I suspect that the only reason it hasn't been broken yet is precisely because it hasn't been turned on yet. That removes both the incentive to break it, and the experimental media to use in the attempt.
You can't buy the phone at all without signing up for a data plan (no word on whether it is expensive or not yet. So of course you can't use the WiFi features without the plan.
Are there smartphones out there that don't require a data plan?
For example, with my Treo I'm forced to purchade the $15/month unlimited data plan from Sprint. It's required for all their smartphones.
So this story seems to be about.... A theoretical contract that is the same as the typical contract and may be unfair if the price is too high (but we don't know the price yet)?
You need to think a little bit about some of those things, because they don't pass the laugh test.
Toll roads? They're only practical on major highways. And even then they reduce the efficiency of the roadway and cost more to implement than a gas tax.
Lawnmowers, generators etc? Look for a gas station that sells fuel labeled as "not for highway use". You won't pay the tax on it. Admittedly, they're hard to find in urban areas, but those people are also less likely to have a lawn to mow, etc...
Regardless of all that, this guy was breaking the law. They've grabbed people for years for running their diesels on home heating oil, and this is no different (but easier to detect).
First off, all cablecards are bidirectional. They always have been. Second, the only "on-site activation" is communication of the necessary serial numbers to the headend so the card will receive the correct decryption codes.
CableCARD has not always been bi-directional. There is no reason for them to be bi-directional. Even now that bi-directional capable cards are the norm in new installations, most CableCARD compatible devices (the vast majority) don't contain the DOCSIS hardware required for the cards to transmit data. Yes, they've always been bi-directional in that they can transmit data to the device they're installed in, but that's clearly not what I was talking about. And there is a reason for on-site activation. It's contractual. The franchises are contractually obligated by the terms of their agreement with cable labs to insure that the CableCARD is not installed in an unauthorized device. Otherwise the cards' serial numbers could be entered at the head-end before they were even sent to the customer, and they could be activated via push-data broadcast over the entire network the same way non-CableCARD STBs are currently activated. The receiver ID wouldn't even be needed.
Incidentally, neither of the cable companies in my town charge for CableCARD installation, however Comcast charges over $2/month for each card after the first one, while Verizon charges a flat $3 fee for each card up front, non-recurring. I've never heard of anybody being able to "self-install".
VOD and PPV can't be implemented in a unidirectional device, but there is no reason that the initiator of the requests and command for PPV and VOD has to be the CableCARD instead of the device the CableCARD is installed in. This is especially true since the CableCARD compliant device is required to provide the DOCSIS hardware for the card to use anyway. The only reason there is a push to implement this functionality inside the CableCARD instead of allowing the CableCARD compliant device to do it is that it essentially undoes the integration ban, preventing third parties from implementing features in a customer-owned STB that the cable company would rather charge for on a recurring-revenue basis. CableCARD 2.0 is essentially a closed, cable company owned STB in pcmcia form factor. It's a complete bypass of the integration ban through a dirty little loophole.
It's excellent that you mentioned DTV as an example. DirecTV's access cards are unidirectional, and PPV works just fine. And when you order from the remote, the part that involves the card is still unidirectional. The STB does all of the communications.
If it's the harddrive-less 360 basic that gets the price cut (It's already being sold way below list as brand new on overstock auction sites, and people aren't bidding) The only thing that will happen is a large, collective point and laugh.
It's doing fairly well in the UK. It's doing horribly in Europe.
In March Microsoft predicted 12 million consoles sold worldwide by the end of June, but by their numbers they've sold less than a million since Christmas.
It's not predicting failure, it's predicting people being pissed that they have to buy another console.
Microsoft has only sold 10 million 360s. That's not very many. The number of people who will be purchasing "another" next-gen console to play Final Fantasy will be low in comparison to the number who are picking up their first. Remember, the market share leader this generation will likely have sold close to 200 million consoles by the time it's over. The race just started.
So the cable companies should call their bluff. Fine? You're going to deny us your signal if we don't encrypt? We'll just take you off the basic tier and move you up into premium.
See how long it would take for the networks to back down. I'd guess the networks would be back on the basic tier without the DRM in less than a half hour.
You're confusing the lies the cable companies told to the FCC to get away with the crap they get away and reality.
You probably also believe that bi-directional CableCARD 2.0 is a good thing.
Here's the deal. CableCARD's don't need to do anything at all other than decrypt TV signals if the customer paid for them. It doesn't need to send data or be activated by an on-site tech or any of that crap to do the job. The device it's plugged into can do the upstream requests, and the authorization codes can be pushed to the card just like they are with CableCo owned set top boxes. bi-directional communications and tech activation exist to prevent you from doing anything with the signal that the cable company doesn't like, even if copyright law doesn't actually prevent you from doing those things.
Just because you agree with it doesn't mean it's flamebait.
Nobody is asking a single developer to hold up the PS3. If the PS3 needed that, this wouldn't even be a question, FF13 would be on the 360. The problem is that outside the US the 360 may as well not even exist.
Square Enix faces a dilemma: put the next game on the 360 only and alienate Japanese fans, depart with tradition and make it multi-platform, or go with PS3 as an exclusive and deal with the backlash from the west
That is just pure flamebait, and shouldn't have ended up on the front page of anywhere but an Xbox360 fansite.
Why is it flamebait? The subtext to that one sentence is that the PS3 is going to fail in the US, and ignores the fact that Final Fantasy titles usually sell as many copies in Japan alone as they do in the rest of the world. He, and everybody else with two or more brain cells, knows that there isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that a Final Fantasy game will ever be an Xbox360 exclusive given the non-existence of the platform in Japan, and that the next-gen race isn't even close to decided in the rest of the world. So why post the false dichotomy except to troll?
I'm planning out a MythTV system not primarily for recording TV but rather for organizing and scheduling the viewing of my DVD collection in a manner less boredom-inducing than the marathons to which Sony's 400-disc player limits me. I can barely sit through watching 3 episodes per disc of Highlander these days.
I did exactly that.
If you find good software for it, please let me know, but MythDVD is *not* it. It is not satisfying at all. It doesn't even preserve menus. It does break less frequently that a Sony 400 disc changer though. I didn't see anything that did all the things that I wanted. (Simple menus, play during rip, menu and special feature preservation, MPEG4 re-encoding, and independent front and back-ends.) I intend to resume the search for a good DIY hard drive based DVD jukebox when it's winter again.
It's also like owning a set of encyclopedias: you may never read them from start to finish, but you can access parts of them from time to time as reference material.
Terrible analogy. An encyclopedia is a concise summary, not a comprehensive archive. Regardless...
I enjoy the body of human knowledge as much as the next geek, but I'm content in my ability to peruse most of it at a library (or on somebody else's webserver instead of a local mirror) and only own a select set of books (and tarballs) and perhaps an encyclopedia for home use.
If your media archive consists of things that you've watched at least once, you're not nearly as bad as some media packrats.
Does your Tivo let you use bittorrent to automagically download new episodes of shows that don't air in your market?
Automatically? Not without hacking (but it's hackable), but you can schedule the downloads on your PC and they'll show up on your TiVo.
As for archiving, You can sortof, sometimes, but I'm firmly (after rehab) in the "that's stupid" camp. Being a media packrat is bad for your (and your wallet's) health. DVRs are for time-shifting and customizing your viewing experience. They're not for archiving. If you're one of the minority that needs that functionality to fill your unwatchable-in-your-lifetime media archive, then by all means, go spend the money and build a MythTV box.
That one little thing you forgot is a major show-stopper for most people, and I really hope someone hacks the cablecard somehow to give us cablecard capability for mythtv.
With the way the market looks to be headed, certified systems that contain cablecard adapters will only be available at the "high-end" (same shit, higher price) of the consumer PC market. It keeps the price high enough that instead of hacking some windows box, you may as well save yourself some money and buy yourself a Tivo.
I do long for the day that I can build a media center PC that can record encrypted HD, but I don't see it happening any time soon. The distribution industry owns our legislature, and younger, technically savvy people don't vote.
And while you may be right that Palm hasn't announced devices for it yet, if it works as advertised (though, until there's something out there, I'm skeptical), I'd be very surprised if they didn't deploy it.
I'm an avid Palm user, and a former developer of Palm software. I'd like you to be correct, but I just don't see it. The new PalmOS (Cobalt, before the rename) *did* work as advertised. There was a simulator and "publically" available images for you to use to develop Cobalt apps. The UI was good. The APIs were good. It worked. Years have passed since then. I've even seen demo devices in Access' trade show booths. They're good. If Palm was going to move in that direction, why haven't they already?
I am very surprised they didn't deploy it. It should have been on the Treo 600 and the Tungsten T series handhelds. They had another opportunity to use it with the LifeDrive (That product may have even been successful if they had gone that route. Instead, it's canceled.) and the Treo 700 series. But if they haven't switched by now, I don't see them switching in the future.
PalmSource was acquired and no longer exists. Their assets are owned by Access software, and as far as I'm aware Palm is working off a source code license to the old PalmOS software (now called GarnetOS). The next-gen PalmOS (Cobalt) has been canceled, and pieces of it have been merged into the "ACCESS Linux Platform". Palm has announced no plans to use the Linux based platform from Access in any devices at all. They are simply releasing their new products with the old PalmOS and a Windows platform as options. There is no next-gen of PalmOS on anybody's roadmap right now.
Who said anything about "demise"? I don't think that PalmOS is going anywhere any time soon. It's going to stick around largely unchanged until people stop buying it. With software support and device sales rapidly declining though, it's only a matter of time until Palm's devices don't run PalmOS anymore. Which is unfortunate, since despite being archaic, it's still the best PDA OS available to end users on the market right now.
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I suspect that the only reason it hasn't been broken yet is precisely because it hasn't been turned on yet. That removes both the incentive to break it, and the experimental media to use in the attempt.
It'll be broken.
That sounds like spin to me.
You can't buy the phone at all without signing up for a data plan (no word on whether it is expensive or not yet. So of course you can't use the WiFi features without the plan.
Are there smartphones out there that don't require a data plan?
For example, with my Treo I'm forced to purchade the $15/month unlimited data plan from Sprint. It's required for all their smartphones.
So this story seems to be about.... A theoretical contract that is the same as the typical contract and may be unfair if the price is too high (but we don't know the price yet)?
1) Goodmail doesn't get your company's money.
2) Your spam doesn't get through
No big long overthought article required.
You need to think a little bit about some of those things, because they don't pass the laugh test.
Toll roads? They're only practical on major highways. And even then they reduce the efficiency of the roadway and cost more to implement than a gas tax.
Lawnmowers, generators etc? Look for a gas station that sells fuel labeled as "not for highway use". You won't pay the tax on it. Admittedly, they're hard to find in urban areas, but those people are also less likely to have a lawn to mow, etc...
Regardless of all that, this guy was breaking the law. They've grabbed people for years for running their diesels on home heating oil, and this is no different (but easier to detect).
This was passed 100-0 in the senate. While this confirms what you're saying, it shouldn't be implied that this was solely a Republican thing.
...you can release a public beta and have have thousands of publicity whores do top notch security analysis of your beta for free?
x^1.01?
For now.
CableCARD has not always been bi-directional. There is no reason for them to be bi-directional. Even now that bi-directional capable cards are the norm in new installations, most CableCARD compatible devices (the vast majority) don't contain the DOCSIS hardware required for the cards to transmit data. Yes, they've always been bi-directional in that they can transmit data to the device they're installed in, but that's clearly not what I was talking about. And there is a reason for on-site activation. It's contractual. The franchises are contractually obligated by the terms of their agreement with cable labs to insure that the CableCARD is not installed in an unauthorized device. Otherwise the cards' serial numbers could be entered at the head-end before they were even sent to the customer, and they could be activated via push-data broadcast over the entire network the same way non-CableCARD STBs are currently activated. The receiver ID wouldn't even be needed.
Incidentally, neither of the cable companies in my town charge for CableCARD installation, however Comcast charges over $2/month for each card after the first one, while Verizon charges a flat $3 fee for each card up front, non-recurring. I've never heard of anybody being able to "self-install".
VOD and PPV can't be implemented in a unidirectional device, but there is no reason that the initiator of the requests and command for PPV and VOD has to be the CableCARD instead of the device the CableCARD is installed in. This is especially true since the CableCARD compliant device is required to provide the DOCSIS hardware for the card to use anyway. The only reason there is a push to implement this functionality inside the CableCARD instead of allowing the CableCARD compliant device to do it is that it essentially undoes the integration ban, preventing third parties from implementing features in a customer-owned STB that the cable company would rather charge for on a recurring-revenue basis. CableCARD 2.0 is essentially a closed, cable company owned STB in pcmcia form factor. It's a complete bypass of the integration ban through a dirty little loophole.
It's excellent that you mentioned DTV as an example. DirecTV's access cards are unidirectional, and PPV works just fine. And when you order from the remote, the part that involves the card is still unidirectional. The STB does all of the communications.
If it's the harddrive-less 360 basic that gets the price cut (It's already being sold way below list as brand new on overstock auction sites, and people aren't bidding) The only thing that will happen is a large, collective point and laugh.
It's doing fairly well in the UK. It's doing horribly in Europe.
In March Microsoft predicted 12 million consoles sold worldwide by the end of June, but by their numbers they've sold less than a million since Christmas.
Microsoft has only sold 10 million 360s. That's not very many. The number of people who will be purchasing "another" next-gen console to play Final Fantasy will be low in comparison to the number who are picking up their first. Remember, the market share leader this generation will likely have sold close to 200 million consoles by the time it's over. The race just started.
Too bad all the non-broadcast HD signals are encrypted.
So the cable companies should call their bluff. Fine? You're going to deny us your signal if we don't encrypt? We'll just take you off the basic tier and move you up into premium.
See how long it would take for the networks to back down. I'd guess the networks would be back on the basic tier without the DRM in less than a half hour.
You're confusing the lies the cable companies told to the FCC to get away with the crap they get away and reality.
You probably also believe that bi-directional CableCARD 2.0 is a good thing.
Here's the deal. CableCARD's don't need to do anything at all other than decrypt TV signals if the customer paid for them. It doesn't need to send data or be activated by an on-site tech or any of that crap to do the job. The device it's plugged into can do the upstream requests, and the authorization codes can be pushed to the card just like they are with CableCo owned set top boxes. bi-directional communications and tech activation exist to prevent you from doing anything with the signal that the cable company doesn't like, even if copyright law doesn't actually prevent you from doing those things.
Just because you agree with it doesn't mean it's flamebait.
Nobody is asking a single developer to hold up the PS3. If the PS3 needed that, this wouldn't even be a question, FF13 would be on the 360. The problem is that outside the US the 360 may as well not even exist.
That is just pure flamebait, and shouldn't have ended up on the front page of anywhere but an Xbox360 fansite.
Why is it flamebait? The subtext to that one sentence is that the PS3 is going to fail in the US, and ignores the fact that Final Fantasy titles usually sell as many copies in Japan alone as they do in the rest of the world. He, and everybody else with two or more brain cells, knows that there isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that a Final Fantasy game will ever be an Xbox360 exclusive given the non-existence of the platform in Japan, and that the next-gen race isn't even close to decided in the rest of the world. So why post the false dichotomy except to troll?
Perhaps a trial lawyer has a bit of bias about whether or not it's a good thing for somebody to represent themselves?
I did exactly that.
If you find good software for it, please let me know, but MythDVD is *not* it. It is not satisfying at all. It doesn't even preserve menus. It does break less frequently that a Sony 400 disc changer though. I didn't see anything that did all the things that I wanted. (Simple menus, play during rip, menu and special feature preservation, MPEG4 re-encoding, and independent front and back-ends.) I intend to resume the search for a good DIY hard drive based DVD jukebox when it's winter again.
Terrible analogy. An encyclopedia is a concise summary, not a comprehensive archive. Regardless...
I enjoy the body of human knowledge as much as the next geek, but I'm content in my ability to peruse most of it at a library (or on somebody else's webserver instead of a local mirror) and only own a select set of books (and tarballs) and perhaps an encyclopedia for home use.
If your media archive consists of things that you've watched at least once, you're not nearly as bad as some media packrats.
Does your Tivo let you use bittorrent to automagically download new episodes of shows that don't air in your market?
Automatically? Not without hacking (but it's hackable), but you can schedule the downloads on your PC and they'll show up on your TiVo.
As for archiving, You can sortof, sometimes, but I'm firmly (after rehab) in the "that's stupid" camp. Being a media packrat is bad for your (and your wallet's) health. DVRs are for time-shifting and customizing your viewing experience. They're not for archiving. If you're one of the minority that needs that functionality to fill your unwatchable-in-your-lifetime media archive, then by all means, go spend the money and build a MythTV box.
Tivo can't make waffles either.
With the way the market looks to be headed, certified systems that contain cablecard adapters will only be available at the "high-end" (same shit, higher price) of the consumer PC market. It keeps the price high enough that instead of hacking some windows box, you may as well save yourself some money and buy yourself a Tivo.
I do long for the day that I can build a media center PC that can record encrypted HD, but I don't see it happening any time soon. The distribution industry owns our legislature, and younger, technically savvy people don't vote.
I'm an avid Palm user, and a former developer of Palm software. I'd like you to be correct, but I just don't see it. The new PalmOS (Cobalt, before the rename) *did* work as advertised. There was a simulator and "publically" available images for you to use to develop Cobalt apps. The UI was good. The APIs were good. It worked. Years have passed since then. I've even seen demo devices in Access' trade show booths. They're good. If Palm was going to move in that direction, why haven't they already?
I am very surprised they didn't deploy it. It should have been on the Treo 600 and the Tungsten T series handhelds. They had another opportunity to use it with the LifeDrive (That product may have even been successful if they had gone that route. Instead, it's canceled.) and the Treo 700 series. But if they haven't switched by now, I don't see them switching in the future.
PalmSource was acquired and no longer exists. Their assets are owned by Access software, and as far as I'm aware Palm is working off a source code license to the old PalmOS software (now called GarnetOS). The next-gen PalmOS (Cobalt) has been canceled, and pieces of it have been merged into the "ACCESS Linux Platform". Palm has announced no plans to use the Linux based platform from Access in any devices at all. They are simply releasing their new products with the old PalmOS and a Windows platform as options. There is no next-gen of PalmOS on anybody's roadmap right now.
Who said anything about "demise"? I don't think that PalmOS is going anywhere any time soon. It's going to stick around largely unchanged until people stop buying it. With software support and device sales rapidly declining though, it's only a matter of time until Palm's devices don't run PalmOS anymore. Which is unfortunate, since despite being archaic, it's still the best PDA OS available to end users on the market right now.