You can have any color (sic)...
... as long as it's black. (Henry Ford)
The pre-installed PC market remains the most visible aspect of Microsoft's monopoly grip on the desktop market; to all intents and purposes, if you walk into a retail outlet and buy a PC, there is still no alternative to getting one with Windows on it. That's not a market driven by consumer choice.
The news from Dell is interesting; apparently in response to consumer pressure over pre-installed Vista machines, they have had to restore the option of ordering a machine with XP instead. Presumably the only thing which will change that market dynamic would be a withdrawal of support for the superseded release.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 09:31 PM GMT+00:00
I've already blogged, here and here, about a Private Member's Bill currently passing through the UK parliamentary process; the Bill would amend the UK Freedom of Information Act so as to exempt both houses of parliament from its provisions.
As far as the general public is concerned, there's only really one question the debate needs to consider: "as a voter, would you trust our elected representatives to abide by the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, even if the law did not actually oblige them to do so?".
The Bill is now being debated in the Commons, having passed through its initial stages without the single "No" vote which would have served to kill it off.
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker pretty much sums it up with the following comment:
Mr Baker, who successfully fought a two-year Freedom of Information battle for a detailed breakdown of MPs' travel expenses, said that a constituent's inquiry would not be "leaked" as it was already covered by the Data Protection Act.
"There is no question that this already exists as a proper means of protecting constituents," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Of the Bill he said: "This is not about constituents' correspondence, this is about exempting MPs from scrutiny in the House of Commons on how, for example, we get our expenses.
He added: "It's about covering up and it shows, I'm afraid, that the Freedom of Information Act culture that we hoped was becoming established in this country, is not actually in the bloodstream yet."
The only addition I'd make to that is to change it so that it reads "is not actually in the parliamentary bloodstream yet"
Let's hope that the Commons proves him wrong on that score.
Postscript: As John Sandell notes in the comments below, the chances of this PMB becoming law are now significantly reduced, after a handful of opposing MPs 'filibustered' the Bill by dragging debate on it past the 14:30 cut-off point. In my view it's the right result, but the means by which we've got there seem bizarre, to say the least.
All I can say is, if the FoIA culture is not yet established in the parliamentary bloodstream, thank goodness Mr Baker and his colleagues were able to maintain a 5-hour I.V. drip and (with luck) eradicate the PMB 'antibodies'.
I reserve the right to block anyone who tries any 'injection of common sense' comments... you can do better than that ;^)
Posted by racingsnake
@ 10:05 AM GMT+00:00
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