The problem with this is that those other appstores are much more lax. Should someone write an application that harvests a user's data or does anything operationally malignant, Apple would have to service that. That would increase support calls and service labor. That costs more money. That means more expensive iPhones.
I also wouldn't doubt that the owners of such stores would have to follow all sorts of new rules that makes owning alternative app stores unattractive. That could probably be resolved by a consortium of sorts...
I'm undoing a few mod points to respond here, and FWIW I would have modded you insightful as well.
That said, I think it depends on the nature of the warranty they're required to provide. I had a jailbroken/unlocked iPhone with an unresponsive screen that Apple refused to provide service for, even after I did a factory restore on it and it was clearly a hardware issue. While I could understand Apple not being liable for software issues with unsigned apps, I'm not entirely certain how far their responsibility is now even with App Store apps. Also, if Apple were required to do this, it's not an unreasonable stretch to say that Apple could and might release an "official jailbreak" that would help minimize their support costs if it was up to Geohot and PlanetBeing to reverse engineer the latest version of resdn0w/pwnagetool/blackra1n.
I don't know if you've ever used Cydia, but it really is a different place than the App Store. Only toward the end of my iPhone owning days did Cydia become a real store, but there was plenty of interesting stuff there, and in Installer before it. Tap Tap Revolution started there, and back then it used music from your iTunes library. Labyrinth started there. SwirlyMMS beat Apple to the punch of being able to receive MMS messages on the iPhone, and it is among the BEST interfaces I've ever seen for MMS. Winterboard and SBSettings are two apps that are nearly iconic on every jailbroken iPhone. If you're a power user with a solid data plan, there's even Terminal and cTorrent. Those are just the apps I remember off the top of my head. There are plenty of nickel-and-dime Winterboard themes there, but I'm fairly certain that even Saurik has limits against malicious code being entered by default, and while you can technically add your own repos, you'd be intentionally doing so.
There was a working prototype for the Slate at CES that ran Win7, so it's safe to assume that a set of hardware specs for that platform are more-or-less nailed down. That said, the two basic options are to either get WebOS to work with the existing hardware (i.e. hammer out some drivers to get the two talking), or redesign the hardware to include tablet-sized versions of the hardware it's already been written for.
While at first glance it seems like a wash as to which is more economical for HP, support and manufacturing are also huge considerations IF a Win7 tablet is also in the works. Call me nuts, but I'm fairly certain there's a market for a tablet that can say "I'm compatible with all of your USB peripherals you've already got, and all the software you've already bought". Some might look for a tablet with WebOS that's a more tablet-specific experience like the iPad, and for that WebOS is probably a better competitor, but I'd also wager that there are plenty of applications for a tablet with that in mind. Therefore, if HP intends to release both a Win7 tablet and a WebOS tablet, they're likely better off keeping the manufacturing process the same for both, sending them out the factory with the sole difference being the firmware flashed on them, and sticking them in different boxes. This also helps for warranty service where reflashing the unit with whatever the user wants is easier than having to double the warehouse inventory. If those two advantages are great enough, I'd wager that HP will likely opt to expand WebOS to work with the same hardware.
But yes, I realize that my entire point here hinges on HP releasing the Slate for both platforms. If WebOS is replacing Win7, then yeah, it still could go either way.
I asked someone at HP about this on Friday, and this was her answer...
Heads up on your Slate post to me this morning. I had to delete it! I flagged the rumor to our team and they asked me not to comment on it at all. Not that I said anything either way about the status of the slate, personally I thought it was laughable, but they said they wanted to manage the rumors and not want anyone to address it. I should hear something back soon and when I do, I'll share it.
If the PR team is planning to "manage the rumors", I'm hesitant to believe that the rumor is accurate. After all, if HP was really killing the Slate, why wouldn't they want word out as soon as possible, or why would they care about managing what's said?
One of the other rumors going around is that they're ditching Win7 for WebOS on the tablet, but the hardware will stay mostly the same. That's possible, but I'm wondering what the benefit would be to them if they already had a Slate ready to go with Win7, but opting to ditch it just because of the software. Personally, I've been hoping for a Win7 tablet for some time now, and there's been plenty of other positive feedback from the idea on HP's Facebook page. I'd rather see them put two SKUs out whereby the software was basically the only difference. The WebOS one would be cheaper and likely have better battery life, but the Win7 version could run desktop apps. It'd be trivial to do, but I guess we'll have to wait for the official word.
-I can't speak for the origins of their e-book division, but my guess is that they've been kept more-or-less in check by the stiff competition from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and now Apple, all four of whom are targeting a very small market (the iPad is a bit wider market, but the e-reader function is what I'm addressing here). I remember asking someone at an e-reader station why I'd want one over a Kindle, and I think the answer she gave me was that the plastic device was $20 and that I could take it home today...so with a sales pitch THAT shaky, they really can't afford to do anything to piss people off. Additionally, AFAIK, there isn't nearly the same exclusivity on e-Books as there is in video games. Even if there's an official contract saying that $EXCLUSIVE_BOOK will only be available on $READER, if that contract is voided, it's a whole lot more trivial to port a book from one reader to the other than it is to pick up $EXCLUSIVE_GAME and port it to the xbox.
-Their still camera division is what's left of Konica-Minolta, so if there's any shred of the original Minolta crew still there, that's what you're seeing the effects of. I don't know whether their pro-grade video cameras started out as a separate company that was later bought by Sony, but even if they weren't, when you're in the business of selling $13,000 cameras to pro videographers who can just as easily get a Canon or JVC model, you're not going to take too many chances. I'm sure that the $30,000-$75,000+ cameras sold to movie studios and TV stations aren't going to be messed with either, because if Sony tried pulling that crap on them, you'd see Sony vs. ABC, aka Media-With-Deep-Pockets-and-A-Broadcast-Medium vs. Media-With-Deep-Pockets-and-A-Broadcast-Medium. Outside of Slashdot you won't see more than 90 seconds of broadcast about this whole schtick, but if ABC were leading the charge against Sony, you'd know it, as would your aunt Gertrude. Sony's not going to touch them, either.
-Sony Creative Software had a former life as Sonic Foundry. Again, a company with half a clue and some decent software that hasn't foundationally changed since then. Additionally, Their flagship products (ACID, Sound Forge, Vegas) are Windows only, while the media production demographic typically leans toward OSX, so their running platform already limits their customer base. Bonus points for the DRM getting progressively more intrusive on those apps for a while now, so this division isn't all that immune from the OmGwTfBbQ pIrAtEs!!!111 battle cry from the higher-ups either.
Compare all three of these divisions (separate niche products targeting a specialized discerning set of customers who know what to look for) with the PS3 (the general public who overall has more interest in playing exclusive video games and watching blu-ray discs and is likely unaware of Linux or that it can be installed on their PS3), and it makes sense why those divisions are shooting slightly straighter than the gaming divisions.
There is a distinct other side to what you're talking about. First off, your entire rant appears to reference Symantec and McAffee. Reading it through that lens, I can completely agree, especially the consumer versions of each. Sometimes I've wondered if Vista, Norton 360, McAffee Internet Security, and Crysis were all in some kind of crazed competition to see which could slow down a user's machine the most. Like you and presumably a sizeable number of other Slashdotters, I've walked into a person's obviously-infected machine that Norton/McAffee have given a clean bill of health. They both nag incessantly about how it's protecting your machine or how you only have 216 days left in your subscription and should renew now. At the risk of being told to speak for myself, I'll wager that you'll find Symantec/McAffee apologists in VERY short supply around here in that regard.
I personally have been very impressed with NOD32. The still-available-around-the-internet-and-supported-and-updated-for-2-more-years-but-no-longer-being-distributed-by-ESET-directly version 2.7 is among the most impressive pieces of software I've seen coded. it's 12MBytes, runs on every version of Windows from 95 to 7 x64 edition, takes up 34MBytes of RAM in the system tray, and is VERY effective. The newer versions are more user friendly and a bit more taxing on the system, but have the advantage of creating bootable rescue media and some other nifty features and is still an order of magnitude easier on the system than consumer-grade Norton or McAffee.
On the professional side, as much as it might cost in literal dollars for a Fortune 500 company to support the antivirus software, ultimately when a company shuffles a couple hundred billion dollars a quarter, I'm sure that in that context, the costs you mention are relatively trivial. With the possible exception of the United States Government, I'm calling [citation needed] on any company with SO many computers that they're spending seven figures on software updates for their AV.
Ten guys just for antivirus maintenance? I'm calling [citation needed] again. I could certainly see a large team being devoted to software management as a whole, but if they require ten people to oversee nothing but the AV app, they're likely doing it wrong. Does it require oversight? sure. I worked for a college campus that had several desktop support reps who all knew how to roll out patches and whatnot, but they weren't all doing it concurrently.
Now let's talk bandwidth. I'd buy that it could take a few terabytes of bandwidth to shuffle updates around over the course of a month for a few thousand computers getting a few updates on a daily basis. The question is this: would they need less bandwidth if they didn't use AV package? Similarly, is the AV patches using up so much bandwidth that it's become detrimental for regular work to take place on the LAN? I sincerely doubt either is the case.
30% of system resources being used during resident scanning, etc.? Again, either they're doing it wrong, using a thoroughly craptacular software title (though in the case of McAffee that may be accurate), or...yeah one of those two. I've never seen resident scanning peg my processor like that unless it actually found something. If they're running scans during the production day (which admittedly DO cause the processor to spike) instead of later on when the building is vacant, then one of those guys needs to be fired.
The soft costs are a crapshoot. What would the costs be if the user DOES get infected? How much productivity would they lose then? How much lost time would be spent troubleshooting that machine? Suppose the only alternative app for a given situation on the Mac/Linux platform is a half-baked, terrible-UI clone of what they've already paid for licensing for? Sure there's plenty of great software for Linux, and I use plenty of OSS myself. At my office though, we're running a apps that are niche apps (annual statement filing, spreadsheet collaboration, AS/400 access, electronic document filing
Not entirely, but the costs can be managed slightly more for power generation than for bandwidth. No, you can't just shut down an entire coal plant, but you can burn less coal at night than you would during the day. A cooler summer leads to less air conditioner use, thereby reducing power consumption. Yes, these are very broad terms and I realize that there is a floor to how much power can be 'not generated', but there certainly must be some wiggle room. A few years ago there was a HUGE push to get everyone near me to switch to those fluorescent socket bulbs. That has stopped recently because it was apparent that those bulbs still ran pretty warm, gave off terrible light, didn't last nearly as long as regular incandescent bulbs, but still cost ten times the price. Nonetheless, the local power company was giving subsidies to people who bought them. The only logical conclusion for the power company giving money back is that they were able to save money in power generation over the long term.
This is radically different than bandwidth in that ISP's can't shut off half their routers during off-peak hours. They can't save any money or resources by notching their backbone routers down to 100MBit instead of Gig-E or 10Gig-E when demand is low. Seeding a dozen torrents doesn't burn more coal than playing Farmville; the only resource being consumed more heavily is the amount of bandwidth unavailable to lesser users.
I don't entirely fault Comcast for throttling torrents during peak usage. A T1 or T3 line is sold with the understanding that you'll get near-perfect uptime and be able to fully saturate your bandwidth without a problem, because you're paying $$$$$$$ to be able to do that. Cable and DSL lines are much cheaper because you don't get any kind of uptime or throughput guarantee. If Comcast (And the rest of the ISPs running around) oversubscribes a bit, that's understandable too - the nature of their business makes that nearly essential to a reasonable degree. The problem is when they grossly oversubscribe and agressively traffic shape during off-peak hours.
Yes, they're experiments, but the GP is still somewhat accurate. Yes, electricity isn't "stored" by electric companies, but they can reduce how much is generated. Lots of highly paid engineers earn their living designing highly complicated systems to determine where to strike that balance. The municipal power company where I live is an old-school oil burning plant. No, they don't store up electricity once it's been generated, but they can do things like burning less oil during periods of lower consumption while increasing oil burning to meet up with demand. This principle admittedly doesn't hold up with things like wind, solar, or nuclear power, but it does here for the intent of my point.
There's no "conserving" bandwidth by leaving it in some sort of unprocessed form. Either bits are going over a wire, or they aren't. To my admittedly limited knowledge, there's no analogous means of "leaving bandwidth in oil form until it's needed", and I think THAT's more what the GP was getting at.
ANY cell phone can disrupt cellular traffic, conversely a group of parts from Radio Shack can also be combined to disrupt cellular traffic. Even so, are you saying that there's just as tangible a danger with an improperly modded gun as there is with an improperly modded cell phone? Personally, I'll take my chances with the guy with the phone. Oh, and even if I modded a cell phone maliciously, odds are the traffic corruption would be "such a tiny change...as to be undetectable".
When I owned an iPhone, I in fact purchased it secondhand from a friend and thus signed NO contract with AT&T. Apple has been working to thwart the jailbreaking scene since the original iPhone was released, back when AT&T wasn't subsidizing a dime of the phone. Even if I did, AT&T allows you to keep the phone if you pay the ETF. If I sign up, get an iPhone, and then pay the ETF, then I am JUST as within the terms of my contract as if I carried the 2 year agreement to term. It'd be stealing if I did the above without paying the ETF and thus was in violation of the contract.
And my point is that once a movie is DeCSS'd, it's not up to the end user to decrypt it and thus has no bearing on the integrity and success of CSS.
Your argument assumes that Adam and Bob both know how to torrent and burn the AVI or MKV to a disc and have a blazing fast internet connection, but all of that is irrelevant.
If they wanted to not pay retail to get a movie, finding street corner vendors, flea markets, give the movie to their local slashdotter to copy...there's always been an underground market for the stuff that dates back to VHS and also has nothing to do with CSS.
The point is that Hollywood is well aware that CSS is trivial to crack, and it's certainly not going to prevent dvd rips from ending up on p2p networks - but it's also trivial to implement. Adobe Encore can CSS a disc with two clicks, for crying out loud. It's a "locks are for honest people" solution that will prevent users below given certain threshold of technical prowess from copying and distributing movies they've purchased to their neighbors and friends. It won't stop mass piracy and they know it, but from their perspective if just a handful of would-be disc copiers opt for buying a disc instead, they'll consider it successful.
I'm acutely aware of the DeCSS codes and that there is no shortage of tools to rip an ISO from a CSS'd DVD. The validity of my argument hinges on how success is defined. If you're defining success as being completely impregnable, then there is no DRM scheme I'm aware of that fits this description. However, EVERYONE who lived through the early 1990's had - and knew how to use - a dual-deck cassette player. Copying a cassette tape was a task whereby if you walked through a mall in 1992 and asked 100 people if they knew how to copy a cassette tape, at least 99 of them would be able to tell you with confidence.
Wear one of those DeCSS T-Shirts in your local mall tomorrow and ask 100 people if they know the significance of the code on the shirt. If 15 of them do, I'd be impressed. Alternatively, even if they don't recognize the source code, ask them if they can name an app that can copy a copy protected DVD movie or rip an ISO of one. Again, if more than 20 people could confidently and accurately demonstrate this task, I'd say that you went to a very tech savvy mall.
I'm acutely aware of the presence of DVD rips all over the internet, but that's a straw-man argument. It only takes one person, one time, to strip the CSS and distribute that copy of the data. That's different than what is being addressed here, which would be (theoretically) distributing a copy-protected ISO and relying on end-users to decrypt the movie before viewing. I doubt you'll find a single MPAA rep who isn't aware that CSS has been cracked and that it isn't preventing aXXo rips from appearing all over the web. The point of CSS is to limit the amount of casual copying between users.
If Adam buys $MOVIE and Bob buys $OTHER_MOVIE, if neither are technical enough to run a cracking app, they'll find out real fast that Roxio/Nero/Your Commercial App Here will refuse to copy it. They'll either swap loaning the movies, or they'll each buy their own copy. If Adam goes online to Google search it, there's a chance that he'll find a usable app, but also a chance that he'll riddle his computer with malware and have to pay the Geek Squad $200 to fix it. In that case, he'll come to the conclusion of "I could have bought 10-20 DVD movies for the cost of fixing my computer after trying to copy one", and give up on the idea. If the MPAA makes a few hundred more sales this way than they would have if clicking "copy DVD" on Roxio worked, then i'd venture to guess that the intent of adding CSS was fulfilled for them, and by THAT metric, it is successful.
The problem with your analogies is that modding your gun and your car is that in both cases, those modifications are illegal because they cause safety problems, especially if done improperly. The rifle is easy to pick out the safety hazard, while the car is a bit more indirect; the smog output are more harmful to the environment and the effects are secondary.
The only thing that could possibly considered to be a harmful side effect of jailbreaking is AT&T getting decreased revenue because I decide to use T-Mo instead, and Apple not getting revenue from apps I get from Cydia instead of the App Store. You *might* even be able to make a half-baked argument that a jailbroken iPhone has more attack vectors if left at a default config, but by that logic every unpatched Windows XP installation should be a fellony, too.
So really jailbreaking doesn't hurt anyone except AT&T and Apple's bottom line, but it's just as illegal as things with much more quantifiable damage. Problem? I think so.
There's more to it than that. It's not just literal information on the phone, it's what that info can imply. If a CEO has e-mails stating that they knew about some insider trading or corporate espionage, or more legally buying another company or huge layoffs being planned, their stock price can tank. As such that data IS worth millions or billions to the shareholders if it leaks, and that's not taking mindshare into account.
in my admittedly anecdotal experience, it's not so much that I expect Windows or Linux to pick up every piece of hardware and have it work out of the box, it's a matter of how simple it is to get $HARDWARE working if it doesn't. With Windows, 999 times out of 1,000 it's just a matter of going to the hardware manufacturer's website, clicking the support tab, selecting make/model/OS, downloading, installing, and rebooting. Several steps, but nothing excessively difficult or overly technical. When I've tried to get Linux drivers, it hasn't ever been that simple. Do I blame them? no, I applaud the fine men and women who volunteer their time and skills to reverse engineer hardware drivers for what they've got on hand. Some drivers have been easier to install than others, but my experience has been wildly inconsistent and even the best of driver installs haven't been as simple as the next-i agree-next-restart routine that is on Windows.
Think hard, then name a half dozen DRM schemes that have lasted for years, and STILL WORK. I'll bet you can't do it.
I'm *NO* fan of DRM, but I accept your challenge...
-CSS on DVD's has been cracked and anyone who knows to look for any number of apps employing DeCSS can bypass it, but it's enough that commercial apps like Roxio and Nero won't do it, and a search for copying DVDs will yield 1,001 apps that either don't live up to their promises or install malware, so while it's possible, I'll give it half-credit because Joe Sixpack will have to do a decent amount of research to figure out how to do it properly.
-The DRM on WMA has held up pretty well; it had been cracked in the past, but AFAIK the latest incarnations of it are still largely intact. Whether that's a "they did it well" or "no one cares" issue, I can't tell, but the bottom line is that I'm unaware of an app that will unlock a song rented from Napster To Go if I download one today.
-While I've seen rips of iTunes videos leaked on a few torrent trackers, by and large I haven't seen a widely distributed app that will crack the DRM on the videos from iTunes.
-While not technically 'years', the comments on slashdot articles about the PS3 lead me to believe that games for that system are extremely-challenging-at-best to pirate. Is that true?
-iLok seems to be holding up pretty well; a few apps have been cracked, but it's no an app-by-app basis instead of a system-wide crack.
-Torq and Serato both have proprietary hardware that's used to enable all the features of the applications, and I haven't seen cracks for either that enable them to use generic ASIO sound cards.
-This one is pure speculation, but I'm sure that there are extremely high-cost, industry specific applications that are DRM'd and haven't been cracked. I'm sure Boeing doesn't use AutoCAD to design airplanes. I'm sure ConEdison doesn't use off-the-shelf software to regulate electricity output across Manhattan.
A bunch of half-examples? yes. Do they half-work? I'd say so.
Actually, this is among the best responses I've read yet. I agree with some degree of filtration - my grandmother used to say "locks are for honest people", so I agree that filtering to prevent accidental run-ins is a good idea, but it's no way to sidestep responsibility.
To directly answer your question, I think that OpenDNS+SteadyState+Linksys Router would be the best technological solution, but the parent poster here does make sense. There's a social aspect to the problem that will be exacerbated rather than alleviated by giving each child their own computer, so keep that in mind no matter what you choose.
Where I live, believe it or not, Verizon is the LESSER of two evils. The other half of the regional duopoly here on Long Island is Cablevision, and they have been even worse with their surprise bills, takedown notices, and doing things like paying off my local township to prevent Verizon from rolling out FIOS in my neighborhood to compete with them. Verizon does plenty of crap I don't like, but at least for me, they ARE the lesser of two evils. I'd love a third option, so if you're starting one in my area, I will guarantee you my membership.
ON a side note, most people don't have multiple phones, they have one phone with multiple SIM cards and swap them out as they go. Someone that ignorant about his own industry should be fired.
Verizon uses CDMA, not GSM. As such, Verizon phones* don't use a SIM card at all; their ESN Hex is tied in with an account number, and derivatively a phone number.
Anecdotally, I personally have two phones, a T-Mobile phone that I pay for and a work-issued Verizon phone. I carry two separate handsets. While I don't know everyone everywhere, I will say that in all of the technologically literate circles I'm aware of, I don't know a single person who owns a dual-SIM phone, nor do I know of any carrier currently offering one. Yes, I'm aware that most of the world purchases their handset and their service separately, but the individual being quoted here was speaking about the US cellular market where handsets are sold and subsidized by the carriers.
*Some Verizon phones set up for worldwide roaming [The Blackberry Tour comes to mind] do have SIM cards so that they can roam on GSM networks in other countries, but domestically they require the same ESN Hex activation for the CDMA network.
See, the issue is that the bigwigs at Verizon and the government bodies that would end up regulating them are equally corrupt and equally out of touch with reality. I may be a conservative, but really I don't think that one entity would be much better or worse than the other at this point.
Windows Mobile is screwing customers by not offering software upgrades
WinMo may not officially release v7 to users for older phones, but I'll all but guarantee that any HTC phone being sold today that runs WinMo 6.5 will have WinPhone7 on it within a year of the official release. The guys over at xda-devs are VERY good at what they do, and I recall Microsoft at some point saying something to the extent of "we know it's there, and we know that shutting you down will do us more harm than good, so we will neither support nor sue".
Besides, from what I'm reading about WinPhone7, they took out basically everything that makes me like the platform, so I'd tag that as "and nothing of value was lost", but that's just me.
That may be true, but there's something that you forgot as well. Apps have existed on the iPhone since just a few months after the release. Before saurik's Cydia really took off, we had installer.app. Before the SDK, there were programmers who reverse-engineered how to do stuff. Labyrinth and Tap Tap Revolution were launch titles in the App Store...but only because they were being released for free before Apple made an official distribution channel. For extra fun, the early versions of TTR used to let you use your own songs, make your own tap patterns and upload/download them, and compete with other players.
The first paid app I can recall that was available for the iPhone that was available through the unofficial distribution channels was SwirlyMMS, and it does a stellar job at handling MMS traffic. The distribution model was later integrated into Cydia.
Also, consider the nature of the apps being released. While WinMo may have been a gold mine for Microsoft in the consumer realms, it made inroads in niche markets of industry. When I worked for Staples, we had inventory scanner guns that ran a terminal emulation app on WinMo that interacted with our AS/400 inventory system. While the WinMo version and the iPhone version are close in price ($25 for WinMo, $29 for iPhone with a free Lite version), the lack of a barcode scanner makes it nearly useless for warehouse and inventory management on the iPhone. Similarly, the last time I got my oil changed at Wal-Mart, the serviceman used a WinMo scanner to check my car in for service.
The reason I bring this up isn't to bash the iPhone or glorify WinMo, but because the apps being written for WinMo are generally geared toward industrial and professional users for whom it is justifiable to spend more money on an app that greatly aids running their business. At the same time, the price point of WinMo apps are similar to the market needs, so a low-volume, high-margin sale is effective, thus yielding a chicken-and-egg problem in the consumer market. The iPhone apps lend themselves to being impulse buys by an average consumer, and average consumers have been paying $2-$3 for ringtones and $5 for games on their phones for years. While I'll agree that the prices have come down quite a bit, I'll guess that part of it is that phone models in years past had only a handful of games to pick from, and at that they were only available from Verizon/ATT/TMo/Sprint. When you're going up against 100,000 other apps, you have to have one amazing app to price yourself anywhere on the right side of the bell curve.
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, had a pretty good way of stating it, at least in terms of the retail industry: "10% of people will never steal from you. 10% of people will always steal from you. It's the other 80% you need to watch out for". I completely agree that copyright infringement != stealing, but for the sake of this argument, I'm going to play along with the idea that it is.
When I worked in retail, the loss prevention statistics (for whatever they're worth to you) stated that over half the people who got caught shoplifting had no prior record of it. The loss prevention tags and locked cases aren't there to stop career criminals - no LP manager is dumb enough to think that any apparatus can. If the opportunities can be removed, it becomes either impractical or impossible for shoplifters who would simply take advantage of the opportunity.
I might have a 7-figure UID, but I've roamed around these boards to hear enough people to believe that the first standard deviation of Slashdotters (and possibly the second as well) go to the cinema with some sort of frequency, purchase DVDs, as well as heading over to $TORRENT_TRACKER for a DVD Screener. I knew some people in college who downloaded anything everything just 'cuz they could, conversely I stopped downloading movies in 2003 for personal reasons. The logic to the trailers is that while my college classmates would never see the ad, and I'd never NEED to see the ad, they're looking to target that first standard deviation that does a little of both and can be "scared" into ceasing. Whether that will result in increased sales or not is above my pay grade, but I'm guessing that that's the logic of it.
Personally, I think that it might show some good faith to replace those trailers with ones saying "thanks for supporting the film industry", and perhaps doing something like printing a coupon code on the tickets that would allow ticket holders to buy the release on iTunes a few weeks early or to give a discount or something like that. Honey and vinegar, carrot and stick.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant to mod you 'funny', but hit 'overrated' by mistake. My bad.
The problem with this is that those other appstores are much more lax. Should someone write an application that harvests a user's data or does anything operationally malignant, Apple would have to service that. That would increase support calls and service labor. That costs more money. That means more expensive iPhones.
I also wouldn't doubt that the owners of such stores would have to follow all sorts of new rules that makes owning alternative app stores unattractive. That could probably be resolved by a consortium of sorts...
I'm undoing a few mod points to respond here, and FWIW I would have modded you insightful as well.
That said, I think it depends on the nature of the warranty they're required to provide. I had a jailbroken/unlocked iPhone with an unresponsive screen that Apple refused to provide service for, even after I did a factory restore on it and it was clearly a hardware issue. While I could understand Apple not being liable for software issues with unsigned apps, I'm not entirely certain how far their responsibility is now even with App Store apps. Also, if Apple were required to do this, it's not an unreasonable stretch to say that Apple could and might release an "official jailbreak" that would help minimize their support costs if it was up to Geohot and PlanetBeing to reverse engineer the latest version of resdn0w/pwnagetool/blackra1n.
I don't know if you've ever used Cydia, but it really is a different place than the App Store. Only toward the end of my iPhone owning days did Cydia become a real store, but there was plenty of interesting stuff there, and in Installer before it. Tap Tap Revolution started there, and back then it used music from your iTunes library. Labyrinth started there. SwirlyMMS beat Apple to the punch of being able to receive MMS messages on the iPhone, and it is among the BEST interfaces I've ever seen for MMS. Winterboard and SBSettings are two apps that are nearly iconic on every jailbroken iPhone. If you're a power user with a solid data plan, there's even Terminal and cTorrent. Those are just the apps I remember off the top of my head. There are plenty of nickel-and-dime Winterboard themes there, but I'm fairly certain that even Saurik has limits against malicious code being entered by default, and while you can technically add your own repos, you'd be intentionally doing so.
There was a working prototype for the Slate at CES that ran Win7, so it's safe to assume that a set of hardware specs for that platform are more-or-less nailed down. That said, the two basic options are to either get WebOS to work with the existing hardware (i.e. hammer out some drivers to get the two talking), or redesign the hardware to include tablet-sized versions of the hardware it's already been written for.
While at first glance it seems like a wash as to which is more economical for HP, support and manufacturing are also huge considerations IF a Win7 tablet is also in the works. Call me nuts, but I'm fairly certain there's a market for a tablet that can say "I'm compatible with all of your USB peripherals you've already got, and all the software you've already bought". Some might look for a tablet with WebOS that's a more tablet-specific experience like the iPad, and for that WebOS is probably a better competitor, but I'd also wager that there are plenty of applications for a tablet with that in mind. Therefore, if HP intends to release both a Win7 tablet and a WebOS tablet, they're likely better off keeping the manufacturing process the same for both, sending them out the factory with the sole difference being the firmware flashed on them, and sticking them in different boxes. This also helps for warranty service where reflashing the unit with whatever the user wants is easier than having to double the warehouse inventory. If those two advantages are great enough, I'd wager that HP will likely opt to expand WebOS to work with the same hardware.
But yes, I realize that my entire point here hinges on HP releasing the Slate for both platforms. If WebOS is replacing Win7, then yeah, it still could go either way.
I asked someone at HP about this on Friday, and this was her answer...
Heads up on your Slate post to me this morning. I had to delete it! I flagged the rumor to our team and they asked me not to comment on it at all. Not that I said anything either way about the status of the slate, personally I thought it was laughable, but they said they wanted to manage the rumors and not want anyone to address it. I should hear something back soon and when I do, I'll share it.
If the PR team is planning to "manage the rumors", I'm hesitant to believe that the rumor is accurate. After all, if HP was really killing the Slate, why wouldn't they want word out as soon as possible, or why would they care about managing what's said?
One of the other rumors going around is that they're ditching Win7 for WebOS on the tablet, but the hardware will stay mostly the same. That's possible, but I'm wondering what the benefit would be to them if they already had a Slate ready to go with Win7, but opting to ditch it just because of the software. Personally, I've been hoping for a Win7 tablet for some time now, and there's been plenty of other positive feedback from the idea on HP's Facebook page. I'd rather see them put two SKUs out whereby the software was basically the only difference. The WebOS one would be cheaper and likely have better battery life, but the Win7 version could run desktop apps. It'd be trivial to do, but I guess we'll have to wait for the official word.
So, he was a QA engineer?
Likely for McAffee.
There are reasons for that though...
-I can't speak for the origins of their e-book division, but my guess is that they've been kept more-or-less in check by the stiff competition from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and now Apple, all four of whom are targeting a very small market (the iPad is a bit wider market, but the e-reader function is what I'm addressing here). I remember asking someone at an e-reader station why I'd want one over a Kindle, and I think the answer she gave me was that the plastic device was $20 and that I could take it home today...so with a sales pitch THAT shaky, they really can't afford to do anything to piss people off. Additionally, AFAIK, there isn't nearly the same exclusivity on e-Books as there is in video games. Even if there's an official contract saying that $EXCLUSIVE_BOOK will only be available on $READER, if that contract is voided, it's a whole lot more trivial to port a book from one reader to the other than it is to pick up $EXCLUSIVE_GAME and port it to the xbox.
-Their still camera division is what's left of Konica-Minolta, so if there's any shred of the original Minolta crew still there, that's what you're seeing the effects of. I don't know whether their pro-grade video cameras started out as a separate company that was later bought by Sony, but even if they weren't, when you're in the business of selling $13,000 cameras to pro videographers who can just as easily get a Canon or JVC model, you're not going to take too many chances. I'm sure that the $30,000-$75,000+ cameras sold to movie studios and TV stations aren't going to be messed with either, because if Sony tried pulling that crap on them, you'd see Sony vs. ABC, aka Media-With-Deep-Pockets-and-A-Broadcast-Medium vs. Media-With-Deep-Pockets-and-A-Broadcast-Medium. Outside of Slashdot you won't see more than 90 seconds of broadcast about this whole schtick, but if ABC were leading the charge against Sony, you'd know it, as would your aunt Gertrude. Sony's not going to touch them, either.
-Sony Creative Software had a former life as Sonic Foundry. Again, a company with half a clue and some decent software that hasn't foundationally changed since then. Additionally, Their flagship products (ACID, Sound Forge, Vegas) are Windows only, while the media production demographic typically leans toward OSX, so their running platform already limits their customer base. Bonus points for the DRM getting progressively more intrusive on those apps for a while now, so this division isn't all that immune from the OmGwTfBbQ pIrAtEs!!!111 battle cry from the higher-ups either.
Compare all three of these divisions (separate niche products targeting a specialized discerning set of customers who know what to look for) with the PS3 (the general public who overall has more interest in playing exclusive video games and watching blu-ray discs and is likely unaware of Linux or that it can be installed on their PS3), and it makes sense why those divisions are shooting slightly straighter than the gaming divisions.
There is a distinct other side to what you're talking about. First off, your entire rant appears to reference Symantec and McAffee. Reading it through that lens, I can completely agree, especially the consumer versions of each. Sometimes I've wondered if Vista, Norton 360, McAffee Internet Security, and Crysis were all in some kind of crazed competition to see which could slow down a user's machine the most. Like you and presumably a sizeable number of other Slashdotters, I've walked into a person's obviously-infected machine that Norton/McAffee have given a clean bill of health. They both nag incessantly about how it's protecting your machine or how you only have 216 days left in your subscription and should renew now. At the risk of being told to speak for myself, I'll wager that you'll find Symantec/McAffee apologists in VERY short supply around here in that regard.
I personally have been very impressed with NOD32. The still-available-around-the-internet-and-supported-and-updated-for-2-more-years-but-no-longer-being-distributed-by-ESET-directly version 2.7 is among the most impressive pieces of software I've seen coded. it's 12MBytes, runs on every version of Windows from 95 to 7 x64 edition, takes up 34MBytes of RAM in the system tray, and is VERY effective. The newer versions are more user friendly and a bit more taxing on the system, but have the advantage of creating bootable rescue media and some other nifty features and is still an order of magnitude easier on the system than consumer-grade Norton or McAffee.
On the professional side, as much as it might cost in literal dollars for a Fortune 500 company to support the antivirus software, ultimately when a company shuffles a couple hundred billion dollars a quarter, I'm sure that in that context, the costs you mention are relatively trivial. With the possible exception of the United States Government, I'm calling [citation needed] on any company with SO many computers that they're spending seven figures on software updates for their AV.
Ten guys just for antivirus maintenance? I'm calling [citation needed] again. I could certainly see a large team being devoted to software management as a whole, but if they require ten people to oversee nothing but the AV app, they're likely doing it wrong. Does it require oversight? sure. I worked for a college campus that had several desktop support reps who all knew how to roll out patches and whatnot, but they weren't all doing it concurrently.
Now let's talk bandwidth. I'd buy that it could take a few terabytes of bandwidth to shuffle updates around over the course of a month for a few thousand computers getting a few updates on a daily basis. The question is this: would they need less bandwidth if they didn't use AV package? Similarly, is the AV patches using up so much bandwidth that it's become detrimental for regular work to take place on the LAN? I sincerely doubt either is the case.
30% of system resources being used during resident scanning, etc.? Again, either they're doing it wrong, using a thoroughly craptacular software title (though in the case of McAffee that may be accurate), or...yeah one of those two. I've never seen resident scanning peg my processor like that unless it actually found something. If they're running scans during the production day (which admittedly DO cause the processor to spike) instead of later on when the building is vacant, then one of those guys needs to be fired.
The soft costs are a crapshoot. What would the costs be if the user DOES get infected? How much productivity would they lose then? How much lost time would be spent troubleshooting that machine? Suppose the only alternative app for a given situation on the Mac/Linux platform is a half-baked, terrible-UI clone of what they've already paid for licensing for? Sure there's plenty of great software for Linux, and I use plenty of OSS myself. At my office though, we're running a apps that are niche apps (annual statement filing, spreadsheet collaboration, AS/400 access, electronic document filing
Not entirely, but the costs can be managed slightly more for power generation than for bandwidth. No, you can't just shut down an entire coal plant, but you can burn less coal at night than you would during the day. A cooler summer leads to less air conditioner use, thereby reducing power consumption. Yes, these are very broad terms and I realize that there is a floor to how much power can be 'not generated', but there certainly must be some wiggle room. A few years ago there was a HUGE push to get everyone near me to switch to those fluorescent socket bulbs. That has stopped recently because it was apparent that those bulbs still ran pretty warm, gave off terrible light, didn't last nearly as long as regular incandescent bulbs, but still cost ten times the price. Nonetheless, the local power company was giving subsidies to people who bought them. The only logical conclusion for the power company giving money back is that they were able to save money in power generation over the long term.
This is radically different than bandwidth in that ISP's can't shut off half their routers during off-peak hours. They can't save any money or resources by notching their backbone routers down to 100MBit instead of Gig-E or 10Gig-E when demand is low. Seeding a dozen torrents doesn't burn more coal than playing Farmville; the only resource being consumed more heavily is the amount of bandwidth unavailable to lesser users.
I don't entirely fault Comcast for throttling torrents during peak usage. A T1 or T3 line is sold with the understanding that you'll get near-perfect uptime and be able to fully saturate your bandwidth without a problem, because you're paying $$$$$$$ to be able to do that. Cable and DSL lines are much cheaper because you don't get any kind of uptime or throughput guarantee. If Comcast (And the rest of the ISPs running around) oversubscribes a bit, that's understandable too - the nature of their business makes that nearly essential to a reasonable degree. The problem is when they grossly oversubscribe and agressively traffic shape during off-peak hours.
Yes, they're experiments, but the GP is still somewhat accurate. Yes, electricity isn't "stored" by electric companies, but they can reduce how much is generated. Lots of highly paid engineers earn their living designing highly complicated systems to determine where to strike that balance. The municipal power company where I live is an old-school oil burning plant. No, they don't store up electricity once it's been generated, but they can do things like burning less oil during periods of lower consumption while increasing oil burning to meet up with demand. This principle admittedly doesn't hold up with things like wind, solar, or nuclear power, but it does here for the intent of my point.
There's no "conserving" bandwidth by leaving it in some sort of unprocessed form. Either bits are going over a wire, or they aren't. To my admittedly limited knowledge, there's no analogous means of "leaving bandwidth in oil form until it's needed", and I think THAT's more what the GP was getting at.
ANY cell phone can disrupt cellular traffic, conversely a group of parts from Radio Shack can also be combined to disrupt cellular traffic. Even so, are you saying that there's just as tangible a danger with an improperly modded gun as there is with an improperly modded cell phone? Personally, I'll take my chances with the guy with the phone. Oh, and even if I modded a cell phone maliciously, odds are the traffic corruption would be "such a tiny change...as to be undetectable".
When I owned an iPhone, I in fact purchased it secondhand from a friend and thus signed NO contract with AT&T. Apple has been working to thwart the jailbreaking scene since the original iPhone was released, back when AT&T wasn't subsidizing a dime of the phone. Even if I did, AT&T allows you to keep the phone if you pay the ETF. If I sign up, get an iPhone, and then pay the ETF, then I am JUST as within the terms of my contract as if I carried the 2 year agreement to term. It'd be stealing if I did the above without paying the ETF and thus was in violation of the contract.
And my point is that once a movie is DeCSS'd, it's not up to the end user to decrypt it and thus has no bearing on the integrity and success of CSS.
Your argument assumes that Adam and Bob both know how to torrent and burn the AVI or MKV to a disc and have a blazing fast internet connection, but all of that is irrelevant.
If they wanted to not pay retail to get a movie, finding street corner vendors, flea markets, give the movie to their local slashdotter to copy...there's always been an underground market for the stuff that dates back to VHS and also has nothing to do with CSS.
The point is that Hollywood is well aware that CSS is trivial to crack, and it's certainly not going to prevent dvd rips from ending up on p2p networks - but it's also trivial to implement. Adobe Encore can CSS a disc with two clicks, for crying out loud. It's a "locks are for honest people" solution that will prevent users below given certain threshold of technical prowess from copying and distributing movies they've purchased to their neighbors and friends. It won't stop mass piracy and they know it, but from their perspective if just a handful of would-be disc copiers opt for buying a disc instead, they'll consider it successful.
I'm acutely aware of the DeCSS codes and that there is no shortage of tools to rip an ISO from a CSS'd DVD. The validity of my argument hinges on how success is defined. If you're defining success as being completely impregnable, then there is no DRM scheme I'm aware of that fits this description. However, EVERYONE who lived through the early 1990's had - and knew how to use - a dual-deck cassette player. Copying a cassette tape was a task whereby if you walked through a mall in 1992 and asked 100 people if they knew how to copy a cassette tape, at least 99 of them would be able to tell you with confidence.
Wear one of those DeCSS T-Shirts in your local mall tomorrow and ask 100 people if they know the significance of the code on the shirt. If 15 of them do, I'd be impressed. Alternatively, even if they don't recognize the source code, ask them if they can name an app that can copy a copy protected DVD movie or rip an ISO of one. Again, if more than 20 people could confidently and accurately demonstrate this task, I'd say that you went to a very tech savvy mall.
I'm acutely aware of the presence of DVD rips all over the internet, but that's a straw-man argument. It only takes one person, one time, to strip the CSS and distribute that copy of the data. That's different than what is being addressed here, which would be (theoretically) distributing a copy-protected ISO and relying on end-users to decrypt the movie before viewing. I doubt you'll find a single MPAA rep who isn't aware that CSS has been cracked and that it isn't preventing aXXo rips from appearing all over the web. The point of CSS is to limit the amount of casual copying between users.
If Adam buys $MOVIE and Bob buys $OTHER_MOVIE, if neither are technical enough to run a cracking app, they'll find out real fast that Roxio/Nero/Your Commercial App Here will refuse to copy it. They'll either swap loaning the movies, or they'll each buy their own copy. If Adam goes online to Google search it, there's a chance that he'll find a usable app, but also a chance that he'll riddle his computer with malware and have to pay the Geek Squad $200 to fix it. In that case, he'll come to the conclusion of "I could have bought 10-20 DVD movies for the cost of fixing my computer after trying to copy one", and give up on the idea. If the MPAA makes a few hundred more sales this way than they would have if clicking "copy DVD" on Roxio worked, then i'd venture to guess that the intent of adding CSS was fulfilled for them, and by THAT metric, it is successful.
The problem with your analogies is that modding your gun and your car is that in both cases, those modifications are illegal because they cause safety problems, especially if done improperly. The rifle is easy to pick out the safety hazard, while the car is a bit more indirect; the smog output are more harmful to the environment and the effects are secondary.
The only thing that could possibly considered to be a harmful side effect of jailbreaking is AT&T getting decreased revenue because I decide to use T-Mo instead, and Apple not getting revenue from apps I get from Cydia instead of the App Store. You *might* even be able to make a half-baked argument that a jailbroken iPhone has more attack vectors if left at a default config, but by that logic every unpatched Windows XP installation should be a fellony, too.
So really jailbreaking doesn't hurt anyone except AT&T and Apple's bottom line, but it's just as illegal as things with much more quantifiable damage. Problem? I think so.
There's more to it than that. It's not just literal information on the phone, it's what that info can imply. If a CEO has e-mails stating that they knew about some insider trading or corporate espionage, or more legally buying another company or huge layoffs being planned, their stock price can tank. As such that data IS worth millions or billions to the shareholders if it leaks, and that's not taking mindshare into account.
in my admittedly anecdotal experience, it's not so much that I expect Windows or Linux to pick up every piece of hardware and have it work out of the box, it's a matter of how simple it is to get $HARDWARE working if it doesn't. With Windows, 999 times out of 1,000 it's just a matter of going to the hardware manufacturer's website, clicking the support tab, selecting make/model/OS, downloading, installing, and rebooting. Several steps, but nothing excessively difficult or overly technical. When I've tried to get Linux drivers, it hasn't ever been that simple. Do I blame them? no, I applaud the fine men and women who volunteer their time and skills to reverse engineer hardware drivers for what they've got on hand. Some drivers have been easier to install than others, but my experience has been wildly inconsistent and even the best of driver installs haven't been as simple as the next-i agree-next-restart routine that is on Windows.
Think hard, then name a half dozen DRM schemes that have lasted for years, and STILL WORK. I'll bet you can't do it.
I'm *NO* fan of DRM, but I accept your challenge...
-CSS on DVD's has been cracked and anyone who knows to look for any number of apps employing DeCSS can bypass it, but it's enough that commercial apps like Roxio and Nero won't do it, and a search for copying DVDs will yield 1,001 apps that either don't live up to their promises or install malware, so while it's possible, I'll give it half-credit because Joe Sixpack will have to do a decent amount of research to figure out how to do it properly.
-The DRM on WMA has held up pretty well; it had been cracked in the past, but AFAIK the latest incarnations of it are still largely intact. Whether that's a "they did it well" or "no one cares" issue, I can't tell, but the bottom line is that I'm unaware of an app that will unlock a song rented from Napster To Go if I download one today.
-While I've seen rips of iTunes videos leaked on a few torrent trackers, by and large I haven't seen a widely distributed app that will crack the DRM on the videos from iTunes.
-While not technically 'years', the comments on slashdot articles about the PS3 lead me to believe that games for that system are extremely-challenging-at-best to pirate. Is that true?
-iLok seems to be holding up pretty well; a few apps have been cracked, but it's no an app-by-app basis instead of a system-wide crack.
-Torq and Serato both have proprietary hardware that's used to enable all the features of the applications, and I haven't seen cracks for either that enable them to use generic ASIO sound cards.
-This one is pure speculation, but I'm sure that there are extremely high-cost, industry specific applications that are DRM'd and haven't been cracked. I'm sure Boeing doesn't use AutoCAD to design airplanes. I'm sure ConEdison doesn't use off-the-shelf software to regulate electricity output across Manhattan.
A bunch of half-examples? yes. Do they half-work? I'd say so.
Plus, if pirates preyed on lawyers, well, who'd argue with that?
Possibly some people in the RIAA or MPAA, but I sincerely doubt that these guys will be sailing in the vicinity of Soviet Russia.
Actually, this is among the best responses I've read yet. I agree with some degree of filtration - my grandmother used to say "locks are for honest people", so I agree that filtering to prevent accidental run-ins is a good idea, but it's no way to sidestep responsibility.
To directly answer your question, I think that OpenDNS+SteadyState+Linksys Router would be the best technological solution, but the parent poster here does make sense. There's a social aspect to the problem that will be exacerbated rather than alleviated by giving each child their own computer, so keep that in mind no matter what you choose.
Joey
Where I live, believe it or not, Verizon is the LESSER of two evils. The other half of the regional duopoly here on Long Island is Cablevision, and they have been even worse with their surprise bills, takedown notices, and doing things like paying off my local township to prevent Verizon from rolling out FIOS in my neighborhood to compete with them. Verizon does plenty of crap I don't like, but at least for me, they ARE the lesser of two evils. I'd love a third option, so if you're starting one in my area, I will guarantee you my membership.
ON a side note, most people don't have multiple phones, they have one phone with multiple SIM cards and swap them out as they go. Someone that ignorant about his own industry should be fired.
Verizon uses CDMA, not GSM. As such, Verizon phones* don't use a SIM card at all; their ESN Hex is tied in with an account number, and derivatively a phone number.
Anecdotally, I personally have two phones, a T-Mobile phone that I pay for and a work-issued Verizon phone. I carry two separate handsets. While I don't know everyone everywhere, I will say that in all of the technologically literate circles I'm aware of, I don't know a single person who owns a dual-SIM phone, nor do I know of any carrier currently offering one. Yes, I'm aware that most of the world purchases their handset and their service separately, but the individual being quoted here was speaking about the US cellular market where handsets are sold and subsidized by the carriers.
*Some Verizon phones set up for worldwide roaming [The Blackberry Tour comes to mind] do have SIM cards so that they can roam on GSM networks in other countries, but domestically they require the same ESN Hex activation for the CDMA network.
See, the issue is that the bigwigs at Verizon and the government bodies that would end up regulating them are equally corrupt and equally out of touch with reality. I may be a conservative, but really I don't think that one entity would be much better or worse than the other at this point.
Windows Mobile is screwing customers by not offering software upgrades
WinMo may not officially release v7 to users for older phones, but I'll all but guarantee that any HTC phone being sold today that runs WinMo 6.5 will have WinPhone7 on it within a year of the official release. The guys over at xda-devs are VERY good at what they do, and I recall Microsoft at some point saying something to the extent of "we know it's there, and we know that shutting you down will do us more harm than good, so we will neither support nor sue".
Besides, from what I'm reading about WinPhone7, they took out basically everything that makes me like the platform, so I'd tag that as "and nothing of value was lost", but that's just me.
That may be true, but there's something that you forgot as well. Apps have existed on the iPhone since just a few months after the release. Before saurik's Cydia really took off, we had installer.app. Before the SDK, there were programmers who reverse-engineered how to do stuff. Labyrinth and Tap Tap Revolution were launch titles in the App Store...but only because they were being released for free before Apple made an official distribution channel. For extra fun, the early versions of TTR used to let you use your own songs, make your own tap patterns and upload/download them, and compete with other players.
The first paid app I can recall that was available for the iPhone that was available through the unofficial distribution channels was SwirlyMMS, and it does a stellar job at handling MMS traffic. The distribution model was later integrated into Cydia.
Also, consider the nature of the apps being released. While WinMo may have been a gold mine for Microsoft in the consumer realms, it made inroads in niche markets of industry. When I worked for Staples, we had inventory scanner guns that ran a terminal emulation app on WinMo that interacted with our AS/400 inventory system. While the WinMo version and the iPhone version are close in price ($25 for WinMo, $29 for iPhone with a free Lite version), the lack of a barcode scanner makes it nearly useless for warehouse and inventory management on the iPhone. Similarly, the last time I got my oil changed at Wal-Mart, the serviceman used a WinMo scanner to check my car in for service.
The reason I bring this up isn't to bash the iPhone or glorify WinMo, but because the apps being written for WinMo are generally geared toward industrial and professional users for whom it is justifiable to spend more money on an app that greatly aids running their business. At the same time, the price point of WinMo apps are similar to the market needs, so a low-volume, high-margin sale is effective, thus yielding a chicken-and-egg problem in the consumer market. The iPhone apps lend themselves to being impulse buys by an average consumer, and average consumers have been paying $2-$3 for ringtones and $5 for games on their phones for years. While I'll agree that the prices have come down quite a bit, I'll guess that part of it is that phone models in years past had only a handful of games to pick from, and at that they were only available from Verizon/ATT/TMo/Sprint. When you're going up against 100,000 other apps, you have to have one amazing app to price yourself anywhere on the right side of the bell curve.
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, had a pretty good way of stating it, at least in terms of the retail industry: "10% of people will never steal from you. 10% of people will always steal from you. It's the other 80% you need to watch out for". I completely agree that copyright infringement != stealing, but for the sake of this argument, I'm going to play along with the idea that it is.
When I worked in retail, the loss prevention statistics (for whatever they're worth to you) stated that over half the people who got caught shoplifting had no prior record of it. The loss prevention tags and locked cases aren't there to stop career criminals - no LP manager is dumb enough to think that any apparatus can. If the opportunities can be removed, it becomes either impractical or impossible for shoplifters who would simply take advantage of the opportunity.
I might have a 7-figure UID, but I've roamed around these boards to hear enough people to believe that the first standard deviation of Slashdotters (and possibly the second as well) go to the cinema with some sort of frequency, purchase DVDs, as well as heading over to $TORRENT_TRACKER for a DVD Screener. I knew some people in college who downloaded anything everything just 'cuz they could, conversely I stopped downloading movies in 2003 for personal reasons. The logic to the trailers is that while my college classmates would never see the ad, and I'd never NEED to see the ad, they're looking to target that first standard deviation that does a little of both and can be "scared" into ceasing. Whether that will result in increased sales or not is above my pay grade, but I'm guessing that that's the logic of it.
Personally, I think that it might show some good faith to replace those trailers with ones saying "thanks for supporting the film industry", and perhaps doing something like printing a coupon code on the tickets that would allow ticket holders to buy the release on iTunes a few weeks early or to give a discount or something like that. Honey and vinegar, carrot and stick.
Is this too much to ask?
That depends on who you ask.