I don't know about you, but ~60% of original size when using FLAC sounds to me like compression is useful. While nowhere near the 10x or more compression of popular lossy codecs, it's still useful to save space. It also helps when you need to make backups.
I do it today. I buy CD's and rip them to FLAC (simultaneously applying ReplayGain) and then they go to my media jukebox. The CD then goes on the shelf and is my master backup should all else fail. I can easily transcode the FLAC to anything else I need without generational loss in quality. My media jukebox is a commercial NAS with RAID 5 and hot spare, so backups are less of a concern. No matter what happens in the future with audio formats, FLAC is about as future-proof as you can get while preserving original quality.
I doubt we'll ever get to buy FLAC from the major labels because there is no possibility to lock it up in DRM.
Problem is, blank media is very difficult to find and expensive. I bought a Blu-ray burner when prices dropped to a reasonable level a couple years ago, but it died as a backup medium before I even got started because blank media were extremely rare. Even today, where I live, blank media is not easy to find. Sure, you go to the store and you can see stacks of blank CD and DVD media... but no blank Blu-ray discs to be found. Typically, you have to order online and the prices are ridiculous. I believe this was done intentionally to discourage the situation that became of DVD, where the DRM was cracked relatively quickly and creating copies became trivially easy to make. I believe they restrict the quantity and keep the prices high in case a full compromise of Blu-ray DRM is eventually made making copies trivial, but due to limited quantities of media it makes it easier to control unlike DVD where media is cheap and broadly available.
I do have a Blu-ray player at home that I use for movies. I buy Blu-ray vs. DVD when the price difference is nominal and I rarely buy first-release. I enjoy the vastly superior sound quality of DTS Master HD and Dolby TrueHD audio since I have a fairly high-end home theater setup. Sure the picture quality is also a big improvement over DVD when you have a good setup, but as an audio and music junkie it's the sound that I bought Blu-ray for, not the picture.
Exactly. Here in the EU, they would actually have to have a valid case before anything will happen. You can't go around suing people like in the US without a strong case to take it to trial. This is a major reason why the US courts are jam-full of frivolous and baseless cases today. The problem is, they often go to trial before there is any real evidence of a crime.
This is exactly why I prefer a letter-of-the-law system like we have in Finland. There is little or no "interpretation". Laws are enforced as written and laws are written so that the average educated adult can understand them without hiring a lawyer to "interpret" them.
In Nordic countries, landline phones at home are quite rare these days. Mobile phone penetration here in Finland is more than 2 mobile phones per person over the whole population. Landlines are really only used for home ADSL and businesses with in-house exchanges. Even home alarms typically use 3G or GPRS radios, not landlines.
I can't remember the last time I saw a landline in a residence here.
Sorry, you are looking at it from the wrong direction. The difference between the US and the EU is that the EU (or by extension the state governments that form it) are protecting their citizens from violations of privacy by corporations. You see, over here, we actually care about privacy and our governments do actually help to protect it. Done properly and where needed, regulation is a Good Thing(tm). Corporate Fascism hasn't yet fully taken over here in the EU as it has in the US.
All you have to do is look at areas such as telecommunications: The EU's mobile phone operators and ISP's provide FAR better service, better prices and a LOT more competition in this area than in the US. I live in a small country of only 5.2 million, and I can choose from literally dozens of mobile phone operators and I have multiple ISP's to choose from with very competitive offerings. I can shop for the best price and/or service. I am not limited to one or two major monopolistic operators or ISP's like in some parts of the US.
Just like the 2-party political system, which is a joke, you guys over in the States need to get over your long-held belief that regulation is bad. Regulation in the EU generally *protects* the consumer and their privacy and prevents monopolistic business practices. In the US, practically everyone believes in the invisible hand of the free market. The problem is the invisible hand is stealing from consumers pockets and stuffing the pockets of corporations. The invisible hand is NOT working in YOUR favor, it's working in favor of the corporations.
Now before a troll comes along and says I do not know what I am talking about, I am an American living abroad in the EU, for more than 10 years. I have lived and worked in both places and I have worked for both American and EU based companies. I can assure you, the EU way really is better and I cannot really consider living and working in the US anymore. It is a major downgrade on practically every metric.
Back to the original topic: tracking cookies. This regulation is in response to companies who abuse users by tracking them using cookies. This is unwanted behavior. Cookies were not originally intended for this use and since companies have been abusing cookies (and by extension the consumers/users), it calls for regulation since companies in the free market cannot be held responsible for acting responsibly. Companies will only do what they can to increase profits and/or market share unless forced to do something else. Regulating cookies for tracking behavior is needed and I do not have a problem with this. It protects me as a consumer since it is widely known to be abused. This is precisely why regulation is sometimes needed.
You may be willing to allow corporations to perform uncontrolled data mining of your online habits but I prefer to have control over that information since the information is open to abuse. There is no legitimate justification for corporations to collect this information other than to use it for their benefit. They are certainly not collecting it to help you as a consumer.
Better check your numbers again. Last time I checked (very recently), a $150 graphics card did a LOT worse than 80% of the performance of a $500 card. Apples-to-Apples at a decent resolution (at least 1920x1200) it's going to be a lot closer to 30-40%, at best. Up the res to 2560x1600 and the gap is even wider.
But then if you are gaming on a mid-res screen like 1680x1050 (or worse), you might be a bit closer though still not reaching 80%.
Not to mention, factor in that console games are (almost) always more expensive than their PC counterparts. I added the almost because some recent AAA title PC games which are also on consoles are selling for roughly the same price as the console version. That is ridiculous, considering that console hardware is sold for basically zero profit and money is made back on game licensing. PC games *should* be cheaper.
Me, I'd rather have cheaper games, although I do have a Wii and PS2. The consoles are for casual gaming with the spouse while my PC is for hardcore gaming with a mouse & keyboard (and a beast of a graphics card).
Besides, consoles only every manage to just get within one generation of PC graphics hardware. They never match PC's and then as the relentless march of progress continues they quickly fall behind the PC in graphics capabilities. Not saying that is the be-all of gaming, but for me, graphics is a big part of it.
I go all the way back to CGA, Hercules Graphics (no, not the one you are thinking of), Video7 and Paradise VGA (back when Western Digital was into graphics). It's all about pushing the envelope of what is possible.
The card reader that connects to the I/O connector is mostly useless in my opinion. What if I want to use a large SD card for supplemental internal storage? That doesn't work very well with the card reader sticking out of the I/O connector. Apple doesn't want to sell you a cheaper iPad with less internal memory and allow you to expand the storage with a cheap SD card, they want you to spring for the more expensive 32 or 64 GB models where they rape you on the incremental storage costs.
Seriously, this lack of user-changeable storage is a deal killer for me. Also, the cover should come with the device, it's ridiculous to have to pay extra for a cover for something sold at this price point.
Because if you are trying to hide something, you must be guilty. At least that's the line the government will use to justify mandating backdoors in everything before long. The government has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they will abuse their power if you let them. The only question is, how long will you let them?
BCC was dead ages ago because nobody hardly ever learned to use it. It was dead before Facebook. It was dead before the large influx of spam. It was dead about the time Gopher came out.
Ever get a "chain forwarded" email with hundreds of email addresses of people you don't know?
That's because nobody uses BCC. Nobody ever learns how to trim FW: lines either. FFS, nobody ever learns to reply in-line with quotes. Replies are all top posted, mostly because of that crawling horror called Lotus Notes and that other crawling horror Exchange. Nobody ever learns how to trim replies either - a one line top posted reply to 10 screens of text or multiple forwards? Sure!
The death of BCC is not because of Facebook. The death of useful email features is because most people are unwilling to learn, rude, or stupid.
-- BMO
Huh? What? I use BCC and trim all the time. Just because "everyone" is not doing it doesn't mean some people aren't doing it and using email effectively.
You isolate them and do not allow access to those systems from the outside. Inside the network, you allow only carefully selected access and block everything else. It's not rocket science.
The reason why this information should not be public is because it's open to abuse and discrimination. What about the employer who chooses not to hire you because you have a rare disease that may cause their insurance costs to increase? Is it fair to allow them to use this information against you in this manner?
No, it is not. You should be hired based upon your qualifications for the job and your previous references. US companies are increasingly turning to this type of information for job discrimination and the longer you let them get away with it, the worse the situation will become. Before long, companies will only hire young healthy workers who have passed their DNA "clean bill of health". Anyone unfortunate enough to be born with an congenital disease or heath problem will essentially become unemployable.
Is that the kind of society we really want to live in?
Sorry, you are incorrect in stating that non FDA-approved software may not be installed in a medical device. It depends on the function of the software within the system and whether it deals directly with PHI (patient healthcare information) or not. Both security (anti-virus) software and the OS itself fall under COTS, or commercial off-the-shelf software. The only software required to comply with FDA and/or HIPAA is the software that deals directly with patient and medical data. Neither the OS nor the security software has direct access to the protected PHI within the medical FDA-approved software, so approval by FDA is not required.
Now, some vendors do lock-down their systems tightly, but for different reasons. It is to prevent installation of 3rd party software not provided with the system, but this has nothing to do with HIPAA, FDA or PHI data protection. This is mainly done to minimize support issues and to prevent tampering with the installed software by installation of 3rd party software which could interfere or conflict with the vendor supplied software.
I have worked in this field over 20 years and I participate in multiple organizations and standards groups in the medical software field, so I am qualified and informed to be able to make these statements.
Totally agree with you there, taking away OtherOS is 100% bait and switch. My comments were only about modding the console, something I consider very different from installing Linux using OtherOS (which is not modding in my opinion).
The world is not black and white and there is no simple good vs. evil plot like Hollywood would like all of us to believe. Movies are an escape and I surely don't need a "happy" ending in every film. I love movies that explore darker themes and the subtleties of human behavior. This is far more interesting that the "hero" movie where the hero ends up with the girl in the end. That is so cliché'd to death in Hollywood, it's extremely boring.
Watchmen was actually very good and graphically very well presented. Sin City is also one of my favorites. I could care less how much money a movie makes for the execs, that is completely irrelevant to me as a viewer. What matters is the quality of the story, the presentation, the acting and the believable characters.
I say bring on more adult-themed fantasy/comic based movies. It's fine to make movies for the kids, but come on, kids are not the only ones who see movies. Give us proper adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator.
It is a bit of a slow movie in the sense that there is not action every five minutes, but it was a very watchable, very cool movie.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as long as you don't need "Die Hard" or "The Expendables" level shoot em up action to enjoy a movie.
This is precisely WHY it was a good movie. It wasn't designed for ADD types, it had very good pacing, something that is totally missing from most modern action movies. I don't understand the need for ACTION, ACTION, ACTION every 5 seconds.
I really have to say something here... I have a hard time understanding why this is such a big deal. Bear with me here...
You are buying a product that works within a closed ecosystem, including Sony's Playstation Network. If you mod your PS3, of course Sony is not going to let you play on their playground because they have no way to determine if your box is cheating or doing other non-good things while being attached to their network. Why is this so hard to understand?
Think about it this way... you are an IT manager for a large company. You manage thousands of desktops and hundreds of servers. What would you do if your employees started taking their laptops home and installing a modified or hacked OS, and then proceeded to bring those laptops to work and connected them to your managed network? Would you like that? Or would you ban those laptops from connecting to your network? This is precisely what Sony is doing and I don't disagree with it.
Note that I'm not against modding and hacking, on the contrary, I am a self-taught hacker with an electronics degree and nearly 30 years of computing experience. But even I understand that if I buy product A that comes with service B, service B may be taken away or unavailable if I modify product A. Sorry, but that's the breaks when you buy into a closed ecosystem. Same thing goes with Apple's walled-garden approach.
Now, if you want to mod your box, fine, just don't expect support or service from Sony. You don't need to use Sony's network if you don't own any games that require it. If I modded my own box, I would expect that I can no longer use any associated services. However, intentionally bricking a device is a whole other topic...
Actually, cue someone claiming that X millions of dollars or pounds were lost during that 42 seconds of downtime...
It's all about trading speed these days, with milliseconds being critical. Not that I agree, because usually this means someone is gaming the system through automated computer-based trading systems. I would like to see a mandatory delay added to all trades to slow things a bit and let the market become more manageable, by you know, humans. After all, it's we, as humans, that are ultimately doing the trades. The problem is automated trading is too widely used and distorts the markets. I would even go out on a limb and say this was a major contributor to the markets crashing.
Not sure about other EU countries, but where I live I can list my mobile number as a business number, and that blocks telemarketing and sms spamming. In fact in more than 10 years, I cannot remember ever getting a telemarketing call or sms spam on my phone. Yes, it's my primary business phone but it's also my personal use phone as well. It's just not a problem here. I have also not had a landline in the same span of time, so I don't get any telemarketing calls, period.
I hear that the do-not-call list in the US really doesn't work. My folks still get calls all the time at home and they added their number to the list. Here, since I have added my number to the do-not-call list, if a telemarketer actually were to call me, I can report them and there are fines for violating the policy. I believe the same goes for sms spam. Oh, and we pay a few cents per sms message, I think it's around 0.07€ per message on my current carrier... translated, roughly about $0.10 per message.
And let's not get started on the privacy issues rampant in the US now... heavy-handed marketing and advertising are really getting out of hand over there and nobody seems to be willing or able to stop it.
I use a somewhat similar set of directories to organize all the stuff on my new NAS with 2.68TB of RAID 5 storage (3x1.5TB). I still have a lot of organizing to do so it will be interesting to follow this topic and pick up some ideas. I have files going back well over two decades, though most of the old stuff is pretty useless, except mainly for nostalgia.
Long-term, I would like to migrate the local docs/pics/videos folders on a couple of my desktops to the NAS, to simplify backups. I have a gigabit switched network, so speed of access is not really an issue for most tasks.
I've been waiting for a post-N900 MeeGo device for a while now. The N900 is a good pilot device for MeeGo, but it isn't quite ready for prime time. I'm still considering an N900 as a geek toy / personal smartphone, but I was hoping for an updated platform with an updated MeeGo.
I really hope they do come out with at least one more MeeGo device, when I read about this MS partnership, I expected it was the death knell for MeeGo. I hope it's not.
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I don't know about you, but ~60% of original size when using FLAC sounds to me like compression is useful. While nowhere near the 10x or more compression of popular lossy codecs, it's still useful to save space. It also helps when you need to make backups.
I do it today. I buy CD's and rip them to FLAC (simultaneously applying ReplayGain) and then they go to my media jukebox. The CD then goes on the shelf and is my master backup should all else fail. I can easily transcode the FLAC to anything else I need without generational loss in quality. My media jukebox is a commercial NAS with RAID 5 and hot spare, so backups are less of a concern. No matter what happens in the future with audio formats, FLAC is about as future-proof as you can get while preserving original quality.
I doubt we'll ever get to buy FLAC from the major labels because there is no possibility to lock it up in DRM.
Problem is, blank media is very difficult to find and expensive. I bought a Blu-ray burner when prices dropped to a reasonable level a couple years ago, but it died as a backup medium before I even got started because blank media were extremely rare. Even today, where I live, blank media is not easy to find. Sure, you go to the store and you can see stacks of blank CD and DVD media... but no blank Blu-ray discs to be found. Typically, you have to order online and the prices are ridiculous. I believe this was done intentionally to discourage the situation that became of DVD, where the DRM was cracked relatively quickly and creating copies became trivially easy to make. I believe they restrict the quantity and keep the prices high in case a full compromise of Blu-ray DRM is eventually made making copies trivial, but due to limited quantities of media it makes it easier to control unlike DVD where media is cheap and broadly available.
I do have a Blu-ray player at home that I use for movies. I buy Blu-ray vs. DVD when the price difference is nominal and I rarely buy first-release. I enjoy the vastly superior sound quality of DTS Master HD and Dolby TrueHD audio since I have a fairly high-end home theater setup. Sure the picture quality is also a big improvement over DVD when you have a good setup, but as an audio and music junkie it's the sound that I bought Blu-ray for, not the picture.
Exactly. Here in the EU, they would actually have to have a valid case before anything will happen. You can't go around suing people like in the US without a strong case to take it to trial. This is a major reason why the US courts are jam-full of frivolous and baseless cases today. The problem is, they often go to trial before there is any real evidence of a crime.
This is exactly why I prefer a letter-of-the-law system like we have in Finland. There is little or no "interpretation". Laws are enforced as written and laws are written so that the average educated adult can understand them without hiring a lawyer to "interpret" them.
In Nordic countries, landline phones at home are quite rare these days. Mobile phone penetration here in Finland is more than 2 mobile phones per person over the whole population. Landlines are really only used for home ADSL and businesses with in-house exchanges. Even home alarms typically use 3G or GPRS radios, not landlines.
I can't remember the last time I saw a landline in a residence here.
Sorry, you are looking at it from the wrong direction. The difference between the US and the EU is that the EU (or by extension the state governments that form it) are protecting their citizens from violations of privacy by corporations. You see, over here, we actually care about privacy and our governments do actually help to protect it. Done properly and where needed, regulation is a Good Thing(tm). Corporate Fascism hasn't yet fully taken over here in the EU as it has in the US.
All you have to do is look at areas such as telecommunications: The EU's mobile phone operators and ISP's provide FAR better service, better prices and a LOT more competition in this area than in the US. I live in a small country of only 5.2 million, and I can choose from literally dozens of mobile phone operators and I have multiple ISP's to choose from with very competitive offerings. I can shop for the best price and/or service. I am not limited to one or two major monopolistic operators or ISP's like in some parts of the US.
Just like the 2-party political system, which is a joke, you guys over in the States need to get over your long-held belief that regulation is bad. Regulation in the EU generally *protects* the consumer and their privacy and prevents monopolistic business practices. In the US, practically everyone believes in the invisible hand of the free market. The problem is the invisible hand is stealing from consumers pockets and stuffing the pockets of corporations. The invisible hand is NOT working in YOUR favor, it's working in favor of the corporations.
Now before a troll comes along and says I do not know what I am talking about, I am an American living abroad in the EU, for more than 10 years. I have lived and worked in both places and I have worked for both American and EU based companies. I can assure you, the EU way really is better and I cannot really consider living and working in the US anymore. It is a major downgrade on practically every metric.
Back to the original topic: tracking cookies. This regulation is in response to companies who abuse users by tracking them using cookies. This is unwanted behavior. Cookies were not originally intended for this use and since companies have been abusing cookies (and by extension the consumers/users), it calls for regulation since companies in the free market cannot be held responsible for acting responsibly. Companies will only do what they can to increase profits and/or market share unless forced to do something else. Regulating cookies for tracking behavior is needed and I do not have a problem with this. It protects me as a consumer since it is widely known to be abused. This is precisely why regulation is sometimes needed.
You may be willing to allow corporations to perform uncontrolled data mining of your online habits but I prefer to have control over that information since the information is open to abuse. There is no legitimate justification for corporations to collect this information other than to use it for their benefit. They are certainly not collecting it to help you as a consumer.
Better check your numbers again. Last time I checked (very recently), a $150 graphics card did a LOT worse than 80% of the performance of a $500 card. Apples-to-Apples at a decent resolution (at least 1920x1200) it's going to be a lot closer to 30-40%, at best. Up the res to 2560x1600 and the gap is even wider.
But then if you are gaming on a mid-res screen like 1680x1050 (or worse), you might be a bit closer though still not reaching 80%.
Not to mention, factor in that console games are (almost) always more expensive than their PC counterparts. I added the almost because some recent AAA title PC games which are also on consoles are selling for roughly the same price as the console version. That is ridiculous, considering that console hardware is sold for basically zero profit and money is made back on game licensing. PC games *should* be cheaper.
Me, I'd rather have cheaper games, although I do have a Wii and PS2. The consoles are for casual gaming with the spouse while my PC is for hardcore gaming with a mouse & keyboard (and a beast of a graphics card).
Besides, consoles only every manage to just get within one generation of PC graphics hardware. They never match PC's and then as the relentless march of progress continues they quickly fall behind the PC in graphics capabilities. Not saying that is the be-all of gaming, but for me, graphics is a big part of it.
I go all the way back to CGA, Hercules Graphics (no, not the one you are thinking of), Video7 and Paradise VGA (back when Western Digital was into graphics). It's all about pushing the envelope of what is possible.
The card reader that connects to the I/O connector is mostly useless in my opinion. What if I want to use a large SD card for supplemental internal storage? That doesn't work very well with the card reader sticking out of the I/O connector. Apple doesn't want to sell you a cheaper iPad with less internal memory and allow you to expand the storage with a cheap SD card, they want you to spring for the more expensive 32 or 64 GB models where they rape you on the incremental storage costs.
Seriously, this lack of user-changeable storage is a deal killer for me. Also, the cover should come with the device, it's ridiculous to have to pay extra for a cover for something sold at this price point.
Because if you are trying to hide something, you must be guilty. At least that's the line the government will use to justify mandating backdoors in everything before long. The government has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they will abuse their power if you let them. The only question is, how long will you let them?
Sounds good, but good luck getting the rights holders to agree to that without a gun to their heads.
BCC was dead ages ago because nobody hardly ever learned to use it. It was dead before Facebook. It was dead before the large influx of spam. It was dead about the time Gopher came out.
Ever get a "chain forwarded" email with hundreds of email addresses of people you don't know?
That's because nobody uses BCC. Nobody ever learns how to trim FW: lines either. FFS, nobody ever learns to reply in-line with quotes. Replies are all top posted, mostly because of that crawling horror called Lotus Notes and that other crawling horror Exchange. Nobody ever learns how to trim replies either - a one line top posted reply to 10 screens of text or multiple forwards? Sure!
The death of BCC is not because of Facebook. The death of useful email features is because most people are unwilling to learn, rude, or stupid.
--
BMO
Huh? What? I use BCC and trim all the time. Just because "everyone" is not doing it doesn't mean some people aren't doing it and using email effectively.
You isolate them and do not allow access to those systems from the outside. Inside the network, you allow only carefully selected access and block everything else. It's not rocket science.
The reason why this information should not be public is because it's open to abuse and discrimination. What about the employer who chooses not to hire you because you have a rare disease that may cause their insurance costs to increase? Is it fair to allow them to use this information against you in this manner?
No, it is not. You should be hired based upon your qualifications for the job and your previous references. US companies are increasingly turning to this type of information for job discrimination and the longer you let them get away with it, the worse the situation will become. Before long, companies will only hire young healthy workers who have passed their DNA "clean bill of health". Anyone unfortunate enough to be born with an congenital disease or heath problem will essentially become unemployable.
Is that the kind of society we really want to live in?
Sorry, you are incorrect in stating that non FDA-approved software may not be installed in a medical device. It depends on the function of the software within the system and whether it deals directly with PHI (patient healthcare information) or not. Both security (anti-virus) software and the OS itself fall under COTS, or commercial off-the-shelf software. The only software required to comply with FDA and/or HIPAA is the software that deals directly with patient and medical data. Neither the OS nor the security software has direct access to the protected PHI within the medical FDA-approved software, so approval by FDA is not required.
Now, some vendors do lock-down their systems tightly, but for different reasons. It is to prevent installation of 3rd party software not provided with the system, but this has nothing to do with HIPAA, FDA or PHI data protection. This is mainly done to minimize support issues and to prevent tampering with the installed software by installation of 3rd party software which could interfere or conflict with the vendor supplied software.
I have worked in this field over 20 years and I participate in multiple organizations and standards groups in the medical software field, so I am qualified and informed to be able to make these statements.
Totally agree with you there, taking away OtherOS is 100% bait and switch. My comments were only about modding the console, something I consider very different from installing Linux using OtherOS (which is not modding in my opinion).
The world is not black and white and there is no simple good vs. evil plot like Hollywood would like all of us to believe. Movies are an escape and I surely don't need a "happy" ending in every film. I love movies that explore darker themes and the subtleties of human behavior. This is far more interesting that the "hero" movie where the hero ends up with the girl in the end. That is so cliché'd to death in Hollywood, it's extremely boring.
Watchmen was actually very good and graphically very well presented. Sin City is also one of my favorites. I could care less how much money a movie makes for the execs, that is completely irrelevant to me as a viewer. What matters is the quality of the story, the presentation, the acting and the believable characters.
I say bring on more adult-themed fantasy/comic based movies. It's fine to make movies for the kids, but come on, kids are not the only ones who see movies. Give us proper adult-themed movies that are enjoyable and entertaining to watch. Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator.
It is a bit of a slow movie in the sense that there is not action every five minutes, but it was a very watchable, very cool movie.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as long as you don't need "Die Hard" or "The Expendables" level shoot em up action to enjoy a movie.
This is precisely WHY it was a good movie. It wasn't designed for ADD types, it had very good pacing, something that is totally missing from most modern action movies. I don't understand the need for ACTION, ACTION, ACTION every 5 seconds.
I really have to say something here... I have a hard time understanding why this is such a big deal. Bear with me here...
You are buying a product that works within a closed ecosystem, including Sony's Playstation Network. If you mod your PS3, of course Sony is not going to let you play on their playground because they have no way to determine if your box is cheating or doing other non-good things while being attached to their network. Why is this so hard to understand?
Think about it this way... you are an IT manager for a large company. You manage thousands of desktops and hundreds of servers. What would you do if your employees started taking their laptops home and installing a modified or hacked OS, and then proceeded to bring those laptops to work and connected them to your managed network? Would you like that? Or would you ban those laptops from connecting to your network? This is precisely what Sony is doing and I don't disagree with it.
Note that I'm not against modding and hacking, on the contrary, I am a self-taught hacker with an electronics degree and nearly 30 years of computing experience. But even I understand that if I buy product A that comes with service B, service B may be taken away or unavailable if I modify product A. Sorry, but that's the breaks when you buy into a closed ecosystem. Same thing goes with Apple's walled-garden approach.
Now, if you want to mod your box, fine, just don't expect support or service from Sony. You don't need to use Sony's network if you don't own any games that require it. If I modded my own box, I would expect that I can no longer use any associated services. However, intentionally bricking a device is a whole other topic...
Actually, cue someone claiming that X millions of dollars or pounds were lost during that 42 seconds of downtime...
It's all about trading speed these days, with milliseconds being critical. Not that I agree, because usually this means someone is gaming the system through automated computer-based trading systems. I would like to see a mandatory delay added to all trades to slow things a bit and let the market become more manageable, by you know, humans. After all, it's we, as humans, that are ultimately doing the trades. The problem is automated trading is too widely used and distorts the markets. I would even go out on a limb and say this was a major contributor to the markets crashing.
Not sure about other EU countries, but where I live I can list my mobile number as a business number, and that blocks telemarketing and sms spamming. In fact in more than 10 years, I cannot remember ever getting a telemarketing call or sms spam on my phone. Yes, it's my primary business phone but it's also my personal use phone as well. It's just not a problem here. I have also not had a landline in the same span of time, so I don't get any telemarketing calls, period.
I hear that the do-not-call list in the US really doesn't work. My folks still get calls all the time at home and they added their number to the list. Here, since I have added my number to the do-not-call list, if a telemarketer actually were to call me, I can report them and there are fines for violating the policy. I believe the same goes for sms spam. Oh, and we pay a few cents per sms message, I think it's around 0.07€ per message on my current carrier... translated, roughly about $0.10 per message.
And let's not get started on the privacy issues rampant in the US now... heavy-handed marketing and advertising are really getting out of hand over there and nobody seems to be willing or able to stop it.
I use a somewhat similar set of directories to organize all the stuff on my new NAS with 2.68TB of RAID 5 storage (3x1.5TB). I still have a lot of organizing to do so it will be interesting to follow this topic and pick up some ideas. I have files going back well over two decades, though most of the old stuff is pretty useless, except mainly for nostalgia.
Long-term, I would like to migrate the local docs/pics/videos folders on a couple of my desktops to the NAS, to simplify backups. I have a gigabit switched network, so speed of access is not really an issue for most tasks.
I've been waiting for a post-N900 MeeGo device for a while now. The N900 is a good pilot device for MeeGo, but it isn't quite ready for prime time. I'm still considering an N900 as a geek toy / personal smartphone, but I was hoping for an updated platform with an updated MeeGo.
I really hope they do come out with at least one more MeeGo device, when I read about this MS partnership, I expected it was the death knell for MeeGo. I hope it's not.
Do we really need yet another Apple-controlled walled garden? Don't we have enough of those already?
Cue the BBC legal department in 3... 2... 1...
I wonder how long before they try to track down the person behind this.