eg. if you own a cafe and put a radio on, you must pay the PRS even though the radio station has *already* paid them. You're paying for something that has been already paid, merely to advertise on behalf of the PRS.
Garage owners have been sued because customers left their car stereos on too loud. Workplaces have been sued because a member of the public 'might' overhear their portable radio. Hell, venues have been sued *even when they only play live music from local artists* beacuse they might, one day, possibly, perhaps, play something copyrighted.
The PRS is an extortion racket, nothing more. If it was just about the songwriters getting paid then I'd be all for it, but these clowns go *way* beyond that.
Seems a bit unlikely, but he says he paid contractors to do it.. that tells me he's not a programmer - a phone based puzzle game doesn't require multiple developers (and I'd love to know how they stretched development time to 6 months). So the project is paying at least two people, one of whom isn't actually doing any coding - effectively deadweight - and it goes on for far too long... and they wonder why it fails to make a profit. This isn't unique to the appstore, the world of business is full of ideas that failed in the same way. Hell, I've worked on a few...
If you do the math, you can see that I need to sell about 9,150 units in the U.S. before I break even on Dapple.
Then he should have done the maths before spending time developing the app, and either not bothered or worked out a way to reduce costs. Only a few apps get wildly successful and make everyone rich. Budgeting for over 1000 sales on a simple puzzle game running on a single platform is fantasy land.
You forget the only changes to the iphone for months have in fact been upgrades to the google apps - apple haven't really done much but bug fix since the release of the appstore. Presumably they're writing for the new iphone (which is going to have to be *really* special to compete, since apple seem wedded to their contract only model most of their prime customers are stuck on contracts and can't upgrade until at least December).
Apple have past form on this, as anyone who's owned an ipod in the past will know. Eventually the updates stop and the only way to get new features is to buy a new device, even if yours would have been perfectly capable of it if apple pulled their finger out.
OTOH the marketing for the G1 is all over the place - you can't walk 10 feet down the high street without seeing adverts offering them free on various contracts - some of them extremely good deals (which is where the open nature shows - O2 can't offer the iphone cheaper than it is because apple won't let them, so they're at a disadvantage long term, as the price of phones normally drops quite quickly after release).
At the moment android feels like it's coming out of beta - no paid apps yet in the UK for example. Then again look at the iphone around version 1.1, which had no apps at all.. in a year things will be totally different.
Are you kidding? Phones are free are nearly free with the plans, and have been for as long as I can remember. They were more expensive a few years ago (especially compared to today where the companies are cutting each other throats to get new business) but they were more expensive across the board - you'd have paid a lot for a bog standard phone as well.
Browsing on opera mini was pretty good back in the day.. only let down by the lack of 3G which didn't become ubiquitous until about 3-4 years ago.
The only reason people didn't have phones with large screens and browsers was the same reason most people don't now - they don't want or need such a device.
The problem with rundll32 is it seems to be used everywhere. Originally (IIRC) it was just a way to run control panel libraries without using control.exe, but it's suffered from feature creep. As an app that can run other apps it should never, ever be whitelisted. It's just a hole waiting to happen.
In Vista it wasn't privileged - there was a separate app RunLegacyCplElevated for that task.
The problem is 'buggy applications are trying to do something that's indistinguishable from a malware attack' are mostly Microsoft applications - Windows Explorer (yes I *do* want to delete files off *my own desktop*), half the apps in the control panel (it should ask *once* when you run the control panel not every time you change a setting). Logging into a wifi network - why is this even privileged?
I haven't had a lot of problem with 3rd party apps.. it's the builtin OS stuff that's the problem.
To counter your anecdote I've never met another person who's worked out how to hack an xbox and put XBMC on it... that's pretty a pretty techie thing to do. The most complex thing a non techie does sometimes is view programmes with their browser on iplayer, and that's a *long* way from being a primary source of viewing. The younger ones are able to figure out bittorrent but download limits make downloading video over it unfeasable anyway.
Set top boxes that played IP TV have been mainstream for ages - the biggest ISP in the country here sells just such a service (except as usual the per-programme charges make it prohibitively expensive).
This has in fact been done for things like cannabis supplied on medical grounds for example, at least in the UK. It's a high risk gamble though - it depends on whether the jury is sympathetic to your case.
Hell, it's virtually impossible to download and install a map on a TomTom *with* their windows application (or OSX application).
They've got some kind of stupid DRM on them that simply doesn't work, so when I buy a map their app downloads it and then the device proudly proclaims the map is corrupt and refuses to use it.
I used to fight throught their absolutely crap support system, but after the last time of being asked for the model and serial numbers 7 times in succession over 3 weeks and no resolution I simply hacked the DRM and put it on manually (their support appears to be largely automated.. it keyword strips your message and produces something that sounds vaguely plausible in reply. This is invariably 'please send more information' even if you've sent them everything before - I even tried the 'hello if there is a human reading this please say something to show it' and it didn't work.. thus proving to me that no humans work at tomtom).
What doctors do know is the placebo effect is very powerful and in many cases even if the diagnosis isn't 100% correct the drug will work because the patient expects it to work. For anything non-life threatening there's no downside.
Oh that's easy. A 'secure' entry will cost $$$, require a verisign certificate and they'll pressure browser makers to produce ominous warnings if your domain isn't signed by them.
I suspect the delay is because NSEC3 only just got put into bind 9.6, and DNSSEC is (ironically) just too insecure to deploy without that.
Slashdot Mirror
Nod32 still borks the TCP stack by default, so I avoid that (what the hell it's even doing hooking into it is beyond me).
Avast is pretty good... you can switch the nag screen off.
That's precisely what the PRS do.
eg. if you own a cafe and put a radio on, you must pay the PRS even though the radio station has *already* paid them. You're paying for something that has been already paid, merely to advertise on behalf of the PRS.
Garage owners have been sued because customers left their car stereos on too loud. Workplaces have been sued because a member of the public 'might' overhear their portable radio. Hell, venues have been sued *even when they only play live music from local artists* beacuse they might, one day, possibly, perhaps, play something copyrighted.
The PRS is an extortion racket, nothing more. If it was just about the songwriters getting paid then I'd be all for it, but these clowns go *way* beyond that.
Seems a bit unlikely, but he says he paid contractors to do it.. that tells me he's not a programmer - a phone based puzzle game doesn't require multiple developers (and I'd love to know how they stretched development time to 6 months). So the project is paying at least two people, one of whom isn't actually doing any coding - effectively deadweight - and it goes on for far too long... and they wonder why it fails to make a profit. This isn't unique to the appstore, the world of business is full of ideas that failed in the same way. Hell, I've worked on a few...
You think setting up bittorrent is easier than clicking buy on the appstore?
Bittorrent is *hard* for non-geeks who think port forwarding is something that boats do. Hell, I've yet to meet a non-geek who even knew what it is.
If you do the math, you can see that I need to sell about 9,150 units in the U.S. before I break even on Dapple.
Then he should have done the maths before spending time developing the app, and either not bothered or worked out a way to reduce costs. Only a few apps get wildly successful and make everyone rich. Budgeting for over 1000 sales on a simple puzzle game running on a single platform is fantasy land.
That's quite funny. Slashdot has story after story saying the iphone is the most popular on the planet, and then you get a post like that.
You forget the only changes to the iphone for months have in fact been upgrades to the google apps - apple haven't really done much but bug fix since the release of the appstore. Presumably they're writing for the new iphone (which is going to have to be *really* special to compete, since apple seem wedded to their contract only model most of their prime customers are stuck on contracts and can't upgrade until at least December).
Apple have past form on this, as anyone who's owned an ipod in the past will know. Eventually the updates stop and the only way to get new features is to buy a new device, even if yours would have been perfectly capable of it if apple pulled their finger out.
OTOH the marketing for the G1 is all over the place - you can't walk 10 feet down the high street without seeing adverts offering them free on various contracts - some of them extremely good deals (which is where the open nature shows - O2 can't offer the iphone cheaper than it is because apple won't let them, so they're at a disadvantage long term, as the price of phones normally drops quite quickly after release).
At the moment android feels like it's coming out of beta - no paid apps yet in the UK for example. Then again look at the iphone around version 1.1, which had no apps at all.. in a year things will be totally different.
So you jailbroke your iphone so now..
1. Everytime apple comes up with an update you lose everything
2. If the phone breaks good luck getting it repaired. Apple won't touch it.
So you would rather code for 5% of the market rather than 80%?
Good luck with that. See you down the unemployment office.
..and nokia doesn't care about the US, because they already have 50% of the worldwide smartphone market *alone*.
You seem to be comparing phones from 5 years ago with modern phones. Nokias high end phones are *way* more powerful than the iphone.
No there aren't.. don't make shit up.
There are a couple of frontends to Safari. Apple will *not* allow a 3rd party browser on the iphone.
Are you kidding? Phones are free are nearly free with the plans, and have been for as long as I can remember. They were more expensive a few years ago (especially compared to today where the companies are cutting each other throats to get new business) but they were more expensive across the board - you'd have paid a lot for a bog standard phone as well.
Browsing on opera mini was pretty good back in the day.. only let down by the lack of 3G which didn't become ubiquitous until about 3-4 years ago.
The only reason people didn't have phones with large screens and browsers was the same reason most people don't now - they don't want or need such a device.
Not by a long shot.. I was using a full screen touch display on a P800 in 2001.
It wasn't as sophisticated as a modern phone, but for its day it was pretty good.
The problem with rundll32 is it seems to be used everywhere. Originally (IIRC) it was just a way to run control panel libraries without using control.exe, but it's suffered from feature creep. As an app that can run other apps it should never, ever be whitelisted. It's just a hole waiting to happen.
In Vista it wasn't privileged - there was a separate app RunLegacyCplElevated for that task.
The maximum is about 6 times for 1 operation, if you're copying a directory.
IIRC that was fixed in Vista SP1, although I'm told it still prompts multiple times it's not so insane.
The problem is 'buggy applications are trying to do something that's indistinguishable from a malware attack' are mostly Microsoft applications - Windows Explorer (yes I *do* want to delete files off *my own desktop*), half the apps in the control panel (it should ask *once* when you run the control panel not every time you change a setting). Logging into a wifi network - why is this even privileged?
I haven't had a lot of problem with 3rd party apps.. it's the builtin OS stuff that's the problem.
The company has been shut down. Its owner faces prosecution *and* a £5000 fine (and for a case like this they will go for the maximum penalties).
Also all its customers are now under investigation and also face possible prosecution.
Also both the original company *and* its customers are wide open for legal action against them if they denied anyone a job because of this data.
That's a pretty fucking heavy disincentive for anyone doing it again.
To counter your anecdote I've never met another person who's worked out how to hack an xbox and put XBMC on it... that's pretty a pretty techie thing to do. The most complex thing a non techie does sometimes is view programmes with their browser on iplayer, and that's a *long* way from being a primary source of viewing. The younger ones are able to figure out bittorrent but download limits make downloading video over it unfeasable anyway.
Set top boxes that played IP TV have been mainstream for ages - the biggest ISP in the country here sells just such a service (except as usual the per-programme charges make it prohibitively expensive).
You mean the 'this file contains a potential unspecified security hole' warning? That always makes me chuckle.
This has in fact been done for things like cannabis supplied on medical grounds for example, at least in the UK. It's a high risk gamble though - it depends on whether the jury is sympathetic to your case.
Hell, it's virtually impossible to download and install a map on a TomTom *with* their windows application (or OSX application).
They've got some kind of stupid DRM on them that simply doesn't work, so when I buy a map their app downloads it and then the device proudly proclaims the map is corrupt and refuses to use it.
I used to fight throught their absolutely crap support system, but after the last time of being asked for the model and serial numbers 7 times in succession over 3 weeks and no resolution I simply hacked the DRM and put it on manually (their support appears to be largely automated.. it keyword strips your message and produces something that sounds vaguely plausible in reply. This is invariably 'please send more information' even if you've sent them everything before - I even tried the 'hello if there is a human reading this please say something to show it' and it didn't work.. thus proving to me that no humans work at tomtom).
What doctors do know is the placebo effect is very powerful and in many cases even if the diagnosis isn't 100% correct the drug will work because the patient expects it to work. For anything non-life threatening there's no downside.
The iraq death toll is nearing 100,000.
Of course the official figures don't count 'uninteresting' people like anyone without an american accent.
Oh that's easy. A 'secure' entry will cost $$$, require a verisign certificate and they'll pressure browser makers to produce ominous warnings if your domain isn't signed by them.
I suspect the delay is because NSEC3 only just got put into bind 9.6, and DNSSEC is (ironically) just too insecure to deploy without that.