Tumbled Logic

Apple TV 3.0.1

Apple have released an update to the Apple TV 3.0 software.

…On a Saturday evening.

…And sent everybody who’s registered their Apple TV an e-mail telling them that they should update immediately.

The wording of the related technical support article has bizarre wording:

Symptoms

• You are using Apple TV software version 3.0 and all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be missing,

or

• You are using Apple TV software version 3.0 and all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be present, but you have not yet updated to Apple TV software version 3.0.1.

“If everything’s gone wrong, or if everything’s just fine…”

The e-mail has the subject “Important message about your Apple TV”, and reads:

Dear Customer, If you’ve installed the Apple TV 3.0 software update, you should immediately update to version 3.0.1. This prevents content from temporarily disappearing until it is resynced. To update your Apple TV software: 1. Reboot your Apple TV (unplug the power cord and plug it back in) 2. Select Settings > General from the main menu 3. Select Update Software 4. Select Download and Install

I honestly can’t recall Apple sending out an e-mail like this ever before. Somebody must have dropped the ball and then some.

Project Canvas costs

Honestly, I think they’re on a different planet.

PDF

The table also includes a modest cost recovery line which comprises anticipated income from listings and or the integration of services (following the model for linear channels for Freesat) and licensing of the Canvas brand, for example to ISPs that wish to publicise the tariffs that meet the Canvas minimum quality standard.

Wait, ISPs will have to pay the Joint Venture in order to be able to claim they’re quick enough?

I can positively feel Charles Dunstone itching, nay, clawing, to sign up.

Seriously, though. £12.6m just in technology costs prior to launch? What the hell are they developing?

Nuttgate

It’s tempting to think that the ACMD is just a scientific body which weighs up just the health-related issues of drug abuse.

Except it isn’t. While politicians may talk about the “wider issues”, those issues are an integral part of the ACMD’s remit and are taken into account when it produces its recommendations.

The members of the Council, up until a few days ago, were:

• Professor David Nutt (Chairman): Psychiatrist and pharmacologist University of Bristol
• Dr Dima Abdulrahim: Research Briefings Manager - National Treatment Agency
• Lord Victor Adebowale: Chief Executive of Turning Point.
• Mr Martin Barnes: Chief Executive of Drugscope
• Dr Margaret Birtwistle: Specialist GP, Senior Tutor - Education and Training Unit, St George’s Hospital & Forensic Medicine Examiner
• Simon Bray: Commander in the Metropolitan Police, overseeing 10 London boroughs
• Dr Simon Campbell CBE FRS: Scientific Consultant
• Eric Carlin: Former Chief Executive of Mentor UK, Chair of the English Drug Education Forum
• Ms Carmel Clancy: Principal Lecturer in Mental Health and Addictions, Middlesex University
• Professor Ilana Crome: Professor of Addiction Psychiatry, Keele University Medical School, Harplands Hospital
• Ms Robyn Doran: Registered Mental Health Nurse & Service Director, Substance Misuse CNWL Mental Health Trust
• Mr Patrick Hargreaves: School inspector, the Drugs & Alcohol Advisor for Durham County Council and a regional PSHEE advisor for the DCSF
• Ms Caroline Healy: Advisor working with the Department of Health
• Matthew Hickman: Reader in Public Health and Epidemiology, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol
• Professor Leslie Iversen: Retired Professor of Pharmacology, University of Oxford
• Dr Les King: Part-time advisor to the Department of Health
• David Liddell: Director of the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF)
• Dr John Marsden: Research Psychologist, Institute of Psychiatry
• Mr Peter Martin: Independent Consultant in Substance Misuse
• Dr Fiona Measham: Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Lancaster University
• Dr Anita Nolan: Consultant, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Oral Medicine, Dundee Dental Hospital, NHS Tayside
• Mr Trevor Pearce: Executive Director. Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)
• District Judge Justin Philips: Appointed to the Bench in 1989 after 19 years as a criminal barrister
• Richard Phillips
• Dr Ian Ragan: Director of CIR Consultancy Ltd providing consultancy services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries
• Mr Howard Roberts: Deputy Chief Constable, Nottinghamshire Police
• Dr Mary Rowlands: Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist, Devon Partnership NHS Trust
• Dr Polly Taylor: Freelance Consultant in Veterinary Anaesthesia
• Ms Monique Tomlinson: Freelance consultant in substance misuse
• Marion Walker FRPharmS: Clinical Director - substance misuse service - Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Clinical Team Pharmacist - National Treatment Agency, Secretary of PharMAG (Pharmacy Misuse Advisory Group)
• Mr Arthur Wing: Assistant Chief Officer, Sussex Probation Area

Just so you know.

Yarr

Tom Watson questions the Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, on illicit filesharing:

Mr Bradshaw: …the cost of doing nothing to the music industry alone in this country is estimated at about £200 million.

Q26 Mr Watson: Whose estimate is that?

Mr Bradshaw: That is the industry’s estimate. It is an estimate that I have not seen challenged by anyone in any serious way.

I’m far from convinced that this was a joke

Or, indeed, this

Or, for that matter, this

But, y’know, what’s complete ignorance of the field you’re legislating between friends?

Thanks to Tom for asking the questions.

Substance Abuse

To: Alan Johnson
CC: Douglas Alexander
Subject: Professor David Nutt

Dear Mr Johnson,

Yesterday I learned that, in your capacity as Secretary of State for the Home Department, you had written to Professor David Nutt, formerly chair of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, in light of comments he made at a lecture at King’s College, London. In this letter, you wrote:

It is important that I can can be confident that the advice from the ACMD will be about matters of evidence.

Your recent comments have gone beyond such evidence and have been lobbying for a change of government policy. This goes against the requirements on general standards of public life required by your position. As chair of the ACMD you can avoid appearing to implicate the Council in your comments and thereby undermining its scientific independence.

When you wrote previously around the relative harms of drugs comparing ecstasy with the risks of horse riding my predecessor made clear that it is not the job of the Chair of the Government’s advisory Council to comment or initiate public debate on the policy framework for drugs. Given this I was surprised and disappointed by your further comments to the press this week.

As Home Secretary, it is for me to make decisions, having received advice from the ACMD. It is vitally important that the public understand the Council’s role and also understand what the government is trying to achieve.

It is important that the government’s messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them.

As my lead advisor on drugs harms I am afraid the manner in which you have acted runs contrary to your responsibilities.

I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD.

I would therefore ask you to step down from the Council with immediate effect.

You are, of course, correct in your assertion that a coherent message is a vital in order to maintain public understanding. You are also correct, in general terms, that it is not the role of the ACMD nor its Chair to engage in public debate on these issues. However, you are mistaken in your belief that doing so instigates some kind of schism which does not already exist.

As you are of course aware, the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs is a Home Office-funded council made up of highly-regarded experts in their respective fields. Their findings, released periodically, are a matter of public record and being independent in nature may not be entirely coherent with the government’s position at any given point. Indeed, if this were not the case, there would be serious questions raised with respect to the independence of the advice formulated.

Moreover, public debate with respect to the use, in various forms and contexts, of controlled substances has raged for at least as long as these substances have held their status. This public debate undoubtedly helps in shaping official policy, given the democratic nature of our society.

Thanks to the long-term existence of legislation controlling the sale, distribution and use of these substances, much of the debate is framed in terms of anecdotal evidence, opinion and an often well-meaning desire to curb the negative consequences of the misuse of controlled substances.

The one aspect of the debate which is often found to be lacking is informed, expert opinion and evidence-driven conclusions. This is surely vital both in terms of injecting reliable positions into the debate, and in shaping government policy.

The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs aimed to fill this void, and has done so admirably over the course of the last few years. The advice, reports and conclusions that it has produced have largely been unparalleled in their depth and rigour.

Where you state “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy”, please allow me to reassure you on one count, at least: there is very little public confusion with respect to the scientific advice surrounding these substances.

Where the public’s confusion does arise, however, is in terms of the marked contrast between expert advice and policy. The public’s expectation is principally that in an area of policy which centres upon the use of a given substance, the scientific advice is the primary guidance for the direction a policy is taken. As a former Secretary of State for Health who has been involved in shaping policies for tobacco, alcohol, and combatting obesity, you are undoubtedly aware of this.

This is not to say, however, that I am naïve enough to believe that policy is solely driven by independent scientific advice; I am well aware that there are other sources of interest which apply to any given debate of this kind. Unfortunately, the weight of evidence in virtually every respect falls against, rather than in favour of, current government policy on drugs. In your role of Home Secretary, I’m sure you will have reviewed this and so it need not be recounted here.

Suffice to say, the significant body of public confusion with respect to drugs policy has little to do Professor Nutt’s comments, and more relates to the fact that government policy is at odds with expert opinion not only in terms of health, but also in economic, social and criminal justice terms.

In other words, the public confusion arises primarily because the government’s current policy seeks to exacerbate, rather than abate, the problems caused by the illicit supply and consumption of controlled substances, and the moves made by your predecessor—the moves criticised by Profession Nutt—reinforced this.

While I recognise the fact that it was your predecessor who held responsibility for the reclassification of Cannabis to which Professor Nutt referred, and that by convention you cannot be held directly responsible for your predecessor’s actions—even if you both form part of the same government—it does not automatically follow that a poor decision made by your predecessor must be reinforced by an equally poor decision by her successor.

As I have long since lost any hope that this government might formulate a policy on drugs and drug-related activities which is based upon the available evidence, there seems to be little value in urging you and your office to review the government’s position in this area, but I shall do so in any case.

I do, however, find it absolutely necessary to express, in the strongest possible terms, my disbelief at the aforementioned letter that you sent to Professor Nutt. Indeed, I find it difficult to consider a demand of resignation of the Chair of an purportedly-independent advisory council because his public airing of honest and considered opinions differs from that of government policy to be anything short of an abhorrent and horrific abuse of the nature by which the ACMD is funded, and—by extension—the Home Office and your position as Home Secretary.

I must therefore request that your next correspondence with Professor Nutt is a letter expressing the government’s apologies and an invitation for him to resume his position of Chair of the ACMD. I appreciate your attention to this matter.

A copy of this letter has been sent to Mr Douglas Alexander MP, in his capacity as my Member of Parliament. You will note that Mr Alexander’s constituency is situated in Paisley, in the West of Scotland; an area by no means unfamiliar with the negative consequences of drug abuse and related criminal activities.

You might therefore, if taken without consideration of the available evidence, find my position which counters that of government policy to be somewhat surprising. I take some comfort in the fact that, as Home Secretary, you will have been appropriately apprised and therefore this will not be the case.

I have also taken the liberty of publishing a copy of this letter on my website, at the following address:

http://nevali.net/post/228853506/substance-abuse

This link should be permanent—as such, you may find it more convenient to circulate it rather than the full text of this letter to your colleagues.

Yours sincerely,

Mo McRoberts.

These are my policies

I am not a politician.

If I were, this is what my leaflet would mention:—

• Gay marriage
• Legalisation of recreational drugs, produced under license
• Legally-binding separation of religion and state, particularly where children are concerned
• Abandonment of PFI schemes which are crippling the economy and leaving local authorities and NHS trusts hamstrung
• Reduce reoffending rates by shifting focus from sheer punishment to a combination of punishment and rehabilitation
• Increase funding to and powers of the Office of the Information Commissioner
• Restrict the ability of the police to perform actions under anti-terror legislation, such as stop-and-search and detention without trial, except under exceptional circumstances and with the approval of a judge.
• Reform of public transport; the public must be the foremost concern, not a group of shareholders.
• Cost-cutting throughout the NHS from the top down, not the other way around.
• Reform of copyright law to enshrine so-called “fair use” in law, retaining the rights of time-shifting of broadcasts and of “fair dealing”, and adding the rights to freely format-shift and share within a household.
• Right to reasonable access to healthcare services, including abortion, throughout the United Kingdom.
• Encryption, secure communications, privacy and safety online taught in all secondary schools. Free courses for adults.
• Enforced separation between retail and investment banking services.
• As soon as is practically possible, begin a gradual scale-back of our armed forces.
• Cancellation of Trident.
• Cancellation of the National Identity Register.
• Reform of the postal service in a way which enables private-sector competition without crippling Royal Mail and encouraging fraudulent reporting of mail volumes, as the current situation does.
• Instigate a copyright-free policy on the output of certain public-sector organisations, including the Royal Mail’s PAF and Postzon databases, Met Office forecasts and imagery, Ordnance Survey’s mapping data, Hansard’s record.
• Urgently review the VOA’s taxation policy of fibre networks and similar connectivity schemes.
• Create funding pools for local high-speed Internet access programmes.

(There are others, but they’d need fuller explanations).

Vote for me… hypothetically!

Freeview HD SI Scrambling Proposal: The Responses

Ofcom has published the responses to the proposal from BBC Free To View Limited to permit it to compress the Event Information Table (which contains EPG data) in a way which can only legally be decompressed by obtaining a license from them, which would come with certain restrictive conditions, including non-disclosure.

You can find the responses here.

There are zero in favour.

Not one.

Nil.

How the EU works: A guide for British readers

1. The UK Government lobbies, via its representatives on the mainland, for European legislation to take a particular course. Just like in national parliaments, deals are done and suchlike. Unlike, national parliaments, it can undertake these actions safe in the knowledge that practically nobody in the UK will notice.
2. (Optional) It issues a consultation on the implementation of such legislation, knowing perfectly well that the response will be overwhelmingly negative
3. (Optional) The response to the consultation could go either way; if it decides to press ahead, the timing will be such that any EU-sourced legislation would coincide neatly with it
4. The EU directive is passed, working pretty much how the UK government wanted it to, but would never admit
5. The deadline for national implementation draws close, and legislation is drawn up in parliament
6. The legislation passes without much debate, because everybody knows it’s going to happen anyway
7. Officials talk to sympathetic hacks off the record and indicate that the Government didn’t want to implement anything like the EU Directive, because it’s far too {harsh,mean,expensive,lenient,tolerant,intolerant}, or whatever, but we’re left with no choice.
8. The Daily Mail prints a front-page article about how terrible the EU is and how it’s making a mockery of the Houses.
9. Everybody forgets that it was the UK Government’s idea in the first place and (optionally) there was even a consultation on it.
10. The opposition complain about the EU publicly to win eurosceptic votes, but their MEPs voted in line with the Government position in any case.

#cabinetforum

Lord Mandelson confirmed today his plans to implement a “three strikes” policy for “persistent illicit downloaders” (let’s not use the word “pirate”, shall we).

Pardon me if I feel this is a touch… foolish, but I think I’m justified in this position.

In the name of curbing the perceived death of the creative industries (which are thriving, incidentally, economic downturn notwithstanding), major rights-holders insist upon:

1. Implementing draconian DRM schemes which not only fail to reduce piracy, but impede activities of legitimate users and pushes them towards illicit downloads.

2. Lobbying governments for disconnection policies for “persistent offenders”, despite this plan being flawed on pretty much every level.

Let’s not forget that the music industry has seen record levels of singles sales, despite the aforementioned economic downturn.

Also bear in mind that, not only have the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group come out against a disconnection policy, but so have the Police and Security Services of all people.

So, yeah. Excuse me if I’m slightly annoyed by this utter perversity.