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I live in India. I'm a suscriber to the http://wwww.relianceinfo.com/Reliance Network and as such I am able to get STREAMING LIVE TV on my mobile for FREE. They have implemented the CDMA technology. As far as some of you are concerned about the sound quality, Qualcomm recently http://www.pmn.co.uk/20040623qsound.shtmllicensed qsound which allows surround like sound on ones own mobile phones. This will soon be coming to this service I am assured. I agree the size of screen is small. But comeon guys it is worth looking into. And as slowly the picture quality on mobile phones improve I am sure this would become very common.

Originally posted at http://george.hotelling.net/90percent/linkage/pr0n _leads_the_way.php:

I found a pretty insightful rant (safe for work) copied from the business guy at the altporn site Suicide Girls. I wish the RIAA would start tracking how people hear about the albums that they buy, so that they could stop freaking out.

Porn has a long history of figuring out how to use new media to their advantage. Perhaps because porn is driven by our basest instinct we understand it on far deeper levels than widget building, and can apply that understanding to things that we don't fully comprehend intellectually. Maybe it's just because there's such intense competition in the industry that forces companies to innovate. I'm sure there's a "free hand of the market" joke in there, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

The VCR was largely decried by the MPAA because they saw it as cutting into their profits. When the VCR was still new, MPAA president Jack Valenti said the VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. (which of course means that he wasn't opposed to the VCR). A driver of early VCR purchases was being able to watch porn movies without having to go to theaters filled with creepier people than you. Fast forward 20 years and that Boston strangler makes up a huge portion of movie studio profits.

While I'm skeptical that porn can drive any technology - who really needs porn on their cellphone at blazing speeds - the porn industry typically ahead of the curve. Let's hope the RIAA realizes this and stops suing 12 year old girls.

Then would you care to explain why J-Phone's picture service Sha-Mail has managed to pick up over 5 million subscribers in the last year, leading to the doubling of data ARPU to 15%?

As for reasons why, pretty much the only reason I still use snail mail is postcards; MMS is about to fill that gap as well. And just the way I send a hell of a lot more email than I used to write paper letters, I suspect I'll be sending a hell of a lot more picture mails than I currently send postcards.

Here's hoping European operators have learned from the WAP debacle and don't price themselves out of the market -- again.

Cheers,
-j.

"The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads." I love that M$ actually considers this an arguement. I think that the real reason that Microsoft doesn't like GPL is clear. In the past, if a technology challenged Microsoft, they always had a back up for getting rid of it: Buy the technology (remember when they tired to buy Palm). But GPL takes way this option. once a technology is GPL'd, they can no longer just throw money at a technology and make it "go away". One good point in all of this, GPL must reaaly be making M$ feel threatened for them to be spending all of this time trashing it. -lowLark

Significantly, it is compatible with the Palm Computing platform, although it is unclear whether it has licensed this technology from Palm Computing itself.

Regards,

Ralf

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.