this leads me to believe that one of your repair staff neglected to reconnect the wireless antenna after the replacement.
I refuse to send the device away for another month to attach one cable. I would have expected more-than-cursory inspection of a full motherboard replacement.
I now have a brilliant tablet with perfect battery life that is next to useless unless tethered.
Please advise as to what can be done to resolve this.
PS Is the replacement motherboard covered by a fresh warranty?
Regards
Andrew Bolster
Still waiting on even an automated reply so when I got back this evening, I cracked it open and lo’ and behold.
Kind enough to tape them down too...
So, the fix was simple, there are three connection points on the Intel Wireless Card (4965AG), TR1 R0 and TR2, and only 2 connections (Gray and Black). In case anyone else comes across something like this i put the gray in TR1 and black in R0, although I assume that as long as one of the TR’s and one of the R0’s is connected you should be grand.
Currently, this is a major American congressional argument, and hasn’t really come up publicly in Europe (outside of Scandinavia , but Net Neutrality is going to be one of those issues that if people aren’t made aware of it, the legislation removing it will sweep over all of us.
Under the Digital Economy Bill, Peter… Sorry, BARON Mandelson has been given unlimited powers to extend penalties to (suspected, theres no real trials) illegal filesharers or copyright violators online. Similar to the much discussed and eventually culled french ‘three-strikes’ rule on filesharing (that Mr Sarkosy would fail), its once…twice…three times a bitch, as £50,000 fine would fall through your letter box (to be noted, this is per household, so thats one movie for mum, a e-book for dad, and a tune for Ann, and poor little timmy foots the bill). But Peter ‘The Baron’ Mandelson isnt done yet.
