... Norton Antivirus for Symbian OS then? I own a Nokia series 60 phone, and although I don't leave Bluetooth on all the time, I do use it for transferring data to and from the device and for using it as a mobile internet connection for my laptop.
If you guys actually read the article, it says it's just another OD2 (On Demand Distribution) outlet. There's nothing new or exciting about that. I guess it's nice that some of the money is going to charity instead of lining record companies' pockets, but when you get right down to it this is the same old WMA based service that's being peddled by MSN, HMV, Coca-Cola and a million others. Pity there doesn't seem to be a way to un-DRM version 9 WMA files at the moment (FreeMe doesn't work any more, it seems).
Can you name a European copyright legislation which is stricter? I certainly can't.
So, you've not heard about the new European Union Copyright Directive, or the even newer IP Enforcement Directive then? (sorry I don't have links to these).
Apple rips off UK customers
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Apple does not yet sell the iPod Mini in the United Kingdom, but once it does I expect it to be just as much of a rip-off as the regular iPod is. To show you what I mean, here's an example: in the UK, Apple charges GBP248.99 including tax for the 15Gb iPod. Take the tax off and it comes to GBP211.91, which is equivalent to $390.55. The same device is sold for $299.00 in their US store.
Maybe if I was some trendy yuppie with a high paying job who has his car changed every 6 months just so he can get the new numberplate, I would consider buying an iPod, but for those of us in this country who are not earning 6 figures or winning the lottery, value for money is a far higher priority than how "cool" it is. You can get a Creative Labs player with 5Gb more storage for GBP69.00 less than the iPod.
(On a completely unrelated note, why doesn't Slashdot reproduce the "pound" symbol, even when I use an HTML entity for it?)
It's worth noting that there's an eBook version of this on Fictionwise. For those of you who complain about it not being available in an open format, I'll point out that Secure Microsoft Reader format is just as insecure as ever:)
Shame that the iTunes music store is STILL not available outside the USA. Also, it looks nice, but Apple made some mistakes with the interface when porting it to Windows. Firstly, the button which you'd expect to be the maximise button actually puts iTunes in Compact mode. Secondly, there doesn't appear to be any right-click functionality to speak of. Thirdly, there doesn't seem to be a way to bookmark favourite radio stations (which I was expecting to be able to do with the non-existent right-click functionality I just mentioned).
As long as there are devices like the Nokia 3650 which only offer IrDA and Bluetooth as connectivity methods, Bluetooth is going to continue to be very much alive. My laptop doesn't have an IR port, and even if it did people have already mentioned that there are problems with having to have line of sight and stuff - what if I'm on a train and I can't get a signal on the phone unless it's near the window? That's not gonna work with IrDA - but it works fine with Bluetooth (I know - I tried it).
No, surprisingly enough, my email address being on the front page of slashdot has not caused a massive influx of spam and suchlike. It has resulted in a few offers of hosting, which is exactly the sort of thing that I was hoping for, and I'll be following those up after discussing it with Winston.
Stealing your neighbors TV or mugging a little old lady doesn't affect Rupert Murdoch or the like.
Sure it does! If you steal your neighbours' TV, how will they watch Sky (a Murdoch-owned satellite network), and if you mug the little old lady how will she buy her Murdoch-owned newspaper?
In other words, perhaps science fiction is suffering from too much science!
[...]
Science is possible... fantasy is impossible. Perhaps that's the problem.
Buy.com on Tuesday launched a new digital music download service -- the site, BuyMusic.com, offers a catalog of more than 300,000 songs.
Argh. Yet ANOTHER US-only music site. Why can't there be some "legal" music download sites for those of us NOT located in North America? I see news stories about European music sites from time to time, but nothing ever seems to come of it.
if you don't know NOTHING about "NTSC vs PAL", you might quite soon end up with an unpleasant surprise buying video tapes abroad. Say, you might be an American on a trip to Amsterdam, taking advantage on their, uh-huh, liberal law regarding the pr0n. Ditto for European in Tokyo.
You're correct about the American visiting Europe, but the reverse is not true - a great deal of European AV equipment has been multisystem for a number of years. For example, I own a 14" Sony TV which I bought when I was at university - it's 10 years old, but it does NTSC as well as PAL. I think it's actually quite hard these days to find a VCR that won't at least do PAL60 (see note). DVD players are another matter, of course, but multiregion DVD players are not hard to find over here.
PAL60: this is what you get when you take an NTSC signal and convert the colour information to PAL format. It's still 525 lines and 30fps, but with the colour information being in PAL format it is actually compatible with many PAL televisions.
This reminds me of what's happened with Microsoft's Reader - although the significant difference there is that (after 6 months) they did actually bother to try to patch the hole (Convert LIT version 1.2 does not work with the updated version of Reader). They didn't do a particularly good job though, and so a few days later Convert LIT 1.4 was released.
I'm happy to announce that there's now a new version of Convert LIT which is compatible with the updated version of Microsoft Reader. You can find it on our website here.
Um, I don't know if you missed what I said after that sentence... as far as I know, because of the special media and format and stuff, software for the Gamecube has to be approved by Nintendo before it can be published, and they allowed Freeloader to come out, so that's what I was referring to when talking about the example they were setting.
That means doing away with crap such as region coded DVDs and damaging tariffs. I should be able to travel whatever products I choose from anywhere I want
I don't think that DVD region coding is a particularly good example for the point you're trying to make. Anybody who cares about getting DVDs from another region can probably find out how to defeat it without too much trouble. Indeed, many DVD players sold in non-US countries are region-free anyway.
A better example would probably be things like console games. I own a modded PS2, not because I want to be able to play copied games or download them off the net or whatever, but because I want to play imported games which will either never see a release here (e.g..hack, Xenosaga) or won't be released for months/years after the US release (as happened with Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X). At least Nintendo is setting a better example in this respect - the GBA continues to have no region locking, and they approved the third-party "Freeloader" utility for the Gamecube, which allows play of import games. If they can do it, why won't Sony and Microsoft do it?
What is the point of region locking anyway - if I buy an imported version of a game, they still get the money, right?
From the article:
ANPR can detect number plates even when vehicles are being driven at more than 100mph - and it can check up to 3,000 plates every hour.
3000 / 60 min / 60 sec =.83333 I don't know about where you drive, but I see a heck of a lot more cars than 1 per second flying by on highways at non-rush hour times.
You're in the USA though; I'd say this figure isn't too far wide of the mark for non-rush hour traffic here in the UK.
Personally, I think their current system, this expansion and the whole concept of congestion billing is based upon the ignorant position that the government can usurp arbitrary amounts of people's freedom and liberty for their duties.
How is this position ignorant? They can "usurp arbitrary amounts of people's freedom", they're the government!
In my country (USA) the soverign are the people and the government gets its rights only from the pleasure of the people. The power structure is clear. The citizenry is the ultimate power in the USA, constitutionally speaking, the government by design is the servant of the people to carry out their wishes.
This would be because you have a Constitution. We don't. Although, Tony Blair is thinking of inducting us into the new European superstate, without letting us vote on it, and that will have a Constitution, although some of the things I've heard about it are pretty stupid.
This view of the world in Britain and I must admit and certain socialist parties here in the US (DNC for example) is the exact opposite, presupposing that the citizenry is ignorant and certainly in a position of inferiority to the all-knowing all-powerful Government. BAH! They vote there, in Great Britain, just like the rest of us; they want it they can have it.
Would that this were so; these days voting doesn't seem to do jack. And of course there are times when the government doesn't let you vote at all (i.e. with regard to the new European superstate).
As for me, I'm voting for freedom and liberty when I have the chance!
Consider yourself lucky that you have the chance.
Re:short term - new clients are too configurable
on
BitTorrent Guide
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· Score: 1
I tried reading the LARTC howto a while ago, it was as clear as mud. I tried their "wondershaper" thing too, and that didn't seem to do much for me. Granted, LARTC is almost certainly a better solution, but I couldn't get it to work. For me, selecting "dsl/cable slow" from a combo box in BitTorrent is considerably easier and has essentially the same effect.
Re:short term - new clients are too configurable
on
BitTorrent Guide
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· Score: 1
Sure, I'll get a "real DSL line", as you put it... right around the time when British Telecom start offering them. Which will most likely be the same time that hell freezes over, pigs start flying, and Windows becomes GPL'ed open source.
Re:short term - new clients are too configurable
on
BitTorrent Guide
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· Score: 1
Worse, the "advanced" BT clients let you change your upload rate. Part of the reason BT is so absolutely, amazingly fast is that it forces you to use all your upload, which pisses off the kiddie leechers who don't realize you gotta pay(full upload capacity) to play(maxxing out your download).
If you're on DSL, maxing out your upstream will kill your downstream. The ability to limit upload bandwidth usage is essential for anyone on this type of connection in order to make any sensible use of BitTorrent. The modified BitTorrent client I use doesn't allow you to set your upload bandwidth to zero.
Okay, I've been getting lots of emails telling me the source and binary links on the site are 404, I know this, we were having some last minute trouble with the binary. Since so many people have asked for the source code, we've put it up anyway, but please be aware that you may have trouble compiling it under Windows. In case anybody forgot the site URL, it is http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/. Have at it.
Something that I wonder about is whether this will ever show up in the UK. Yes, I know we have CNX now, which puts us in a much better situation with regard to anime on TV than we were before, but the only decent anime on it are Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, both of which you guys in the US have already had on Cartoon Network - although we got the uncut versions! They even showed the hot springs episode of Outlaw Star:)
I know there's the issue of whether they have the license for the UK, but IIRC ADV has a policy of getting licenses that cover the English-speaking world outside of Asia. I'd be quite happy to pay extra to have this channel on Sky Digital.
Slashdot Mirror
... Norton Antivirus for Symbian OS then? I own a Nokia series 60 phone, and although I don't leave Bluetooth on all the time, I do use it for transferring data to and from the device and for using it as a mobile internet connection for my laptop.
It seems to work fine in Firefox 0.8. Perhaps you should consider upgrading...?
If you guys actually read the article, it says it's just another OD2 (On Demand Distribution) outlet. There's nothing new or exciting about that. I guess it's nice that some of the money is going to charity instead of lining record companies' pockets, but when you get right down to it this is the same old WMA based service that's being peddled by MSN, HMV, Coca-Cola and a million others. Pity there doesn't seem to be a way to un-DRM version 9 WMA files at the moment (FreeMe doesn't work any more, it seems).
Maybe if I was some trendy yuppie with a high paying job who has his car changed every 6 months just so he can get the new numberplate, I would consider buying an iPod, but for those of us in this country who are not earning 6 figures or winning the lottery, value for money is a far higher priority than how "cool" it is. You can get a Creative Labs player with 5Gb more storage for GBP69.00 less than the iPod.
(On a completely unrelated note, why doesn't Slashdot reproduce the "pound" symbol, even when I use an HTML entity for it?)
It's worth noting that there's an eBook version of this on Fictionwise. For those of you who complain about it not being available in an open format, I'll point out that Secure Microsoft Reader format is just as insecure as ever :)
Shame that the iTunes music store is STILL not available outside the USA. Also, it looks nice, but Apple made some mistakes with the interface when porting it to Windows. Firstly, the button which you'd expect to be the maximise button actually puts iTunes in Compact mode. Secondly, there doesn't appear to be any right-click functionality to speak of. Thirdly, there doesn't seem to be a way to bookmark favourite radio stations (which I was expecting to be able to do with the non-existent right-click functionality I just mentioned).
As long as there are devices like the Nokia 3650 which only offer IrDA and Bluetooth as connectivity methods, Bluetooth is going to continue to be very much alive. My laptop doesn't have an IR port, and even if it did people have already mentioned that there are problems with having to have line of sight and stuff - what if I'm on a train and I can't get a signal on the phone unless it's near the window? That's not gonna work with IrDA - but it works fine with Bluetooth (I know - I tried it).
No, surprisingly enough, my email address being on the front page of slashdot has not caused a massive influx of spam and suchlike. It has resulted in a few offers of hosting, which is exactly the sort of thing that I was hoping for, and I'll be following those up after discussing it with Winston.
This reminds me of what's happened with Microsoft's Reader - although the significant difference there is that (after 6 months) they did actually bother to try to patch the hole (Convert LIT version 1.2 does not work with the updated version of Reader). They didn't do a particularly good job though, and so a few days later Convert LIT 1.4 was released.
I'm happy to announce that there's now a new version of Convert LIT which is compatible with the updated version of Microsoft Reader. You can find it on our website here.
Um, I don't know if you missed what I said after that sentence... as far as I know, because of the special media and format and stuff, software for the Gamecube has to be approved by Nintendo before it can be published, and they allowed Freeloader to come out, so that's what I was referring to when talking about the example they were setting.
A better example would probably be things like console games. I own a modded PS2, not because I want to be able to play copied games or download them off the net or whatever, but because I want to play imported games which will either never see a release here (e.g. .hack, Xenosaga) or won't be released for months/years after the US release (as happened with Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X). At least Nintendo is setting a better example in this respect - the GBA continues to have no region locking, and they approved the third-party "Freeloader" utility for the Gamecube, which allows play of import games. If they can do it, why won't Sony and Microsoft do it?
What is the point of region locking anyway - if I buy an imported version of a game, they still get the money, right?
Somebody interviewed Ms. Deep? Gee, I guess I better Read Or Die...
You're in the USA though; I'd say this figure isn't too far wide of the mark for non-rush hour traffic here in the UK.
How is this position ignorant? They can "usurp arbitrary amounts of people's freedom", they're the government!
This would be because you have a Constitution. We don't. Although, Tony Blair is thinking of inducting us into the new European superstate, without letting us vote on it, and that will have a Constitution, although some of the things I've heard about it are pretty stupid.
Would that this were so; these days voting doesn't seem to do jack. And of course there are times when the government doesn't let you vote at all (i.e. with regard to the new European superstate).
Consider yourself lucky that you have the chance.
I tried reading the LARTC howto a while ago, it was as clear as mud. I tried their "wondershaper" thing too, and that didn't seem to do much for me. Granted, LARTC is almost certainly a better solution, but I couldn't get it to work. For me, selecting "dsl/cable slow" from a combo box in BitTorrent is considerably easier and has essentially the same effect.
Sure, I'll get a "real DSL line", as you put it... right around the time when British Telecom start offering them. Which will most likely be the same time that hell freezes over, pigs start flying, and Windows becomes GPL'ed open source.
Does anyone know if this new "Basic" service will be available on the UK version of TiVo, which is called Sky Plus?
Okay, I've been getting lots of emails telling me the source and binary links on the site are 404, I know this, we were having some last minute trouble with the binary. Since so many people have asked for the source code, we've put it up anyway, but please be aware that you may have trouble compiling it under Windows. In case anybody forgot the site URL, it is http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/. Have at it.
Something that I wonder about is whether this will ever show up in the UK. Yes, I know we have CNX now, which puts us in a much better situation with regard to anime on TV than we were before, but the only decent anime on it are Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, both of which you guys in the US have already had on Cartoon Network - although we got the uncut versions! They even showed the hot springs episode of Outlaw Star :)
I know there's the issue of whether they have the license for the UK, but IIRC ADV has a policy of getting licenses that cover the English-speaking world outside of Asia. I'd be quite happy to pay extra to have this channel on Sky Digital.