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Slashback: GSM, Buffy, Wobble
Macrovision, everyone's favorite killjoy. byteCoder writes "Apparently Macrovision marketing is trying to put a good spin on Intuit's plan to eliminate the use of Macrovision's DRM software for pre-paid copies of TurboTax (as discussed last week here). This reminds me of the classic Monty Python line: "I'm not dead yet!""
That's got to be some spin -- An anonymous reader points to Eric Hellweg's Tech Investor on CNN, which suggests that the backlash which triggered Intuit's copy-protection reversal may have cost the company $100 million.
Can I use my Go Phone there? An anonymous reader writes ""In a follow-up to the Slashdot article 'CDMA vs GSM in Post-war Iraq,' The Reg has a story about how MCI has won the contract to rebuild the mobile phone system with GSM. This is a good thing for the people of Iraq that GSM is being used, GSM is the world standard and several U.S. companies (AT&T for one) are switching to GSM."
Adding Money to Insult. Neophytus writes "Remember the 'Star Wars Kid' that waxy.org found a couple of weeks ago? Well after over a million downloads the guy has been found. His name is Ghyslain, a 15-year-old tenth grader living in Quebec. Jish contacted him and got a brief, but interesting, interview."
No unlimited copy privileges in jail. the-dude-man writes "As reported here A 19-year-old pleaded guilty to costing DirectTV for leaking information about the secrets of DirectTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology to hacker websites. As part of the plea deal, Serebryany admitted to copying and distributing 800 megabytes of scanned documents from DirecTV, costing the company $68,000 in investigatory costs. Both sides stipulated to sentencing factors that carry six months to a year in prison under federal guidelines -- assuming no prior convictions. The sentencing court can depart from the guidelines only if the judge finds that the proposed sentence doesn't adequately reflect the facts of the case. According to court records affidavit, Serebryany's adventures began when he found himself with access to some of DirecTV's most coveted technological secrets while working for his uncle at a document imaging company at the office of a Los Angeles law firm, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. The firm was representing the satellite TV company in a lawsuit against NDS, the makers of the smart cards DirecTV uses to control access to its signal."
For every 11 discontented customers, there's one of these happy oddballs! RedWingsSuck writes "A few weeks ago, I asked /. users what they thought about the wobble my 12" Power Book has developed. Last week Apple Care told me that I could send my laptop off for repairs. I decided to drive to the local Apple Store, about 15 minutes away, and drop it off. They had my laptop for less than 3 days. When I went in to pick it up, they told me that it was sent in and the BC (bottom cover) was repaired. It doesn't wobble anymore, so I am happy. I was really surprised with how fast it was fixed. I didn't mean to sound like I regretted my AiBook purchase in the last post, and now I even happier."
Relax, it's a television show. HardcoreGamer writes "Buffy creator Joss Whedon responds to questions from New York Times readers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as it comes to the end of its 7 season run. He also discusses the now-canceled Firefly and concludes with one of the key reasons why the show is ending: 'I'm simply too tired.'"
That Sarah Michelle Gellar wants out, that the ratings are declining, and that no one wants Dawn the Vampire Slayer all contributed to Buffy leaving the air, too.
...so why is it such a great thing that MCI is building it in Iraq?
Eventually all carriers will have to move from whatever they're using to either WCDMA or cdma2000. The transition to WCDMA is not simple, and there are doubts that WCDMA will deliver on its promised performance. On the other hand, cdma2000 is much simpler to adopt, and has been proven to work (in Korea, for example.)
GSM is dead. R.I.P.
How much sooner than the United States will Iraq get a GSM/GPRS network? AT&T, T-Mobile and Cingular are taking their time. Maybe the Iraqi people will get affordable data plans, too.
Is that so many other geeks find him pitiful. If his self-esteem wasn't low already...
No,
It's not a good thing for Iraq for GSM to be implemented. GSM is really aging. The only way to get even moderately high-speeds is using the piggy-back GPRS. Reconstructing GSM to be 3G is very difficult transition path. If it weren't for Quallcom's patents on CDMA, nobody would be using GSM which is based on TDMA.
I really like some of the stuff GSM has done with respect to the phones themselves, such as the use SIMM card for storing the phones information. But CDMA is by far the technically superior solution, however patent incumbered. Building an infrastructure from the ground up on TDMA technology is just brain-dead politics.
Yes, GSM is more widely supported than CDMA, but note that the GSM folks are having a heck of a time providing 3G support, whereas the two big CDMA providers in the states (Verizon and Sprint) have both rolled out huge 3G networks. The reason for this is that 1xRTT is a better standard for data. By contrast, DoCoMo is losing money hand over fist deploying WCDMA.
GSM is everywhere largely because of European licensing agencies requiring GSM, and those same restrictions are built into the licenses for 3G spectrum (with UMTS). NOT because GSM is a better technology. CDMA gets better efficiency (more users per channel per cell) than GSM, especially in lightly loaded areas.
I don't see why GSM-everywhere is so desirable. The conveinences everyone claims that GSM has (eg SIM cards) are already being standardized in cdma2000, and will be here soon. GSM is a beast from the past, pushed only by government regulations. For those who say AT&T's switch shows that GSM is the future, remember that AT&T is switching from a TDMA network that's technologically equivalent to GSM (and hence inferior to CDMA), and that AT&T is having all sorts of network problems as a result, since they have to hard-block their frequencies, effectively creating a huge fragmentation problem.
a video of myself doing some Neo-esque bullet-dodging kunf-fu moves... maybe I'll get an iPod too.
All joking aside, from the interview, Ghyslain (the starwars kid) acted quite mature for someone his age... aware that his not-meant-for-public-viewing is now world famous he chose not to be bitter or overly proud of this. He seems to just let it pass as a page in his life story.
Anyway, he did make me laugh, and what a way to start what is anticipated to be a loooong busy day.
Thanks Ghyslain!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Come on guys, pitch in and buy this kid an iPod and other stuff for his efforts! What a star!
Am I the only one who was completely detached of that last buffy episode? well actually from the last 2 seasons? She could have died and I don't think it would have cared less... I was almost worried that she would die and Faith replace her for another stagnating 5 seasons....
I'm sure I am not the only one who was continuing to watch it because he "invested time into watching the 5 previous seasons that were really cool and I need to know how it will all end"... the ending of season 5 when she closes the portal by jumping into it was like...at least 10x better than yesterday's serie ending.... Its a good thing that this show finally ends eventho I was a big fan the 5 first seasons. When I see shows like family guy, B5 crusade and firefly being cancelled and see crap like this season's of buffy still on, it makes me wonder.
Now I just hope the Angel show doesn't go the same way.
One show that I really enjoyed this year was John Doe, is there a second season of this? this is probably one of the good findings this year, new actors good story, just enough "fiction" to keep it "real", I like the balance and the general concept.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
It was pretty clear, even during the last episode in, admittedly, one of the weaker story arcs why this show has such a devoted following: the writing is incredible. Thanks to Joss and everybody involved for creating characters, plots, and dialog that were immensely entertaining (the D&D scene alone had me laughing hysterically). I'm going to miss this show and these characters. Why can't shows with potential like, say, Enterprise figure out the tricks Buffy managed to pull year after year? Note to Paramount: maybe you have to start caring about the writing again to bring a borefest like Trek back to life. Notice that no one on Buffy wore catsuits.
Here is an exact link: http://www.jish.nu/2003_05_01_archive.php#20028747 3
I would really love, if we will manage to buy him not only iPod, but also a Mac he desire.
This Is Not a Sig
Crappy codec that sounds no where near as good as EFR on GSM. Crappy phones with short battery life. Wot ? No bluetooth ? Most have no infrared even.
These phones are lightyears behind GSM phones.
Also, saying that the US is "CDMA territory" is simply wrong. Cingular, AT&T and T-Mobile (VoiceStream) are 3 of the top providers in the US, Sprint and Verizon being the other two.
Hate to break it to the CDMA biggots here, but there are more GSM subscribers in the US than CDMA.
I've used both over many years, and gravitate back to GSM for better sound, SMS that works and yup, the all important international roaming.
CDMA is technically better, especially in remote areas, but GSM is the way to go.
CDMA is simply a bad case of NIH.
FWIW I've read that the biggest contributing factor is that 7 seasons worth of episodes is the optimal number (according to the marketplace) for selling as a syndication package.
yet he insists that all the big insights be his and his alone
Yet in the Article, he states:
"It would have been impossible for me to predict where Buffy's character would go by the end of the series because the character is informed by so many things. You have to find out what people respond to, you have to find out what works on the show, what aspects make sense, what your meaning is. "
So, that would seem to suggest that there's a fairly substantial feedback loop going on there between himself, the viewers and others...
I don't think he goes it entirely alone... And for the most part the real issues with the last couple of seasons have been with the actual dialogue or more specfic things with episodes, which come about from the actual writer of the script, and Joss doesn't seem to have written many of the later episodes at all.
Having said that the final season (I don't know what episode you're up to in the states, but we're only part way through in Aus) has been by and large painful to watch... It's really being that bad. I've been watching the last season of Angel, as I had stopped watching that, and I'm finding it FAR more enjoyable than the current Buffy.
INAL, but I have been involved in court cases. You don't go out of your way to make life easy on the opposition. In fact you go out of your way (within legal limits) to make like difficult for them. Drowning your opponent in paper is the most fun response to a fishing, I mean discovery, request that there is. Often there will be damning information down in there, but they never bother to actually go thru it all to find it.
Possibly he thinks he could have saved the series if he hadn't been so overcommitted (three active series, and development work on two more). Probably not true: I think a lot of Fox people either didn't understand Firefly or just didn't think such a high-budget series could be profitable. (Reality shows are so much cheaper to produce!) Still, it would have had a better chance if Whedon had been able to fight the network's creative meddling and idiotic scheduling.
I once read an interview with him, where's he's standing on the bridge of Serenity (the set is a complete mockup of the ship) and proclaiming that he's in "Geek Heaven". Ever since Fox pulled the series, I've been watching the news for reports that the set has been broken up. Unless I missed that report, he's keeping that set around, which must be costing him a mint. If he gives up and gets rid of the set, then we'll know that Firefly is dead, no mouth-to-mouth, no resurrection spell!
Ok, so MCI gets to build a GSM network in Iraq. Get over it - the reason that Sprint isn't doing it is because a) CDMA sucks monkey member and b) the US is more or less the only country on the planet that does NOT use GSM. It wouldn't make any sense to drop a CDMA network in Iraq when all of the surrounding countries use GSM. Also, there is already a lot of equipment for GSM in Iraq that can be reused (of course MCI will probably bill for new equipment even though they use the old stuff).
The U.S. has a horrible track record of going with non-standards in order to try to lock out foreign competition - or at least make them build a different widget just to sell in the U.S.
Here are some examples:
U.S - TV uses NTSC, the rest of the world uses PAL, so TV and VCR makers have to make a completely different product to sell here.
U.S. - HDTV over the air uses 8VSB (because of political lobbying), an inferior modulation method to COFDM, which the rest of the world uses because of its technical merit.
U.S. - uses the English system of measure whereas the rest of the world uses the more intuitive metric system
U.S. - drives on the wrong damn side of the road
I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of other examples..
What I'd like to know is - how the *F* did the U.S. make such a logical and sound conclusion as to what network to use in Iraq?
I wrote: Of the western countries (excluding the US),
You wrote: Misleading nonsense. The major claimant is Kuwait, which
The last time I checked, Suadia Arabia and Kuwait were not generally considered to be western countries.
You again: If you calculate out the Kuwaiti and Saudi claims, the remaining debt becomes quite manageable.
I agree. It *is* quite managable to a country with the resources of Iraq. Which is why I think that the US's push to cancel the 7 billion in debt Iraq it owes to Russia (and a similar figure to France) to be more of a slap against the interests who were against the US deposing Sadaam than it is of a financial boost to Iraq.
Seven billion US dollars is nothing to the US, and not that big of a deal to France (less than one percent of their annual revenues), but to Russia, who only brings in $46billion a year, seven billion is a lot of money. Talk about the US twisting the knife.