For me it's once a week. At least. I travel a lot for work and although you can get multi-SIM phones, most of them are terrible as actual phones (unless your idea of a 'good phone' is similar to a feature phone from circa 2003). I think people prefer to use their regular Android phone or iPhone or whatever.
Having said that, currently I'm using an iPhone and those damn microSIMs are already way to small to manipulate easily with my fat fingers. Especially since I usually do my SIM swaps while sitting on the plane en route to my destination:)
Huh? This varies by brand/model. Most TomTom units have free map updates. Garmin ones are $99, though you can buy a lifetime map updates package for not much more than this. Etc.
Also, at least for Garmin (which I am most familiar with), map updates are managed through their website and appear to cost the same for users worldwide, so no issue of 'Australia tax' there.
Yyeah, GPS 'reception' is awful in any high-rise city. (I say 'reception', because the reception itself in terms of signal strength is usually fine - the issue is rather that the signal is getting bounced off buildings and thus longer to get to you, which obviously means your position calculated from those signals will be off).
Phone or stand-alone GPS doesn't seem to matter that much... I get the same problems on my iPhone as I do with my regular car Garmin GPS when I drive into central Sydney. You basically have to ignore it because its telling you things like "in 100 metres, turn left on Blah Street" when you already passed Blah Street a block or two ago.
While Google Maps can't do this, there are apps out there that DO allow you to do this (at least for iOS, I'm sure there would be on Android too). Two off the top of my head I can think of:
Expensive: The TomTom app (basically turns your phone into something almost identical to the actual stand-alone TomTom units, including the fact that the maps are stored locally)
Cheap: MotionXGPS: allows you to download and store locally mapping/sat data for any arbitrary area you want, sourced from either Bing, OpenStreetMap and various other sources (e.g. terrain maps for hiking, marine maps for sailing etc.)
Bzzt. NZ (and Australia) are region 4 for DVDs. Europe is region 2.
Not that it matters anyway since DVD players sold in Australia are all region-free out of the box (by law) anyway. Not sure about the situation in NZ but it's probably similar.
Think we're talking here about the state of their respective economies, particularly sovereign debt, rather than merely the size of their economies. And you can of course throw Canada in with that lot too.
An entire season behind. And you can rest assured the cost in other markets is a lot more than $2.99. US iTunes store prices are way less than anywhere else.
Yay - someone gets it:D There's a reason Australia pirates so much and it's not because we're evil, dirty people who refuse to pay for stuff. It's just that American (well, mostly American) companies refuse to offer their 'legal' options outside the US. Don't they want our money?
Mind you, our companies do the same thing. Australian TV channels all have free online streaming and catch-up services (some of which are damn good, ABC iView is brilliant), but they too are blocked outside Australia. Incredibly annoying when you're travelling (until I left a SOCKS proxy running at home... that works nicely). Stupid copyright law!
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Diablo III Released
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I suppose it depends what you define as DRM. I always thought "DRM" strictly referred to the locking of actual data (i.e. music, movies, software) to a particular user in order to prevent copying/sharing of that data. "Always online" requirements, while just as annoying, I didn't put under that umbrella. But that may simply be my incorrect understanding of the term. I'm not disagreeing that it sucks, but merely saying that I didn't really think of it as "DRM". You don't have to tell me about the pitfalls of 'always online'... I'm Australian so one unavoidable impact of this for me is having 300-400 ms of latency playing a 'single player' game (wish Blizz would get around to installing some local servers one of these years... the AU/NZ market has got to be big enough to justify at least ONE server).
Separating the single player game from the (potentially) multiplayer game is a good idea... I never thought about that but now that you mention it, it'd be a simple way of doing it. When creating a character you could be given the choice of creating a "local only" character, or an "online" character (only the online character could participate in multiplayer games and the auction house, but could still be played 'single player, but online' if you wanted.
Mind you, it'd suck if you created a "local only" character and got an awesome drop that you could have sold for $100s on the AH. I strongly suspect that Blizzard didn't go down this route not for nefarious "stop the pirates/hackers" reasons, but more because by forcing everyone to play online, there'd be a much wider range of equipment being dropped that could potentially be put on the RMAH. Since Blizz gets a cut of every transaction this is obviously in their interest.
Yeah I agree. In countries where they generally have always had caps, plans are often delivered at "whatever speed the infrastructure can support", and you pay for the download limit you want. The situation with Comcast differs in that you are being charged for speed tier, as well as volume downloaded. Furthermore, there isn't a range of different caps to choose from as there are in some other countries.
For instance, I'm on an ADSL2+ connection in Australia and have a cap. However, plans don't have any particular advertised speed (on DSL at least, cable or fibre is a different story) - they are simply "ADSL2+", which supports up to 24 Mbps down, and up to 2.5 Mbps up. The speed you actually get will be as fast as your modem can manage to sync, given your line length and condition. Some people with short phone lines will get the full 24 Mbps. Some with very long lines will only get a couple of Mbps. And most get somewhere in between... but the point is you get as fast as your line will support.
The only choice you need to make with regards to your plan is how much download quota you want (and you can change this month to month to suit your needs). My ISP (Internode) currently offers 30 GB, 60 GB, 200 GB, 300 GB, 600 GB and 1.2 TB caps. I don't see caps as a bad thing IF you have a range of them to choose from, as it means low volume users who impact the network less can pay less, those that do use a lot pay more, and it helps the ISP predict and manage their network capacity to ensure a congestion-free experience (and for me, quality of connection is more important than the sheer amount I can download). Also note that once you go over your cap, you aren't charged more here... they just throttle your speed down.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
I don't know why everyone's talking about DRM. This isn't DRM... it's not stopping you copying anything. Hell they put up the full client on their website for free. It's an online game that requires a server to run, that's all. It's like complaining than an MMO requires "always online" (well no kidding...!)
Virtually the whole game is run on the server... the randomised level generation, mob spawning, pathing and behaviour, loot (as you say), even quest dialog... EVERYTHING is done server-side. You might not like it done that way, but it's not DRM, it's just that the whole game is online. There are good reasons for this too (namely preventing item hacks/dupes and preserving the integrity of the market, which is doubly important now that there's a real-money AH), but 'DRM' or preventing people copying things or playing for free is NOT one those reasons.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
There's a lot of cut scenes and and an absolute shit ton of audio files (every NPC's speech in the game, usually completely different for each of the 5 classes). 7.6 GB seems pretty right to me for all that. Hell if I compare it to the Aion MMO client I also have on my hard drive, which is 21 GB but contains virtually no video/cutscene material and nowhere near as much dialogue, 7 gigs seems light.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
Except that the game itself is actually mostly run remotely. Your character is animated client side, but monsters, loot drops etc. are all calculated by the servers and sent to you... not computed locally. So merely cracking the client isn't going to help - you would have to emulate the server as well.
For all intents and purposes D3 is a multiplayer game, not a single-player game. It just so happens that you can play by yourself (same as if you logged onto an MMO server and noone else happened to be on). At any time, someone else can log in and instantly join your game.
Plus the fact that all items are generated and stored server-side should at least nip item hacks in the bud.
Who said anything about education? Was merely pointing out that the size of their home continent is not one of the main reasons for low passport ownership. Less average days of vacation per year is a major factor... which has nothing to do with them being "stupid" or "not well educated".
I think you're reading criticisms into my words that aren't there.
It's fair. The 4G frequencies supported by the new iPad (and used on US 4G networks) will never be used for 4G here in Australia. For good reason too: that part of the spectrum is occupied by television broadcasting!
"And Americans need passports much less because they can travel throughout a huge continent without one."
What's that got to do with anything? Australians have a huge continent they can travel throughout too, but near 90% of adult Australians have passports (and use them - one in four Australians goes overseas at least once a year). Similarly you don't need a passport to travel throughout the (large and diverse) Schengen Area in Europe, either, yet most Europeans carry passports.
No, Americans don't travel for various reasons (having crappy entitlements to paid leave from work compared to all other OECD countries is the major one), but merely having access to a large 'home' continent is not one of them.
I love how all the articles/debate on this issue seem to think it's only fat cat millionaires that get affected by laws like this, rather than the hundreds of thousands of regular middle-class expats making modest incomes who just happen to live somewhere else than the US due to family or career reasons. Sigh.
The point is, virtually no other country does this (taxes citizens worldwide, rather than just residents). Even countries with substantially better "benefits of citizenship" (aka government services).
It's not necessarily always people trying to make a quick buck.
My wife is American but hasn't lived there since we were married (which was quite a while ago). She is considering giving up her US citizenship because once she makes more than a certain amount per year, she no longer falls under the foreign-earned income exemption and can actually end up getting double taxed (i.e. she pays her full local income tax, and then also has to pay income tax to the US on whatever she earns above the foreign-earned exemption limit. That is ridiculous, I'm sorry. Why would we do that if we didn't have to?
America is the only country I know of (there may be some others, but not that I've come across) that tax you based on your citizenship, rather than your residency. If you're a US citizen, you have to file a tax return and potentially pay tax, even if you've not set foot inside the country in 50 years and have no financial affairs there whatsoever. That needs to change if they want to stop people randomly giving up citizenship for financial reasons.
Outside the US: the GSM iPhone was always sold unlocked by Apple, since day one. In fact I don't even think you CAN buy it locked from Apple... only from carriers themselves.
In the US: the GSM iPhone was originally locked to AT&T, but that changed around a year-and-a-half or so ago when Apple started selling iPhones outright (not with a carrier-subsidised plan) from Apple Stores. The outright-purchased phone is unlocked in the US, same as it is everywhere else.
A contract of any length is a big deal for people in places with GSM mobile markets with many competing carriers (read: all of Europe, Australia and NZ, most of the rest of the world). And it's nothing to do with moving out of the coverage area.
Reason is, if you are tied into a contract for 18-24 months, you are agreeing to pay a certain amount each month for 'x' amount of calls/SMS/data. But in 18/24 months time, the plans that will be available then will be much cheaper or offer more for your dollar. People don't want to be tied into paying a static cost in a world where the cost of plans is decreasing every year.
Personal example: I'm on a $20/month plan (not a contract, a month-by-month plan that can be changed or cancelled at any time) with Vodafone (Australia). It has three times the data allowance and 50% more calls than the $20 Vodafone plan from two years ago. So I'm glad I'm not tied into that old plan. Similarly, there are 5 or 6 major GSM carriers here (and many smaller ones), and if one of them comes out tomorrow with a new plan that offers me much better value, I can (and would) switch to it immediately. Again, because I'm not tied into a contract.
The day Apple gets rid of physical SIMs is the day I switch to another type of phone. I have multiple microSIMs that I switch into my iPhone regularly while travelling. I have SIMs for Australia, Singapore, USA, UK and NZ and I keep them in my little travel wallet with my passport. Usually, I perform the SIM swap while on the plane so I'm ready to go when I land.
The only reason I'd accept ditching SIMs is if multiple network providers could be easily set up on the phone itself (i.e. a virtual SIM card done in software) and it was supported in as wide a variety of places as offer physical SIMs now.
Or, if global roaming rates using my home provider were massively reduced (i.e. by 90%+).
$5.67/gallon is fairly cheap compared to virtually ALL Western countries except for US/Canada. It's certainly less than in any European country, Japan, Korea, Australia, NZ, etc etc.
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Something's very wrong with your iPhone if you are getting only thirty minutes talk time out of it...
For me it's once a week. At least. I travel a lot for work and although you can get multi-SIM phones, most of them are terrible as actual phones (unless your idea of a 'good phone' is similar to a feature phone from circa 2003). I think people prefer to use their regular Android phone or iPhone or whatever.
Having said that, currently I'm using an iPhone and those damn microSIMs are already way to small to manipulate easily with my fat fingers. Especially since I usually do my SIM swaps while sitting on the plane en route to my destination :)
Huh? This varies by brand/model. Most TomTom units have free map updates. Garmin ones are $99, though you can buy a lifetime map updates package for not much more than this. Etc.
Also, at least for Garmin (which I am most familiar with), map updates are managed through their website and appear to cost the same for users worldwide, so no issue of 'Australia tax' there.
Yyeah, GPS 'reception' is awful in any high-rise city. (I say 'reception', because the reception itself in terms of signal strength is usually fine - the issue is rather that the signal is getting bounced off buildings and thus longer to get to you, which obviously means your position calculated from those signals will be off).
Phone or stand-alone GPS doesn't seem to matter that much ... I get the same problems on my iPhone as I do with my regular car Garmin GPS when I drive into central Sydney. You basically have to ignore it because its telling you things like "in 100 metres, turn left on Blah Street" when you already passed Blah Street a block or two ago.
While Google Maps can't do this, there are apps out there that DO allow you to do this (at least for iOS, I'm sure there would be on Android too). Two off the top of my head I can think of:
Expensive: The TomTom app (basically turns your phone into something almost identical to the actual stand-alone TomTom units, including the fact that the maps are stored locally)
Cheap: MotionXGPS: allows you to download and store locally mapping/sat data for any arbitrary area you want, sourced from either Bing, OpenStreetMap and various other sources (e.g. terrain maps for hiking, marine maps for sailing etc.)
Bzzt. NZ (and Australia) are region 4 for DVDs. Europe is region 2.
Not that it matters anyway since DVD players sold in Australia are all region-free out of the box (by law) anyway. Not sure about the situation in NZ but it's probably similar.
Think we're talking here about the state of their respective economies, particularly sovereign debt, rather than merely the size of their economies. And you can of course throw Canada in with that lot too.
An entire season behind. And you can rest assured the cost in other markets is a lot more than $2.99. US iTunes store prices are way less than anywhere else.
Yay - someone gets it :D There's a reason Australia pirates so much and it's not because we're evil, dirty people who refuse to pay for stuff. It's just that American (well, mostly American) companies refuse to offer their 'legal' options outside the US. Don't they want our money?
Mind you, our companies do the same thing. Australian TV channels all have free online streaming and catch-up services (some of which are damn good, ABC iView is brilliant), but they too are blocked outside Australia. Incredibly annoying when you're travelling (until I left a SOCKS proxy running at home ... that works nicely). Stupid copyright law!
I suppose it depends what you define as DRM. I always thought "DRM" strictly referred to the locking of actual data (i.e. music, movies, software) to a particular user in order to prevent copying/sharing of that data. "Always online" requirements, while just as annoying, I didn't put under that umbrella. But that may simply be my incorrect understanding of the term. I'm not disagreeing that it sucks, but merely saying that I didn't really think of it as "DRM". You don't have to tell me about the pitfalls of 'always online' ... I'm Australian so one unavoidable impact of this for me is having 300-400 ms of latency playing a 'single player' game (wish Blizz would get around to installing some local servers one of these years ... the AU/NZ market has got to be big enough to justify at least ONE server).
Separating the single player game from the (potentially) multiplayer game is a good idea ... I never thought about that but now that you mention it, it'd be a simple way of doing it. When creating a character you could be given the choice of creating a "local only" character, or an "online" character (only the online character could participate in multiplayer games and the auction house, but could still be played 'single player, but online' if you wanted.
Mind you, it'd suck if you created a "local only" character and got an awesome drop that you could have sold for $100s on the AH. I strongly suspect that Blizzard didn't go down this route not for nefarious "stop the pirates/hackers" reasons, but more because by forcing everyone to play online, there'd be a much wider range of equipment being dropped that could potentially be put on the RMAH. Since Blizz gets a cut of every transaction this is obviously in their interest.
Yeah I agree. In countries where they generally have always had caps, plans are often delivered at "whatever speed the infrastructure can support", and you pay for the download limit you want. The situation with Comcast differs in that you are being charged for speed tier, as well as volume downloaded. Furthermore, there isn't a range of different caps to choose from as there are in some other countries.
For instance, I'm on an ADSL2+ connection in Australia and have a cap. However, plans don't have any particular advertised speed (on DSL at least, cable or fibre is a different story) - they are simply "ADSL2+", which supports up to 24 Mbps down, and up to 2.5 Mbps up. The speed you actually get will be as fast as your modem can manage to sync, given your line length and condition. Some people with short phone lines will get the full 24 Mbps. Some with very long lines will only get a couple of Mbps. And most get somewhere in between ... but the point is you get as fast as your line will support.
The only choice you need to make with regards to your plan is how much download quota you want (and you can change this month to month to suit your needs). My ISP (Internode) currently offers 30 GB, 60 GB, 200 GB, 300 GB, 600 GB and 1.2 TB caps. I don't see caps as a bad thing IF you have a range of them to choose from, as it means low volume users who impact the network less can pay less, those that do use a lot pay more, and it helps the ISP predict and manage their network capacity to ensure a congestion-free experience (and for me, quality of connection is more important than the sheer amount I can download). Also note that once you go over your cap, you aren't charged more here ... they just throttle your speed down.
I don't know why everyone's talking about DRM. This isn't DRM ... it's not stopping you copying anything. Hell they put up the full client on their website for free. It's an online game that requires a server to run, that's all. It's like complaining than an MMO requires "always online" (well no kidding...!)
Virtually the whole game is run on the server ... the randomised level generation, mob spawning, pathing and behaviour, loot (as you say), even quest dialog ... EVERYTHING is done server-side. You might not like it done that way, but it's not DRM, it's just that the whole game is online. There are good reasons for this too (namely preventing item hacks/dupes and preserving the integrity of the market, which is doubly important now that there's a real-money AH), but 'DRM' or preventing people copying things or playing for free is NOT one those reasons.
There's a lot of cut scenes and and an absolute shit ton of audio files (every NPC's speech in the game, usually completely different for each of the 5 classes). 7.6 GB seems pretty right to me for all that. Hell if I compare it to the Aion MMO client I also have on my hard drive, which is 21 GB but contains virtually no video/cutscene material and nowhere near as much dialogue, 7 gigs seems light.
Except that the game itself is actually mostly run remotely. Your character is animated client side, but monsters, loot drops etc. are all calculated by the servers and sent to you ... not computed locally. So merely cracking the client isn't going to help - you would have to emulate the server as well.
For all intents and purposes D3 is a multiplayer game, not a single-player game. It just so happens that you can play by yourself (same as if you logged onto an MMO server and noone else happened to be on). At any time, someone else can log in and instantly join your game.
Plus the fact that all items are generated and stored server-side should at least nip item hacks in the bud.
Who said anything about education? Was merely pointing out that the size of their home continent is not one of the main reasons for low passport ownership. Less average days of vacation per year is a major factor ... which has nothing to do with them being "stupid" or "not well educated".
I think you're reading criticisms into my words that aren't there.
It's fair. The 4G frequencies supported by the new iPad (and used on US 4G networks) will never be used for 4G here in Australia. For good reason too: that part of the spectrum is occupied by television broadcasting!
"And Americans need passports much less because they can travel throughout a huge continent without one."
What's that got to do with anything? Australians have a huge continent they can travel throughout too, but near 90% of adult Australians have passports (and use them - one in four Australians goes overseas at least once a year). Similarly you don't need a passport to travel throughout the (large and diverse) Schengen Area in Europe, either, yet most Europeans carry passports.
No, Americans don't travel for various reasons (having crappy entitlements to paid leave from work compared to all other OECD countries is the major one), but merely having access to a large 'home' continent is not one of them.
I love how all the articles/debate on this issue seem to think it's only fat cat millionaires that get affected by laws like this, rather than the hundreds of thousands of regular middle-class expats making modest incomes who just happen to live somewhere else than the US due to family or career reasons. Sigh.
The point is, virtually no other country does this (taxes citizens worldwide, rather than just residents). Even countries with substantially better "benefits of citizenship" (aka government services).
It's not necessarily always people trying to make a quick buck.
My wife is American but hasn't lived there since we were married (which was quite a while ago). She is considering giving up her US citizenship because once she makes more than a certain amount per year, she no longer falls under the foreign-earned income exemption and can actually end up getting double taxed (i.e. she pays her full local income tax, and then also has to pay income tax to the US on whatever she earns above the foreign-earned exemption limit. That is ridiculous, I'm sorry. Why would we do that if we didn't have to?
America is the only country I know of (there may be some others, but not that I've come across) that tax you based on your citizenship, rather than your residency. If you're a US citizen, you have to file a tax return and potentially pay tax, even if you've not set foot inside the country in 50 years and have no financial affairs there whatsoever. That needs to change if they want to stop people randomly giving up citizenship for financial reasons.
Outside the US: the GSM iPhone was always sold unlocked by Apple, since day one. In fact I don't even think you CAN buy it locked from Apple ... only from carriers themselves.
In the US: the GSM iPhone was originally locked to AT&T, but that changed around a year-and-a-half or so ago when Apple started selling iPhones outright (not with a carrier-subsidised plan) from Apple Stores. The outright-purchased phone is unlocked in the US, same as it is everywhere else.
A contract of any length is a big deal for people in places with GSM mobile markets with many competing carriers (read: all of Europe, Australia and NZ, most of the rest of the world). And it's nothing to do with moving out of the coverage area.
Reason is, if you are tied into a contract for 18-24 months, you are agreeing to pay a certain amount each month for 'x' amount of calls/SMS/data. But in 18/24 months time, the plans that will be available then will be much cheaper or offer more for your dollar. People don't want to be tied into paying a static cost in a world where the cost of plans is decreasing every year.
Personal example: I'm on a $20/month plan (not a contract, a month-by-month plan that can be changed or cancelled at any time) with Vodafone (Australia). It has three times the data allowance and 50% more calls than the $20 Vodafone plan from two years ago. So I'm glad I'm not tied into that old plan. Similarly, there are 5 or 6 major GSM carriers here (and many smaller ones), and if one of them comes out tomorrow with a new plan that offers me much better value, I can (and would) switch to it immediately. Again, because I'm not tied into a contract.
The day Apple gets rid of physical SIMs is the day I switch to another type of phone. I have multiple microSIMs that I switch into my iPhone regularly while travelling. I have SIMs for Australia, Singapore, USA, UK and NZ and I keep them in my little travel wallet with my passport. Usually, I perform the SIM swap while on the plane so I'm ready to go when I land.
The only reason I'd accept ditching SIMs is if multiple network providers could be easily set up on the phone itself (i.e. a virtual SIM card done in software) and it was supported in as wide a variety of places as offer physical SIMs now.
Or, if global roaming rates using my home provider were massively reduced (i.e. by 90%+).
Yep. Complete with .002c/kB roaming charges :P
$5.67/gallon is fairly cheap compared to virtually ALL Western countries except for US/Canada. It's certainly less than in any European country, Japan, Korea, Australia, NZ, etc etc.