It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's.
BINGO! They're great smartphones except that... they're aren't smart because they don't run the apps you want! The hardware itself isn't _that_ bad (although Palm as usual is 1-3 years behind and had some poor choices like 8GB internal flash and no card slot) but the fact that you can't do much with it really hurts and as expected will kill the platform. As I was saying the day Palm Pre was announced (and especially after knowing it won't be GSM for a long while): good riddance, Palm.
Plus you get the "real" ZFS, zones, and tightly integrated, bootable system rollbacks using zfs clones:)
Plus you get the "real" opensolaris experience:
- poor (like really really poor) hardware compatibility. Starting with basic stuff, many on-board Ethernet controllers with flaky or no support, very hard to choose a motherboard that's available and without too many compromises and fully supported. A guy asked if Android pairing is available (to use phone as modem for OpenSolaris), made me spill my coffee... - doubtful future - no security patches (yes, you read that right) - major features like zfs encryption slipping schedule for years (working on it since 2008, last promise was to be in 2010.2 release which in itself slipped to 2010.3 and this one seems to be delayed as well as it was supposed to be released on the 26th and in any case it's quite sure that encryption won't make it anyway)
MHz = 1,000,000 hertz, and refers to the clock rate. The clock rate is the number of cycles per second a processor executes. Each cycle is exactly one toggle - either a zero or a one.
Because this is used in the processing of the data, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with data itself, there is absolutely no way to relate the clock rate to bits or bytes. You can't even compare hertz values between the different families of processors in a brand, let alone get any kind of external relation to bytes.
Just because YOU use MHz only for the CPU clock rate it doesn't mean it isn't widely used for something else, directly related to data transfer. Straightforward example from PCI's wikipedia page (note it's from the summary, not some anal technical detail):
133 MB/s (32-bit at 33 MHz) 266 MB/s (32-bit at 66 MHz or 64-bit at 33 MHz) 533 MB/s (64-bit at 66 MHz)
(there are some rounding errors in the world of CPU/bus speed, multipliers and the like and 3x33=100 more often than not, that's another story)
Redefining KB makes these calculations harder. The only kind of calculations it makes easier are things that involve bytes and some other SI units that use the SI prefixes in the same equation.
WRONG. Quick, transform 2x700 MiB in GiB. Answer: 1.3671875 GiB. Easy, huh? And the big problem isn't that it makes the calculations harder but ambiguous. Let's say we live with the additional overhead of multiplying with 1000/1024 and similar each time we move "k" around in an expression. But having the same symbol the shorthand for *1024 in some context and shorthand for *1000 in others requires each time you see it to make a decision and there are bound to be people choosing the value that wasn't intended for that context.
About the only other SI quantity that you ever see in an equation with bytes is seconds and you almost never talk about kiloseconds or megaseconds...
We already had it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Compaq_TC1100 Keep in mind we're talking about 5+ years ago - people are still using them. With bluetooth&wifi&Pentium-M&1024x768 it was a decent netbook well before first official netbook. However there WAS something wrong with it: probably the price was around (above?) $2000.
I assume multitasking is still missing so how's skype/fring going to work? "Call me so I can log in"? "While in a skype call - let me log out, I need to check this links/mail/etc?"
There was an article a while back about a phone battery that is able to recharge itself by intercepting the various radio / wifi waves in its Antenna to generate a current. (Still in development, still not efficient)
... and if you use that "wireless recharging battery" with a phone (or some other device with wifi) you can both USE your wifi and recharge your battery!
If my phone had a USB host port, I could do all of the things you mentioned, and it runs Maemo + ARM Debian. Nasty corporate software excluded - and we'll all be better off if those guys are forced to modify their crap.
Might I also suggest that you don't switch to a bank with a website that wants to run binaries on your computer. For your own good.
We all know even x86 linux can't support all I mentioned unless you chose your hardware wisely. And that "if my phone had USB host" is a really really big if. When was the last time USB host was somehow vaguely widespread? Windows Mobile 2003 with high end PDAs? Of course in theory you could have USB host with anything but as of now you just don't have it (as far as smartphones go). If you get a small XP capable machine OF COURSE you'll get USB with it.
And frankly I'm not impressed with Maemo, as far as applications go. There are (many) places in the world where the only navigation programs/ecosystems that have any useful maps are iGo and Garmin. iGo can run on Windows (barely), Windows Mobile, iPhone (barely), Android (anounced). You can use Garmin with Windows, Windows Mobile, Palm non-Pre (barely), Symbian. See what I mean? Anywhere you turn and you have something more complicated than a Firefox extension you're stuck if there isn't a big open source project to fill that particular need (like Apache, Firefox, Gimp,...).
Running sandboxed Java applets (=normal browser Java) is reasonably secure and is not just "a website that wants to run binaries". If you are too afraid to do it I suggest you find a bank that works with lynx. And run it as nobody. Chrooted. In a virtual machine. From a CDROM. Apart from banks there are many servers/remote access systems that need java (you can have alternative for VNC browser applet but you might not have alternative for something that might be even implemented in firmware from Sun, Compaq, Dell, etc). And because I don't have time to wait until "those guys are forced to modify their crap" can you let me know if Maemo runs applets from browser (I know Android doesn't)?
And how many of those apps run on Linux? Of those, how many do not run on ARM?
I know this is slashdot and all but let's not pretend commercial software doesn't exist. Plus as I said I don't have patience to wait. Oh, they just brought Flash to my platform. How nice. Maybe we'll have Java in mobile browsers by 2011.
Here we have a platform where there is no reason whatsoever to have an ass-backwards-compatible architecture in order to run legacy Windows apps.
There are tons and tons and tons of x86 apps that run on some (potential) over sized x86 phone with 800x600 resolution, 512MB RAM, 1GHz CPU, 8-16-32... GB flash. Yes, you can do MANY things with iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile or Maemo. However with a small x86 box no matter how underpowered you can do MOSTLY ANYTHING. And there's a big difference. Examples: flash is big news on iPhone and Android. Java (as in browser applets): no chance in Android (don't know about the other platforms). That means some banking sites and some remote access software don't work. Get different servers? Switch banks? Heck, they work fine even with Windows 95! Tried to print directly from your phone directly to some dumb printer? Tried to scan something (no, I don't mean take a picture with the crappy camera)? Get some files from some NTFS USB drive? Connect a TV tuner? Connect to some strange nasty corporate VPN?
Yes, 90% of the usage is covered with a nice basic browser, some media player and maybe a voip client. But there's a lot in the 10% left and I don't have the patience to have it all ported to arm (not that it'll ever happen as the market is so divided).
You're thinking CRT, LCDs are in this respect very similar to e-ink, they change only when you need them to change (i.e. there's no refresh while showing static images). There is a flicker if the backlight is fluorescent (as opposed to the new LED backlight present in many new notebooks and netbooks) but you get the same flicker if you look at anything (event a book) under fluorescent light (which most people tolerate quite well).
You mean, you can't just buy a pre-paid SIM card in Italy (without showing ID), and use it for e.g. 3G or at least GPRS Internet access?
You can't buy a pre-paid SIM in Italy even WITH ID!!! You need (in theory at least) to register with the authorities and get first a "Codice Fiscale" and use that (plus probably ID, I'm not sure) to get a working SIM card. There are quite a few European countries with similar requirements (Germany, Switzerland, Spain since recently, etc).
With Cuba I was referring to the obligation to register all your (foreign I believe) guests (irrespective of them using wifi or anything else) and provide the list to authorities. This is by law in both Italy and Cuba I believe.
As far as Internet goes in Cuba probably there are ways to get it anonymously as it is freakishly expensive and in consequence rare. If somebody somehow manages to start some kind of underground network with any kind of popularity (highly unlikely as computers are very expensive and rare) then they'll close the door. Until then probably nobody cares even if it's Cuba.
Can somebody with more knowledge comment on what are the significant differences between Belarus and Italy? In Italy they are obliged to scan your ID when you want internet access and also they have to log many things and be sure to be able to correlate them with you. Free anonymous internet ("normal" open wifi) is forbidden as far as I know.
As a side-note in Italy if you're a guest your host (at least the "organized" ones, like hotels and such) are obliged to take all your data and report you to some authority. I'm sure there are many countries with the same requirement but the first one that comes to mind is Cuba...
They are way beyond dicks and would go to unbelievable lengths not to provide you with the service you bought. They are proactively scanning your account and will shut you down (without ANY warning whatsoever) for any media file that look suspicious (that includes mp3's you recorded yourself, as in you're the artist). At first when they started cracking down on people using disk space they just shut down everybody that was using "too much" in their opinion (they were specifically offering 1500 GBytes space and 15000 GB/month transfer at the time - now they are "unlimited"). No questions, nothing. When customers asked they said they modified the TOS and say something like "you're not allowed to store files (!)". They also modified the TOS to say they don't have to notify you when they modify the TOS (which they had accordingly to the old TOS). And they didn't notify anybody, just shut down accounts randomly. If you use their whois privacy feature (default on and unmanageable via web interface) they will spam your whois with advertising. They also don't seem to get what this feature actually means and insist that you own the domain which can't be true in any legal and meaningful way (yes, you are the owner in a field in their database but legally and as far as ICANN is concerned they are the owner).
The last drop in the bucket is the hidden 50000 files limit. The limit is absolutely secret and you can find about it only when you are kicked out or warned that you are above. However they would still insist the space is unlimited but the number of files is limited. And that it is for your own protection because fsck would take far too long if you have too many files. And that if you don't like it you should go away. The idea here is only to pay, not to use what you paid for. To put things into perspective a default installation of gallery with default plugins will eat about half of those 50000 files you are allowed. And use probably a couple tens of megs of space (keep in mind they were offering 1500GB before going unlimited which should mean for any reasonable person more than 1500GB). Oh, and people hosting linux distributions are abusers as well. Of course they would work more flexibly than a random free provider (you get shell access but you need to fax your ID!). But between random crashes and this "anybody using is abusing" policy you won't get too far.
The parent was talking about the legally enshrined rights provided by the copyright legislation. Whatever the EULA says is pretty moot because there is no legal requirement for you to agree to an EULA.
However, even if you were to assume that the consumer agrees to whatever licence they are presented with and that the licence is enforceable, you are still wrong: When I buy a DVD, I am never presented with a licence agreement - I go into the shop and say "I want to buy this DVD", hand over some money and get given the DVD in return. You cannot argue that this doesn't constitute the sale of the DVD (which would give me all the rights and restrictions granted by copyright law). Iff I were to go into the shop and say "I want to buy this DVD" and they said "you can't buy it, you can only licence the content, here's a licence for you to sign" then you could argue that I didn't buy the DVD and that I am therefore bound by the licence terms, but that never happens.
Correct, the point you're making here is that not all material is sold with an extra contract "on the side". We also know that most of these "licensing agreements" are absolutely non-enforceable. We have many ridiculous examples like "by opening the box you agree to these terms (written inside the box)", "you agree to whatever terms we chose to publish on our site (sometimes at an undisclosed precise location)" and so on.
But even if ALL material would be sold only with a legally binding bulletproof contract DRM still would be infringing on the rights of well mostly everybody else. The point here is that you can't sign off my rights. Society decided that it would be best for everybody if authors could for a finite time have a monopoly in distributing their works as they please. This is an incentive for authors to create. However the rest of society should be getting something in return and one of the things we should be getting in return is free access to that material after a finite amount of time. After the work is in public domain EVERYBODY has the right to it, except maybe people who explicitly gave away their rights by signing some extra licensing agreements (if those are found to be legal and binding). However if the material is protected by DRM (which is happening currently with a lot of stuff) the authors can just tie it to some device their customers own or to some authentication server (that might go away if they want). So most of the people wouldn't get what is legally theirs. If they want to go "would you steal a car" route we can as well. DRM is theft!.
If you buy a stolen stereo on the street, it can be confiscated by the government. Same for a stolen car, that's why we have chop shops that launder parts from stolen cars back out into the market. So, granted IP rights may be different than real world stuff (did anybody suffer harm because unauthorized copies were distributed? was anybody deprived of anything? don't quote anything in parentheses, or this sentence, this isn't what i'm here to discuss), if you are in possession of a stolen item, it can be confiscated. It looks like amazon was just trying to jump the gun and possibly assumed that the copies would equate to 'stolen'.
Other side of the coin, let's say that these were just counterfeit copies. I.E. unauthorized copies of a protected item. I feel that this is closer to the truth. Current law says that it is NOT within the government's rights to seize a single counterfeit item if that is the only copy in your possession and you do not intend to sell it. That's why you never hear about a non-seller's collection of bootleg dvd's or fake-gucci purses being siezed. So had amazon realized that, it would have classified the re-seller as a digital counterfeiter and possibly resolved the matter by shutting off transfer rights (to another account, not another device within the account.)
I think the first problem is that while the government can (legally) do many things (from taking your goods to killing people) Amazon can't . After they sold you the stolen or fake or infringing or whatever goods they can't (legally) just reach to your computer/kindle and "correct" the mistake by helping themselves just because this is the way they designed the system.
Plus I'm sick and tired of this DRM double dipping. Copyright gives rights not only to authors but also to customers AND all other people. With DRM authors are giving themselves technologically rights they don't have legally. Copyright owners don't have the legal right to stop you from selling your music collection. They don't have the right to take back what they sold to you. They don't have the right to prevent you from playing your US DVD in Europe. They don't have the right to forbid you to take small parts to use them in a research work (fair use). They don't have the right to kill your collection because they don't think maintaining the authentication servers is profitable for them (yes, Yahoo, Microsoft, Wallmart I'm looking at you). And above all they don't have the right to keep their creations from falling into public domain (although they are very close to their desired "forever less one day" in extending the copyright terms).
Not that there's any chance in hell for this to happen but I vote to have any (legal) copyright protection removed for any material that has DRM. You, author, want to break the deal with customers and with general public by not giving them all the rights they have (via technological means). FINE. There's no deal then. No (legal) copyright protection for whatever DRMed crap you sell.
Does this affect the Mac OS X version, or does at least one of the callers have to be on a PC?
Like mostly everything else it probably DOESN'T run on OS X. And in case you missed the last 4 years or so we don't really have the distinction PC/Mac anymore (not to mention that Mac OS X runs on many "PCs" from netbooks to Macs - and so does Windows in all incarnations worth mentioning).
Let people use whatever measuring system they find most useful and if the metric system is better, it'll become dominant.
And why would that happen? Survival of the fittest for measuring systems? It doesn't work, no measuring system is THAT good to give you an advantage when everybody and everything else uses another one. If every law, textbook, label, measuring instrument, ordering system (and computer programs in general) are using the "bad" measuring system you would have no advantage and a lot of hassle if you start using the "good" measuring system. Metric system is better if mostly everybody is using it not if you and three neighbors are using it while everybody else uses something different.
Wow, this is a crap deal. How disappointing. Why is the app is 1.2GB in size, when the iPhone is designed as an always-on device? A $30 1GB app with paid map downloads on demand, instead of storing the entire USA on the phone at once, would make much more sense. I agree that streaming maps (such as the google maps app) are useless if you're in the sticks with no coverage or Edge-only coverage, but giving up over 1/8th or 1/16th of my total storage for maps I won't use 99% of the time is a terrible compromise. if I could install map packs based on my travel plans, that would make much more sense. And $100 for the USA, when I can buy a standalone TomTom 125 for $80? Unless the $100 app has feature parity with the $400 standalone units, the only conclusion I can come to is that they are trying to incentivise people away from using the iPhone app, and toward buying a dedicated GPS unit instead. I can think of no other excuse. Bad form, guys. I hope someone sees the market opportunity and steals your cake.
If as you said you won't be using this application much this isn't for you, just plain and simple. However for MANY OTHER users the GPS application on their PDAs/phones/etc is the most expensive and used application. Most of them would consider 1/16 or 1/32 of the space on the device put to good use to have it there and don't mess with roaming charges, 3G coverage, having the right data plan next time you renew your contract and having Apple store and Tomtom giving you access to the content you paid next year. The last point is especially valid as already big names like Microsoft, Yahoo, Wallmart closed their digital stores leaving their customers in various states of limbo with their DRM files; I'm really surprised that people would advocate today "streaming" something you paid for versus just "having a copy" (especially with Amazon's Kindle 1984 "here's your copy, now we're taking it back" crap).
What's more if you have already internet access most of the time it means you save quite a bit of space on the phone (for example you don't need to keep a multi-GB offline wikipedia snapshot) and it is more likely to have more space available.
YES, TomTom had for a long while a problem (as in it doesn't work) with using multiple maps (probably still has). Basically unlike iGo for example you couldn't just drop whatever maps you want in a folder (usually one file per country/state in the US); instead you would get a huge map (let's say Western Europe) and still you wouldn't be able to combine it with other maps you already bought and use with the same program (like Eastern Europe for example). This was actually a big problem in 2005 (storage, CPU) but not so much now. Of course if Apple had left any way of extending the storage on the iPhone (*SD card, USB host, etc) we wouldn't be having this discussion but still for many users it's an acceptable compromise.
That will work fairly well until two years from now when they decide to use the IP you blacklisted for billing.comcast.com (or similar) and you lose half a day to figure out what happens.
Heh, I've never found NiMH AA's to be cheap either!
What is your definition of cheap? AFAIK the very best NiMh nowadays are Sanyo 2700 (for raw capacity). Probably Sanyo Enelooops are the best (or one of the best) for low self discharge. You can get them around 10$/10EUR (US/Europe) for a 4-pack - that would be usually from Amazon (or reliable ebay sellers) and includes usually shipping (if you order enough from Amazon for example, but that shouldn't be a problem). Is 2.50$/EUR per NiMH AA so much of a problem? Sure, if you need to pay retail to the only shop in some turist place you get shafted with a 50$ price for a couple NiMH and a basic charger. Have you looked how much it would cost there to replace your LiIon battery (not that they're likely to have the right one for your camera)? With AAs you have any time the option to just buy a couple alkys and be on your way immediately.
Apart from being insanely expensive you can't ride it legally in most places, neither on the sidewalk nor on the street. And, oh - did I mention expensive? Nah, it's not that, it's how it makes you look...
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BINGO! They're great smartphones except that ... they're aren't smart because they don't run the apps you want! The hardware itself isn't _that_ bad (although Palm as usual is 1-3 years behind and had some poor choices like 8GB internal flash and no card slot) but the fact that you can't do much with it really hurts and as expected will kill the platform. As I was saying the day Palm Pre was announced (and especially after knowing it won't be GSM for a long while): good riddance, Palm.
Plus you get the "real" opensolaris experience:
- poor (like really really poor) hardware compatibility. Starting with basic stuff, many on-board Ethernet controllers with flaky or no support, very hard to choose a motherboard that's available and without too many compromises and fully supported. A guy asked if Android pairing is available (to use phone as modem for OpenSolaris), made me spill my coffee...
- doubtful future
- no security patches (yes, you read that right)
- major features like zfs encryption slipping schedule for years (working on it since 2008, last promise was to be in 2010.2 release which in itself slipped to 2010.3 and this one seems to be delayed as well as it was supposed to be released on the 26th and in any case it's quite sure that encryption won't make it anyway)
Thanks, but no thanks.
Just because YOU use MHz only for the CPU clock rate it doesn't mean it isn't widely used for something else, directly related to data transfer. Straightforward example from PCI's wikipedia page (note it's from the summary, not some anal technical detail):
(there are some rounding errors in the world of CPU/bus speed, multipliers and the like and 3x33=100 more often than not, that's another story)
WRONG.
Quick, transform 2x700 MiB in GiB. Answer: 1.3671875 GiB. Easy, huh?
And the big problem isn't that it makes the calculations harder but ambiguous. Let's say we live with the additional overhead of multiplying with 1000/1024 and similar each time we move "k" around in an expression. But having the same symbol the shorthand for *1024 in some context and shorthand for *1000 in others requires each time you see it to make a decision and there are bound to be people choosing the value that wasn't intended for that context.
Wrong again. Never heard of MHz and GHz?
WHICH of the SI units? kilo is at least 200 years old (with the clear-cut 1000 meaning), I doubt kilobyte is older!
We already had it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Compaq_TC1100
Keep in mind we're talking about 5+ years ago - people are still using them. With bluetooth&wifi&Pentium-M&1024x768 it was a decent netbook well before first official netbook. However there WAS something wrong with it: probably the price was around (above?) $2000.
I assume multitasking is still missing so how's skype/fring going to work? "Call me so I can log in"? "While in a skype call - let me log out, I need to check this links/mail/etc?"
For one thing we can pretend we're in an alternate timeline where the one from last year never happened.
There was an article a while back about a phone battery that is able to recharge itself by intercepting the various radio / wifi waves in its Antenna to generate a current. (Still in development, still not efficient)
... and if you use that "wireless recharging battery" with a phone (or some other device with wifi) you can both USE your wifi and recharge your battery!
If my phone had a USB host port, I could do all of the things you mentioned, and it runs Maemo + ARM Debian. Nasty corporate software excluded - and we'll all be better off if those guys are forced to modify their crap.
Might I also suggest that you don't switch to a bank with a website that wants to run binaries on your computer. For your own good.
We all know even x86 linux can't support all I mentioned unless you chose your hardware wisely. And that "if my phone had USB host" is a really really big if. When was the last time USB host was somehow vaguely widespread? Windows Mobile 2003 with high end PDAs? Of course in theory you could have USB host with anything but as of now you just don't have it (as far as smartphones go). If you get a small XP capable machine OF COURSE you'll get USB with it.
And frankly I'm not impressed with Maemo, as far as applications go. There are (many) places in the world where the only navigation programs/ecosystems that have any useful maps are iGo and Garmin. iGo can run on Windows (barely), Windows Mobile, iPhone (barely), Android (anounced). You can use Garmin with Windows, Windows Mobile, Palm non-Pre (barely), Symbian. See what I mean? Anywhere you turn and you have something more complicated than a Firefox extension you're stuck if there isn't a big open source project to fill that particular need (like Apache, Firefox, Gimp,...).
Running sandboxed Java applets (=normal browser Java) is reasonably secure and is not just "a website that wants to run binaries". If you are too afraid to do it I suggest you find a bank that works with lynx. And run it as nobody. Chrooted. In a virtual machine. From a CDROM.
Apart from banks there are many servers/remote access systems that need java (you can have alternative for VNC browser applet but you might not have alternative for something that might be even implemented in firmware from Sun, Compaq, Dell, etc). And because I don't have time to wait until "those guys are forced to modify their crap" can you let me know if Maemo runs applets from browser (I know Android doesn't)?
And how many of those apps run on Linux? Of those, how many do not run on ARM?
I know this is slashdot and all but let's not pretend commercial software doesn't exist. Plus as I said I don't have patience to wait. Oh, they just brought Flash to my platform. How nice. Maybe we'll have Java in mobile browsers by 2011.
Here we have a platform where there is no reason whatsoever to have an ass-backwards-compatible architecture in order to run legacy Windows apps.
There are tons and tons and tons of x86 apps that run on some (potential) over sized x86 phone with 800x600 resolution, 512MB RAM, 1GHz CPU, 8-16-32... GB flash. Yes, you can do MANY things with iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile or Maemo. However with a small x86 box no matter how underpowered you can do MOSTLY ANYTHING. And there's a big difference. Examples: flash is big news on iPhone and Android. Java (as in browser applets): no chance in Android (don't know about the other platforms). That means some banking sites and some remote access software don't work. Get different servers? Switch banks? Heck, they work fine even with Windows 95!
Tried to print directly from your phone directly to some dumb printer? Tried to scan something (no, I don't mean take a picture with the crappy camera)? Get some files from some NTFS USB drive? Connect a TV tuner? Connect to some strange nasty corporate VPN?
Yes, 90% of the usage is covered with a nice basic browser, some media player and maybe a voip client. But there's a lot in the 10% left and I don't have the patience to have it all ported to arm (not that it'll ever happen as the market is so divided).
You're thinking CRT, LCDs are in this respect very similar to e-ink, they change only when you need them to change (i.e. there's no refresh while showing static images). There is a flicker if the backlight is fluorescent (as opposed to the new LED backlight present in many new notebooks and netbooks) but you get the same flicker if you look at anything (event a book) under fluorescent light (which most people tolerate quite well).
You mean, you can't just buy a pre-paid SIM card in Italy (without showing ID), and use it for e.g. 3G or at least GPRS Internet access?
You can't buy a pre-paid SIM in Italy even WITH ID!!! You need (in theory at least) to register with the authorities and get first a "Codice Fiscale" and use that (plus probably ID, I'm not sure) to get a working SIM card. There are quite a few European countries with similar requirements (Germany, Switzerland, Spain since recently, etc).
Combine this with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_2006/24/EC and you'll get the 2010 version of 1984, "free world" version.
With Cuba I was referring to the obligation to register all your (foreign I believe) guests (irrespective of them using wifi or anything else) and provide the list to authorities. This is by law in both Italy and Cuba I believe.
As far as Internet goes in Cuba probably there are ways to get it anonymously as it is freakishly expensive and in consequence rare. If somebody somehow manages to start some kind of underground network with any kind of popularity (highly unlikely as computers are very expensive and rare) then they'll close the door. Until then probably nobody cares even if it's Cuba.
Can somebody with more knowledge comment on what are the significant differences between Belarus and Italy? In Italy they are obliged to scan your ID when you want internet access and also they have to log many things and be sure to be able to correlate them with you. Free anonymous internet ("normal" open wifi) is forbidden as far as I know.
As a side-note in Italy if you're a guest your host (at least the "organized" ones, like hotels and such) are obliged to take all your data and report you to some authority. I'm sure there are many countries with the same requirement but the first one that comes to mind is Cuba...
They are way beyond dicks and would go to unbelievable lengths not to provide you with the service you bought. They are proactively scanning your account and will shut you down (without ANY warning whatsoever) for any media file that look suspicious (that includes mp3's you recorded yourself, as in you're the artist).
At first when they started cracking down on people using disk space they just shut down everybody that was using "too much" in their opinion (they were specifically offering 1500 GBytes space and 15000 GB/month transfer at the time - now they are "unlimited"). No questions, nothing. When customers asked they said they modified the TOS and say something like "you're not allowed to store files (!)". They also modified the TOS to say they don't have to notify you when they modify the TOS (which they had accordingly to the old TOS). And they didn't notify anybody, just shut down accounts randomly.
If you use their whois privacy feature (default on and unmanageable via web interface) they will spam your whois with advertising. They also don't seem to get what this feature actually means and insist that you own the domain which can't be true in any legal and meaningful way (yes, you are the owner in a field in their database but legally and as far as ICANN is concerned they are the owner).
The last drop in the bucket is the hidden 50000 files limit. The limit is absolutely secret and you can find about it only when you are kicked out or warned that you are above. However they would still insist the space is unlimited but the number of files is limited. And that it is for your own protection because fsck would take far too long if you have too many files. And that if you don't like it you should go away.
The idea here is only to pay, not to use what you paid for.
To put things into perspective a default installation of gallery with default plugins will eat about half of those 50000 files you are allowed. And use probably a couple tens of megs of space (keep in mind they were offering 1500GB before going unlimited which should mean for any reasonable person more than 1500GB). Oh, and people hosting linux distributions are abusers as well.
Of course they would work more flexibly than a random free provider (you get shell access but you need to fax your ID!). But between random crashes and this "anybody using is abusing" policy you won't get too far.
Stay away from bluehost.
Correct, the point you're making here is that not all material is sold with an extra contract "on the side". We also know that most of these "licensing agreements" are absolutely non-enforceable. We have many ridiculous examples like "by opening the box you agree to these terms (written inside the box)", "you agree to whatever terms we chose to publish on our site (sometimes at an undisclosed precise location)" and so on.
But even if ALL material would be sold only with a legally binding bulletproof contract DRM still would be infringing on the rights of well mostly everybody else. The point here is that you can't sign off my rights. Society decided that it would be best for everybody if authors could for a finite time have a monopoly in distributing their works as they please. This is an incentive for authors to create. However the rest of society should be getting something in return and one of the things we should be getting in return is free access to that material after a finite amount of time. After the work is in public domain EVERYBODY has the right to it, except maybe people who explicitly gave away their rights by signing some extra licensing agreements (if those are found to be legal and binding). However if the material is protected by DRM (which is happening currently with a lot of stuff) the authors can just tie it to some device their customers own or to some authentication server (that might go away if they want). So most of the people wouldn't get what is legally theirs. If they want to go "would you steal a car" route we can as well. DRM is theft!.
I think the first problem is that while the government can (legally) do many things (from taking your goods to killing people) Amazon can't . After they sold you the stolen or fake or infringing or whatever goods they can't (legally) just reach to your computer/kindle and "correct" the mistake by helping themselves just because this is the way they designed the system.
Plus I'm sick and tired of this DRM double dipping. Copyright gives rights not only to authors but also to customers AND all other people. With DRM authors are giving themselves technologically rights they don't have legally. Copyright owners don't have the legal right to stop you from selling your music collection. They don't have the right to take back what they sold to you. They don't have the right to prevent you from playing your US DVD in Europe. They don't have the right to forbid you to take small parts to use them in a research work (fair use). They don't have the right to kill your collection because they don't think maintaining the authentication servers is profitable for them (yes, Yahoo, Microsoft, Wallmart I'm looking at you). And above all they don't have the right to keep their creations from falling into public domain (although they are very close to their desired "forever less one day" in extending the copyright terms).
Not that there's any chance in hell for this to happen but I vote to have any (legal) copyright protection removed for any material that has DRM. You, author, want to break the deal with customers and with general public by not giving them all the rights they have (via technological means). FINE. There's no deal then. No (legal) copyright protection for whatever DRMed crap you sell.
Like mostly everything else it probably DOESN'T run on OS X. And in case you missed the last 4 years or so we don't really have the distinction PC/Mac anymore (not to mention that Mac OS X runs on many "PCs" from netbooks to Macs - and so does Windows in all incarnations worth mentioning).
And why would that happen? Survival of the fittest for measuring systems? It doesn't work, no measuring system is THAT good to give you an advantage when everybody and everything else uses another one. If every law, textbook, label, measuring instrument, ordering system (and computer programs in general) are using the "bad" measuring system you would have no advantage and a lot of hassle if you start using the "good" measuring system. Metric system is better if mostly everybody is using it not if you and three neighbors are using it while everybody else uses something different.
If as you said you won't be using this application much this isn't for you, just plain and simple. However for MANY OTHER users the GPS application on their PDAs/phones/etc is the most expensive and used application. Most of them would consider 1/16 or 1/32 of the space on the device put to good use to have it there and don't mess with roaming charges, 3G coverage, having the right data plan next time you renew your contract and having Apple store and Tomtom giving you access to the content you paid next year. The last point is especially valid as already big names like Microsoft, Yahoo, Wallmart closed their digital stores leaving their customers in various states of limbo with their DRM files; I'm really surprised that people would advocate today "streaming" something you paid for versus just "having a copy" (especially with Amazon's Kindle 1984 "here's your copy, now we're taking it back" crap).
What's more if you have already internet access most of the time it means you save quite a bit of space on the phone (for example you don't need to keep a multi-GB offline wikipedia snapshot) and it is more likely to have more space available.
YES, TomTom had for a long while a problem (as in it doesn't work) with using multiple maps (probably still has). Basically unlike iGo for example you couldn't just drop whatever maps you want in a folder (usually one file per country/state in the US); instead you would get a huge map (let's say Western Europe) and still you wouldn't be able to combine it with other maps you already bought and use with the same program (like Eastern Europe for example). This was actually a big problem in 2005 (storage, CPU) but not so much now. Of course if Apple had left any way of extending the storage on the iPhone (*SD card, USB host, etc) we wouldn't be having this discussion but still for many users it's an acceptable compromise.
That will work fairly well until two years from now when they decide to use the IP you blacklisted for billing.comcast.com (or similar) and you lose half a day to figure out what happens.
Heh, I've never found NiMH AA's to be cheap either!
What is your definition of cheap? AFAIK the very best NiMh nowadays are Sanyo 2700 (for raw capacity). Probably Sanyo Enelooops are the best (or one of the best) for low self discharge. You can get them around 10$/10EUR (US/Europe) for a 4-pack - that would be usually from Amazon (or reliable ebay sellers) and includes usually shipping (if you order enough from Amazon for example, but that shouldn't be a problem).
Is 2.50$/EUR per NiMH AA so much of a problem?
Sure, if you need to pay retail to the only shop in some turist place you get shafted with a 50$ price for a couple NiMH and a basic charger. Have you looked how much it would cost there to replace your LiIon battery (not that they're likely to have the right one for your camera)? With AAs you have any time the option to just buy a couple alkys and be on your way immediately.
Apart from being insanely expensive you can't ride it legally in most places, neither on the sidewalk nor on the street. And, oh - did I mention expensive? Nah, it's not that, it's how it makes you look...