Maybe there are more holes in the surroundings, then it's clear. Also don't craters normally come with an elevated rim? Hard to see from above of course but no indication of such a rim around it.
Oh well lots of guesses will be posted here I'm sure. It's/. after all, fantasies running wild.
Indeed just take those metals to your local uni or so, have them figure out what it is. If they really react strongly to water then this must be recently exposed material (won't last long outdoors in the wet soil), so can't be from an ancient impact crater. I mean the material itself could be from whatever source but it's obviously exposed recently as you can find it easily with a metal detector so can't be there for a very long time or it would have weathered already.
Also impact craters usually have lots of glassy material from molten rock present, look up some research articles about confirmed craters on what you should be able to find there.
With the big difference that (micro)SD cards are designed to be removable devices (they are in all other devices that use them). My phone has one, it's hidden behind the battery but it won't break my phone were I to take it out.
OK we're nerds. But for the general public, who's not so deep into computers/software/etc: do they buy an "iOS device" or an "iPhone"? Do they buy an "Android phone" or a "SonyEricsson X6 phone"? Do they buy a "Symbian phone" or a "Nokia N-something"?
Or in other words: does an average consumer buy a phone because of its OS, or because of its model?
And if they were to buy say an iPhone and an iPad, would they realise that the underlying OS is basically the same?
Something I'm actually quite curious about. After all a general consumer will go out a computer shop to "buy a PC" or to "buy an Apple", not to buy "a computer running Windows" or "a computer running Mac OS-X".
Other posters indicate that MS's DRM requires certain hardware. That's a problem.
Even if no such hardware was required: how about key distribution? This is the hard part, keeping them secret. Closed source is a requirement for that - in open source there is no secret. And actually keeping the keys secret and well hidden in the final compiled binary, that's what went wrong with the DVD and resulted in DeCSS.
I mean if your game sold 5 million copies but was download 20 million times, think how much more money you could have made! Gets them all excited with the thought that by investing resources in DRM you could literally increase your profits a few hundred percent.
I wouldn't be surprised as all that DRM actually would cost sales due to people not being able to try out the game (though they could give away a trial with just one level or so instead, still not as good as a friend saying "hey try this out!"), and the likely bad press they get from the moments the DRM fails and blocks legitimate buyers. The stronger the DRM protections the more likely this is.
I have seen quite some low-res versions of stuff on the torrent sites.
It makes sense, for the simple reason that most phones can not handle a 1080p stream. They just don't have the horsepower for it. Let alone a screen big enough to need such a size. Indeed if I were to download video for my phone, I'd be looking for something that's more fitting to it's 320x240 screen resolution, and the 2 GB memory card.
No rights given to the customer that they didn't already have (that's why sellers prefer to call their customers "consumers" instead), only restrictions on what they can do with it. Only restrictions to the seller as they can only sell to people that have also bought in to their specific scheme.
It puts restrictions on all sides: before I have already argued why it's self-defeating due to these restrictions companies put themselves in (in case of music it gave Apple all pricing power with their iTunes/iPod monopoly; same with Amazon's book DRM). Basically you want to sell music with DRM, your only viable option is iTunes/iPod with their 80% or so market share. The rest is splintered. But it gives Apple all power, and now we see music being sold without DRM. Books to follow.
Here again indeed a case of self-defeating DRM. The studio's apparently have a problem "supporting" all those schemes, or is it Android that doesn't support them? Hard to say. Everyone has been trying to reinvent this broken wheel, and of course they do not interoperate. No surprise there.
But those dreams of yours may not be that far off, AC.
Music DRM has all but been defeated already with music being sold on-line without DRM. iTunes started bit by bit to remove DRM from their offerings, studio after studio gave in. Not sure whether they still use it now or that it has been abolished completely.
Book DRM will likely be the next "victim" to a splintered market, Amazon already supports DRM-free books - it is only likely that this will continue as the Kindle is far from the only available book reader nowadays.
Movie DRM is likely to be next. Again the problem is indeed that sellers restrict themselves to a part of the market they can sell to, they exclude themselves from a large number of potential buyers. Buyers that as it stands CAN NOT buy, even if they want to - and can't be good for any business.
So yes I predict that in some 10 years from now we're looking at DRM as a fad from the 1990s/2000s, and that by then the whole media markets have totally revamped with for starters much lower prices, worldwide availability (no silly geographical restrictions), and probably with some new payment methods making it actually easy and safe to buy stuff on-line, hopefully even competition by multiple resellers but on the Internet that's a major issue in itself.
In terms of how excited consumers are about a product, based on the companies previous offerings, hello, are not "95%" of us running Windows?;) I highly doubt 95% of us are using iPods, yet the iPod gets all the credit!
pins of reality?
Not 95% of us is using portable mp3 players. Many people don't even use computers on a daily basis. And when they're using a computer, they're not using Windows but they're "doing e-mail, checking facebook, watching clips on youtube". Windows is not important as long as it doesn't get in the way.
But I have heard before of an >80% market share of iPod in the mp3 player market. That's not that far off of Microsoft's monopoly in Windows.
Jaywalking like the other offenses you mention is easy to get away with as you're one of the millions that do it on a daily basis. The risk of getting caught is low; even if the police would hand out 1,000 fines a day that would mean only a chance of one in thousands to get a fine. If you don't look out for police on patrol that is.
Not complying to such a regulation as a company is harder as there are just a few companies. Easier to prosecute them all.
When I say "hype" I mean more than basic marketing. Then I mean the general public is getting actually excited about it, looking forward to it. Like the iPhone indeed (mainly thanks to Apple's track record with the iPod line I think) - highly anticipated by press and public. Apple only had to fan the flames with their marketing. As I mentioned the iPhone is the de-facto reference since release, that's no matter what impressive. And acts as free advertising for their phone as well: seeing everything compared against the iPhone makes it sound like the iPhone is simply the best, so why make do with a second choice?
Google has a similar advantage thanks to the popularity of their search engine. People talk about Google in their daily lives. And so there are more companies that are loved, seen as innovative and exciting, and which are eagerly followed by fans which in turn sets off word of mouth. And Android-based phones seem to hold up quite well against the iPhone. At least there are many more models to choose from, in a large price range.
Microsoft doesn't have this mind share. Not anymore at least. I do recall the days of Win95/Win98 releases: that were hypes. People rushing in the stores at midnight on the release day to be the first to buy a copy. I don't recall much of that with the release of XP and definitely not with Vista and Win7. I know they marketed the hell out of those two, but the general public simply didn't like it, let alone got excited about it.
Indeed no idea where that company lost it. They hire so many of the smartest minds in the world. They have tens of thousands of employees. Yet they fail to come up with interesting, compelling, innovative, must-have products. Oh well they shouldn't worry too much, even without any new products they will survive easily for another decade or two. Plenty of installed base, plenty of cash reserves.
Is there really more than one telco maintaining a fixed line network? In most parts of the world there is just one company maintaining a network. Maybe more than one per country, but usually no overlapping networks. Australia may be different there.
As long as it's done by who-ever owns the wires and does the maintenance, fixed line customers do not have much of a choice.
Something tells me that for lack of perfect voice recognition software the transcription part is going to be the costly one. Foreign languages and poor phone connections only make it worse.
Maybe report every single change in the network, apply for approval for every person moving their connection, for every new connection, for every cable repaired, for every minute change in their network. And make it very clear to the customer that to comply with the law they have to wait for the government to approve of the changes, as the government wants to make sure they can still listen in to your calls.
This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system. Secondly causing delays all over even for simple routine operations, causing numerous complaints. Thirdly it makes the people very aware that their government wants to listen in to their phone calls - and that again should also give a serious outcry.
The last assuming people actually still care about their privacy. Not sure about that one.
But the overburdening and causing delays part should work well - especially when the members of the government themselves get stuck up in their own approval process and have a problem getting telephone lines moved or fixed.
This law sounds totally bullshit to me. I bet there are regulations in place already to require wiretapping facilities, that should be enough.
I'll disregard that last word as typo in your mail. As I have not seen a single ad for Windows Phone 7. I'm not sure whether it's even available in this part of the world.
Maybe you should remember that the world is bigger than the USA alone. I know it's hard for Americans but still it would be nice if you could.
And an ad campaign != hype. It can only support a hype. As long as the media doesn't talk about it, people don't talk about it, you can advertise what you want but it's not going to happen. No hype.
With case design I was talking about prettiness and looks, not sturdiness or easy to build in. Consumers buying a case to put in their living room or IT people buying a case to put in a comms cupboard or server room have totally different requirements on case design.
I agree with you. Also, I think I need to add to that the carriers the new WP7 phones came out on: AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T has the iPhone and T-Mobile has the MyTouch 4G as their flagship phones.
This part is still hard for me to grasp. But then I live in a place where there are at least five networks available, plus virtual providers, where porting your number to another network takes just a few days at no charge, and where simlocks are non-existent.
Some phones are sold with contract: you pre-pay the phone; then get discount on your plan for the next 12-24 months. For the rest phones and carriers are not related whatsoever.
You want an iPhone? You buy an iPhone, put your existing sim in it, and you're good to go. Would you want a WP7 phone (not sure whether they're available here): same story. I bought myself an LG smartphone (Android based) the other day; now I have three phones and two sim cards: works in any combination.
And the iPhone, seriously: how does that lock you in? Paid apps is the only thing I can think of. Unless people actually like it.
Slashdot Mirror
he posts to Slashdot for some insight
You must be new here.
According to the summary, he actually already did just that. And that geologist told him it's not a crater, just a sink hole.
Interesting as the site may be, it's probably really not an impact crater.
Looking at that photo, sinkhole sounds plausible.
Maybe there are more holes in the surroundings, then it's clear. Also don't craters normally come with an elevated rim? Hard to see from above of course but no indication of such a rim around it.
Oh well lots of guesses will be posted here I'm sure. It's /. after all, fantasies running wild.
Indeed just take those metals to your local uni or so, have them figure out what it is. If they really react strongly to water then this must be recently exposed material (won't last long outdoors in the wet soil), so can't be from an ancient impact crater. I mean the material itself could be from whatever source but it's obviously exposed recently as you can find it easily with a metal detector so can't be there for a very long time or it would have weathered already.
Also impact craters usually have lots of glassy material from molten rock present, look up some research articles about confirmed craters on what you should be able to find there.
DRM has the same problems for sellers in both rented and purchased content. They can only sell to those who have their DRM client installed.
With the big difference that (micro)SD cards are designed to be removable devices (they are in all other devices that use them). My phone has one, it's hidden behind the battery but it won't break my phone were I to take it out.
OK we're nerds. But for the general public, who's not so deep into computers/software/etc: do they buy an "iOS device" or an "iPhone"? Do they buy an "Android phone" or a "SonyEricsson X6 phone"? Do they buy a "Symbian phone" or a "Nokia N-something"?
Or in other words: does an average consumer buy a phone because of its OS, or because of its model?
And if they were to buy say an iPhone and an iPad, would they realise that the underlying OS is basically the same?
Something I'm actually quite curious about. After all a general consumer will go out a computer shop to "buy a PC" or to "buy an Apple", not to buy "a computer running Windows" or "a computer running Mac OS-X".
Other posters indicate that MS's DRM requires certain hardware. That's a problem.
Even if no such hardware was required: how about key distribution? This is the hard part, keeping them secret. Closed source is a requirement for that - in open source there is no secret. And actually keeping the keys secret and well hidden in the final compiled binary, that's what went wrong with the DVD and resulted in DeCSS.
DRM and open source just don't go together.
I mean if your game sold 5 million copies but was download 20 million times, think how much more money you could have made! Gets them all excited with the thought that by investing resources in DRM you could literally increase your profits a few hundred percent.
I wouldn't be surprised as all that DRM actually would cost sales due to people not being able to try out the game (though they could give away a trial with just one level or so instead, still not as good as a friend saying "hey try this out!"), and the likely bad press they get from the moments the DRM fails and blocks legitimate buyers. The stronger the DRM protections the more likely this is.
I have seen quite some low-res versions of stuff on the torrent sites.
It makes sense, for the simple reason that most phones can not handle a 1080p stream. They just don't have the horsepower for it. Let alone a screen big enough to need such a size. Indeed if I were to download video for my phone, I'd be looking for something that's more fitting to it's 320x240 screen resolution, and the 2 GB memory card.
DRM = Digital Restrictions Management.
No rights given to the customer that they didn't already have (that's why sellers prefer to call their customers "consumers" instead), only restrictions on what they can do with it. Only restrictions to the seller as they can only sell to people that have also bought in to their specific scheme.
It puts restrictions on all sides: before I have already argued why it's self-defeating due to these restrictions companies put themselves in (in case of music it gave Apple all pricing power with their iTunes/iPod monopoly; same with Amazon's book DRM). Basically you want to sell music with DRM, your only viable option is iTunes/iPod with their 80% or so market share. The rest is splintered. But it gives Apple all power, and now we see music being sold without DRM. Books to follow.
Here again indeed a case of self-defeating DRM. The studio's apparently have a problem "supporting" all those schemes, or is it Android that doesn't support them? Hard to say. Everyone has been trying to reinvent this broken wheel, and of course they do not interoperate. No surprise there.
But those dreams of yours may not be that far off, AC.
Music DRM has all but been defeated already with music being sold on-line without DRM. iTunes started bit by bit to remove DRM from their offerings, studio after studio gave in. Not sure whether they still use it now or that it has been abolished completely.
Book DRM will likely be the next "victim" to a splintered market, Amazon already supports DRM-free books - it is only likely that this will continue as the Kindle is far from the only available book reader nowadays.
Movie DRM is likely to be next. Again the problem is indeed that sellers restrict themselves to a part of the market they can sell to, they exclude themselves from a large number of potential buyers. Buyers that as it stands CAN NOT buy, even if they want to - and can't be good for any business.
So yes I predict that in some 10 years from now we're looking at DRM as a fad from the 1990s/2000s, and that by then the whole media markets have totally revamped with for starters much lower prices, worldwide availability (no silly geographical restrictions), and probably with some new payment methods making it actually easy and safe to buy stuff on-line, hopefully even competition by multiple resellers but on the Internet that's a major issue in itself.
It were excesses like Versailles that brought down the French royal rulers...
In terms of how excited consumers are about a product, based on the companies previous offerings, hello, are not "95%" of us running Windows? ;) I highly doubt 95% of us are using iPods, yet the iPod gets all the credit!
pins of reality?
Not 95% of us is using portable mp3 players. Many people don't even use computers on a daily basis. And when they're using a computer, they're not using Windows but they're "doing e-mail, checking facebook, watching clips on youtube". Windows is not important as long as it doesn't get in the way.
But I have heard before of an >80% market share of iPod in the mp3 player market. That's not that far off of Microsoft's monopoly in Windows.
Jaywalking like the other offenses you mention is easy to get away with as you're one of the millions that do it on a daily basis. The risk of getting caught is low; even if the police would hand out 1,000 fines a day that would mean only a chance of one in thousands to get a fine. If you don't look out for police on patrol that is.
Not complying to such a regulation as a company is harder as there are just a few companies. Easier to prosecute them all.
When I say "hype" I mean more than basic marketing. Then I mean the general public is getting actually excited about it, looking forward to it. Like the iPhone indeed (mainly thanks to Apple's track record with the iPod line I think) - highly anticipated by press and public. Apple only had to fan the flames with their marketing. As I mentioned the iPhone is the de-facto reference since release, that's no matter what impressive. And acts as free advertising for their phone as well: seeing everything compared against the iPhone makes it sound like the iPhone is simply the best, so why make do with a second choice?
Google has a similar advantage thanks to the popularity of their search engine. People talk about Google in their daily lives. And so there are more companies that are loved, seen as innovative and exciting, and which are eagerly followed by fans which in turn sets off word of mouth. And Android-based phones seem to hold up quite well against the iPhone. At least there are many more models to choose from, in a large price range.
Microsoft doesn't have this mind share. Not anymore at least. I do recall the days of Win95/Win98 releases: that were hypes. People rushing in the stores at midnight on the release day to be the first to buy a copy. I don't recall much of that with the release of XP and definitely not with Vista and Win7. I know they marketed the hell out of those two, but the general public simply didn't like it, let alone got excited about it.
Indeed no idea where that company lost it. They hire so many of the smartest minds in the world. They have tens of thousands of employees. Yet they fail to come up with interesting, compelling, innovative, must-have products. Oh well they shouldn't worry too much, even without any new products they will survive easily for another decade or two. Plenty of installed base, plenty of cash reserves.
Nothing worse? How about treating the populous like criminals[...]
Remember this is Australia we're talking about :-)
Is there really more than one telco maintaining a fixed line network? In most parts of the world there is just one company maintaining a network. Maybe more than one per country, but usually no overlapping networks. Australia may be different there.
As long as it's done by who-ever owns the wires and does the maintenance, fixed line customers do not have much of a choice.
Something tells me that for lack of perfect voice recognition software the transcription part is going to be the costly one. Foreign languages and poor phone connections only make it worse.
The storage is the cheap part; even on paper.
Maybe report every single change in the network, apply for approval for every person moving their connection, for every new connection, for every cable repaired, for every minute change in their network. And make it very clear to the customer that to comply with the law they have to wait for the government to approve of the changes, as the government wants to make sure they can still listen in to your calls.
This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system. Secondly causing delays all over even for simple routine operations, causing numerous complaints. Thirdly it makes the people very aware that their government wants to listen in to their phone calls - and that again should also give a serious outcry.
The last assuming people actually still care about their privacy. Not sure about that one.
But the overburdening and causing delays part should work well - especially when the members of the government themselves get stuck up in their own approval process and have a problem getting telephone lines moved or fixed.
This law sounds totally bullshit to me. I bet there are regulations in place already to require wiretapping facilities, that should be enough.
I'll disregard that last word as typo in your mail. As I have not seen a single ad for Windows Phone 7. I'm not sure whether it's even available in this part of the world.
Maybe you should remember that the world is bigger than the USA alone. I know it's hard for Americans but still it would be nice if you could.
And an ad campaign != hype. It can only support a hype. As long as the media doesn't talk about it, people don't talk about it, you can advertise what you want but it's not going to happen. No hype.
With case design I was talking about prettiness and looks, not sturdiness or easy to build in. Consumers buying a case to put in their living room or IT people buying a case to put in a comms cupboard or server room have totally different requirements on case design.
I agree with you. Also, I think I need to add to that the carriers the new WP7 phones came out on: AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T has the iPhone and T-Mobile has the MyTouch 4G as their flagship phones.
This part is still hard for me to grasp. But then I live in a place where there are at least five networks available, plus virtual providers, where porting your number to another network takes just a few days at no charge, and where simlocks are non-existent.
Some phones are sold with contract: you pre-pay the phone; then get discount on your plan for the next 12-24 months. For the rest phones and carriers are not related whatsoever.
You want an iPhone? You buy an iPhone, put your existing sim in it, and you're good to go. Would you want a WP7 phone (not sure whether they're available here): same story. I bought myself an LG smartphone (Android based) the other day; now I have three phones and two sim cards: works in any combination.
And the iPhone, seriously: how does that lock you in? Paid apps is the only thing I can think of. Unless people actually like it.
[P]eople are too fascinated and in love with their phone, and win7 phones are going to fix that for you.... wait, what?
Somehow I don't see that as a way to sell your product, when you tell it'll make you hate your phone.
Luckily for most products the sales last longer than just one day. And, like Android, I assume the idea is to get it on more models than just one.
How can an ID card specifically facilitate anonymous transactions? Isn't that an exact contradiction?
You sure it's not Swiß?