Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs that were developed based mostly on public funding, and I will agree with you that something is wrong there.
Heh. I have to admit that I can't spell the names of most of the drugs on the market and defiantly can't pronounce them and therefor can't possibly produce that kind of information, but I can tell you that the information comes from people in the field that I trust and believe with 100% confidence. So I'll ask you to name an Asthma drug that was 100% privately funded... How about an AIDS drug? Vaccines?
I'm sure if you are interested you can go dig through the details of that NIH and DHHS grant databases to find out how many billions of dollars they directly or indirectly spent funding privately patented drugs. Personally, I don't care to waste my time scrounging for details to appease your quest for belief.
I'm confused. If these companies are only producing "lifestyle" drugs
Except IP rights were originally not created as an innovation incentive, they were originally a intended to enrich the friends of the crown in exchange for their support (salt monopolies, stationers guild, etc); ie, an alternative taxation system.
That may have been way back when, but that is not the case NOW. What happened 300 years ago doesn't change my statement as it applies to today. Many laws have changed over the years - things that used to be illegal are now legal, and vice versa. IP laws got worse. The reasoning behind modern laws is invention incentive (profit.) While I am not personally familiar with the reasoning behind 300 year old law (I wasn't born yet you see) it still sounds like it was a profit based motive.
In fact, reading what I wrote ("personal financial gain") and what you wrote ("enrich the friends of the crown") I don't see how they are different in any substantial way.
Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
While true, people did that before laws that artificially restricted basic human rights. Now it's just about insane huge piles of cash, not simple "profit."
The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion and you getting the new drug for free. The choices are you paying for the drug, or the drug not existing.
I think you and I both know I didn't say that drugs should be free. They should be reasonably priced based on the actual costs instead of artificially inflated because of patent protection.
Did you not read the rest of my post? The part about patented drugs being developed with taxpayers funding the vast majority of the research (if not all of it?) Didn't think so. The public funds most of the real nasty stuff while the drug companies fund "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra and other vanity drugs. These same drug companies are the type that go after Indian pharmaceutical companies that provide inexpensive "patented" drugs to poor nations around the world. I have zero respect for pharmaceutical companies that charge US consumers 10 times what they charge consumers in Canada or other countries. Legalized mugging. This is one reason health care costs are rising at 5-10 times the rate of inflation / income, and that this problem is primarily a US problem.
Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority?
Because the government has been secretly been taken over by Ferengi disguised as humans. Of course anything that doesn't make a profit is immoral to a Ferengi. But seriously: Paid lobbyists greasing palms. Nothing else needs to be said.
Your assertion that you have some "right" to do whatever you want with someone else's ideas, information, or invention is just that - an assertion. It does not flow from any first principle. In other words, what moral or rational basis do you use to argue that if a company spends e.g. $1 billion dollars developing a cure for some disease that you have the "right" to just steal their formula and start cranking out cheap copies?
Well, if you look at the world without the modern day legal blinders on, yes, you do have a basic natural right to do exactly that. The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
You are making an assertion that it is moral to withhold a lifesaving cure for those who can't afford it. I find that disturbing. There is very little morality in modern IP laws. It's all about profit. I guess it could be moral to you if you are a Ferengi... But back to your "cure" example. It is simply amazing how much government funded (that means TAXPAYER funded) research ends up with privately patented drugs. This is the case with MOST government funded research by the way, such as with NASA, DOD, DOE, etc.
Maybe because this really DOESN'T affect resale value much at all. It's a full-blown home theater - despite what it looks like, that's valuable in itself. Minor decorating changes and it's mostly a normal room again. Personally, I would have spent a few more bucks on equipment - such as a 400 disk changer or two (they are only $250 now for models that have component and HDMI) and eliminate the massive bookshelf of plastic boxes.
Last decade in another job, I did industrial control systems. We had a couple air cylinders left over from a prototype, and rigged up the door to the shop to open like that when you walked up to the door, tripping one of the photo-electric sensors. Surprisingly few parts - a 555 timer chip with a few discrete components, an opto-22 module, 4-way pneumatic valve, etc. Being pneumatic, it made the expected noise (close but not exact.) We even tempered the action of the cylinders with springs so it wouldn't crush a body part. Operation was much faster than a traditional automatic door you see in a store, but we could adjust that from almost instant to painfully slow with an air muffler on the 4-way. A small panel granted access to a over-ride manual valve in case of power failure.
And considering that cattle produce about 500 liters of methane per day, that's 650 billion liters of methane per day available (considering you capture all of it, which would probably be impossible.)
I just think it would be funny to drive around and see all these weather balloon's sticking out of the ass end of cows.
And we will NEVER, EVER see any kind of FIOS service until copper prices go up so much that it ends up being less expensive to replace the old copper with fiber when it wears out in 100 years or so. Even the larger cities won't get it.
So let's just make that assumption. Fiber in smaller communities and rural areas is cost prohibitive. Where the fsck is WiMAX? What about internet via the old UHF channels we heard about a few years back (since it can propagate better than the 2.4G range?)
If you've got DSL, then you're probably not "rural".
That is a bad assumption. You can be rural and get DSL in many cases. It all depends on how far you are from a Remote Terminal, and whether the telco has equipment that supports DSL in the RT. I know people who are 40 miles from a town with a population greater than 300 that have DSL. Being in a big city doesn't guarantee DSL either. I used to live in San Jose and couldn't get it due to the distance to the nearest RT, instead having to settle for $200 / month IDSL.
My service with Verizon has been problem free with one exception. Over the past several years I've had numerous lines installed with DSL at various locations, both business and residential. The only problem I had is when I requested a speed upgrade from 1.5 to 3M, and the did it, but my line didn't support it (too far from the CO.) Within 4 hours of reporting the problem, they had it fixed. Actual line distance as tested by the tech was different than the computer had.
I'm very concerned about my business DSL service now with Fairpoint. Will it go up in price? Will it become flaky / slow? Ah fsck it. I'm moving to Arizona. Tempe looks nice. At least I'll have a choice of ISP's unlike here.
Yes, but the thing is the artist could let the art lapse into public domain if they desired it so. If they didn't let it then, well, it'd be forgotten like many other works of ancient times.
I suggest you read up on the reason copyright laws have time limits. It is SPECIFICALLY so that works do NOT get lost forever.
I din't mean to imply this would happen tomorrow but a decade or two from now when certainly things could be watermarked (and recognized) appropriately and furthermore most vehicles of media would be connected one way or another. Given IPv6 it's not impossible.
So the only way to enjoy published works in your version of the modern world is to be connected 24x7x365 to the internet. No thanks.
And what would be wrong with being able to revoke/retrive an embarassing video or soundbite?
What would be wrong with rewriting history? Maybe we can pretend that Sadam was a kind and generous man that was good to his people. Maybe Paris Hilton wants to pretend that she is not a slut, or Mel Gibson wants to pretend that he didn't make anti-semitic remarks. There is nothing wrong with wanting to take back what you said, it's called an apology. There is nothing wrong with stupid teens posting embarrassing videos of themselves either, and later in life saying that we ALL do stupid stuff when we are kids. You learn from those mistakes. Your "system" attempts to eliminate consequences of doing bad / stupid stuff - sorry, that's just not a good thing for society.
Artists would have to reimburse the prorated amount owed the consumer.
So an artist that goes on a drug binge and goes crazy can take away my purchased right to listen to music he sold me back when he was sane? I don't want that, even if I DO get a partial refund. Considering how many artists are nuts to begin with, this is not a far-fetched scenario.
DRM is bad, M'Kay? There are no redeeming values. You can attempt to create some bizzaro perfect-world scenarios where it could possibly work with a gazillion exceptions and conditions, but we do not live in a perfect world.
Imagine an idiot posts something he or she later regrets to the web. It's foreseable that some of them would wish to recall/revoke/delete what they posted to the Internet. Today there is no way to put the "genie" back inthe bottle. If there were a total artist control type of rights management this idiot could retrieve (forever extinghuish the existence) the now-regrettable work posted to the Internet.
Imagine that you as a consumer PAID for a copy of that work, and then a week later found that you can no longer access the content you PAID for. I would bet that you would be a little miffed.
Furthermore, you still haven't put the genie back in the bottle, it's still out, but you have deactivated private digital copies of the genie. For example: if you posted an anti-semitic video message on YouTube, the people who saw it will still remember it, and their comments talking about it will still exist. Don't forget that the analog hole still exists too - I can point a camera at my screen and record your video therefore bypassing your restrictions.
IMHO, the lack of the ability for people to delete what they wrote (like on/.) should help train people to "think" before they stick their foot in their mouth. It's a good thing.
Let's say that the audience never had ownership but simply could make micropayments
Good luck finding the suckers willing to use such a system. Have you never dated a teen girl? They tend to listen to the same song 34,995,897 times. Your micropayments would have to be very Very VERY small to handle teen girls... You are better off selling your music on your own web site for $0.25 - $0.50 / song and keep 95% of sales instead of 2% like you do with the labels.
It'd be like it was before technology, in the sense that the artist'd control all aspects of their fruits. Their fruits lived and died with them.
Um, no. We still can read the writings of people who wrote books 1000 years ago, or painted pictures, etc. While we can't enjoy original performances of Shakespeare plays, we have the manuscripts to enable modern performances. Your "idea" is worse than no technology at all. If Shakespeare's works were in time-bombed e-book form only, they would be lost to the world.
That may be, but when they release this phone in 6 months you will only be able to buy it with a 2 year contract with Cingular, and in the US it will stay that way for the next 2 years.
No, better usability is not just a firmware update away - it is the hardware.
Sorry, but that's BS. One very simple example is a contact list. On my phone, I can only scroll one line at a time, or hold the button down and wait 5 seconds for it to start to painfully scroll one entry per second. There is no ability to "page down" even though there are unused buttons that could do so. Ditto for reading SMS emails, browsing the web, etc. The software is 99% of the usability.
has way more potential because it isn't a crippled me-too product
It can't support 3rd party apps like the competition. How is that not crippled? I also noticed that Job's didn't demo opening a word or excel doc. I strongly suspect lack of support, and without a third-party reader you are screwed. There goes the business market.
At first, I thought partnering exclusively with Cingular was a mistake
I guess that also depends on whether Cingular has good coverage where you are. They totally suck around here, which makes them the worst possible choice and a huge mistake from my viewpoint. Because of that, they will get near ZERO market share here. If they had another national provider available, it would be a non-issue.
I've been happy with the interfaces on all my Verizon phones, but that's beside the point.
Really? I found that on my non-pda style phones I could never page down, and I've gone through dozens of different phone models over the years. I can only scroll at a painful rate and get a sore finger doing it. I also found that between slightly different models of basically the same phone from the same manufacturer, they decided that they needed to reorganize the menu's all the time so you have to re-learn how to do really basic stuff all the time. To me, that's not user friendly or simple.
The simplicity and power of the Apple phone will be awesome, but not at the current price point. For that price point, I want the ability to install my own apps.
Bingo. These are the people that install a lot of third party applications, and expect their PDA/Phones to be able to open Word and Excel files. Can the iPhone open Word and Excel files? If not, it's dead in the business world.
The rest of the market is 15 - 21 year olds who just don't have the money to buy an expensive phone that needs an expensive voice / data plan to use it. Voice / Data plans are around $80 / month.
I initially wanted this phone, and thought it would be great. 3G, I can get by without. GPS? well, ok, I can do without that too, although it greatly reduces the functionality of google maps. No third party apps? Dead in the water.
Yes, but would you buy a car that only ran Apple brand gas and had the hood welded shut? Probably not. The iPhone is Cingular only and doesn't allow third party apps. Note that MOST smartphones (PDA style) allow third party apps and work just fine. The crap about stability is just that. Crap.
If it's not integrated into the phone, it's an extra thing you have to lug around, charge, pay for, and then find out you can't use it because you can't use 3rd party apps on your iPhone.
EDGE is not 3G. EDGE is 5 times slower than VOL's 3G, and about the same amount slower they Cingular's own 3G service. It's a little faster than dialup, but has high latency so it's about the same as dialup overall. It's inexcusable for a brand-new high-end smart phone not to have 3G out of the box.
So I guess you could call EDGE "entry LEVEL 3G", but it's really 2.5G due to the fact that it's so slow.
Cisco is not trademark squatting here, they registered in 96 and sell an iPhone product.
Sorry, but I don't buy that at all.
Cisco BOUGHT a company that had the iPhone trademark. Big difference.
Look at Cisco's product line when it comes to phones (include Linksys too.) It has daring names like: Cisco SIP Proxy Server, Cisco Voice Provisioning Tool, Cisco Unified IP Phone 7985G, Linksys One Business Phone, Linksys One Manager Phone, SPA962 IP Phone.
Notice that there is not ONE vanity name in that list. Cisco had 2 years prior knowledge that Apple was going to release a phone and call it "iPhone". 3 weeks before MacWorld after discussions had basically fallen apart they release an iPhone product???? Come ON. That's a blatant smack in the face. Cisco had had no intention of ever releasing an "iPhone" they did so to profit off the energy of Apple's product and piss off Apple. Apple would not have wanted any other "iPhone"'s in the market.
Not that Apple is all blameless either. They should have just accepted that they were not going to get "iPhone" and pick something else. Picking a battle with Cisco like this over something so petty is idiotic.
Yeah, but we all know that they had 2 years prior knowledge that Apple was going to make a phone, and they decided to release their iPhones a couple weeks before MacWorld. Pretty fricking obvious why they did that. It probably pissed Apple off to the point where they just said "Screw Cisco." Not that Apple's behavior is great either, and they certainly had a choice to just call their phone some other name... IMHO, both companies behaved badly, and now it's gonna get a lot more ugly.
How true. A simple single torpedo from a sub on a "training mission" would mean the end of Sealand. Anonymous and deadly. In reality though, people would find out. It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction", and no history to suggest it ever did or ever will (unlike Iraq.)
On the other hand, I think the consequences would be rather severe, as now all small countries who have done nothing wrong will feel that they are targeted. Remember: if your country doesn't have copyright laws, it's not wrong to copy stuff. Many many many things that are illegal in the US are legal elsewhere, and vice versa. Political pressure is not the same as military action.
And maybe Apple will address some of the issues people have such as 3G (which is HUGE IMHO. I believe that every other current smartphone on the market does 3G.) I think that's why it's a wait and see thing at this point. I still think a lot of things about the iPhone are way cool - the UI is far far better than anything else, but there is nothing stopping any of the smartphone vendors from fixing the worst user usability complaints in a firmware update, but they will only do so if / when there is a better competitive product.
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Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs that were developed based mostly on public funding, and I will agree with you that something is wrong there.
Heh. I have to admit that I can't spell the names of most of the drugs on the market and defiantly can't pronounce them and therefor can't possibly produce that kind of information, but I can tell you that the information comes from people in the field that I trust and believe with 100% confidence. So I'll ask you to name an Asthma drug that was 100% privately funded... How about an AIDS drug? Vaccines?
I'm sure if you are interested you can go dig through the details of that NIH and DHHS grant databases to find out how many billions of dollars they directly or indirectly spent funding privately patented drugs. Personally, I don't care to waste my time scrounging for details to appease your quest for belief.
I'm confused. If these companies are only producing "lifestyle" drugs
No no no. Read again. I said FUND - not PRODUCE.
Except IP rights were originally not created as an innovation incentive, they were originally a intended to enrich the friends of the crown in exchange for their support (salt monopolies, stationers guild, etc); ie, an alternative taxation system.
That may have been way back when, but that is not the case NOW. What happened 300 years ago doesn't change my statement as it applies to today. Many laws have changed over the years - things that used to be illegal are now legal, and vice versa. IP laws got worse. The reasoning behind modern laws is invention incentive (profit.) While I am not personally familiar with the reasoning behind 300 year old law (I wasn't born yet you see) it still sounds like it was a profit based motive.
In fact, reading what I wrote ("personal financial gain") and what you wrote ("enrich the friends of the crown") I don't see how they are different in any substantial way.
completely useless observation.
Based on your say so? Hmm.
Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
While true, people did that before laws that artificially restricted basic human rights. Now it's just about insane huge piles of cash, not simple "profit."
The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion and you getting the new drug for free. The choices are you paying for the drug, or the drug not existing.
I think you and I both know I didn't say that drugs should be free. They should be reasonably priced based on the actual costs instead of artificially inflated because of patent protection.
Did you not read the rest of my post? The part about patented drugs being developed with taxpayers funding the vast majority of the research (if not all of it?) Didn't think so. The public funds most of the real nasty stuff while the drug companies fund "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra and other vanity drugs. These same drug companies are the type that go after Indian pharmaceutical companies that provide inexpensive "patented" drugs to poor nations around the world. I have zero respect for pharmaceutical companies that charge US consumers 10 times what they charge consumers in Canada or other countries. Legalized mugging. This is one reason health care costs are rising at 5-10 times the rate of inflation / income, and that this problem is primarily a US problem.
Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority?
Because the government has been secretly been taken over by Ferengi disguised as humans. Of course anything that doesn't make a profit is immoral to a Ferengi. But seriously: Paid lobbyists greasing palms. Nothing else needs to be said.
Your assertion that you have some "right" to do whatever you want with someone else's ideas, information, or invention is just that - an assertion. It does not flow from any first principle. In other words, what moral or rational basis do you use to argue that if a company spends e.g. $1 billion dollars developing a cure for some disease that you have the "right" to just steal their formula and start cranking out cheap copies?
Well, if you look at the world without the modern day legal blinders on, yes, you do have a basic natural right to do exactly that. The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
You are making an assertion that it is moral to withhold a lifesaving cure for those who can't afford it. I find that disturbing. There is very little morality in modern IP laws. It's all about profit. I guess it could be moral to you if you are a Ferengi... But back to your "cure" example. It is simply amazing how much government funded (that means TAXPAYER funded) research ends up with privately patented drugs. This is the case with MOST government funded research by the way, such as with NASA, DOD, DOE, etc.
It doesn't have GPS. That is one of the complaints about it...
Maybe because this really DOESN'T affect resale value much at all. It's a full-blown home theater - despite what it looks like, that's valuable in itself. Minor decorating changes and it's mostly a normal room again. Personally, I would have spent a few more bucks on equipment - such as a 400 disk changer or two (they are only $250 now for models that have component and HDMI) and eliminate the massive bookshelf of plastic boxes.
Last decade in another job, I did industrial control systems. We had a couple air cylinders left over from a prototype, and rigged up the door to the shop to open like that when you walked up to the door, tripping one of the photo-electric sensors. Surprisingly few parts - a 555 timer chip with a few discrete components, an opto-22 module, 4-way pneumatic valve, etc. Being pneumatic, it made the expected noise (close but not exact.) We even tempered the action of the cylinders with springs so it wouldn't crush a body part. Operation was much faster than a traditional automatic door you see in a store, but we could adjust that from almost instant to painfully slow with an air muffler on the 4-way. A small panel granted access to a over-ride manual valve in case of power failure.
And considering that cattle produce about 500 liters of methane per day, that's 650 billion liters of methane per day available (considering you capture all of it, which would probably be impossible.)
I just think it would be funny to drive around and see all these weather balloon's sticking out of the ass end of cows.
And we will NEVER, EVER see any kind of FIOS service until copper prices go up so much that it ends up being less expensive to replace the old copper with fiber when it wears out in 100 years or so. Even the larger cities won't get it.
So let's just make that assumption. Fiber in smaller communities and rural areas is cost prohibitive. Where the fsck is WiMAX? What about internet via the old UHF channels we heard about a few years back (since it can propagate better than the 2.4G range?)
If you've got DSL, then you're probably not "rural".
That is a bad assumption. You can be rural and get DSL in many cases. It all depends on how far you are from a Remote Terminal, and whether the telco has equipment that supports DSL in the RT. I know people who are 40 miles from a town with a population greater than 300 that have DSL. Being in a big city doesn't guarantee DSL either. I used to live in San Jose and couldn't get it due to the distance to the nearest RT, instead having to settle for $200 / month IDSL.
My service with Verizon has been problem free with one exception. Over the past several years I've had numerous lines installed with DSL at various locations, both business and residential. The only problem I had is when I requested a speed upgrade from 1.5 to 3M, and the did it, but my line didn't support it (too far from the CO.) Within 4 hours of reporting the problem, they had it fixed. Actual line distance as tested by the tech was different than the computer had.
I'm very concerned about my business DSL service now with Fairpoint. Will it go up in price? Will it become flaky / slow? Ah fsck it. I'm moving to Arizona. Tempe looks nice. At least I'll have a choice of ISP's unlike here.
Yes, but the thing is the artist could let the art lapse into public domain if they desired it so. If they didn't let it then, well, it'd be forgotten like many other works of ancient times.
I suggest you read up on the reason copyright laws have time limits. It is SPECIFICALLY so that works do NOT get lost forever.
I din't mean to imply this would happen tomorrow but a decade or two from now when certainly things could be watermarked (and recognized) appropriately and furthermore most vehicles of media would be connected one way or another. Given IPv6 it's not impossible.
So the only way to enjoy published works in your version of the modern world is to be connected 24x7x365 to the internet. No thanks.
And what would be wrong with being able to revoke/retrive an embarassing video or soundbite?
What would be wrong with rewriting history? Maybe we can pretend that Sadam was a kind and generous man that was good to his people. Maybe Paris Hilton wants to pretend that she is not a slut, or Mel Gibson wants to pretend that he didn't make anti-semitic remarks. There is nothing wrong with wanting to take back what you said, it's called an apology. There is nothing wrong with stupid teens posting embarrassing videos of themselves either, and later in life saying that we ALL do stupid stuff when we are kids. You learn from those mistakes. Your "system" attempts to eliminate consequences of doing bad / stupid stuff - sorry, that's just not a good thing for society.
Artists would have to reimburse the prorated amount owed the consumer.
So an artist that goes on a drug binge and goes crazy can take away my purchased right to listen to music he sold me back when he was sane? I don't want that, even if I DO get a partial refund. Considering how many artists are nuts to begin with, this is not a far-fetched scenario.
DRM is bad, M'Kay? There are no redeeming values. You can attempt to create some bizzaro perfect-world scenarios where it could possibly work with a gazillion exceptions and conditions, but we do not live in a perfect world.
Imagine an idiot posts something he or she later regrets to the web. It's foreseable that some of them would wish to recall/revoke/delete what they posted to the Internet. Today there is no way to put the "genie" back inthe bottle. If there were a total artist control type of rights management this idiot could retrieve (forever extinghuish the existence) the now-regrettable work posted to the Internet.
Imagine that you as a consumer PAID for a copy of that work, and then a week later found that you can no longer access the content you PAID for. I would bet that you would be a little miffed.
Furthermore, you still haven't put the genie back in the bottle, it's still out, but you have deactivated private digital copies of the genie. For example: if you posted an anti-semitic video message on YouTube, the people who saw it will still remember it, and their comments talking about it will still exist. Don't forget that the analog hole still exists too - I can point a camera at my screen and record your video therefore bypassing your restrictions.
IMHO, the lack of the ability for people to delete what they wrote (like on
Let's say that the audience never had ownership but simply could make micropayments
Good luck finding the suckers willing to use such a system. Have you never dated a teen girl? They tend to listen to the same song 34,995,897 times. Your micropayments would have to be very Very VERY small to handle teen girls... You are better off selling your music on your own web site for $0.25 - $0.50 / song and keep 95% of sales instead of 2% like you do with the labels.
It'd be like it was before technology, in the sense that the artist'd control all aspects of their fruits. Their fruits lived and died with them.
Um, no. We still can read the writings of people who wrote books 1000 years ago, or painted pictures, etc. While we can't enjoy original performances of Shakespeare plays, we have the manuscripts to enable modern performances. Your "idea" is worse than no technology at all. If Shakespeare's works were in time-bombed e-book form only, they would be lost to the world.
That may be, but when they release this phone in 6 months you will only be able to buy it with a 2 year contract with Cingular, and in the US it will stay that way for the next 2 years.
No, better usability is not just a firmware update away - it is the hardware.
Sorry, but that's BS. One very simple example is a contact list. On my phone, I can only scroll one line at a time, or hold the button down and wait 5 seconds for it to start to painfully scroll one entry per second. There is no ability to "page down" even though there are unused buttons that could do so. Ditto for reading SMS emails, browsing the web, etc. The software is 99% of the usability.
has way more potential because it isn't a crippled me-too product
It can't support 3rd party apps like the competition. How is that not crippled? I also noticed that Job's didn't demo opening a word or excel doc. I strongly suspect lack of support, and without a third-party reader you are screwed. There goes the business market.
At first, I thought partnering exclusively with Cingular was a mistake
I guess that also depends on whether Cingular has good coverage where you are. They totally suck around here, which makes them the worst possible choice and a huge mistake from my viewpoint. Because of that, they will get near ZERO market share here. If they had another national provider available, it would be a non-issue.
I've been happy with the interfaces on all my Verizon phones, but that's beside the point.
Really? I found that on my non-pda style phones I could never page down, and I've gone through dozens of different phone models over the years. I can only scroll at a painful rate and get a sore finger doing it. I also found that between slightly different models of basically the same phone from the same manufacturer, they decided that they needed to reorganize the menu's all the time so you have to re-learn how to do really basic stuff all the time. To me, that's not user friendly or simple.
The simplicity and power of the Apple phone will be awesome, but not at the current price point. For that price point, I want the ability to install my own apps.
Bingo. These are the people that install a lot of third party applications, and expect their PDA/Phones to be able to open Word and Excel files. Can the iPhone open Word and Excel files? If not, it's dead in the business world.
The rest of the market is 15 - 21 year olds who just don't have the money to buy an expensive phone that needs an expensive voice / data plan to use it. Voice / Data plans are around $80 / month.
I initially wanted this phone, and thought it would be great. 3G, I can get by without. GPS? well, ok, I can do without that too, although it greatly reduces the functionality of google maps. No third party apps? Dead in the water.
Yes, but would you buy a car that only ran Apple brand gas and had the hood welded shut? Probably not. The iPhone is Cingular only and doesn't allow third party apps. Note that MOST smartphones (PDA style) allow third party apps and work just fine. The crap about stability is just that. Crap.
If it's not integrated into the phone, it's an extra thing you have to lug around, charge, pay for, and then find out you can't use it because you can't use 3rd party apps on your iPhone.
EDGE is not 3G. EDGE is 5 times slower than VOL's 3G, and about the same amount slower they Cingular's own 3G service. It's a little faster than dialup, but has high latency so it's about the same as dialup overall. It's inexcusable for a brand-new high-end smart phone not to have 3G out of the box.
So I guess you could call EDGE "entry LEVEL 3G", but it's really 2.5G due to the fact that it's so slow.
Cisco is not trademark squatting here, they registered in 96 and sell an iPhone product.
Sorry, but I don't buy that at all.
Cisco BOUGHT a company that had the iPhone trademark. Big difference.
Look at Cisco's product line when it comes to phones (include Linksys too.) It has daring names like: Cisco SIP Proxy Server, Cisco Voice Provisioning Tool, Cisco Unified IP Phone 7985G, Linksys One Business Phone, Linksys One Manager Phone, SPA962 IP Phone.
Notice that there is not ONE vanity name in that list. Cisco had 2 years prior knowledge that Apple was going to release a phone and call it "iPhone". 3 weeks before MacWorld after discussions had basically fallen apart they release an iPhone product???? Come ON. That's a blatant smack in the face. Cisco had had no intention of ever releasing an "iPhone" they did so to profit off the energy of Apple's product and piss off Apple. Apple would not have wanted any other "iPhone"'s in the market.
Not that Apple is all blameless either. They should have just accepted that they were not going to get "iPhone" and pick something else. Picking a battle with Cisco like this over something so petty is idiotic.
Yeah, but we all know that they had 2 years prior knowledge that Apple was going to make a phone, and they decided to release their iPhones a couple weeks before MacWorld. Pretty fricking obvious why they did that. It probably pissed Apple off to the point where they just said "Screw Cisco." Not that Apple's behavior is great either, and they certainly had a choice to just call their phone some other name... IMHO, both companies behaved badly, and now it's gonna get a lot more ugly.
How true. A simple single torpedo from a sub on a "training mission" would mean the end of Sealand. Anonymous and deadly. In reality though, people would find out. It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction", and no history to suggest it ever did or ever will (unlike Iraq.)
On the other hand, I think the consequences would be rather severe, as now all small countries who have done nothing wrong will feel that they are targeted. Remember: if your country doesn't have copyright laws, it's not wrong to copy stuff. Many many many things that are illegal in the US are legal elsewhere, and vice versa. Political pressure is not the same as military action.
And maybe Apple will address some of the issues people have such as 3G (which is HUGE IMHO. I believe that every other current smartphone on the market does 3G.) I think that's why it's a wait and see thing at this point. I still think a lot of things about the iPhone are way cool - the UI is far far better than anything else, but there is nothing stopping any of the smartphone vendors from fixing the worst user usability complaints in a firmware update, but they will only do so if / when there is a better competitive product.