I think by photography, you mean photographic film and traditional photographic paper printing. Photography itself is far from dead and in fact is probably much stronger than it ever was thanks to digital cameras. I would bet that the number of photos taken by the average person with a digital camera is 20-50x what is was during the film days, thanks to the fact that you do not pay for each frame as in the film days. I know that personally my number of shots per year has gone from a few hundreds to many thousands of frames per year. People today take more pictures than ever before.
Any electronics device *can* be serviced or repaired. The issue is cost and difficulty of the repair itself. In many cases it is simply too difficult to replace a failed component or too costly. In your camera example, it could be a component buried deep inside the camera on a small PCB which is not easily accessible. It may take a technician an hour or more to disassemble the camera into a few hundred pieces to get access to the failed component. That is certainly a more expensive operation than replacement of the device.
As a result, many electronic devices made today are effectively disposable. The cost involved to fix them just isn't justified. As an EE, I do try to repair my own devices if they are out of warranty coverage, but sometimes the effort required is just not worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to replace in many cases.
Why aren't they looking to places where they actually have good broadband? Like Sweden or Finland? I mean come on, Australia? I have a good friend who lived there for almost 5 years and he had horrible broadband. Slow transfers, dropped connections, download caps, poor customer service, took 3 months to get service installed, you name it. Here in Finland we have 100Mb connections at a reasonable price. Sweden has had 100Mb even longer and they pay a lot less. Recently, Finland even established the right of all citizens to 100Mb broadband access by 2012. The infrastructure here is already well on the way to meeting that today.
I wonder how this will affect the recently passed law here in Finland that internet access is a legal right for all citizens. I'm getting pretty tired of France running the show in the EU and getting their ridiculous laws enacted at the EU level.
Just think, it will likely take them YEARS just to catch up with all the iPhone mobile apps. The best thing we can hope for is their heads will implode from all the "reviewing".
Just when I thought the nanny state of the UK could not be topped...
Well if you consider the fact that there is no direct XP > Win7 in-place upgrade path, anyone "upgrading" to Win7 is coming from Vista (which has a direct in-place upgrade path). And as we all know, anyone who is running Vista is fsck'd already. So what's the issue?:P
Sarcasm aside, I have done MANY Win7 installs going all the way back to the earliest beta (we are an MS Partner). I learned a LONG time ago that you NEVER upgrade to a new Windows version. It's always backup/wipe/install/restore. I have never had a problem doing this, but I have to say that Win7 is by FAR the easiest OS install I have ever used. And I've installed and worked with practically every major OS over the past 20+ years including many versions of DOS, 16-bit Windows 3.x, 32-bit Windows (9x and NT kernels), BeOS, Solaris and OpenSolaris, many different Linux distros, FreeBSD, FreeNAS and OSX.
As long as you make sure you have any necessary drivers, Win7 installs are easy. And never do an in-place upgrade on Windows. Ever.
PS: Please take my Vista comment with a large grain of salt. I've been running Vista SP2 x64 on my main workstation for over half a year now with zero OS issues. When Vista came out, it just plain sucked and was not ready to be released. When SP1 was released, the situation improved dramatically and the poor driver situation at launch had been largely resolved over time. I'm generally pleased with it now, in fact I'm on the fence regarding a Win7 install on that machine, is it really worth the whole backup/wipe/install/restore process.
While what you are saying might be true in theory, in the real world it works exactly the opposite. If anything, companies would prefer stronger copyrights (and patents). And I don't think you will find too many companies saying they are both anti-free market or anti-capitalist and want to abolish copyright or patents.
More than likely they apologized only because this started to generate negative news. Why didn't they realize they were "going too far" earlier? Like, oh I don't know... before they sent her a demand for money? The should have realized long before this became news that they had no right to demand payment.
This is extortionist behavior on the part of the PRS (and other similar groups). Strike hard and first seems to be the guiding rule in these types of cases, without even considering the facts.
To prevent a large monopoly from forming around a certain product, service or market? Seems like a good enough reason to me. Monopolies only benefit themselves (the companies that create them) and not consumers. In the EU, at least the government still cares about protecting the consumer. In the US, the companies run the show and the politicians.
All I can say is good for them. They developed a core piece of technology and have re-invested for the future. As another poster already mentioned, this is the way the patent system should work. Now, if only the damn patent trolls would wake up, stop their frivolous lawsuits and coercion tactics and actually invent something instead of profiteering off of other companies investments by buying up patents, we would be getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the current patent environment in the US won't let this happen.
Why is this any surprise? It seems that today all the game developers either want to develop or are being forced by the publishers to develop for consoles. As someone who has grown up gaming on a PC (since 1983-84), I for one am getting sick of all the crappy console ports, crippled 3D engines and dumbed-down interfaces of games designed for consoles. Gaming has taken several steps backwards over the past few years in many areas. PC's used to push the envelope of what was possible in graphics and gameplay. While there are still some good games out with decent gameplay, graphics has really taken a beating from the console-centric game engines and their console hardware imposed limitations (draw distance, texture resolutions, etc.). Even once-great PC champions Carmack and id have largely given up on the PC market and moved to consoles, although they lay the blame on game piracy. There are no true leaders left championing PC gaming these days and all the publishers are too much "me-too" to do something about it. The casual games market explosion and low-tech "franchises" like the Sims selling huge quantities of drivel doesn't help matters. Call me bitter, but it used to be a lot better than this.
Exactly. Since when does a US carrier "add value" in any sense of the word? All the US carriers do is cripple the phone hardware (disabling tethering, MMS, etc) and lock-in their customers. Glad I live in Europe where I'm free to choose the phone hardware and service independently, and the phones are not crippled. And I pay a reasonable amount when roaming in other countries and calls rarely get dropped. Oh yeah... that's called service.
Or, he/she reads the efficiency rating on all major electrical appliances that is required in some markets. I moved to Finland almost 10 years ago from the US and I was surprised to see these labels on practically every type of heavy-use electrical appliance, from dishwashers to refrigerators to washers, dryers and AC units. And the energy consumption information (either watts, VA or A ratings) is easily available. The efficiency rating (A-F) is I believe used EU-wide, but I could be wrong. The efficiency rating is not determined by the manufacturer. When I go to buy a new appliance, the first thing I look for is one with an A+ rating to be sure I am getting the most efficient product within that category. Unfortunately, they do not yet apply the rating to TV's, but I believe it is only a matter of time.
Please check the date on that article. All of the sites that were claimed to be blocked, are no longer blocked (I know, I checked them all just now, and I live in Finland). Yes, there were some problems in the beginning when they implemented the filtering. And I absolutely do not agree that filtering should be allowed on the net. But I can say truthfully, I have never seen a site actually blocked by this filtering.
As someone living in Finland, I feel this is a good step forward. 1mb here is considered bottom-tier broadband, but that doesn't mean it's useless, far from it. We have a solid infrastructure where I live (Helsinki), and 100mb has been available for close to a year. I have had a 24mb connection at home through one of the major ISP's for more than a year now. We don't have bandwidth caps, I can use all I want or need. I achieve download speeds pretty close to rated speeds most of the time. And it costs less than 50 bucks/month. The only reason I haven't upgraded to 100mb is it would mean a new ADSL modem (my current one tops out at 24mb) and I honestly can't see a need for something faster. I don't torrent music/movies, just normal usage. Occasionally I download a new Linux distro, but that's about it for my high-bandwidth usage. But even we are behind Sweden in this area, they had 24mb at least 5 years ago, and due to government subsidy they paid only about 1/4th of what I pay today for the same speed.
As you're in the UK, I would say that more than likely it is not a negative to work in the gambling industry. However, in some parts of the US, gambling is highly stigmatized and considered a sin. This is especially true in the bible belt (a large chunk of the southeast US) and other more religiously conservative areas of the country. I still remember 20+ years ago in my home state (in the southern US) when they first brought in the state lottery and horse racing, it was not pretty.
Sadly, outside the US it is already easy to reach the 500 mile range on gasoline. I can routinely hit 450 miles/tank with my Golf TSI and that includes combined city/highway driving daily. For longer trips on the highway 500 miles/tank is routine. When will the gasoline cars sold in the US ever actually actually reach the efficiency of most cars sold in Europe? Oh that's right, it's gonna happen when everyone in the US gives up on the idea that they need a huge SUV and accompanying large V8 or V6 engine. I was appalled to read recently that the AVERAGE fuel consumption of cars in the US today is about 21 mpg. I can come extremely close to double that on the highway (40 mpg).
I'm not saying that gasoline cars are the future, but if you think you can't get an efficient gasoline car today, that's pure BS. They do exist, just not in the US.
This is precisely what can happen when a western company outsources "engineering" work to countries with little or no respect of copyright or intellectual property. Of course the company providing the "engineering" work will poach as much as they can from the open source community without compensating the community (by publishing their contributions/patches or through donations) or even acknowledging that they utilized it. This also applies to non- open source tech as well. Many of these "companies" will basically steal what they can to get the job done at the lowest cost so that they can win the business of a major western company.
I'm not saying the ideas of copyright and intellectual property as they are defined today are necessarily right, but I do acknowledge that they exist in some form.
Great, now I can have 2 buggy display drivers installed at the same time, each with their own quirks. And who helps me out when I have graphical problems in a game? Do you really think ATI or NVIDIA will give end-user support for this? What about game developer support? It is a support nightmare for all involved. No thanks. Sorry, this idea is brain-dead long before it hits the shelf.
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I think by photography, you mean photographic film and traditional photographic paper printing. Photography itself is far from dead and in fact is probably much stronger than it ever was thanks to digital cameras. I would bet that the number of photos taken by the average person with a digital camera is 20-50x what is was during the film days, thanks to the fact that you do not pay for each frame as in the film days. I know that personally my number of shots per year has gone from a few hundreds to many thousands of frames per year. People today take more pictures than ever before.
Any electronics device *can* be serviced or repaired. The issue is cost and difficulty of the repair itself. In many cases it is simply too difficult to replace a failed component or too costly. In your camera example, it could be a component buried deep inside the camera on a small PCB which is not easily accessible. It may take a technician an hour or more to disassemble the camera into a few hundred pieces to get access to the failed component. That is certainly a more expensive operation than replacement of the device.
As a result, many electronic devices made today are effectively disposable. The cost involved to fix them just isn't justified. As an EE, I do try to repair my own devices if they are out of warranty coverage, but sometimes the effort required is just not worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to replace in many cases.
Why aren't they looking to places where they actually have good broadband? Like Sweden or Finland? I mean come on, Australia? I have a good friend who lived there for almost 5 years and he had horrible broadband. Slow transfers, dropped connections, download caps, poor customer service, took 3 months to get service installed, you name it. Here in Finland we have 100Mb connections at a reasonable price. Sweden has had 100Mb even longer and they pay a lot less. Recently, Finland even established the right of all citizens to 100Mb broadband access by 2012. The infrastructure here is already well on the way to meeting that today.
I wonder how this will affect the recently passed law here in Finland that internet access is a legal right for all citizens. I'm getting pretty tired of France running the show in the EU and getting their ridiculous laws enacted at the EU level.
Just think, it will likely take them YEARS just to catch up with all the iPhone mobile apps. The best thing we can hope for is their heads will implode from all the "reviewing".
Just when I thought the nanny state of the UK could not be topped...
Well if you consider the fact that there is no direct XP > Win7 in-place upgrade path, anyone "upgrading" to Win7 is coming from Vista (which has a direct in-place upgrade path). And as we all know, anyone who is running Vista is fsck'd already. So what's the issue? :P
Sarcasm aside, I have done MANY Win7 installs going all the way back to the earliest beta (we are an MS Partner). I learned a LONG time ago that you NEVER upgrade to a new Windows version. It's always backup/wipe/install/restore. I have never had a problem doing this, but I have to say that Win7 is by FAR the easiest OS install I have ever used. And I've installed and worked with practically every major OS over the past 20+ years including many versions of DOS, 16-bit Windows 3.x, 32-bit Windows (9x and NT kernels), BeOS, Solaris and OpenSolaris, many different Linux distros, FreeBSD, FreeNAS and OSX.
As long as you make sure you have any necessary drivers, Win7 installs are easy. And never do an in-place upgrade on Windows. Ever.
PS: Please take my Vista comment with a large grain of salt. I've been running Vista SP2 x64 on my main workstation for over half a year now with zero OS issues. When Vista came out, it just plain sucked and was not ready to be released. When SP1 was released, the situation improved dramatically and the poor driver situation at launch had been largely resolved over time. I'm generally pleased with it now, in fact I'm on the fence regarding a Win7 install on that machine, is it really worth the whole backup/wipe/install/restore process.
While what you are saying might be true in theory, in the real world it works exactly the opposite. If anything, companies would prefer stronger copyrights (and patents). And I don't think you will find too many companies saying they are both anti-free market or anti-capitalist and want to abolish copyright or patents.
More than likely they apologized only because this started to generate negative news. Why didn't they realize they were "going too far" earlier? Like, oh I don't know... before they sent her a demand for money? The should have realized long before this became news that they had no right to demand payment.
This is extortionist behavior on the part of the PRS (and other similar groups). Strike hard and first seems to be the guiding rule in these types of cases, without even considering the facts.
To prevent a large monopoly from forming around a certain product, service or market? Seems like a good enough reason to me. Monopolies only benefit themselves (the companies that create them) and not consumers. In the EU, at least the government still cares about protecting the consumer. In the US, the companies run the show and the politicians.
All I can say is good for them. They developed a core piece of technology and have re-invested for the future. As another poster already mentioned, this is the way the patent system should work. Now, if only the damn patent trolls would wake up, stop their frivolous lawsuits and coercion tactics and actually invent something instead of profiteering off of other companies investments by buying up patents, we would be getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the current patent environment in the US won't let this happen.
Why is this any surprise? It seems that today all the game developers either want to develop or are being forced by the publishers to develop for consoles. As someone who has grown up gaming on a PC (since 1983-84), I for one am getting sick of all the crappy console ports, crippled 3D engines and dumbed-down interfaces of games designed for consoles. Gaming has taken several steps backwards over the past few years in many areas. PC's used to push the envelope of what was possible in graphics and gameplay. While there are still some good games out with decent gameplay, graphics has really taken a beating from the console-centric game engines and their console hardware imposed limitations (draw distance, texture resolutions, etc.). Even once-great PC champions Carmack and id have largely given up on the PC market and moved to consoles, although they lay the blame on game piracy. There are no true leaders left championing PC gaming these days and all the publishers are too much "me-too" to do something about it. The casual games market explosion and low-tech "franchises" like the Sims selling huge quantities of drivel doesn't help matters. Call me bitter, but it used to be a lot better than this.
Exactly. Since when does a US carrier "add value" in any sense of the word? All the US carriers do is cripple the phone hardware (disabling tethering, MMS, etc) and lock-in their customers. Glad I live in Europe where I'm free to choose the phone hardware and service independently, and the phones are not crippled. And I pay a reasonable amount when roaming in other countries and calls rarely get dropped. Oh yeah... that's called service.
What's more sad, is the state of mathematics and science education in the US today. It's no wonder Joe Sixpack comes to this kind of conclusion.
Or another Enron?
BS
Or, he/she reads the efficiency rating on all major electrical appliances that is required in some markets. I moved to Finland almost 10 years ago from the US and I was surprised to see these labels on practically every type of heavy-use electrical appliance, from dishwashers to refrigerators to washers, dryers and AC units. And the energy consumption information (either watts, VA or A ratings) is easily available. The efficiency rating (A-F) is I believe used EU-wide, but I could be wrong. The efficiency rating is not determined by the manufacturer. When I go to buy a new appliance, the first thing I look for is one with an A+ rating to be sure I am getting the most efficient product within that category. Unfortunately, they do not yet apply the rating to TV's, but I believe it is only a matter of time.
Please check the date on that article. All of the sites that were claimed to be blocked, are no longer blocked (I know, I checked them all just now, and I live in Finland). Yes, there were some problems in the beginning when they implemented the filtering. And I absolutely do not agree that filtering should be allowed on the net. But I can say truthfully, I have never seen a site actually blocked by this filtering.
As someone living in Finland, I feel this is a good step forward. 1mb here is considered bottom-tier broadband, but that doesn't mean it's useless, far from it. We have a solid infrastructure where I live (Helsinki), and 100mb has been available for close to a year. I have had a 24mb connection at home through one of the major ISP's for more than a year now. We don't have bandwidth caps, I can use all I want or need. I achieve download speeds pretty close to rated speeds most of the time. And it costs less than 50 bucks/month. The only reason I haven't upgraded to 100mb is it would mean a new ADSL modem (my current one tops out at 24mb) and I honestly can't see a need for something faster. I don't torrent music/movies, just normal usage. Occasionally I download a new Linux distro, but that's about it for my high-bandwidth usage. But even we are behind Sweden in this area, they had 24mb at least 5 years ago, and due to government subsidy they paid only about 1/4th of what I pay today for the same speed.
As you're in the UK, I would say that more than likely it is not a negative to work in the gambling industry. However, in some parts of the US, gambling is highly stigmatized and considered a sin. This is especially true in the bible belt (a large chunk of the southeast US) and other more religiously conservative areas of the country. I still remember 20+ years ago in my home state (in the southern US) when they first brought in the state lottery and horse racing, it was not pretty.
Ummm... ok, not sure how that is relevant here. I'm talking only about US gallons.
Sadly, outside the US it is already easy to reach the 500 mile range on gasoline. I can routinely hit 450 miles/tank with my Golf TSI and that includes combined city/highway driving daily. For longer trips on the highway 500 miles/tank is routine. When will the gasoline cars sold in the US ever actually actually reach the efficiency of most cars sold in Europe? Oh that's right, it's gonna happen when everyone in the US gives up on the idea that they need a huge SUV and accompanying large V8 or V6 engine. I was appalled to read recently that the AVERAGE fuel consumption of cars in the US today is about 21 mpg. I can come extremely close to double that on the highway (40 mpg).
I'm not saying that gasoline cars are the future, but if you think you can't get an efficient gasoline car today, that's pure BS. They do exist, just not in the US.
This is precisely what can happen when a western company outsources "engineering" work to countries with little or no respect of copyright or intellectual property. Of course the company providing the "engineering" work will poach as much as they can from the open source community without compensating the community (by publishing their contributions/patches or through donations) or even acknowledging that they utilized it. This also applies to non- open source tech as well. Many of these "companies" will basically steal what they can to get the job done at the lowest cost so that they can win the business of a major western company.
I'm not saying the ideas of copyright and intellectual property as they are defined today are necessarily right, but I do acknowledge that they exist in some form.
Great, now I can have 2 buggy display drivers installed at the same time, each with their own quirks. And who helps me out when I have graphical problems in a game? Do you really think ATI or NVIDIA will give end-user support for this? What about game developer support? It is a support nightmare for all involved. No thanks. Sorry, this idea is brain-dead long before it hits the shelf.