Other than DHCP request packets, nothing that I don't control. It can search my network for DNLA servers, but only if I enable that. It can be set to automatically check for new firmware and alert me, but it can't be set to automatically download and install it.
Everything else is some sort of immediate request (e.g., "play this YouTube video", "browse to this website", etc.).
It'll also be a cold day in hell before I plug an ethernet cable into a TV and give it access to the internet.
My TV has an Ethernet connection and can do things like show YouTube and Netflix. I don't care about any of those extras because other cheaper devices can also do this for me.
But, the Ethernet connection does give me an easy way to apply updates (one has already improved picture quality), and stream media from a PC. The TV also has a web browser that is good enough to allow basic browsing, and works pretty well if you add a bluetooth keyboard. With bookmarks, you can do things like check the local weather without even needing a keyboard. This means that you can do some things without having to have another device involved. You can also control the TV using an Android or iOS app.
So, yeah, when they stop supporting the TV with updates, some of this functionality will stop, but there is a lot that an Ethernet connection gives you that will never go away.
One of the issues with this method is that each channel only sends its own guide data, as they have no incentive to let you know what is showing on other channels. This is the way it is done in the US.
The problem is that to see what's on another channel, your TV has to tune to that channel. If the TV has enough memory and the channels send data for long enough, the TV can just do this sort of tuning when it is "turned off" and it would work fine. But, without memory or extended guide data, there is no way to check the guide for channels that you are not watching without stopping viewing of live TV.
A DVR should always have plenty of memory, and if it has more than one tuner then most of the time you shouldn't have an issue even without extended guide data, but without extended data, there would be times that shows would not record because all tuners were in use for current recordings and could not be used to see what's coming up.
and they might even edit some of the original content to "sanitize" it
I don't think Disney "sanitizes" anything except movies released under the Disney label and rated G.
Touchstone, Miramax, and Hollywood Pictures all made R-rated films, and Disney has released movies under their own label with PG-13 ratings for sexual content, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Likewise, I'm fairly sure you would have heard from Joss Whedon about "The Avengers" being sanitized if that were the case.
By 1978, it's possible that it wasn't the "original" any more, as the movie was first released in 1977. But, even during that first release, there were differerent versions (sound mixes, etc.), and there aren't any copies from that era in private hands, so we can't really know what is 100% "right".
it could just as easily be candidates who already have a public position on an issue that the company cares about (or it could simply be obvious which way the candidate would vote on a topic).
Do you seriously think that candidates have "public positions" on "tax breaks for companies that employ between 250 and 500 persons and manufacture left-handed cables for use by venues that play live music"? Because these are the kind of laws that get passed as a result of "campaign contributions".
Candidates only have "public positions" on either vague issues ("more jobs") or issues that never actually addressed (like budget deficits).
And in case you were wondering, the actual camera they used is here, though it was modified by a third party company to run at a higher frame rate.
One thing I had noticed is that TBS and Fox did not use this camera on the wild-card or division series. It was very much missed, as my regional sports network does use this camera for every home game (and a few away games), and I had gotten use to freeze frames with no visible motion. The 180fps cameras can't come close to resolving a 3-inch baseball that moves 1500 inches per second.
But you've introduced another problem. Want to cripple the NRA or the EFF? set up robocalls "on their behalf".
The NRA and EFF aren't "companies" as far as robocalls are concerned...they are political lobbying groups. As such, they could actually robocall as much as they want and not break any laws.
Like spam, I have yet to receive any telemarketing call from any entity I don't "have a relationship with" that isn't a scam of some sort. It may only be overpriced airfare to get a free cruise, but it's always some sort of scam. So, the obvious solution is to completely ban all telemarketing calls.
The UHF and VHF pointed at Baltimore are combined with a UHF/VHF combiner (just like in this nicely detailed post) on the antenna mast. Then, the DC and Baltimore wires are combined near the tuners using a bi-directional splitter/combiner. I combine near the tuners because some of my devices have two separate antenna inputs, and those get fed the uncombined signal.
This sort of thing might not work if you have two antennas that both get some signal from the same transmitter, but it works well for me where the antennas get very little signal from the "other" direction.
My misuse of the word "routed" has caused misunderstandings...I have a/29 assigned to me (whois lookup says I'm the contact, not the ISP), but the routing works as if a/24 is being used, so the my router has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 on the public address.
What the Boxee probably does is store the recording on a small drive (40GB maybe) and then uploads it as bandwidth allows.
As I mentioned in another post, having any local hard drive would basically mean that you're better off buying a full-fledged DVR with a 3TB drive in it, and then using something like Slingbox to watch on the go.
This is because it costs about $40 right now for any spinning hard drive/flash memory that will give you enough storage for upload cache, while it only costs $150 for a 3TB drive, which makes the price difference less than 5 months of service. 3TB is over 450 hours of the highest bitrate HD available for ATSC/QAM recording, and realistically around 600 hours, and well over 2500 hours of SD. No, that's not unlimited, but it is hundreds of days of continous TV watching (unless you watch TV while you are asleep, too). Add in a Slingbox, and in less than two years a home-built version of what Boxee is offering will pay for itself. You'd still be using off-the-shelf, pre-built systems, so it wouldn't be any harder to use than the Boxee system.
For reasonable usage you don't need to upload in real time, you can just save locally and upload as the bandwidth allows.
For OTA HDTV, I get about 6GB/hour average when recording. With two tuners (like this box has), it wouldn't be at all unusual to record 4 hours of TV per day, which would be 24GB.
To be able to upload that without falling behind, you'd need to have a 1GB/hour upload rate, which works out to a steady stream of around 2.8Mbps. Yes, it can be done (and easily with FiOS, for example), but you must have a good provider and no caps to make it work. I've completely ignored the use case of a family with cable TV where you might see 20 or more hours per day recorded (although definitely at lower bit rates), especially since storage is unlimited (which would lead to people recording anything they might ever think they might want to watch).
Basically, what it means is that the box would have to have local storage of some kind, and that would mean a spinning hard drive (since that would be the only way to keep the box price low enough), but if you have a spinning hard drive, why bother with cloud storage, as the cost difference between a 3TB drive and one that is big enough to cache until upload would be less than 5 months of paying for the service.
If you have metal siding, it makes an attic install trickier. It might still work, but you can't really know until you try, and despite the name, it is not a "multi-directional" antenna. Being a fairly standard quad bow-tie, it's likely to have a -3dB beam width around 10 degrees, and -12dB around 40 degrees or so.
What this means is that if all the stations you want are generally in the same direction, then it'll do a great job. But, if one transmitter is 90 degrees off from the direction it's pointed, your SOL for that one. It also has decent back-side rejection (because of the reflector screen), but if a transmitter is really powerful, you could still pull it in. This would be an option if you can point it at the weaker stations and have the stronger ones at the back.
Personally, I'm near the Washington, DC and Baltimore stations, and they are exactly 90 degrees off each other from my location. So, I have a 8-bay pointed at DC, and a 4-bay with a VHF-Hi specialty antenna pointed at Baltimore (because the 4-bay doesn't do a good job on those channels for the distance I am at). With this setup, I get 21 distinct frequencies, with an average of about 3 sub-channels per frequency.
In the US an ATSC multiplex is about 20megabit (19.2 I think). A QAM multiplex is 40megabit. Comcast squeezes 3 MPEG2 HD channels onto a single QAM multiplex. So yes, they do transcode the content.
Although cable companies often re-encode, the bitrate math in your example isn't proof, as even on the few frequencies with no sub-channels, it's rare that they use all the available bandwidth for that one channel. As an example, my local Fox station uses 12.2Mbps for their main stream, so that three streams like that would fit into one 40Mbps QAM "channel".
Also, re-encoding might not be a problem in some cases, as some TV stations feed the cable company from a point before their OTA encoder, so the cable company might get a 40Mbps (or more) stream to start with. I don't have cable, but do have DirecTV, and I know that at least one of their feeds for OTA channels in my area is this way, as the OTA only gives about 7Mbps to 720p, and you can see MPEG-2 artifacts like crazy, while the DirecTV feed is much cleaner, so it almost certainly comes from before the OTA encoder.
There was an experiment done where people where told to eat until they were full out of a bowl of soup. And the amount people ate was strongly correlated to the size of the container, despite everyone believing they only ate the amount they needed.
One problem with this sort of experiment is the "starving college student given free food" demographic.
I know of one such poor college student who ate nearly the entire turkey when invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, but the next week of eating a few hundred calories a day easily made up for it. This allowed money to be re-allocated for other necessities, like rent.
I've never been that bad, but I still tend to eat most everything served to me (especially at restaurants), and if it's a lot, I just don't eat as much as usual the next meal (or two).
It depends on the ISP and how you connect, but in many cases the ISP will enable configuration so that if you try and use an IP address other than the one they gave you it will fail.
Yeah, I've got a/29 routed to me, but since I only pay for 5 of the 8 IPs, that's all I can use. But, nobody can use the other 3, either. I've been meaning to contact my ISP and see if they can give me a deal on the other 3 because of this.
Usually, DNA is enough to strongly link a person or persons to a scene, just like usually an IP is strong enough to link a person or persons to a scene.
Except that in this case, the plaintiff likely presented only a list of IP addresses, dates and a name of a torrent. I can create a list like that in a few minutes using Excel and the "RAND()" function. The relatively strict rules that apply to collection and custody of evidence like DNA samples is nowhere to be found in these copyright cases.
The whole point of these cases is not to go to trial, but rather to get a payout with little expenditure of money. Most of the firms that are pursuing these sorts of cases just ignore ones that have any opposition after they get contact information. Almost every case that actually involves a trial is about fighting to be allowed to easily obtain contact information and send extortion letters.
So, if the stats about file sharing are accurate, using randomly generated IP addresses and times in the initial discovery request would likely never be uncovered, because there would be enough people who are scared into settling. This is especially true in this case, where porn is involved. As long as the contact info they get hits people who downloaded porn (any porn), they're likely to get a decent settlement rate.
The only way to get real evidence of file sharing is too much work for the payout, as the copyright holder would have to download a relatively large chunk of the infringed work (or possibly all of it if it was a split RAR file) from every defendant's computer. This would require a well-behaved torrent client (to avoid things like disconnection for bad data) but modified to store each copy of the downloaded data separately, and to never upload (since uploading would be similar to entrapment in a criminal case). Next, the computer used to do this downloading would have to be in some way "frozen" to keep from altering any of the proof, while still allowing access to that proof for generation of the lawsuit. Last, the copyright holder would have to allow experts for the defense access to the "frozen" computer that was used to do the downloading.
How is it overpriced when it costs the same as the other phones?
A product with the same price as another product but less features is overpriced.
The overpriced myth is possibly the most hilarious anti-Apple meme because it is so provably untrue. The meme is also indefensible when compared to the price spectrum on lots of other products.
I have no problem agreeing with you here that people are generally stupid. One of the reasons Apple products sell at the marked price is the same reason that Gucci bags sell for more than "non-designer" handbags. Yes, both Apple and Gucci might be a little bit prettier, but when it comes to function, you can get as much or more for a lot less money.
Plenty of people don't buy the cheapest car they can find; and in fact they routinely pay 30-100% more than the cheapest for largely aesthetic reasons, and those people are not subject to the same kind reductive criticism which Slashdotters heap on iPhone users for paying the same or maybe 10-20% more for the phone they want.
Cars are one of the best analogs compared to electronics when it comes to stupid buying, and yes, we do heap criticism on people who overspend on them for no good reason. If you pay more for a car with more real features (e.g., a large SUV to hold your whole family instead of a Smart that wouldn't do the job), then it's fine. But, once you get silly (a Hummer instead of just about any other "luxury" SUV), you get ridiculed. Likewise, spending $200K or so for a "supercar" when you can get something that you can drive at a still insane but more real-world top speed of 120mph or so on the highway (if you live in the US) for $65K will generally get you ridculed by people who realize the extra $135K will get you to go with that car. And, I know personally know people who can literally buy any car they want and have found out the hard way that spending more for a "name" is not smart (like the Range Rover that spent more time in the shop than on the 10,000 acre ranch).
As for "10-20%", a 64GB iPhone 5 is a premium of $200 over the 16GB model, yet I could replace the 16GB micro SD card in my phone with a name-brand (SanDisk) for less than $60. So, that's a premium of 57% (since my phone did cost $200 when I bought it 18 months ago). Worse, if my wife did the same thing with her less than $150 phone, she would end up with 16GB internal plus the 64GB external, making the iPhone 90% more money for less features (other than maybe the screen resolution, my wife's 9-month old phone has every other hardware spec as good or better than the iPhone 5).
The iPhone is a well made, well designed piece of electronic gear. It functions superbly. Is it overpriced?
Yes, yes, it is overpriced, since the vast majority of Android phones in the $200 with contract price range are also well-made, well-designed pieces of electronic gear, yet offer more bang for the buck.
Until the iPhone 5, pretty much every Android "smartphone" had a bigger screen, most had close to or as many pixels on that screen, all had better cameras, almost all had more storage for the same price (and all could be expanded cheaply if necessary). In addition, for the normal usage pattern of phone, some Internet browsing/video streaming, music, social networking/staying in contact/texting (including taking and sharing pictures), games, and downloading/installing apps, both Android and iOS are pretty damn easy to use. For some edge cases, one or the other is easier, but this isn't most people.
I have my upgrade order from a 4 for one simple reason -- a higher storage capacity.
Why don't you just get a bigger SD card...oh, yeah, that's right, Apple didn't put in a slot for one, likely hoping for exactly this sort of extra sale.
I wonder how many iPhones were sold for essentially nothing but this (e.g., a 16GB iPhone 4 replaced by a 32 or 64GB model when the user realized that 16GB wasn't enough after few months).
Probably not but it would still seem that predictions that the iPhone 5 is destined to be a flop have been greatly exaggerated.
I don't see how anybody could think the iPhone 5 wouldn't sell a lot of units. It's been a year since the last time Apple junkies could get a new phone, and over 2 years since any major change to the phone. I suspect that the iPhone 5 could have been priced at $400 with contract for the 16GB model and still sold as much as it has.
Even the $200 upcharge for the 64GB model probably won't slow down sales of that version, since you can't just spend $60 and install a 64GB micro-SD card in case you need more storage later.
I have two portable speaker system with remote controls can control an iPod/iPhone. Change songs, playlist etc.
You may be able to do the sort of thing you describe with your music collection if you have it memorized, but try doing this from 20 feet away: use the remote to play "Kashmir" off of Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti album. Then, see how long the same task takes using the iPod controls (touchscreen or 4-way ring). Basically, you use the remote for play/pause and next/previous and nothing else. Big deal
What about car systems with integrated iPod controls on the steering wheel?
Oh, you mean those car companies that screwed up their systems by not providing you with a full display for your playing music, instead forcing you to look at your iPod to navigate to a song? I can take any USB device (including iPods) and plug it into my car and use the 9" touchscreen (or steering wheel controls for minor things like next track) to control and display the music. Even if you don't have a touchscreen, you have a radio that displays text (on any car modern enough to have an Apple dock), and that could be used for display. I guess the iPod dock can transfer that info, too, but why limit the customer to just an Apple product, when the same amount of money put into a USB interface would allow any device to work.
How do you send video signals over USB?
Again, since you need to have an external display anyway, you do exactly like you suggest and let the car/TV/whatever do the video playback. My car will play back most videos (although you only hear audio unless the car is in "Park") from a connected USB device. The "play over USB" was a really minor added expense, as it plays back DVDs and already has the display.
So, like I said, there is no real use case for using the iPod display but also using external navigation features, and once you have an external display and speakers, there's also no need to use anything but USB to get the data out.
Slashdot Mirror
Other than DHCP request packets, nothing that I don't control. It can search my network for DNLA servers, but only if I enable that. It can be set to automatically check for new firmware and alert me, but it can't be set to automatically download and install it.
Everything else is some sort of immediate request (e.g., "play this YouTube video", "browse to this website", etc.).
It'll also be a cold day in hell before I plug an ethernet cable into a TV and give it access to the internet.
My TV has an Ethernet connection and can do things like show YouTube and Netflix. I don't care about any of those extras because other cheaper devices can also do this for me.
But, the Ethernet connection does give me an easy way to apply updates (one has already improved picture quality), and stream media from a PC. The TV also has a web browser that is good enough to allow basic browsing, and works pretty well if you add a bluetooth keyboard. With bookmarks, you can do things like check the local weather without even needing a keyboard. This means that you can do some things without having to have another device involved. You can also control the TV using an Android or iOS app.
So, yeah, when they stop supporting the TV with updates, some of this functionality will stop, but there is a lot that an Ethernet connection gives you that will never go away.
One of the issues with this method is that each channel only sends its own guide data, as they have no incentive to let you know what is showing on other channels. This is the way it is done in the US.
The problem is that to see what's on another channel, your TV has to tune to that channel. If the TV has enough memory and the channels send data for long enough, the TV can just do this sort of tuning when it is "turned off" and it would work fine. But, without memory or extended guide data, there is no way to check the guide for channels that you are not watching without stopping viewing of live TV.
A DVR should always have plenty of memory, and if it has more than one tuner then most of the time you shouldn't have an issue even without extended guide data, but without extended data, there would be times that shows would not record because all tuners were in use for current recordings and could not be used to see what's coming up.
and they might even edit some of the original content to "sanitize" it
I don't think Disney "sanitizes" anything except movies released under the Disney label and rated G.
Touchstone, Miramax, and Hollywood Pictures all made R-rated films, and Disney has released movies under their own label with PG-13 ratings for sexual content, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Likewise, I'm fairly sure you would have heard from Joss Whedon about "The Avengers" being sanitized if that were the case.
The original first movie in 1978 was *it*.
By 1978, it's possible that it wasn't the "original" any more, as the movie was first released in 1977. But, even during that first release, there were differerent versions (sound mixes, etc.), and there aren't any copies from that era in private hands, so we can't really know what is 100% "right".
it could just as easily be candidates who already have a public position on an issue that the company cares about (or it could simply be obvious which way the candidate would vote on a topic).
Do you seriously think that candidates have "public positions" on "tax breaks for companies that employ between 250 and 500 persons and manufacture left-handed cables for use by venues that play live music"? Because these are the kind of laws that get passed as a result of "campaign contributions".
Candidates only have "public positions" on either vague issues ("more jobs") or issues that never actually addressed (like budget deficits).
And in case you were wondering, the actual camera they used is here, though it was modified by a third party company to run at a higher frame rate.
One thing I had noticed is that TBS and Fox did not use this camera on the wild-card or division series. It was very much missed, as my regional sports network does use this camera for every home game (and a few away games), and I had gotten use to freeze frames with no visible motion. The 180fps cameras can't come close to resolving a 3-inch baseball that moves 1500 inches per second.
But you've introduced another problem. Want to cripple the NRA or the EFF? set up robocalls "on their behalf".
The NRA and EFF aren't "companies" as far as robocalls are concerned...they are political lobbying groups. As such, they could actually robocall as much as they want and not break any laws.
Like spam, I have yet to receive any telemarketing call from any entity I don't "have a relationship with" that isn't a scam of some sort. It may only be overpriced airfare to get a free cruise, but it's always some sort of scam. So, the obvious solution is to completely ban all telemarketing calls.
The UHF and VHF pointed at Baltimore are combined with a UHF/VHF combiner (just like in this nicely detailed post) on the antenna mast. Then, the DC and Baltimore wires are combined near the tuners using a bi-directional splitter/combiner. I combine near the tuners because some of my devices have two separate antenna inputs, and those get fed the uncombined signal.
This sort of thing might not work if you have two antennas that both get some signal from the same transmitter, but it works well for me where the antennas get very little signal from the "other" direction.
Forgot the missing address: The gateway address.
My misuse of the word "routed" has caused misunderstandings...I have a /29 assigned to me (whois lookup says I'm the contact, not the ISP), but the routing works as if a /24 is being used, so the my router has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 on the public address.
What the Boxee probably does is store the recording on a small drive (40GB maybe) and then uploads it as bandwidth allows.
As I mentioned in another post, having any local hard drive would basically mean that you're better off buying a full-fledged DVR with a 3TB drive in it, and then using something like Slingbox to watch on the go.
This is because it costs about $40 right now for any spinning hard drive/flash memory that will give you enough storage for upload cache, while it only costs $150 for a 3TB drive, which makes the price difference less than 5 months of service. 3TB is over 450 hours of the highest bitrate HD available for ATSC/QAM recording, and realistically around 600 hours, and well over 2500 hours of SD. No, that's not unlimited, but it is hundreds of days of continous TV watching (unless you watch TV while you are asleep, too). Add in a Slingbox, and in less than two years a home-built version of what Boxee is offering will pay for itself. You'd still be using off-the-shelf, pre-built systems, so it wouldn't be any harder to use than the Boxee system.
For reasonable usage you don't need to upload in real time, you can just save locally and upload as the bandwidth allows.
For OTA HDTV, I get about 6GB/hour average when recording. With two tuners (like this box has), it wouldn't be at all unusual to record 4 hours of TV per day, which would be 24GB.
To be able to upload that without falling behind, you'd need to have a 1GB/hour upload rate, which works out to a steady stream of around 2.8Mbps. Yes, it can be done (and easily with FiOS, for example), but you must have a good provider and no caps to make it work. I've completely ignored the use case of a family with cable TV where you might see 20 or more hours per day recorded (although definitely at lower bit rates), especially since storage is unlimited (which would lead to people recording anything they might ever think they might want to watch).
Basically, what it means is that the box would have to have local storage of some kind, and that would mean a spinning hard drive (since that would be the only way to keep the box price low enough), but if you have a spinning hard drive, why bother with cloud storage, as the cost difference between a 3TB drive and one that is big enough to cache until upload would be less than 5 months of paying for the service.
If you have metal siding, it makes an attic install trickier. It might still work, but you can't really know until you try, and despite the name, it is not a "multi-directional" antenna. Being a fairly standard quad bow-tie, it's likely to have a -3dB beam width around 10 degrees, and -12dB around 40 degrees or so.
What this means is that if all the stations you want are generally in the same direction, then it'll do a great job. But, if one transmitter is 90 degrees off from the direction it's pointed, your SOL for that one. It also has decent back-side rejection (because of the reflector screen), but if a transmitter is really powerful, you could still pull it in. This would be an option if you can point it at the weaker stations and have the stronger ones at the back.
Personally, I'm near the Washington, DC and Baltimore stations, and they are exactly 90 degrees off each other from my location. So, I have a 8-bay pointed at DC, and a 4-bay with a VHF-Hi specialty antenna pointed at Baltimore (because the 4-bay doesn't do a good job on those channels for the distance I am at). With this setup, I get 21 distinct frequencies, with an average of about 3 sub-channels per frequency.
In the US an ATSC multiplex is about 20megabit (19.2 I think). A QAM multiplex is 40megabit. Comcast squeezes 3 MPEG2 HD channels onto a single QAM multiplex. So yes, they do transcode the content.
Although cable companies often re-encode, the bitrate math in your example isn't proof, as even on the few frequencies with no sub-channels, it's rare that they use all the available bandwidth for that one channel. As an example, my local Fox station uses 12.2Mbps for their main stream, so that three streams like that would fit into one 40Mbps QAM "channel".
Also, re-encoding might not be a problem in some cases, as some TV stations feed the cable company from a point before their OTA encoder, so the cable company might get a 40Mbps (or more) stream to start with. I don't have cable, but do have DirecTV, and I know that at least one of their feeds for OTA channels in my area is this way, as the OTA only gives about 7Mbps to 720p, and you can see MPEG-2 artifacts like crazy, while the DirecTV feed is much cleaner, so it almost certainly comes from before the OTA encoder.
There was an experiment done where people where told to eat until they were full out of a bowl of soup. And the amount people ate was strongly correlated to the size of the container, despite everyone believing they only ate the amount they needed.
One problem with this sort of experiment is the "starving college student given free food" demographic.
I know of one such poor college student who ate nearly the entire turkey when invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, but the next week of eating a few hundred calories a day easily made up for it. This allowed money to be re-allocated for other necessities, like rent.
I've never been that bad, but I still tend to eat most everything served to me (especially at restaurants), and if it's a lot, I just don't eat as much as usual the next meal (or two).
Seriously, there's a lot of real information about the business world in the book, and it's funny.
It depends on the ISP and how you connect, but in many cases the ISP will enable configuration so that if you try and use an IP address other than the one they gave you it will fail.
Yeah, I've got a /29 routed to me, but since I only pay for 5 of the 8 IPs, that's all I can use. But, nobody can use the other 3, either. I've been meaning to contact my ISP and see if they can give me a deal on the other 3 because of this.
Usually, DNA is enough to strongly link a person or persons to a scene, just like usually an IP is strong enough to link a person or persons to a scene.
Except that in this case, the plaintiff likely presented only a list of IP addresses, dates and a name of a torrent. I can create a list like that in a few minutes using Excel and the "RAND()" function. The relatively strict rules that apply to collection and custody of evidence like DNA samples is nowhere to be found in these copyright cases.
The whole point of these cases is not to go to trial, but rather to get a payout with little expenditure of money. Most of the firms that are pursuing these sorts of cases just ignore ones that have any opposition after they get contact information. Almost every case that actually involves a trial is about fighting to be allowed to easily obtain contact information and send extortion letters.
So, if the stats about file sharing are accurate, using randomly generated IP addresses and times in the initial discovery request would likely never be uncovered, because there would be enough people who are scared into settling. This is especially true in this case, where porn is involved. As long as the contact info they get hits people who downloaded porn (any porn), they're likely to get a decent settlement rate.
The only way to get real evidence of file sharing is too much work for the payout, as the copyright holder would have to download a relatively large chunk of the infringed work (or possibly all of it if it was a split RAR file) from every defendant's computer. This would require a well-behaved torrent client (to avoid things like disconnection for bad data) but modified to store each copy of the downloaded data separately, and to never upload (since uploading would be similar to entrapment in a criminal case). Next, the computer used to do this downloading would have to be in some way "frozen" to keep from altering any of the proof, while still allowing access to that proof for generation of the lawsuit. Last, the copyright holder would have to allow experts for the defense access to the "frozen" computer that was used to do the downloading.
The killer feature for me, though.. is talk and data simultaneous on an iphone.. only at&t can do that so far.
Every carrier should be able to do this with the iPhone 5, since it is 4G.
How is it overpriced when it costs the same as the other phones?
A product with the same price as another product but less features is overpriced.
The overpriced myth is possibly the most hilarious anti-Apple meme because it is so provably untrue. The meme is also indefensible when compared to the price spectrum on lots of other products.
I have no problem agreeing with you here that people are generally stupid. One of the reasons Apple products sell at the marked price is the same reason that Gucci bags sell for more than "non-designer" handbags. Yes, both Apple and Gucci might be a little bit prettier, but when it comes to function, you can get as much or more for a lot less money.
Plenty of people don't buy the cheapest car they can find; and in fact they routinely pay 30-100% more than the cheapest for largely aesthetic reasons, and those people are not subject to the same kind reductive criticism which Slashdotters heap on iPhone users for paying the same or maybe 10-20% more for the phone they want.
Cars are one of the best analogs compared to electronics when it comes to stupid buying, and yes, we do heap criticism on people who overspend on them for no good reason. If you pay more for a car with more real features (e.g., a large SUV to hold your whole family instead of a Smart that wouldn't do the job), then it's fine. But, once you get silly (a Hummer instead of just about any other "luxury" SUV), you get ridiculed. Likewise, spending $200K or so for a "supercar" when you can get something that you can drive at a still insane but more real-world top speed of 120mph or so on the highway (if you live in the US) for $65K will generally get you ridculed by people who realize the extra $135K will get you to go with that car. And, I know personally know people who can literally buy any car they want and have found out the hard way that spending more for a "name" is not smart (like the Range Rover that spent more time in the shop than on the 10,000 acre ranch).
As for "10-20%", a 64GB iPhone 5 is a premium of $200 over the 16GB model, yet I could replace the 16GB micro SD card in my phone with a name-brand (SanDisk) for less than $60. So, that's a premium of 57% (since my phone did cost $200 when I bought it 18 months ago). Worse, if my wife did the same thing with her less than $150 phone, she would end up with 16GB internal plus the 64GB external, making the iPhone 90% more money for less features (other than maybe the screen resolution, my wife's 9-month old phone has every other hardware spec as good or better than the iPhone 5).
The iPhone is a well made, well designed piece of electronic gear. It functions superbly. Is it overpriced?
Yes, yes, it is overpriced, since the vast majority of Android phones in the $200 with contract price range are also well-made, well-designed pieces of electronic gear, yet offer more bang for the buck.
Until the iPhone 5, pretty much every Android "smartphone" had a bigger screen, most had close to or as many pixels on that screen, all had better cameras, almost all had more storage for the same price (and all could be expanded cheaply if necessary). In addition, for the normal usage pattern of phone, some Internet browsing/video streaming, music, social networking/staying in contact/texting (including taking and sharing pictures), games, and downloading/installing apps, both Android and iOS are pretty damn easy to use. For some edge cases, one or the other is easier, but this isn't most people.
I have my upgrade order from a 4 for one simple reason -- a higher storage capacity.
Why don't you just get a bigger SD card...oh, yeah, that's right, Apple didn't put in a slot for one, likely hoping for exactly this sort of extra sale.
I wonder how many iPhones were sold for essentially nothing but this (e.g., a 16GB iPhone 4 replaced by a 32 or 64GB model when the user realized that 16GB wasn't enough after few months).
You're comparing apples and lemons.
No, we're comparing Apple fantics to lemmings.
Probably not but it would still seem that predictions that the iPhone 5 is destined to be a flop have been greatly exaggerated.
I don't see how anybody could think the iPhone 5 wouldn't sell a lot of units. It's been a year since the last time Apple junkies could get a new phone, and over 2 years since any major change to the phone. I suspect that the iPhone 5 could have been priced at $400 with contract for the 16GB model and still sold as much as it has.
Even the $200 upcharge for the 64GB model probably won't slow down sales of that version, since you can't just spend $60 and install a 64GB micro-SD card in case you need more storage later.
I have two portable speaker system with remote controls can control an iPod/iPhone. Change songs, playlist etc.
You may be able to do the sort of thing you describe with your music collection if you have it memorized, but try doing this from 20 feet away: use the remote to play "Kashmir" off of Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti album. Then, see how long the same task takes using the iPod controls (touchscreen or 4-way ring). Basically, you use the remote for play/pause and next/previous and nothing else. Big deal
What about car systems with integrated iPod controls on the steering wheel?
Oh, you mean those car companies that screwed up their systems by not providing you with a full display for your playing music, instead forcing you to look at your iPod to navigate to a song? I can take any USB device (including iPods) and plug it into my car and use the 9" touchscreen (or steering wheel controls for minor things like next track) to control and display the music. Even if you don't have a touchscreen, you have a radio that displays text (on any car modern enough to have an Apple dock), and that could be used for display. I guess the iPod dock can transfer that info, too, but why limit the customer to just an Apple product, when the same amount of money put into a USB interface would allow any device to work.
How do you send video signals over USB?
Again, since you need to have an external display anyway, you do exactly like you suggest and let the car/TV/whatever do the video playback. My car will play back most videos (although you only hear audio unless the car is in "Park") from a connected USB device. The "play over USB" was a really minor added expense, as it plays back DVDs and already has the display.
So, like I said, there is no real use case for using the iPod display but also using external navigation features, and once you have an external display and speakers, there's also no need to use anything but USB to get the data out.