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Money is now speech, so bribes are just a way to tell someone what you think. Why are you against the 1st amendment?

It thought that 1st amendment would protect any speech, so why would anyone's speech in opposition to bribes be suppressed?

You think I'm not getting the joke/irony/sarcasm? Well, maybe I do get it, but I'm not quite in the mood to take the things lightly: watch out CISPA.

What motivates this man to be so evil?

This is not half that evil as others... watch out CIPSA

After all, AT&T's shoddy network encouraged huge numbers to switch to other carriers the moment Apple allowed them to. In business having a poor product might allow you to gain in the short term but is a huge detriment in the long term.

That can't possibly prove anything wrong, because it itself is wrong.

The secret has been out for over a year that AT&T did not lose any significant number of users to other iPhone carriers when exclusivity ended. They actually GAINED customers, and they GAINED more iPhone 4S customers than did Verizon or any of the other iPhone carriers.

So your premise is totally wrong.

The huge detriment you speak of, on the other hand is accruing to the carriers that gain the iPhone, but not for the reason you expect. Selling the iPhone is huge drain on a carriers bottom line.

According to CNN-Money: all carriers that carry the iPhone lose money on it over what they were making previously. If AT&T has a network problem it has been caused directly by the iPhone and iPhone users. From lame Infinion chipsets that brought the towers to their knees early, to the data sucking ways of the typical iphone user.

Between 2009 and 2010, Verizon averaged EBITDA service margin of 46.4% per quarter. In the first quarter that the iPhone went on sale, that fell to 43.7%. Last quarter, when Verizon sold a record 4.2 million iPhones, its margin plunged to 42.2%.

This is not to say I have any argument with the subject of this story, namely the suspicion that carriers are hording bandwidth and creating artificial shortage.

What is off topic about linking evidence of Apple's questionable ethical standards in a discussion about Apple's integrity, or lack of it?

Google has gone nuts with the ads.

Myspace tried that. It didn't work out well for them.

Google's advice to their AdSense advertisers is both funny and pathetic. Google suggests that the content should be a tiny box in the center, surrounded by Google ads on all sides. Google has actually sent out emails to AdSense advertisers telling them that they should have more ads on their page. That's what Myspace looked like during their screaming dive to irrelevance.

(We give away Ad Limiter which cuts Google ads on Google search results down to one ad per page. Since AdBlock Plus sold out and started allowing ads from their "partners", Ad Limiter is picking up a modest number of users. Or you can use DuckDuckGo, which limits itself to one ad per page.)

Or does DHS just think it has enough scanners once TSA installs the 250 new scanners in this year's budget?

Probably that one. It's not like they're going to --GASP-- spend less money by not buying full body scanners. They're just going to spend that money on other stupid stuff.

moving back home would mean 17 hours a day hard labor in the fields. Foxconn is a paid vacation compared to "home" they could go to at any time.

Indeed. Do you know what you have in common with a used diaper or do I have to spell it?

There has been no definitive ruling by the courts in this litigation. The judge only denied Capitol Records request for a preliminary injunction against ReDigi to force them to cease operations while the litigation proceeds. That, most likely would have forced ReDigi out of business, which may well have been what the judge was thinking about. We won't have any real answers about this until after a trial and, presumably, the inevitable appeals.

More Info here and here

Maybe they're looking at doing an ARM SoC with the ATI video core...

Whoever sold their mobile business to Qualcomm has probably been promoted as a visionary...

Blackout day is still on. I am pleased to share the report that Wikipedia will definitely participate.

GoDaddy apparently had a material benefit in SOPA.

Shouldn't that be "has"?

By the way, Dump GoDaddy Day (or "move you domain day") appears to be still on for tomorrow, Dec 29 2011. And... even Danica Patrick isn't able to stop it!

There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list (142 entries, dec 23).

Beyond the law firms that have complained, I can't help but note that Electronic Arts aren't in the PDF.

Also, every time some actor tweets anti-SOPA sentiment, make sure to point out to them that the Screen Actors Guild are official SOPA supporters according to the judiciary.

Bad timing on getting a Revue.

Less than 24 hours after you bought it, Logitech terminated the Revue, the CEO even claiming that GoogleTV was a "gigantic" mistake for them.

If you didn't get it on sale, I'd try post-purchase price matching it once the firesales start, or even return it if you're concerned about long-term support by Logitech.

The hands-free issue is moot:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/10/17/cellphone-handsfree.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/57097-hands-free-calls-could-be-just-as-dangerous-on-the-roads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jun/30/mobilephones.uknews
http://socialtimes.com/distracted-driving-dangerous-but-no-evidence-hands-free-laws-help_b69790
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-driving/
http://news.yahoo.com/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-170124007.html
http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/hands-free-phones-more-dangerous-for-drivers-than-alcoholic-drinks.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html
http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/hands-free-phoning-just-as-dangerous-1.1096622

Seems it was published everywhere except mainstream US media, which strongly indicates that it's true but contrary to corporate interests. I guess more accidents translates to more car sales. Ideally cars should be as safe as possible for the driver and passengers, but difficult to drive (i.e. small windows, confusing/distracting features, controls, and meters), and most importantly more likely to be written off from even minor collisions. Sounds about right. Too bad about the bad wrecks that kill people, but hey, business is business.

It doesn't have to have anything interesting on it to be seized. It's enough for the FBI to just be in the same rack as a suspect server.

The game has already been out for a month. It was not published clearly on the outside of the box, just in the manual (and who RTFM around here?).

They're treating it as a success at capcom because Gamestop is paying 6$ for it used in the UK and in Japan.

Source.

Right, so instead you should move to an OS developed by a wholesome, open-source embracing company like Nokia.

Faster posting on /. ?

Perhaps... especially using something like this, which you could also use for lots of other stuff you'd normally use a "regular computer" for.

Apparently they can't meter you too well.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/att-vows-to-improve-inaccurate-broadband-metering/

As to the tracking, I'm sure it can be done, however, unlike DNA, spoofing is completely trivial, so I would never be comfortable having it as the only evidence in some type of trial.

Here's a link to the original article with teardown pictures. Beware blatant product placement of ifixit tools.

Looks like Apple wasn't happy enough putting proprietary tamper-resistant fasteners on this device though, the iPad 2 is glued together.

"It's not likely that WebOS will supplant existing operating systems on PCs, but rather would run on top of Windows to be able to launch WebOS apps" link

`HP chief technical officer Phil McKinney told the Seattle Times that the company's PCs will have an "integrated WebOS experience." It won't be a virtualization, he said, but rather an "enhancement" to Windows' link

The Adam has been shipping for a month, and people have them in their hands.

The Xoom will be available in stores Feb 24th, i.e. tomorrow (after a week's delay). Is that close enough for you? It's a little more expensive than the iPad, but has far more features. The wifi-only version is equivalently priced but further off, yes.

A rooted Nook Color is certainly a geek's toy; I'd agree it's not a mass-market product. Luckily, we're all geeks on Slashdot, yes? It's definitely a valid option for many people here.

I just saw something that suggests that Honeycomb *is* coming to mobile phones. Flash 10.2 mobile apparently requires Android 3.0 and "they" say Flash 10.2 is coming to mobile phones, therefore...
(example citation: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/flash-10-2-honeycomb-smartphone/)

A CompactCard survived a bridge explosion with the photo: http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/blast-destroys-camera-flash-card-survives/

Another card one survived the collapse of one of the Twin Towers, with photos from the photographer that perished: http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0111/biggart_intro.htm

Facebook takes up 25% of all US Internet traffic: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/facebook-25-pct-of-u-s-traffic-and-100-million-app-downloads/

That's not really a small part of the Internet.

Wrong. Windows is not a brand of computer, when it comes to computer sales by a company, Apple is doing pretty damned good, at least in the US.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-toshiba-show-strong-u-s-computer-sales/

Word choice is critical in making short messages easy to gro.., er, understand.

Net-jargon that has failed to be approved for dictionaries will confuse readers of automatic translations --they were never perfect to begin with, but are increasingly ubiquitous.*

People don't think they'll reach readers whose native language isn't theirs... that'll change: see how quick we link to Sweedish translations of Assange's newspaper stories, for example. This is important enough that a certain mainstream browser goes "It looks like you were sent to a Chinese website... want me to translate it to English?"

There are to me several reasons MOST of the documents shouldn't have been leaked. First and foremost the assessments of foreign leaders need to be frank and straightforward. Yes we all suspect Putin is the real power in Russian and many Russia watchers would tell you it is obvious but that needs to be confirmed by someone interacting with the powers in Russia. Same with Merkel, she is risk averse? so any proposal that you want her support on make sure you either control risk as much as possible or allow for that change to be made in the future. Why should the be confidential? So that someone you are working with and require a good relationship with to do you job doesn't find the unflattering opinion of them.

Fair enough, but this is pretty trivial, unlike the overall goal of the leak. Never mind that (as far as I've seen) the actual damage to international relations has been practically nonexistent. If you can provide evidence to the contrary, I'd be happy to think about my stance some more.

The list of important sites should also not have been released, they could be compiled by terrorists on their own but at least we wouldn't be handing it to them.

Again, fair point, but I doubt this will actually really be endangering to these facilities and certainly not to U.S. security. If anything, making these pubic should inspire an increase in security around these areas, nevermind that (like you said) really critical places are probably already marked, which means the release was only really informative to people like us, anyway.

Accusations of Chinese involvement in computer intrusions need to be investigated before they are claimed in public, also giving China the chance to respond or make concessions.

They have been investigated, down to the very people who ordered it.

Yemenites should know who is attacking them in their home country.

We're in agreement here. I'm not sure what you were getting at with the rest of your paragraph, so I'll just let it be.

Can we stop pushing the idea that consoles are sold at a loss? The Wii has been sold for a profit since launch (source). The Xbox 360 has been sold for a profit for four years (source). The PS3 has taken the longest to get there, but it is now sold for a profit as well (source). New consoles are often initially sold at a loss, but they do not stay at that price.

The problem with the five-year lag is that the consoles are decreasing the lag the consumer sees. Crytek's CEO claims that the current generation of consoles was holding back developers. There are some games that are PC-only, but those only appeal to a fraction of the potential market, so most developers have to go for multiple platforms and accept the limitations that the old hardware has. The consumer mostly sees cross-platform games, so it doesn't look like a five-year lag at all. If there were a hardcore PC developer pushing the envelope, it might be different, but now that Crytek has developed CryEngine 3 for all platforms, I don't think anyone could do it.

I wonder how much of this is Nintendo's fault - MS and Sony look over and see their competitor beating them with half the graphics and a bit of a lower price, and they realize that graphics have hit a point that most games won't benefit that much from nicer hardware. Of course, then they think that the magic is all in the motion controls and that they need to have something that imitates that...it's like watching iphone imitators.

a kinect review
Highs:

* Just plain fun
* Limitless potential, could move beyond gaming.
* New, innovative technology will only get better.
Lows:

* $150 price on top of Xbox 360 console
* Half-second of inherent lag
* Fairly basic games
* Only handles two players at a time



german summry
Approximative transaltion in english :
The setup is a problem too. So kinect needs really much place and has problem with light. One tester from joystiq was not
recognized due to his glasses, because it was reflecting too much light.

Whoever want to paly to 2 needs 3 meter of free palce from TV (9 foot aprox) which needs a lot of moving furniture by many.
Which means also that the dashboard features like move command cannot be used when one want to do only a to watch a film, not to play.
Also the price is critized.



IGN video review linked ina rticle

Mixed reviews for kinect



My verdict from what i all read : the lag will probably limit it to games where it is not too important (casual family game, or game where a 1/3 to 1/5 second lag has no impact). Tech looks good and could be a revolution, but at the moment too expensive. Wait and see for Kinect 1.2 with a good offering of games.

however, TV manufacturers are having a hard time convincing households that they need a second flatscreen television. Large CRTs are being moved into master bedrooms as big flatscreens take their place in living rooms, but while market penetration of HDTV is finally significant (at least in the U.S.) people aren't buying two

It may be happening more than you think:

A telephone survey conducted by the Leichtman Research Group found that nearly half of all U.S. households (46 percent) will have at least one high-definition television in the house by the end of the 2009--a figure that's roughly double the number who had HDTVs two years ago. Furthermore, approximately 38 percent of HDTV owners say they have more than one high definition television. Half of U.S. Households Embracing HDTV?

They used to. The technology used in building the PS3 is now such that they make money per console. Source

>Macs have a failure rate, according to Consumer Reports, of 19% per year.

[citation needed]. How is Consumer Reports obtaining their figures?

Seems it's not just consumer reports.

It appears Sony were still losing $18 per console back in Feb but should be on the profit side now, see here. That said, I was talking about the overall profitability of the business, not just the profit on hardware. From what I have read SCE in particular seem so far in the hole this gen it's difficult to see them get net positive. (Of course it helped Sony win the format war with Blu Ray, which no doubt brings the company as a whole revenue in other areas).

um... I honestly believe that the latest Android phones have comparable features to the latest iPhone model, yes.

like anything you buy, the competing products have various strengths and weaknesses. but they're all comparable and none is clearly superior to the rest.

google informs me that I am not the only one who thinks so

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/devices/htc-incredible-vs-apple-iphone-3gs/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194464/droid_vs_iphone_3gs_an_update.html

http://www.ifixit.com/Misc/nexus_vs_iphone.html

Well, that sure puts them in their place. LG can now only expect to sell 7,849,999 players in 2010 instead of the prior estimate of 7,850,000.

(LG Sales Projections)

More or less. The cult + those who are woefully uninformed about competing products. Half the people who are buying "ipods" dont even know there are alternatives. Much like most religions there are those who are the true believers and those who simply do not know anything else.

So what are all of these "better" alternatives -- especially to the Touch or the Nano? Every company but Apple has basically abandoned the high capacity market (except for Archos). So what's the alternative to the Classic?

I used to own an iPod (2 in fact, both broke within a year...) and after that I bought a COWON S9. Beats the crap out of the iPod in every way. Doesn't crash once a day like both iPods did (got to learn real well the restart command of an iPod), the sound is so much better (same files and headphones from the iPod), battery life rocks (55 hours'ish, no joke. I had to recharge the iPod daily, once ever few days for the S9), doesn't randomly freeze when I'm playing new songs, no 'special' software needed, the computer reads it like a USB drive and I just drag and drop. Beats the iPod in every way. As for the Nano, the SanDisk Clip+ is better.

However the ipod is just shit. Its highly proprietary and DRMed out the ass. I pods are more expensive their their equal quality competitors. iTunes is just a bastard of a bit of software. It causes massive stabability issues and is a complete and utter resource hog. Ipods are known to be fragile and scratch prone.

iTunes hasn't sold DRM'd music (or music videos) in over a year and where can you get DRM free video from any store -- either physical or electronic. The iPod plays bog standard MP3, WAV, AAC audio and H.264 and MPeg video. So where are all these cheaper better alternatives to the Touch, Nano, and Classic?

The DRM is in the hardware. Try to take any song/video on an iPod and put it back on the computer. You can't due to the iPod's DRM. As for the alternatives, look at the players on http://www.anythingbutipod.com/ which is for mp3 players, and you'll find many that are better.

Do you have a source for your claims of fragility and a comparison of the reliability of the iPod compared to other music players?

I've given you the links and shown you better ones. Just because you only know iPods, doesn't mean they are the only ones out there.

"Xbox360 has had a huge struggle with hardware failures. WinMo is old and clunky, Vista left a really bad taste in peoples mouth, Office is facing competition from Google Docs and OpenOffice, and Play For Sure failed publicly."

Not exactly. Xbox 360 is far ahead in the media center game, which is what people want, the days of a $300 gaming only system are over. Only thing PS3 still has going for it is the built-in blu-ray drive, but to do something as simple as stream Netflix requires a Netflix disc that the Xbox 360 does not. Microsoft designed the Xbox 360 to be a media center, while the PS3 seems to be focused on being a blu-ray player, probably so Sony can protect and encourage movie sales.

We're still waiting for our all-in-one solution, the company that will provide us with all our devices. Apple has surprisingly made some great strides in the last ten years with the iPhone, Apple TV and being a major media content provider with iTunes. They appear to be the front runner in this game, all they need now is to add gaming to the Apple TV and they'd be hard to beat. Only thing they keep missing on is Flash support: iPhone/Touch only does Youtube streaming, no other sites. If they removed that limitation it'd be a far more attractive form factor.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10302038-37.html
http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/missing-prototype-iphone-leads-to-chinese-workers-death/
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/14/211242
http://timecapsuledead.org/

Apple has a long history of threatening decenters against its 'grand vision', there have been multiple instances where large chunks of their own support forums have been purged because users were critisizing Apple for their laptops keys melting (suspend issue) or their ipods burning or their laptop power adapters failing or their timecapsule powerbricks dieing after almost exactly a year. All of these took massive user lashback to get fixed inside warrenty in some cases these defective products never were.

The story of the iPod above retells that in order to get a replacement they had to agree not to reveal that the product had a fault ever. This is the kind of behaviour that is acceptable to you? How many other stories have never been told thanks to Apple raverous lawyers?

If you think that the arrogance of Apple only exists in my mind then you need to get your rampant fanboyisum in check and read more of the internet than what is released in Apple press releases.

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=1799
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/19/gps-close-to-breakdown
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184550/GPS-satellite-close-breakdown-fail-2010--leading-motorists-straight-trouble.html
• http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/05/18/daily24.html
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/gps-satellites-to-start-failing-next-year/

Considering most of these articles were on slashdot before, you don't have much of an excuse.

You plug into your laptop? Oh..that's unfortunate. What if you don't have a laptop? What if you have an ipod touch, PSP, or other PMP?
Oh.. I see. You have to actually buy one of the only wimax ready devices.. a Samsung Mondi (Korean made btw)

too bad, keep trying.

Coverage?
Hmm
http://news.digitaltrends.com/feature/122/testing-clear-s-wimax-internet-service

Failed in the parking garage? Too bad..
the egg performed like a champ in the bowels of a building I was in.

Looks like clear didn't cut it there.

failed on the above ground LRT? wow.. as I already pointed out, skype on the underground subway in Korea.

If you want to try and throw something back at someone, you might want to try reading things.
Seoul, Wibro 37Mb (corrected that off the koreatimes article) @ $20 a month, includes equipment.
A few random american towns, 3-6Mbs (with bursts up to 10!) for $40 a month, you need to buy or lease the equipment, plus free crappy coverage

and Clear doesn't offer any solution for other mobile devices. too bad. The egg is only slightly larger than my cellphone.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/123_43867.html

Korea certainly is in sorry shape. next time do your homework champ. Shame on those people modding you up.

What I wonder is how long it will be before these phones *are* your computer and you just plug in a fullblown screen and keyboard wherever you want to sit and work.

Or this plus a built-in projector Maybe throw in a virtual keyboard for good measure.

There are viable alternatives, temporary as they may be...

No way anyone can compete making something by hand but as an experiment, it's very cool.

Actually it seems that China seems to compete ok as they have millions of workers making things with their hands, like the iphone girl

That's almost an order of magnitude more than the percent of linux market share in 2004.

"According to Market Share, Linux's market penetration stagnated at .29 percent in 2004." source.

"Using a touch-screen as a keyboard is a terrible idea, and only good for very casual users."

I very much agree. Touch-screens will not be used as keyboards until they can provide tactile response and keys with at least 3mm of travel like modern keyboards. If they can figure that out then I could see "touch-screen" keyboards happening.

However I could imagine the mouse touchpad becoming a touchscreen.

I think laptops in 7 yrs will become more like the Mac Air and the Eee PC but with swiveling lay-flat touch-screen LCDs. The need to DVD and CD drives installed within the laptops will disappear as free online storage and faster wireless speeds replace the need to record or install from physical media.

While waiting for a connecting flight several months ago, I heard about a guy getting delayed for about 15 minutes at an airport security checkpoint because of his laptop's "suspicious look" on the x-ray machine. It turned to be a Sony X505 laptop. For those not familiar with the X505, this review by Digital Trends mentioned in this /. article back in 2004 details the specs.

What was so suspicious about it? I was told that someone overheard a TSA agent mention that it looked transparent on the x-ray machine. It seems that this was the case with the AirBook.

Perhaps companies like Sony and Apple that develop such advanced portables should notify TSA officials so they could, inturn, teach the line agents to not become alarmed when encountering such a device passing through the x-ray machine? Since that would make too much sense, it probably won't happen. Go figure.

If you happen to own an AirBook or other sub-notebook, good luck!!

I love how I have to read other country's news reports to find out what's going on in my own country...

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

I heard it from several places. Of course, this may not be reliable. A quick search on Walmart's site and they still sell Bluray players and discs.