Re:The iPhone as a weapon against the cell carrier
on
Top Inventions of 2007
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· Score: 1
That's not insignificant. Previously phone designs were limited by what it was percieved people would pay... phones were always free with a contract 6-9 months after their release, which meant they had a fixed budget. As production got cheaper, phones improved.. but it was limited.
Then apple decided to build this hugely expensive gadget and unexpectely they actually sold some. That means others can now do the same - bigger screens, better features, faster processors.. the base phone will be a lot more expensive but do a lot more out of the box.
You're probably right about the wii (although that would be last year) - it was an unexpected revolution.
'Yet another phone' is *not* an invention. (and I even *have* an iphone. It sucks as a phone.. OK as an mp3 player, but the touch is better as it's 16gb).
That's the unequality thing again - it's counterbalanced by the fact that if a marketing company were to do something (don't know what) with my information I could very publically call them scumbags, and ultimately hurt their bottom line.
eg. if company X gets my (largely freely available) details and starts spamming me, I publically denounce them as spammers.. with evidence. Their ISP shuts down their email, they lose a lot of money.
The only problem is that someone can just post a picture of you having a pee in the middle of the street on a Saturday night and then next thing you know, it's in a national newspaper.
It's only news to the chattering classes. Anyone who's actually been *outside* on a saturday night has seen worse than that every single week.
And I agree with the comments on that page. WTF is it with the focusing on women? Like last month they were all nuns or something?
You get smashed, you don't type on you facebook about your antics, but you friend does and you share all same contacts, whats more, those contacts include people who are not necessarily friends but more acquitances, work colleagues etc.
Woo you got smashed and did stupid stuff. Like the rest of the population of the frikkin world... Everyone knows anyway. What do you think this revelation is going to do?
If facebook allows people to realize they are *not* somehow uniquely special then it's done a good thing.
Wouldn't bother me personally... as long as I could watch back.
'privacy' only works because everyone has it equally. If we all decide to give parts of it up (as facebook allows us to do) we get a more open society.
I did read a story where they theorized what would happen if privacy vanished altogether... IMO it was a bit utopian but the general principle (that pretty much what we use it for is to hide stuff we shouldn't be doing) was about right.
Also cell triangulation is *not* 'pretty much spot on for urban areas'. I live in a city of 5 million and it simply doesn't work here. Real GPS of course works perfectly.
After all, who would want an open standard phone where you can install your own software and not be charged a buck for a text message or a ringtone? Who the fuck would want that?
So you'll be buying an N800 then? By your argument it should have taken over the market by now.
No need to go that far though.. the symbian SDK is a free download, the dev certificate is free and I've never met anyone that's paid for a ringtone.. even the cheap payg phones can be persuaded to use free ones.
Since the iphone has a wide open security bug that apple still hasn't fixed it's far less secure than other phones right now - visiting the wrong website could have you making a reverse charge call to nigeria.
Don't have any development in the US, so if someone goes after you it only affects distribution not development, don't ever incorporate in the US (makes it harder for them to go after you), and make sure you don't look too hard at existing patents (it's triple damages if you knowingly infringe a patent.. since its damned near impossible not to infringe a software patent with any sizable code it's far better if you're ignorant of which ones.. and yes a lawyer was the first one who advised us about that).
We have a sales team in the US but there's no legal company there, to protect ourselves.
On a 32bit XP machine with all the required WMP and DRM it still refuses to work, because you're using firefox. That's what you get for hiring ex MS employees to write something.
All of it? That's gonna work well when you post random encrypted crap onto a mailing list and all the outlook users go 'wha..?'
The problem with encrypted email is there are at least two competing major standards, and 99% of users don't have mail packages that understand either.. so you can't send it unless by prior agreement with your close friends. In practice this ends up as almost never.
They can't - cable has the disadvantage that it's all shared bandwidth in an street (up to the 'green box') so if they uncapped it as high as that it would affect TV reception (which is their primary revenue source)... not to mention the backhaul would have to have enormous bandwidth just to handle it... and people just wouldn't be prepared to pay that kind of money for service (when your streets local p2p junkie suddenly maxes his line out 24/7 and your service runs like crap because of it who are your going to blame? The cable company, probably.).
(my pet hate - children in restaraunts.. they just run around screaming and, occasaionally, throwing food at the other guests, and all their parents can say is 'isn't he cute'. NO HE FUCKING ISN'T. LEAVE THE BASTARD AT HOME!!).
Not just that... taxi marshalls, just shop workers, bouncers, just normal civilian street patrols.. they're commonly (around here.. always) linked via radio so they can call for help in trouble, direct CCTV monitoring, etc.
It's not just the emergency cases that get screwed up... you're compromising peoples safety.
It's wierd we don't seem to get the problem in the UK.. different social values I guess. The theatres always run a 'please switch off your phone' trailer at the start of films and nearly everyone does. Occasionally someone forgets, the entire theatre turns around and stares at them when it rings and they try to crawl under the seat whilst frantically switching it off:p
This happens. I've been part of medical experiments.. you just sign a consent form and they give you the random stuff they're trying and you either live or die.
In the UK we had one of these go wrong and several people actually died.. but OTOH they knew what they were signing up to.
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That's not insignificant. Previously phone designs were limited by what it was percieved people would pay... phones were always free with a contract 6-9 months after their release, which meant they had a fixed budget. As production got cheaper, phones improved.. but it was limited.
Then apple decided to build this hugely expensive gadget and unexpectely they actually sold some. That means others can now do the same - bigger screens, better features, faster processors.. the base phone will be a lot more expensive but do a lot more out of the box.
You're probably right about the wii (although that would be last year) - it was an unexpected revolution.
'Yet another phone' is *not* an invention. (and I even *have* an iphone. It sucks as a phone.. OK as an mp3 player, but the touch is better as it's 16gb).
That's the unequality thing again - it's counterbalanced by the fact that if a marketing company were to do something (don't know what) with my information I could very publically call them scumbags, and ultimately hurt their bottom line.
eg. if company X gets my (largely freely available) details and starts spamming me, I publically denounce them as spammers.. with evidence. Their ISP shuts down their email, they lose a lot of money.
The only problem is that someone can just post a picture of you having a pee in the middle of the street on a Saturday night and then next thing you know, it's in a national newspaper.
It's only news to the chattering classes. Anyone who's actually been *outside* on a saturday night has seen worse than that every single week.
And I agree with the comments on that page. WTF is it with the focusing on women? Like last month they were all nuns or something?
You get smashed, you don't type on you facebook about your antics, but you friend does and you share all same contacts, whats more, those contacts include people who are not necessarily friends but more acquitances, work colleagues etc.
Woo you got smashed and did stupid stuff. Like the rest of the population of the frikkin world... Everyone knows anyway. What do you think this revelation is going to do?
If facebook allows people to realize they are *not* somehow uniquely special then it's done a good thing.
Wouldn't bother me personally... as long as I could watch back.
'privacy' only works because everyone has it equally. If we all decide to give parts of it up (as facebook allows us to do) we get a more open society.
I did read a story where they theorized what would happen if privacy vanished altogether... IMO it was a bit utopian but the general principle (that pretty much what we use it for is to hide stuff we shouldn't be doing) was about right.
Also cell triangulation is *not* 'pretty much spot on for urban areas'. I live in a city of 5 million and it simply doesn't work here. Real GPS of course works perfectly.
If Nokia or any of the other big mobile phone companies created the exact same phone instead of Apple, there definitely wouldn't of been such a 'hit'.
:p
"WTF? No MMS, No 3G, Crappy battery life, Crappy camera. Nokia have lost it."
Yeah I can see that..
After all, who would want an open standard phone where you can install your own software and not be charged a buck for a text message or a ringtone? Who the fuck would want that?
So you'll be buying an N800 then? By your argument it should have taken over the market by now.
No need to go that far though.. the symbian SDK is a free download, the dev certificate is free and I've never met anyone that's paid for a ringtone.. even the cheap payg phones can be persuaded to use free ones.
Since the iphone has a wide open security bug that apple still hasn't fixed it's far less secure than other phones right now - visiting the wrong website could have you making a reverse charge call to nigeria.
The solution is easy... God forgot to make backups.
Don't have any development in the US, so if someone goes after you it only affects distribution not development, don't ever incorporate in the US (makes it harder for them to go after you), and make sure you don't look too hard at existing patents (it's triple damages if you knowingly infringe a patent.. since its damned near impossible not to infringe a software patent with any sizable code it's far better if you're ignorant of which ones.. and yes a lawyer was the first one who advised us about that).
We have a sales team in the US but there's no legal company there, to protect ourselves.
Technically the queen (it's setup by royal charter) but the queen owns the license fee payers too...
Compared to what.. 35 million hits a day? It's pretty precise.. they're saying between 0.2% and 0.4%
It also requires IE for some insane reason.
On a 32bit XP machine with all the required WMP and DRM it still refuses to work, because you're using firefox. That's what you get for hiring ex MS employees to write something.
It does depend on his percieved success though. If the BBC website sucked he'd get it in the neck.
So his job is to look good.
Modern phones are pretty much all 'smart' phones.. and they all do flash (except the iphone).
If you're looking at something from 2+ years ago, then yeah they didn't do it. 4 years ago they didn't even have HTML.
All of it? That's gonna work well when you post random encrypted crap onto a mailing list and all the outlook users go 'wha..?'
The problem with encrypted email is there are at least two competing major standards, and 99% of users don't have mail packages that understand either.. so you can't send it unless by prior agreement with your close friends. In practice this ends up as almost never.
They can't - cable has the disadvantage that it's all shared bandwidth in an street (up to the 'green box') so if they uncapped it as high as that it would affect TV reception (which is their primary revenue source)... not to mention the backhaul would have to have enormous bandwidth just to handle it... and people just wouldn't be prepared to pay that kind of money for service (when your streets local p2p junkie suddenly maxes his line out 24/7 and your service runs like crap because of it who are your going to blame? The cable company, probably.).
Nah they'll just get children.
(my pet hate - children in restaraunts.. they just run around screaming and, occasaionally, throwing food at the other guests, and all their parents can say is 'isn't he cute'. NO HE FUCKING ISN'T. LEAVE THE BASTARD AT HOME!!).
Not just that... taxi marshalls, just shop workers, bouncers, just normal civilian street patrols.. they're commonly (around here.. always) linked via radio so they can call for help in trouble, direct CCTV monitoring, etc.
It's not just the emergency cases that get screwed up... you're compromising peoples safety.
What if you're a doctor on call? That changes things quite a bit.
Doctors have pagers that are unobtrusive and - crucially for doctors - run for months on a single AA battery.
They don't rely on phones.. they're too unreliable - one flat battery and someone dies.
It's wierd we don't seem to get the problem in the UK.. different social values I guess. The theatres always run a 'please switch off your phone' trailer at the start of films and nearly everyone does. Occasionally someone forgets, the entire theatre turns around and stares at them when it rings and they try to crawl under the seat whilst frantically switching it off :p
I prefer iphoneization. It annoys the mac zealots and makes for more amusing slashdot threads :p
This happens. I've been part of medical experiments.. you just sign a consent form and they give you the random stuff they're trying and you either live or die.
In the UK we had one of these go wrong and several people actually died.. but OTOH they knew what they were signing up to.