Retail is a whole other problem because you really can't do retail for much less than 30 bucks a copy, you're losing to much to fixed costs and distribution at anything less than that. Unlike movies where publishers are happy to print a million discs for something that will barely sell 50k units, and if it doesn't sell they can repurpose the jewel cases (the expensive part) for another title with a game the box and manual are game specific and you can't afford to eat 40k in inventory that doesn't sell let alone a million units in inventory.
OK stopped reading here. You don't know what you're talking about.
First of all, jewel cases are never repurposed, way too much labour involved. Just scrap the lot if needs be and send it off to the recyclers.
Secondly movie DVDs retail for well under US$10 a piece. Often half price. Books are similar, printing is cheap. Package of DVD+book shouldn't cost more than about US$10 retail, unless publisher is greedy. And 50k pcs is enough to have a good economy of scale on manufacturing. Distribution doesn't matter too much, it's usually piecewise or boxwise anyway, and shipping to the shop goes combined with other orders.
Well then it's not a far stretch to argue that the RIAA et. al. are the ones supporting terrorism as they are fighting Internet piracy, which is an enemy of the terrorists.
In a way I do hope this phrase "the terrorists win" is misused over and over again.
That way it'll lose all it's original bite, and those "anti-terrorism" people lose out as no-one is afraid of it anymore. They'll only sound incredibly stupid when the general population starts thinking "oh, they're talking about terrorists winning again, yawn".
What may also help there, is that there is no second-hand market for apps (and that's what's being blamed for lackluster sales this time). Afaik there is no way to transfer your Google Play or Apple Store purchase to another person, so no resale possible. Besides the prices are so low that many people probably wouldn't bother even if that were an option... games/apps become disposable.
Gema will do that for them. It's a very simple calculation after all: something like 90% of the videos will have some Gema affiliate copyrighted music (if not more, if you ask them), then take the number of hits to YouTube from German IP addresses, well 90% of that number times a license fee of say E 0,50 a song (still give or take a 50% discount on the iTunes price) gives the number Google must pay.
OK, I think the "pull out of Germany" option might be the cheaper one after all. Never mind.
This "dual use" clause is scrary and definitely highly ambiguous.
Where to put the line? Before you know it we can't export iron! After all you can make cars with it, but also guns. Or trucks: can be used for transporting both civilian or military goods. Or mobile phones: aren't they used to set off bombs?
And this example of raw materials is not far fetched, it is from direct personal experience: I'm in the business of trading plastic recycling materials out of Europe, and currently we basically can not ship to Malaysia as virtually all cargo has to undergo extra inspections by customs as it may be "dual use cargo". A few months ago there were no such problems.
I don't know why Malaysia is in the spotlight, just that it is, and that it's hindering general trade and commerce. And that's the result of this "dual use" argument.
I've received legitimate emails from my bank that l could've sworn up and down were from a spammer (unsolicited, from someone I've never met, from a branch that I don't go to, poorly formatted and offering me a free credit card) but which were upon further review (checked the email address and the phone number provided in the email with the bank's fraud division) were legit.
I'm surprised you actually went that far, and didn't delete the mail instantly. That's what I do with such mails. From my bank I only expect automatic incoming remittance notifications; anything else that appears to be from my bank or any other bank gets deleted without even reading the body.
The basic model is now 60 years old, the oldest flying ones 50 years. But that doesn't make them 50-60 year old tech. The models will have received many modifications over time; look at the commercial Boeing 737 airliner with it's many sub-versions and modifications. A newly delivered model looks quite different from the first model, and that's just the outside.
On the inside, all the electronics will have been retrofitted several times over by now. Newer radios, navigation systems, etc. They all have GPS now, which didn't exist when the first B52 flew. Engines too, if only because they wear out over time. And then you will use a more modern, better engine to put in place of the old ones. Ongoing modernisation.
By the way, one of the main specs of an aircraft is it's top speed. The faster you are, the faster you can get in, do your job, and get out, outmanouvring a slower opponent in the meantime. However there is this thing called the sound barrier, limiting most aircraft to about 85-90% of the speed of sound. To go radically faster you need a radically different design of the plane, and a lot more engine power (so burning more fuel), for a generally smaller payload. The same for the B-52, it's speed is limited by the sound barrier, and any newer heavy bomber will have the same problem.
This also explains why, over the last 40 years or so, commercial aircraft have not received any speed increases (the Concorde being an exception - and underlining the problems of breaking the sound barrier).
Hardware on client side is only part of the equation.
Encrypted networks, secure e-mail storage, secured communications channels, security-checked apps: it's all part of the package. How good is your ultra-secure phone when you can install random 3rd party software that can do who-knows-what to your phone?
Even if it's highly secured, well I'd say especially when it's highly-secured, you must assume that there are security bugs in the underlying software. Besides fixing them as soon as you find them, you will want to make sure that no software that is installed on the secure device is doing anything it's not supposed to do, thus preventing attacks to happen to begin with.
Google Play is of course the first component to go. The next is other installer code, that allows installation of stuff. Only pre-approved, possible in-house developed apps will be allowed.
Remember it's ultra-security so highly locked down. The implementation of such policies is the hard part: proper vetting in place, keeping on top of any and all security issues in the OS, etc. You may assume this device can also not connect to the Internet. Encrypted VPN to the mothership, web/mail/whatever from there, no more. No random browsing.
And sure developing all that stuff by yourself is expensive. You may be able to use third-party stuff that releases the sources for inspection. At least they're not trying to write a complete OS themselves this time around.
Now look at the sizes of those parts (commercial GPS != available to the general public), and the weights and costs of it, and think how far away that was from shrinking to a hand-holdable size that retails for $400-1000. Your GPS was probably a multiple of that cost alone.
I'm thinking handheld, you're thinking luggable. Big difference.
The idea was really very much before it's time, so much I'm almost ready to call bs on it.
This proposed device from 1991 includes GPS location service. Sure GPS was under construction and worked somewhat, but it was not fully operational until 1994. A bit premature to think it can be put into a handheld consumer device before that.
It proposes to use a slot for removable media: I don't remember any removable media other than floppy disks from that time. It may have existed in a lab, but not so much out of that.
Did affordable, reliable touch screens exist already?
Rechargeable batteries that lasted longer than an hour?
They call for an online manual - great, when almost no-one even has a mobile phone, and mobile data barely exists, and coverage of mobile networks is patchy to boot. And the Internet as we know it didn't exist - the www had only just been invented.
Oh well the technology was definitely simply not ready for the device by then. That's one of the reasons it took a while between that chimera and the launch of the iPhone. And why MS rightully rejected putting money into the idea. Obviously so did all the other tech companies (if you seriously talk to MS about a project, then you'd certainly also talk to others as well).
Well considering how it tends to pull DOWN eyes, I'd argue they don't defy but rather enhance gravity. The cleavage-defining objects however do appear to defy gravity, but usually can only do so with the generous help of certain specially designed supports. Without such supports it's generally quite obvious how gravity is not defied at all.
That's tricky for most Chinese too, especially if e.g. normal components are used to create a fake. On top of that, many users of the various Chinese dialects create their own characters to write down words unique for their dialect, if they don't want to use the formal written form. And I don't think there are any Chinese that know all existing characters. They know a subset only (you need to know something like 5,000 characters for reading the newspaper; I have seen estimates of 80,000 existing characters).
Effectively we're just going back to the era before.com and other suffixes existed, and your e-mail address would be something like user@ibm or so. The first years of the Internet when it was possibly not even called Internet yet.
And with everyone wanting their.com domain, it's just like stripping the.com like most sites already stripped the www. part (though in Hong Kong it's remarkable how many websites require the www. and simply give an error if you don't type the www, for example hko.gov.hk fails, www.hko.gov.hk gives you the web site of the Observatory - not even a redirect or so).
How many Linux and OSX releases are supported for 12 years?
How many Linux distributions (where maintainers stayed in business) have not seen a major upgrade for the better part of a decade? That's the time it took from XP to Vista. And then the upgrade wasn't even considered an upgrade by many - so maybe you should look at the time it took from XP to Win7 even?
This video shows exactly my problem with the latest Ubuntu interface, Unity. I'm sure it's nice on touch screens or on small screens like netbooks, but it sucks on even my small-for-today's-measures 15" monitor. Small and big screens need different way of doing stuff.
The difference is that Unity is navigable, it didn't made me lose my way by hiding all those important controls, just was very irritating to deal with. Everything full screen, only most-used icons visible and the rest hidden, etc.
But then I was more interested in MS's offering for actual tablets/phones - the environment those tiles are designed for. It's new, quite innovative, and that makes it interesting (but not necessarily good, of course).
I know you're joking (at least trying to) but well that's the question I also have. But then on a more serious note.
A problem that I see with iOS vs Android is, for as far as I have played with iOS, the basic UI is the same. No significant difference. Less difference than between OS-X and Windows even. It's basically iOS and Android all along, and with major brands like Samsung doing their best to look as much like iOS as they can get away with (including the design of the hardware) the real amount of choice we have is actually diminishing.
For better or for worse, Microsoft tries something totally different, and that's interesting. What is good about Metro, what is bad? What can we learn about UIs from their attempt? Which bits can we copy and put into other UIs?
I have never had a chance to play with Metro, never even seen it in action even. I actually don't see MS's offering to take off anytime soon, which I think is a pity in a way as a third serious competitor can only be good for the overall market. And besides MS I can't think of any software house to be able to put a viable competitor in this market.
Slashdot Mirror
In my world, books are pretty physical.
Retail is a whole other problem because you really can't do retail for much less than 30 bucks a copy, you're losing to much to fixed costs and distribution at anything less than that. Unlike movies where publishers are happy to print a million discs for something that will barely sell 50k units, and if it doesn't sell they can repurpose the jewel cases (the expensive part) for another title with a game the box and manual are game specific and you can't afford to eat 40k in inventory that doesn't sell let alone a million units in inventory.
OK stopped reading here. You don't know what you're talking about.
First of all, jewel cases are never repurposed, way too much labour involved. Just scrap the lot if needs be and send it off to the recyclers.
Secondly movie DVDs retail for well under US$10 a piece. Often half price. Books are similar, printing is cheap. Package of DVD+book shouldn't cost more than about US$10 retail, unless publisher is greedy. And 50k pcs is enough to have a good economy of scale on manufacturing. Distribution doesn't matter too much, it's usually piecewise or boxwise anyway, and shipping to the shop goes combined with other orders.
In other words, internet piracy fights terrorism.
Well then it's not a far stretch to argue that the RIAA et. al. are the ones supporting terrorism as they are fighting Internet piracy, which is an enemy of the terrorists.
I suspect your answer is the long version of "no" and implying "I just finished primary school".
In a way I do hope this phrase "the terrorists win" is misused over and over again.
That way it'll lose all it's original bite, and those "anti-terrorism" people lose out as no-one is afraid of it anymore. They'll only sound incredibly stupid when the general population starts thinking "oh, they're talking about terrorists winning again, yawn".
What may also help there, is that there is no second-hand market for apps (and that's what's being blamed for lackluster sales this time). Afaik there is no way to transfer your Google Play or Apple Store purchase to another person, so no resale possible. Besides the prices are so low that many people probably wouldn't bother even if that were an option... games/apps become disposable.
Gema will do that for them. It's a very simple calculation after all: something like 90% of the videos will have some Gema affiliate copyrighted music (if not more, if you ask them), then take the number of hits to YouTube from German IP addresses, well 90% of that number times a license fee of say E 0,50 a song (still give or take a 50% discount on the iTunes price) gives the number Google must pay.
OK, I think the "pull out of Germany" option might be the cheaper one after all. Never mind.
This "dual use" clause is scrary and definitely highly ambiguous.
Where to put the line? Before you know it we can't export iron! After all you can make cars with it, but also guns. Or trucks: can be used for transporting both civilian or military goods. Or mobile phones: aren't they used to set off bombs?
And this example of raw materials is not far fetched, it is from direct personal experience: I'm in the business of trading plastic recycling materials out of Europe, and currently we basically can not ship to Malaysia as virtually all cargo has to undergo extra inspections by customs as it may be "dual use cargo". A few months ago there were no such problems.
I don't know why Malaysia is in the spotlight, just that it is, and that it's hindering general trade and commerce. And that's the result of this "dual use" argument.
I've received legitimate emails from my bank that l could've sworn up and down were from a spammer (unsolicited, from someone I've never met, from a branch that I don't go to, poorly formatted and offering me a free credit card) but which were upon further review (checked the email address and the phone number provided in the email with the bank's fraud division) were legit.
I'm surprised you actually went that far, and didn't delete the mail instantly. That's what I do with such mails. From my bank I only expect automatic incoming remittance notifications; anything else that appears to be from my bank or any other bank gets deleted without even reading the body.
One man's "more choice" is another man's "fragmentation".
The basic model is now 60 years old, the oldest flying ones 50 years. But that doesn't make them 50-60 year old tech. The models will have received many modifications over time; look at the commercial Boeing 737 airliner with it's many sub-versions and modifications. A newly delivered model looks quite different from the first model, and that's just the outside.
On the inside, all the electronics will have been retrofitted several times over by now. Newer radios, navigation systems, etc. They all have GPS now, which didn't exist when the first B52 flew. Engines too, if only because they wear out over time. And then you will use a more modern, better engine to put in place of the old ones. Ongoing modernisation.
By the way, one of the main specs of an aircraft is it's top speed. The faster you are, the faster you can get in, do your job, and get out, outmanouvring a slower opponent in the meantime. However there is this thing called the sound barrier, limiting most aircraft to about 85-90% of the speed of sound. To go radically faster you need a radically different design of the plane, and a lot more engine power (so burning more fuel), for a generally smaller payload. The same for the B-52, it's speed is limited by the sound barrier, and any newer heavy bomber will have the same problem.
This also explains why, over the last 40 years or so, commercial aircraft have not received any speed increases (the Concorde being an exception - and underlining the problems of breaking the sound barrier).
More like Chinese Yuan, ex-factory price. Before shipping and retail mark-ups.
What you saying, that factory is not in China?
Hardware on client side is only part of the equation.
Encrypted networks, secure e-mail storage, secured communications channels, security-checked apps: it's all part of the package. How good is your ultra-secure phone when you can install random 3rd party software that can do who-knows-what to your phone?
Even if it's highly secured, well I'd say especially when it's highly-secured, you must assume that there are security bugs in the underlying software. Besides fixing them as soon as you find them, you will want to make sure that no software that is installed on the secure device is doing anything it's not supposed to do, thus preventing attacks to happen to begin with.
Google Play is of course the first component to go. The next is other installer code, that allows installation of stuff. Only pre-approved, possible in-house developed apps will be allowed.
Remember it's ultra-security so highly locked down. The implementation of such policies is the hard part: proper vetting in place, keeping on top of any and all security issues in the OS, etc. You may assume this device can also not connect to the Internet. Encrypted VPN to the mothership, web/mail/whatever from there, no more. No random browsing.
And sure developing all that stuff by yourself is expensive. You may be able to use third-party stuff that releases the sources for inspection. At least they're not trying to write a complete OS themselves this time around.
Now look at the sizes of those parts (commercial GPS != available to the general public), and the weights and costs of it, and think how far away that was from shrinking to a hand-holdable size that retails for $400-1000. Your GPS was probably a multiple of that cost alone.
I'm thinking handheld, you're thinking luggable. Big difference.
The idea was really very much before it's time, so much I'm almost ready to call bs on it.
This proposed device from 1991 includes GPS location service. Sure GPS was under construction and worked somewhat, but it was not fully operational until 1994. A bit premature to think it can be put into a handheld consumer device before that.
It proposes to use a slot for removable media: I don't remember any removable media other than floppy disks from that time. It may have existed in a lab, but not so much out of that.
Did affordable, reliable touch screens exist already?
Rechargeable batteries that lasted longer than an hour?
They call for an online manual - great, when almost no-one even has a mobile phone, and mobile data barely exists, and coverage of mobile networks is patchy to boot. And the Internet as we know it didn't exist - the www had only just been invented.
Oh well the technology was definitely simply not ready for the device by then. That's one of the reasons it took a while between that chimera and the launch of the iPhone. And why MS rightully rejected putting money into the idea. Obviously so did all the other tech companies (if you seriously talk to MS about a project, then you'd certainly also talk to others as well).
Well considering how it tends to pull DOWN eyes, I'd argue they don't defy but rather enhance gravity. The cleavage-defining objects however do appear to defy gravity, but usually can only do so with the generous help of certain specially designed supports. Without such supports it's generally quite obvious how gravity is not defied at all.
That's tricky for most Chinese too, especially if e.g. normal components are used to create a fake. On top of that, many users of the various Chinese dialects create their own characters to write down words unique for their dialect, if they don't want to use the formal written form. And I don't think there are any Chinese that know all existing characters. They know a subset only (you need to know something like 5,000 characters for reading the newspaper; I have seen estimates of 80,000 existing characters).
That's why they used SHORT words, of course!
Effectively we're just going back to the era before .com and other suffixes existed, and your e-mail address would be something like user@ibm or so. The first years of the Internet when it was possibly not even called Internet yet.
And with everyone wanting their .com domain, it's just like stripping the .com like most sites already stripped the www. part (though in Hong Kong it's remarkable how many websites require the www. and simply give an error if you don't type the www, for example hko.gov.hk fails, www.hko.gov.hk gives you the web site of the Observatory - not even a redirect or so).
How many Linux and OSX releases are supported for 12 years?
How many Linux distributions (where maintainers stayed in business) have not seen a major upgrade for the better part of a decade? That's the time it took from XP to Vista. And then the upgrade wasn't even considered an upgrade by many - so maybe you should look at the time it took from XP to Win7 even?
I still wonder why shops in the US so readily give full refunds for sold products that are not defective.
This video shows exactly my problem with the latest Ubuntu interface, Unity. I'm sure it's nice on touch screens or on small screens like netbooks, but it sucks on even my small-for-today's-measures 15" monitor. Small and big screens need different way of doing stuff.
The difference is that Unity is navigable, it didn't made me lose my way by hiding all those important controls, just was very irritating to deal with. Everything full screen, only most-used icons visible and the rest hidden, etc.
But then I was more interested in MS's offering for actual tablets/phones - the environment those tiles are designed for. It's new, quite innovative, and that makes it interesting (but not necessarily good, of course).
I know you're joking (at least trying to) but well that's the question I also have. But then on a more serious note.
A problem that I see with iOS vs Android is, for as far as I have played with iOS, the basic UI is the same. No significant difference. Less difference than between OS-X and Windows even. It's basically iOS and Android all along, and with major brands like Samsung doing their best to look as much like iOS as they can get away with (including the design of the hardware) the real amount of choice we have is actually diminishing.
For better or for worse, Microsoft tries something totally different, and that's interesting. What is good about Metro, what is bad? What can we learn about UIs from their attempt? Which bits can we copy and put into other UIs?
I have never had a chance to play with Metro, never even seen it in action even. I actually don't see MS's offering to take off anytime soon, which I think is a pity in a way as a third serious competitor can only be good for the overall market. And besides MS I can't think of any software house to be able to put a viable competitor in this market.
MapQuest is pretty much US only.
Just tried it again. Click the link, search for "Hong Kong". Only result: a street somewhere in US. Not the SAR.
Search "China". You know, that big country where 20% of the world's population resides. No results.
OK, that's it, useless.