"iMessage" is a message transport. The app is "Messages". The document from Apple specifically says "SMS": it does not mention either Messages or iMessage. While it's possible that Apple leaves iMessages unencrypted on the device, it would be surprising given how much trouble they go through to protect then in transit. So while this document doesn't explicitly say iMessages are safe, it also doesn't say they're vulnerable.
It's big enough to carry everything you've mentioned, but no bigger than necessary. It comfortably distributes the weight when fully loaded, and is unbelievably durable. I've used mine on a daily basis for four years, including several cross-country and international trips, and it still looks new. Worth every penny. Highly recommended.
i've been a bluespoon user for years- first the AX and now the AX2. while they've worked great with all my Nokia phones, i just switched to an LG CU320 and if i use the bluespoon with it, people on the other end experience intolerable echo. so, YMMV.
Two: it's impossible. Impossible to do it and meet all of your criteria for anonymity and so on.
see
Chaum, D. Fiat, A. Naor, M., Untraceable electronic cash. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, West Germany, p. 319-27, 1990)(Conference: Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO '88. Proceedings, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 21-25 Aug. 1988)
What I mean is, having some magic string of bits that stands alone, with no link to a central server etc., and can be swapped around, will never happen. Because whatever those strings of bits are, they can be duplicated digitally.
OK, I guess my number was too small. Add a zero. My point is (and I may be mistaken) that there's probably an arbitrary upper limit on the value of transactions that Visa, Mastercard, et al will accept.
stuff that has inherent physical value, like... cash
come again?
I don't believe you'll ever be able to have anonymous digital money, popular science fiction notwithstanding.
we are able to have anonymous digital money right now. the math is easy. the market is the hard part, which makes any digital cash scheme pretty worthless since cash is only as valuable as the network of people that use it. if some digital cash scheme did take off, we'd find that the politics become even harder to beat than the market. i'm quite sure it won't be long before digital cash is illegal (anonymous digital cash, that is).
so i agree that we won't have anonymous digital money any time soon (though it's not because it's impossible). i am quite sure we'll have it eventually, because it's just too good an idea to fail.
(as far as the small businesses go, i'm thinking smaller. there are so many juice stands where i can't use anything but cash. there are artisans and craftspeople who don't take credit cards. i can't buy firewood from my neighbor using a credit card. nor can i use one to settle a dedt for lunch with my coworker. and so on.)
I have paper cash in my wallet. It is lightweight, accepted everywhere and there are no fees or auditing associated with it.
Accepted everywhere? Ever tried using it online?
With eCash, I'll invariably be paying fees for using my money
You don't pay fees for regular cash because the government runs it- you pay taxes in order to use regular cash. You could theoretically use privately issued cold cash and pay fees to use it. You could likewise theoretically use government issued digital cash and pay taxes instead.
and whomever is running the system & the government will be able to track or audit my activity.
there is such a thing as anonymous digital cash. that's why it's called "digital cash" and not "digital credit".
If you don't want to carry cash, call American Express and get a credit or charge card.
I like carrying cash, and use it for as many offline transactions as possible. It just doesn't work so well online.
I have a couple of cards in my wallet, and with them I can buy just about any product or service in real life, over the phone, or on the Internet.... As far as I'm concerned, "digital cash" is here.
Can you use them to buy something that costs $0.05? How about something that costs $500,000? Can you use them anonymously?
Credit cards are great if you're buying medium priced stuff from large businesses and you don't mind the world knowing about it. They suck for micropayments, for macropayments, for purchases from small businesses, and for purchases that are "outside the norm".
What does this digital money do that my regular money doesn't?
If you're comparing digital cash to online credit card transactions, then the difference is that digital cash is anonymous and irrepudiable.
If you're comparing digital cash to cold cash, then the difference is that cold cash requires you to be in the same meatspace as the other transactee. Whereas digital cash can be spent online over the net, or offline face to face.
If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.
Are you sure about that? I have residential class service from Speakeasy, and as far as I can tell my TOS doesn't prohibit me reselling the service. If it's not prohibited, then I assume it's allowed, no?
what do you mean you don't have "much" of a choice? you have the quintisential (sp?) choice of the consumer: cheap, fast access through an isp with poor service, or more expensive, slower access through an isp that doesn't suck. most americans seem to go for the numbers- less money and more speed must be good, right? well, just keep thinking that way while you watch the utility of your net connection degrade until it's only good for viewing banner ads. then you'll regret the fact that the competition has gone under since nobody appreciates quality service...
it would be much more interesting to see who, given one liter of gas, could win a race over a road circuit. steady-state driving at low speed doesn't relate to most real-world driving.
if you make a copy of that CD so that you can listen to it and still lend it out to friends
but it's legal for me to make a copy of the CD for backup purposes. so is i just not legal for me to make a backup AND share? i have to pick between the two? or can i make a backup and share, as long as only one version of the CD is played at a time? what if a leave a copy in my car and a copy in my apartment, that should be fine, right? but what about someone borrowing my car and listening to that CD... it should be perfectly legal, until I start listening to the copy in at home? hogwash.
it's perfectly legal for me to make a copy of a CD and lend it out to friends.
What you can't do is set up a server so that others can take possession of that MP3 without the consent of the copyright holder.
how is that legally different from lending my computer to others, who can then take possession of that MP3 without the consent of the copyright holder?
In the Treo, at least, when you are on the phone, you can't continue to use your applications.
that's odd. on my samsung sph-i300 i can use other applications while on the phone (granted, this is only useful while on speakerphone or with a headset).
actually that's my only problem with emusic- 128k fixed rate mp3s. they sound great on my crappy computer speakers and on my nomad with sennheiser earbuds, but in my car (empeg with boston accoustics speakers) they only sound fine at low volume. crank it up and you can hear artifacts of the compression. how noticeable they are depends on the kind of music you're listening to, so you'd really have to try it out to know. some of the best albums i've found on emusic i've subsequently bought on cd, just so i can make some higher quality mp3s. but for $10/month, it's been well worth it for me.
for my $9.99 a month, i download a few of their editors picks each week. one of them ends up being something i really like and might not have otherwise found. so, i average about 4 full ablums that i like from them each month, which is about $2.50 per album, or just under $0.25 per track.
sure, i don't have the option to just spend only $0.25 and only get britney's latest chart busting single, but emusic's target market is, i believe, people who actually appreciate music and not the lemming-like consumers of the billboard top 40.
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"iMessage" is a message transport. The app is "Messages". The document from Apple specifically says "SMS": it does not mention either Messages or iMessage. While it's possible that Apple leaves iMessages unencrypted on the device, it would be surprising given how much trouble they go through to protect then in transit. So while this document doesn't explicitly say iMessages are safe, it also doesn't say they're vulnerable.
It's big enough to carry everything you've mentioned, but no bigger than necessary. It comfortably distributes the weight when fully loaded, and is unbelievably durable. I've used mine on a daily basis for four years, including several cross-country and international trips, and it still looks new. Worth every penny. Highly recommended.
i've been a bluespoon user for years- first the AX and now the AX2. while they've worked great with all my Nokia phones, i just switched to an LG CU320 and if i use the bluespoon with it, people on the other end experience intolerable echo. so, YMMV.
in this context, OSS means Open Sound System, not Open Source Software.
see
(this is just the cardinal example- other people have come up with other ways of providing offline
but you can't implement it till 2005:
Your digital cash will arrive in 2005, when an important David Chaum patent expires.
What I mean is, having some magic string of bits that stands alone, with no link to a central server etc., and can be swapped around, will never happen. Because whatever those strings of bits are, they can be duplicated digitally.
there are several solutions to this problem. see the work of David Chaum, Stefan Brands, and others.
sorry, i'm saying that digital cash is both anonymous and irrepudiable, and that credit card transactions are neither.
Yes, definitely.
... cash
OK, I guess my number was too small. Add a zero. My point is (and I may be mistaken) that there's probably an arbitrary upper limit on the value of transactions that Visa, Mastercard, et al will accept.
stuff that has inherent physical value, like
come again?
I don't believe you'll ever be able to have anonymous digital money, popular
science fiction notwithstanding.
we are able to have anonymous digital money right now. the math is easy. the market is the hard part, which makes any digital cash scheme pretty worthless since cash is only as valuable as the network of people that use it. if some digital cash scheme did take off, we'd find that the politics become even harder to beat than the market. i'm quite sure it won't be long before digital cash is illegal (anonymous digital cash, that is).
so i agree that we won't have anonymous digital money any time soon (though it's not because it's impossible). i am quite sure we'll have it eventually, because it's just too good an idea to fail.
(as far as the small businesses go, i'm thinking smaller. there are so many juice stands where i can't use anything but cash. there are artisans and craftspeople who don't take credit cards. i can't buy firewood from my neighbor using a credit card. nor can i use one to settle a dedt for lunch with my coworker. and so
on.)
I have paper cash in my wallet. It is lightweight, accepted everywhere and there are no fees or auditing associated with it.
Accepted everywhere? Ever tried using it online?
With eCash, I'll invariably be paying fees for using my money
You don't pay fees for regular cash because the government runs it- you pay taxes in order to use regular cash. You could theoretically use privately issued cold cash and pay fees to use it. You could likewise theoretically use government issued digital cash and pay taxes instead.
and whomever is running the system & the government will be able to track or audit my activity.
there is such a thing as anonymous digital cash. that's why it's called "digital cash" and not "digital credit".
If you don't want to carry cash, call American Express and get a credit or charge card.
I like carrying cash, and use it for as many offline transactions as possible. It just doesn't work so well online.
I have a couple of cards in my wallet, and with them I can buy just about any product or service in real life, over the phone, or on the Internet. ... As far as I'm concerned, "digital cash" is here.
Can you use them to buy something that costs $0.05? How about something that costs $500,000?
Can you use them anonymously?
Credit cards are great if you're buying medium priced stuff from large businesses and you don't mind the world knowing about it. They suck for micropayments, for macropayments, for purchases from small businesses, and for purchases that are "outside the norm".
What does this digital money do that my regular money doesn't?
If you're comparing digital cash to online credit card transactions, then the difference is that digital cash is anonymous and irrepudiable.
If you're comparing digital cash to cold cash, then the difference is that cold cash requires you to be in the same meatspace as the other transactee. Whereas digital cash can be spent online over the net, or offline face to face.
hmm... i missed that bit. thanks for pointing it out.
If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.
Are you sure about that? I have residential class service from Speakeasy, and as far as I can tell my TOS doesn't prohibit me reselling the service. If it's not prohibited, then I assume it's allowed, no?
7100/768, for $200/mo? who offers this wondrous sounding service?
yup, he's the one running a Linux mailing list that won't let any nimrod using Outlook join.
what do you mean you don't have "much" of a choice? you have the quintisential (sp?) choice of the consumer: cheap, fast access through an isp with poor service, or more expensive, slower access through an isp that doesn't suck. most americans seem to go for the numbers- less money and more speed must be good, right? well, just keep thinking that way while you watch the utility of your net connection degrade until it's only good for viewing banner ads. then you'll regret the fact that the competition has gone under since nobody appreciates quality service...
not much of a choice... sheesh!
it would be much more interesting to see who, given one liter of gas, could win a race over a road circuit. steady-state driving at low speed doesn't relate to most real-world driving.
i bet if you emailed a jboss developer and said "i'll pay twice as much for an html version" they'd take you up on the offer.
i haven't read any of them but the JBossCMP docs, which are for 3.0.
if you make a copy of that CD so that you can listen to it and still lend it out to friends
but it's legal for me to make a copy of the CD for backup purposes. so is i just not legal for me to make a backup AND share? i have to pick between the two? or can i make a backup and share, as long as only one version of the CD is played at a time? what if a leave a copy in my car and a copy in my apartment, that should be fine, right? but what about someone borrowing my car and listening to that CD... it should be perfectly legal, until I start listening to the copy in at home? hogwash.
it's perfectly legal for me to make a copy of a CD and lend it out to friends.
What you can't do is set up a server so that others can take possession of that MP3 without the consent of the copyright holder.
how is that legally different from lending my computer to others, who can then take possession of that MP3 without the consent of the copyright holder?
If only there were better docs...
there are.
In the Treo, at least, when you are on the phone, you can't continue to use your applications.
that's odd. on my samsung sph-i300 i can use other applications while on the phone (granted, this is only useful while on speakerphone or with a headset).
actually that's my only problem with emusic- 128k fixed rate mp3s. they sound great on my crappy computer speakers and on my nomad with sennheiser earbuds, but in my car (empeg with boston accoustics speakers) they only sound fine at low volume. crank it up and you can hear artifacts of the compression. how noticeable they are depends on the kind of music you're listening to, so you'd really have to try it out to know. some of the best albums i've found on emusic i've subsequently bought on cd, just so i can make some higher quality mp3s. but for $10/month, it's been well worth it for me.
for my $9.99 a month, i download a few of their editors picks each week. one of them ends up being something i really like and might not have otherwise found. so, i average about 4 full ablums that i like from them each month, which is about $2.50 per album, or just under $0.25 per track.
sure, i don't have the option to just spend only $0.25 and only get britney's latest chart busting single, but emusic's target market is, i believe, people who actually appreciate music and not the lemming-like consumers of the billboard top 40.