qBittorrent is certainly not a bad client but I find it lacking in a very critical security function - blocklists/IPFilters. Unlike many other open source clients like Transmission, Deluge, and (I believe, I haven't used it for awhile) KTorrent, qBT does NOT 1) Allow you to enter the URL of a blocklist file and 2) Automatically update from said blocklist at intervals. Instead, you have to have to download a proper file to a local machine and then manually hit the key to reload/update the blocklist filter. This is cumbersome and often defeats the purpose of blocklists, which are updated swiftly to ensure that anti-P2P organization address blocks are rejected. If anyone is up to the task and wishes to contribute to qBT I'd really suggest adding this functionality to bring it in line with the best of open source clients. Until then, I'll have to give qBittorrent a pass.
I should have been more specific - like OtherOS, this proposed path for OUYA will lock out/concurrent/ use of "normal" content and rooted/hacker/homebrew/custom content which is really what brought me to considering the device. This is why I made my Android example; the right choice was made by Google and other content providers with respect to how using custom ROMs software/rooting/repos/manual APKs etc... does not preclude you from accessing your Google Play purchased content, using "official" applications and other things. Nearly all other "consoles" will do so in the fruitless endeavor of trying to squash piracy and make content providers happy, ironically lowering the chance of future software purchase in the process.
I don't want to purchase a "console" that is built on a modified Android platform that is more locked down than Android itself! Having to boot into a special "open" mode , totally segregated from OUYA's "console" experience is absolutely the wrong path to take. Users will not frequently wish to boot back and forth, which will ultimately mean that they'll spend less time in the OUYA ecosystem chatting, playing games, or purchasing content.
I think the vast majority of those who came to OUYA thinking "finally, someone gets it. " will agree this isn't the way to go. Accept that piracy happens, remember the success of Google Play and others on Android despite the lack of user lockdown, and instead try to actually set out to make the open console you sold OUYA as. Anything less than allowing the normal gaming usage to persist concurrently with rooted/custom user content is a failure in this regard. Do not provide a "Free speech zone" and then tell us that is what you meant by "open", expecting to be lauded.
I pre-ordered an OUYA through Kickstarter (Limited Edition - though I admit I am a little frustrated that the "metal chocolate" LE version requires a $140 commitment and you only get one controller. Really, I think In addition, I expected the kickstarter consoles to be, as most kickstarter software/hardware projects are, significantly cheaper than "normal" preordering, but that isn't the case.), mostly because of its openness. In truth I need a new WDTV/XBMC device for another room so when I saw the OUYA's openness and partnership with XBMC, it seemed a great idea. They have a lot of rhetoric about giving access to the hardware specs, root it if you want and much more, but like a few others have posted here a few recent tweets basically smash that idea to bits.
It appears that the "core experience" is still going to be locked down. "Root it and do what you want" doesn't mean "Root it and put your own apps and software next to ours and stuff you purchase" it seems to mean "Root it and it will be like the former OtherOS PS3 function - nothing 'normal' will work anymore". Sorry, that isn't new. As I just said, the PS3 has already done that and other consoles, if you're willing to give up oh say.. playing games on them, they can be wonderful little boxes to run homebrew and hacked software, off line, to your content. What I wanted to invest in was a console that would allow you to hack around WITHOUT impeding the 'normal' use of the box. After all, even an Android phone or tablet, using rooted variant or even a custom ROM like CyanogenMod, won't preclude you from using all the standard features, including both sideloaded APKs and stuff downloaded from Google Play "officially"! If they've compromised this, then we're looking at a HUGE step back, more akin to that disastrous "OnLive" feces, especially if you need to be online to play official OUYA titles and if content is streamed instead of downloaded.
I hope that it is still early enough in the process that we the community can get in contact with OUYA and ensure that it isn't a DRMed wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. I'm beginning to fear for my pledge.
I'm a great fan of Mozilla's products; they're some of the last remaining open source, cross platform, standards-compliant offerings from a company that isn't building their tech with data mining everything I do, in mind. For those of us that don't want everything completely in "The Cloud" and have interest in privacy, there are few other email clients out there and none I've found better than Thunderbird (especially on Windows - Kmail and Evolution etc... can do well in Linux along with your old school pine/mutt etc...). It works, efficiently.
Thunderbird puts all my email accounts at my command from one central location. It also gives me the "full" compliment of Email features and the option to configure them as I choose. Its also relatively easy to use and setup even for novices; much like Firefox it has found the FOSS holy grail of providing accessibility and tutorials for beginners (see: If you want to set up a gmail, hotmail, or other "normal" webmail account it already knows many of the specifications thereof. It also can easily walk you through setting up a new account for say, your ISPs mail) without compromising features for advanced users. I'm not beholden to "The Cloud" - I can locally store my mail and info as I wish. Its plugin API provides for all sorts of things from international dictionaries to Enigmail to Lightning. For email alone, it has everything I need and quite a few features available if I need them in the future. I
However, I'd like to see it go further and be made into a full fledged Outlook replacement - this is NOT a huge jump. All the pieces are there and it will only take a little time and refinement to make it so. Thunderbird already supports contacts/addressbook/PIM features in open formats. A few more wizards and whatnot and it would likely take care of what most would need and easily at that. Perhaps a few others can suggest some PIM features, but I'm pretty much set...unless they did something like KeePass integration and whatnot for storing various keys and secure data. Calendaring/Tasks is the big one - Lightning/Sunbird is a great start, but they only need a few improvements for both local and remote calendars, but I think with CalDAV and other options we can have a nice open set of calendar formats and some wizarding to make their creation and management easier. Thunderbird could probably even interact with Exchange if necessary, now days. Likewise, Tasks/ToDo could be brought up to par. Finally, the big thing necessary is proper sync support to tie it all together. Multiple calendars with their own tasks, integrating PIM to allow contacts to interact with calendars and their tasks, syncing with various mobile devices etc... all of this stuff could really make Thunderbird a first-rate email/newsgroup/PIM client, able to stand up to Outlook and make most home users and even a great many businesses choose the lock-in free solution instead.
I don't want to see Mozilla let Thunderbird wither on the vine when, for a relatively modest investment of time and energy, it could be polished to a sparkling shine. Mozilla seems to be one of the last bastions of privacy-respecting software for best accessing the Internet on the user's terms AND is capable of bringing that paradigm even to novices with easy to use, efficient software and tons of useful features. When everyone else is creating tools where control is taken out of the user's hands, putting up their walled gardens and making "the cloud" look as attractive as possible, I want Mozilla working hard to improve their tools to show that moving forward doesn't mean giving up what's important. I'm glad that Thunderbird, FOSS as it is, will thankfully not "die", but I think its wrong for Mozilla to toss it onto the back burner when they should be polishing it to a shine. Thunderbird is Mozilla's second most popular and visible software with a wide userbase, and like Firefox it deserves attention necessary to put it atop competitors offerings, and keep it there!
I am currently running my main rig built on an Socket 1366 i7-920 (@ 3.8ghz), X58 chipset Rampage II Extreme, and 6gb of tri-channel RAM (Soon to be 12gb). For my investment, it seemed that Intel's "Enthusiast" socket 1366 made all the right choices. The tech was released early, prior to the mainstream socket 1156, was more advanced (tri-channel RAM and X58 allowed for tons of PCI-E lanes and CrossFireX/SLI without having to choose etc...), the X58 boards didn't have all the foulups necessitating multiple revisions and GEN2/GEN3 as in the mainstream, and the i7-920/930 both had similar specs to the 960 extreme edition save for clock speed and all were open to huge boosts when overclocking. Later, the hex-cores came about for those with the $999 to spend and incredible performance. This rig has kept me near the top performance-wise against the entire socket 1156, and 1155 lineup to date - competitive with Sandy Bridge and even Ivy so many years later.
I was actually looking forward to Sandy Bridge-E and the debut of Socket 2011 to be a second generation 1366 but sadly it seemed Intel flipped about-face with everything meaningful. 2011 based builds came out WAY after Sandy Bridge 1155, the processors were incredibly expensive starting at around $400 for a quad and a semi-decent hex was in the $700 range, X78 high end boards proved even more expensive than X58 at launch, leaving the platform a huge investment for the upgrade. Where was the Core i7-920 analog that had the cache, cores, and features of the extreme edition but was clocked lower (leaving plenty of room for OCing up to and beyond EE specs) for the $250-300 mark? Everything they seemed to do right with Nahalem and Socket 1366 as a whole, which has probably been the best platform investment I've made in years, they've scrubbed for what...? Does Intel just want me upgrading more frequently and paying more for the privilege? Do they not want to "hit it out of the park" anymore in favor of small base hits? It seems in bad taste, even more so if it is done because they aren't afraid of AMD's latest crop of CPUs so they figure they can choke out a few minor steps forward and ratchet the price skyward as there are no alternatives
Thus, I passed by SB-E which I hoped to be the next "big" upgrade and looked toward IB-E but things don't bode well. There seems to be little discussion of IB-E and what is mentioned suggests it wont' be launched until very late this year, leaving it to fall in right before Haswell. There are competing reports if Haswell-E will exist on Socket2011 and not require a new socket change as those who are enjoing SB/IB on 1155 will. I hear nothing about pricing, and if SB-E is any indication, it will be another expensive clusterfuck. If anyone as further information as to IB-E, Haswell's Enthusiast socket, or the future of the Enthusiast platform in general I'd appreciate it, but at the moment it doesn't seem promising. I truly hope that Piledriver can provide solid competition for Ivy Bridge in terms of both single/multithreaded performance at "enthusiast/power user" tasks like gaming, coding, content creation etc... as it would be nice to see AMD bring back the whole "5-10% less performance than Intel at a HUGE monetary savings for the processor and platform itself" that brought all my recent builds save my main rig onto Phenom II X4 or X6 BlackEditions, which serve faithfully.
Ivy Bridge being an incremental upgrade isn't necessarily a huge problem, but I worry more about overall pricing of Intel platforms, Socket 2011's IB-E still in question, Haswell,and the future of the Enthusiast socket/platform as a whole.
I don't see how this can be a true, honest viable metric to make decisions by. First is the major issue at hand - does "Good for the community" mean "Nice guy who generally is a cordial player" or does it mean the more marketing-centric decision of "Is likely to/already has demonstrated the ability to - buy lots of DLC, get lots of other people to buy DLC, refer people to the game in exchange for content, have a well known social media/blog presence, sell one's concept of privacy for a free hat, participate or be involved in the "esports" streamcasting world, get lots of people to vote for them and/or a particular game-related bit of info etc..."?
Despite the fact we usually consider Valve a "good guy", this is a serious issue and I am unwilling to give anyone a free pass when it comes to a monetization scheme in gaming these days. A perfectly affable player who is friendly to newbies, plays well with others, and generally brightens the server but only plays occasionally for shorter bursts of time is far too easy to write off instead of picking the more financially-direct rewarding option. Someone who's a jerk but is worth it to advertisers or spends a lot of money and time on the game is more valuable than X number of casual friendly players. There are all sorts of ways to bend "Its good for the community" to suit your worldview if you wish to justify it. MOBA type games like DOTA have basically proven an extreme example of this - they all pretty much subsist nearly entirely on "serious" gamers who are outright cuntbaskets in their interactions with others; verbal insults at the slightest wrong move is par for the course and there is to date little if anything developers or communities choose to do to change this. Rather, it is embraced because to eliminate these abrasive players is to cut their revenue stream immensely at this point. The very same attitudes pervade the competitive fighting game scene and "E-Sports" play as a whole. "Good for the community" or "likable to play with" doesn't have to mean an affable, respectful person and it is far too easy to overlook all but the most egregious behavior so long as the perpetrator provides a revenue stream.
Secondly, even if it is implemented in an idyllic manner, there is a huge potential for corruption innate in the system because it is either 1) Putting decisions in the hands of fellow players and/or 2) provides known benchmarks and milestones that can then be purposefully achieved/exploited while. "Likable to play with" is completely subjective. Some would rather a top notch player on their team who is a trash-talking, abrasive asshole than a less skilled but friendly player because for them winning makes for a more enjoyable play session regardless of their teammate's attitude. For others, its the reverse. If I piss off someone with enough guild/clan/messageboard/socialnetwork friends and time on their hands, I may be down-voted to oblivion needlessly. If I have a virtual "army" of my own, I can convince them to up-vote myself, which also renders anyone legitimately down-voting me nearly moot as I have to many upvotes to cancel them out, providing a certain amount of buffer. Bribery and threats will be commonplace, as will the formation of webs and networks of players for the purpose of protection, aggression, or just to game the system. If fellow players are at all involved in someone's status, there is little potential for it to work well. If the "achievements" necessary to attain lower priced games and other bonus content are made public, then anyone with the time an inclination will work to game the system. This may end up harming the very community they were put in place to protect. For instance, players may keep more to private servers and well known friends, because the wildcard notion of playing with others could jeopardize their status, which leads to less of an overall community but instead forms tribal groups who hold dominion over small islands.
I cannot see any good coming from such a system as either a perversion of
Anyone interested, I urge you to take a look at and pick up "Shatter! ( www.shattergame.com ) and ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ ) for more info! It takes the pong/breakout game to one of its more in-depth levels I've seen to date. There are horizontal, vertical, and circular playing fields, multi-depth "stage progressions" that take you from the outer shell of a boss to its inner core, weapons and powerups, physics elements (ie destroy an anchor block and all the blocks connected to it will "fall", and you both have a "pull" and "push" ability that can draw in the ball, powerups, and dangerous blocks alike...or push them out to change the impact!), co-op multiplayer modes and mor! I know it has come to critical acclaim with some indie-styled awards, but I don't know if it is "pong-enough" for this, as it tends more towards the "breakout - single player vision" than the one-on-one table tennis "VS pong". Still, an excellent example in the genre.
For a retro throwback, I urge you to checkout "Wizorb" ( http://www.wizorb.com/ ) which approximates a later-generation NES title graphically, and mixes breakout style play with RPG elements as well! It even has native Linux clients available which you can pick up direct or from Desura (For those who don't know, Desura is an open digital distribution system that favors mods, indie, and alpha titles but also supports AAA games of course. They have a native Linux client, but of course not all games sold on the platform have native linux support, but many do)
One of the best, recent pong/breakout/arkanoid style games I've seen as of recently is just as you describe - Shatter. www.shattergame.com and http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ for more info. It has many levels that spherical/circular in design, sometimes in different "stages" - stage one is against the "front hex" , stage 2 is the "back hex" stage 3 is inside the sphere against the "second-tier front hex and then third-tier front hex" followed by your ship going deeper inside until fighting the "core" in a boss fight.
If we can get by the neckbeard virgin jokes, its actually a good idea for them to specifically target anime-watching (especially the fansub community) in their notes. For years, there has been the complaint that, compared to such offerings as Media Player Classic Home Cinema, especially with lots of external filters from something like the Combined Community Codec Pack, VLC was inferior. Subtitles were not rendered as aesthetically pleasingly, image quality may have suffered, and other factors made VLC a second player choice despite its internal filters and easy accessibility.
The anime fansub community has pioneered the usage of initially arcane formats, expecting exacting quality and often utilizing features that would be an afterthought for most other media. Matroska container formats,H.264/ X264 HD video, Ogg Theora/OGM, multi-channel AAC/OGG/ audio, multiple streams of the aforementioned plus multiple softcoded subtitle options, etc.. showed up prominently in anime fansub encodes long before the general population ever saw them. Some would say their pioneering encoding even helped drive pirate rips of SD and HD content out of old-fashioned AVI containers for everything, besides being a huge boon to localization in any form as these advances helped to move from single language audio and subtitle options hardcoded (or hand-selected-and-renamed-manual-subs) to simple container formats with multiple options. Today, we're seeing many fansub release groups offering 1080p high bitrate MKV with lossless FLAC audio channels and 10-bit color pallets...even for porn!
Anime fansubs/localization has been a quiet but important force in driving online video quality from the days of grainy, option-free rips to a single high-bitrate HD file with several lossless audio channels and subtitles for 8 languages available, often using open specifications and open source codecs to do so. VLC setting the bar for these enthusiasts who really move the media forward is certainly commendable in my opinion, compared to saying "Well, if it runs content purchased off iTunes, its good enough!".
As others have stated, its very easy to see the writing on the wall. Getting your same level of insurance coverage for the same inflation-adjusted price is going to be impossible once the dam has broken and these tracking devices flood onto the market. The "discount" is simply an avoidance of penalty for those that are willing to capitulate to be monitored everywhere they drive. As technology marches on and it has become financially and technically possible for basically monitor everyone as they drive, we have a responsibility that, just like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/PCIP, we make our objection known to make it a bigger pain in the ass for invasive implementation like this. Otherwise, the next step is the Demolition Man / Fifth Element "One Point Has Been Deducted From Your License" or remote speed limiting/deactivation on behalf of next-gen devices that have become truly mandatory after industry-led "studies" proving their effectiveness. Lets not forget that, aside from groovy middle eastern music, "He's got a scan blocker. Must be a criminal. Blast him!" is how future "peace officers" will likely judge those who don't wish to be tracked every second as they drive.
For the past half-century or so driver's insurance has been computed based upon a handful of metrics (some, outdated or misplaced correlation) but mostly by the actual events that occur regarding an account holder. If you wrap your car around a tree frequently because you're drunk, your insurance goes up. That is how it should be. With all the financial services (ie insurance) and corporate money invested in this catastrophe, you can guarantee there's going to be something that kicks your insurance up a few bucks because of some fallacious study done by GoodYear that proves that tire wear equals more accidents. Every part of the automobile is now becoming computerized or at least computer-monitored, and each of those companies is going to want to "prove" that these devices should monitor for things that mean more auto hardware replacements. Don't have the high-end GoodYears with computerized monitoring? Up go your insurance rates. Don't change them when the completely spurious requirements tell you its a "safety" issue to do so? (ie. Tire wear parameters set well in advance of any problems that ultimately will require you to replace your tires 1.5 to twice as fast as you do now). You're a "bad driver for not maintaining your auto" and your rates go through the roof. Soon automobiles will be just very expensive game consoles, where everything within is really owned by someone else and subject to their rules, you just have the "privilege" of paying for them, and this insurance scam is just part of the racket.
This needs to be cut off at the knee-level before the tide can rise any higher. Lets be honest here, we have a small window of opportunity because the majority of the population at this point isn't going to be outraged about this - the frog is being boiled too slowly - so those in the know of the current ills and most likely future implications of this path need to start making a stink about it now. Call your insurance company and ask if they have any plans to implement a plan like this. If they do, explain your displeasure in a mature manner and ask to be escalated up the chain until you can speak to someone who is normally insulated from the displeasure of the policy holders. If you can switch away from a company that has this kind of monitoring to a company that doesn't (and doesn't have it on the table at the moment), tell them you switched specifically because they respect your privacy. For decades insurance has been calculated based on a variety of actual payouts, without the need to track every time you make a hasty turn will no ill effect. Things are changing now because insurance companies figure they can justify overall rate hikes and bigger profits with this spurious policy and most drivers are willing to bend over and give up their privacy just to maintain similar rates. We must show them this is not a profitable course of action!
Short answer: Yes, consoles should be upgradeable. Why? Because I envision a next generation where all games are built to be played standards-compliant PCs. Much like the dedicated Brother Word Processor in my closet, the day of the game console should be at an end because we have a better option. We no longer need to make a single-purpose piece of hardware in order to have an affordable gaming machine. In truth, we have the technology to provide more convergence devices than ever...so why are we going backward?
Money and control. Would you like to have the choice of playing your PS3/X360 titles with online services that don't mind if you have a ton of game images on your hard drive, or the excellent MultiMan or XBMC software for your media? Well, tough shit. Despite the fact you payed between $300-600 for that lump of plastic in your living room, everything you do on it is controlled by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. You don't have to option to play any game you want on an alternative to XLive, so you have to either play by Microsoft's rules, or simply not play online. Why do you have to have the disc in the bloody tray if you install the thing to the HDD (Which, costs more per gigabyte than any "normal" HDD around)? Because Microsoft says so. Would you rather not see ads when you're paying yearly for XboxLive? Tough shit, MS knows you're not leaving because you have nowhere else to play online instead! Your games are basically being held hostage because they exist on these pieces of hardware that by the "benevolence" of their creators, you're given the opportunity to spend money on. So long as you do exactly what they say, pay up and shut up, you may get to play your game...what's left of it after the mandatory DLC-ripping occurs, that is... but do something they don't like and prepare to be hardware-level banned from the only network said hardware is able to work with. Its bloody extortion at this point. Console gaming is becoming more and more expensive, and even convergence devices are attempting to be locked down into "consolized" walled gardens to ensure that user experience and control are always second to hardware and software developer control.
That vast majority of so-called console games are developed on PCs and then "ported" to consoles, using varying SDKs. Sure, there are some easy tricks that you can use if you're absolutely sure you only need to support a very limited set of hardware, but lets be honest now the entire PC software market has developed everything from gaming to speed-trading software that is made to run on PCs that have varying hardware. There's nothing wrong with a handful of specifications on the box; PC gamers and developers haven't lamented this fact for years. If you want to make a game that requires a WiiRemote w/MotionPlus kit for the PC, then do so. Same with a DualShock 3 or X360 Controller - put the required or suggested controller on the bloody box and let us run Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at 1080p if our hardware can handle it. I'd love to see a day when there weren't any "hardware exclusives", no $10 extra fee passed on to the customer for the privilege of playing said titles on a locked down pseudo-PC, and a given game wouldn't be a binary "Yes if you have console X No if you don't" affair.
The entire gaming experience would be much better if the next generation of games were simply programmed for normal PCs, ideally using technology easily portable so that the most hardware and software could be taken into account, especially OS-independent, FOSS technology. Everyone knows that when it comes to multi-platform titles today, the PC version is always the best one (unless its a horrible port) in terms of user access, cost, and modification. Why stay shackled to an antiquated system where a near unrelated entity has full control of the hardware and makes tons of demands to control and enrich themselves from both software developers and users, as opposed to the free and open game platforms we call PCs?
Spectrum does have its limits, but it is not correct to apply true scarcity models toward as you would something like oil. EMS is not a commodity. One hundred years ago, the amount of the spectrum that was useful to transmit data was very limited. Today, we've progressed a long way from the first radios. We're always figuring out how to get more out of the spectrum we have, and nowhere near all of it is currently "used" at the moment. Remember "HD Radio" - adding additional channels in-between current FM channels? It is unlikely we'll ever reach "peak" spectrum. In addition, EMS is extremely easy to repurpose. One of the big issues recently is what to do with the former analog TV broadcast spectrum frequencies. If you have a good authoritative govt (yes, it has to be government or else the people that profit from the status quo will do everything in their power to prevent buggy whips from going out of style. Its bad enough now that business tries to influence government to do this, but if it was only up to business there would be nobody looking out for the good of the public as that is just not profitable to make an expensive change while you're currently soaking up the finances) office that says "Hey, after X date Y spectrum will no longer be used for Q, since we've been pretty much winding down Q for awhile. We'll have some research time, and then decide of R or S would be a better use of Y spectrum". There's no complex "recycling" that results in some spectrum being destroyed in the process, you simply repurpose .
So spectrum doesn't have to be handled in the one-size-fits-all way that business wants to turn everything into a commodity to be traded at will. However, if it was, there are still way better ways to make money from public resources and ensure said resources profit actually is returned to the public, something that rarely if ever happens at current. I urge you to think outside the box a bit, as it appears you're encumbering yourself with what people who want to profit from selling everything and anything on the market as a private resource, have told us is a "rule", when in truth its simply an oft-repeated falsehood that makes the few rich at the cost of the many.
The fact that it has been managed poorly, often intentionally so over the past decade by those who WANT anything related to government or regulation to fail (ie. see: Postal service being cut-loose in terms of funding and expected to make it as a "business" while still acting under Congressional control as if they were the Department of the Post Office and thus making decisions that don't make money. That was a decision engineered specifically to make the efficient Post Office into something that private couriers could compete with, after much UPS/FedEx whingeing and whining.).
The FCC was created as a regulatory oversight for communications. It should do that job well. The fact that it isn't is a fault of a number of decisions meant to make it appear chaotic, inefficient, and unhelpful so that everyone with a private industry solution can say "Oh we can't trust that GUBBERMINT AGENCY look at how bad they are. Look, why don't you push some taxpayer money at my/my friend's/my constituent's business to clean up the mess that government inevitably makes!". I'm not saying they're perfect, but if they were reformed into the agency they were designed to be without private industry money and lobby interference buying officials, they'd easily be able to execute their mission as intended.
Just because something is public owned doesn't mean its unregulated, as I noted in my original post. As others have posted, you simply make sure there are standards. GSM works really well on a handful of frequencies for instance, and even better in European and Asian nations where governments get involved. If we didn't have companies dicking around trying to monopolize a given band within the spectrum , we could easily have even more efficient use. Much of the mobile telephone communication around the world happens exclusively on a handful of frequencies (GSM) and there are no problems with "sharing" without having some private entity bitching that only THEY should be able to use the 900mhz band and won't be able to do their job otherwise - that's a USA-style greed invented issue.
Also, applying these principles to hardware involved in broadcasting is another huge benefit we don't enjoy here in the USA. Verizon owns all the CDMA towers and ATT owns nearly all the GSM towers, allowing them to restrict access to anyone else; T-mo had to actually start putting up their OWN towers. Yes, both ATT and Verizon capitulated slightly to allow licensing access, but only to avoid anti-monopolistic laws that generally allow them to continue doing exactly what they're doing - high prices, little choice. These companies, despite the fact they are hugely subsidized with taxpayer dollars to put up the infrastructure, retain control. This hurts competition and public value. In nations where communications and information infrastructure is subsidized in a way that We The People actually own the towers (or the copper, or the fiber etc..) no matter who was contracted to build them, prices are lower, there are more standards, and performance is off the charts.
Nearly the entire world enjoys cheaper mobile communication, largely because of strong government regulations to ensure that infrastructure benefits those taxpayers that subsidized it, standards are adhered to, and it even opens the field for competition because new players know that they won't have to license their own spectrum, build hardware for use on said spectrum, or build their own towers/broadcasting equipment that is proprietary - they can simply come in and compete without those kinds of barriers to entry. Much like how the Interstate Highway System allowed America to rise out of the dark ages of unpaved, unmetered, halfassed toll and back roads, by providing a unified, high-"bandwidth" quality system, that is implemented everywhere not just where it was profitable to do so, doing the same for information/communication infrastructure will enable us to take a big leap forward.
Information Infrastructure is just as important as roads and dams; we've seen the problems of deregulation and putting our critical infrastructure in the hands of private interests who only do what is profitable at the moment. Lets learn from the past and do better; there's already a portion of the world proving the success so its not even broaching new territory so much as it is playing catch up with the rest of the first world. However, we can't do that unless we give up the fear of the word "public" and the idea that private industry and finance are the panacea for everything - in most cases unless they're properly regulated with a watchful, empowered entity, they're actually the plague instead.
The FCC absolutely needs to have the regulative authority to say "You can't bid on this without having the money to pay for it, being willing to actually develop on it instead of just sitting on your ass and holding it to lock down competitors until you feel threatened, being willing to roll out development on your new spectrum in rural areas and you have to either keep prices below X or subsidize plans for low-income Americans", but that's at a bare minimum. This bill basically allows anyone who buys spectrum rights to do well... whatever they want with it, even if its to the detriment of everyone save for their own business. Even worse, it prevents the FCC from giving away rights to unlicensed spectrum - Hundt talked about how Wi-Fi would never have come to pass if this bill was in place years ago. I don't want every single possible frequency needlessly licensed to someone with the money to buy it. However, I disagree when it comes to what he says about oligopolistic practices; unless you force fragmentation to a point that is foolish, OR do the right thing and make unlicensed (WiFi, Bluetooth etc..) spectrum and/or public-held "free" spectrum capable of the kind of performance, you'll run into a de-facto oligopoly as the one we have now in telecom/mobile data.
However, I feel the answer to this issue is relatively simple - stop spectrum auctions and in truth remove private ownership of spectrum entirely. The FCC is an absolutely necessary government function. We need someone to say "Look, these bands are for military communication, these are for emergency services, and these can be used for broadcasting music etc.... if everyone sticks to the frequency as assigned, we won't have any problem. Fuck it up and start playing country music over the missile telemetry channel and we're going to crack some skulls, fine your ass, and take away your right to broadcast". Leaving it up to private sector greed doesn't work, just like with any other decision it becomes "He who has the most money, wins". Why are we allowing parts of the spectrum to be licensed exclusively for private use? Why not just make all spectrum public? Note, this does not mean "unregulated", but it does mean that we'd have a lot better outcome then trying to let a corrupt market decide. There is absolutely no benefit to auctions for exclusivity in the private sector. In truth, the private sector will fare better by having public access to various frequencies. Want to make the next generation long-distance WiMax-like technology? Oh, crap...well, Google bought up all the rights to the spectrum that you thought would work for you. Having the FFC say "All that analogTV open space is now available for this sort of communication usage" means that anyone who wants to build something to work on said frequency is allowed to do so. It also means that your equipment won't be totally useless if Goog-Fi is removed from "beta" because of issues, and thus anyone who built any devices (especially those paying Google for the privilege) is SOL because their hardware only works on frequencies that belong to Google for the next 20 years. Public control and access of the electromagnetic spectrum is good for the public and the benevolent private sector.
A bill such as this is certainly an insult to the public and furthers the "Money means power" agenda of those who can't get enough of either. However, we shouldn't just fight to return things to the status quo, but rather return control of the spectrum to the public good.
I've read a lot of discussion about getting off this rock before things that will happen millions of years in the future. My concerns are a lot more immediate, lest we won't be here to worry about solar expansion, heat death, or a world-ending collision. Not to mention we're just learning about quantum physics (Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell for instance, funneled his experience into funding and promoting lots of research into quantum physics and noetic science) and realizing that there's a whole lot more to the laws of the universe than we've thought. I'm undoubtedly for manned space exploration and I believe that doing so will provide nigh-unlimited benefit to our terrestrial population. Think of many of the scientific advances that have come from our short space program thus far, encumbered by inefficiency and cut budgets, profit motive always getting in the way. Hell, look over to the former Soviet program and look at all the scientific research that came out of there, some of which was squashed later for various political reasons.
The greatest enemies we have to manned space exploration and the benefits it could confer upon humanity, are greed and shortsightedness. Even during the height of US and Soviet space programs, there were times when someone forgot to double check, pushed something ahead because they wanted X to happen before Y or on Z date, etc..and it led to brave, highly trained men and women dying. There are heartbreaking stories that have come out of Cosmonaut corps (including a close friend of Yuri Gagarin) where you can hear someone as they realize they're about to suffocate or burn to death on reentry, cursing those who ignored engineering reports because they wanted the flight to happen on an anniversary of a Russian victory for morale reasons. We had our own share of issues, though not nearly as many (Challenger Explosion could have been prevented; there was ample evidence of failure of O-rings based on temperature and either the design could have been updated and the O-rings replaced or the mission could have been called off - truthfully both should have happened - until a better temp profile was available in a later launch window. Because of previous delays and the Shuttle program being ordered to basically launch as much as possible, as fast as possible or lose funding, those Astronauts died).
Greed interceded here even when these programs were the "darling" of their nations, under relatively strict controls and had disastrous effects, so I shutter to think what would happen if, as some suggest, space exploration became a venture exclusively of private industry. You want BP refining the fuel for your ship with their paid-off safety inspectors? Comfortable with Halliburton enough that you stake your life on them using the money for the project on buying the right titanium alloy, instead of a cheaper one and using the rest of the money for hookers and cocaine? When you're seated on a giant explosive would you not at all be worried that the launch date was set before the end of the fiscal year so that stock prices could rise from your successful launch? On the other side, could you spend years investing your time and energy into engineering the next big push into manned spaceflight (with all of your research retained and owned exclusively by Lockheed Martin Space Ventures) only to find that you're out of a job and your Miracle Material (that you believe could revolutionize medical nanotechnology) will have its schematic relegated to a basement server somewhere never to see the light of day in spaceflight or other uses, all because a minor, totally unseen and easily fixable exhaust problem meant people sold LMSV stock and thus "confidence" was down, so the board decided to scrap everything associated with the mission and start from scratch, causing their stock to rebound with the "new product" they were now backing; meanwhile, actual space flight and associated progress never happens. This cycle repeats for quite a few years and LMSV has an
So, Elop, MS's installed "Service Pack" for Nokia is trying to deflect blame for their ho-hum OS onto someone else? Nothing new. I've only used Windows Phone in demo settings and I've been underwhelmed enough; its trying to be iOS in terms of "experience" and popularity but doesn't want to totally let go of the customization of Android. It seems like everything Windows Phone is doing, someone else is doing better unless you're just totally enamored with Microsoft products. I can see when Windows 8 gets here there will be a lot more convergence between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
That said, I'm as pissed as any here about MS cash infusion and installed puppet diverting or just plain firing so many good Linux and QT developers while calling for an end to Maemo and MeeGo development. My old N900 here sits beside me and it probably doesn't have much life left. When I purchased it, I was looking forward to Harmattan and MeeGo to be installed upon it, followed by my next phone being one of a handful of high-end MeeGo devices. Maemo5 was to be the last "Geeks Only" OS, and that Harmattan/MeeGo would break triumphantly into the public view, with the kind of polish, UI and features that the iOS user could love, without compromising the Linux-loving hacker from adding his favorite repositories and apt-getting what was needed, or freely developing software for the thing without having to beg for a dev kit and agree to capitulate to giving censor rights to a major corporation. From what we see regarding the N9, this was certainly on target - it doesn't surprise me that people are going out of their way to find one despite Nokia's attempt to hide them in the mud, so to speak. Now, imagine if this happened a few years back as it would have done so without MS meddling in Nokia's affairs, and I'm guessing that MeeGo (7 or 8) by now could easily be one of the major, well known mobile operating systems, where it is just second nature to develop your app for iOS, Android, and MeeGo. I have to admit that the lack of "normal" apps affected me with the N900 - when MMORPGs made their mobile authenticators, they didn't consider porting them to Maemo platforms. However, it was looking that MeeGo would have no problem running Android applications, especially at the beginning of its presence before it was popular enough for big-name application developers to add MeeGo to its list of must-launch-upon mobile OSes. Especially considering that there were already working variants of Alien Dalvik that allowed you to run Android apps on a Maemo/MeeGo phone as close to native as they run on their their own, MeeGo could likely be one of the dominant OSes around.
Microsoft's cash flow gives them the ability to basically throw money at a sinking ship if it is in their best interest to do so to sink other, more vulnerable ships. They can afford to subsidize every Windows Phone sold if it means killing MeeGo and putting the world's biggest phone manufacturer under their thumb while, (as they may have planned) trying to get Windows Phones to market cheaper than everyone else. Unfortunately, people just aren't excited enough about Windows Phone which seems to be "meh" in every way so they're not taking the bait. While I'll never buy a Windows Phone just because of what they did to MeeGo, they're finding that even Joe Mobile doesn't want their product. I'm guessing that in time, if they can't manage to bring out some killer new feature with Win8 and WinPhone8 on the magnitude of "Your Phone is now an Xbox360 ! Install to disk on your home console and its uploaded to the Live Cloud, so you can play on your Windows Phone 8! Supports built in connections for 4 X360 controllers and voice with or without headset! Phone camera is Kinect-compliant on every WinPhone 8! Want to play on the big screen? Just use the included HDMI cable! All for free with your XLive subscription!", they'll probably fade into the ether as Windows Mobile did; likely even faster because they don't have an entrenched PDA and business phone community.
I think it is important to remember not to hold Occupy and other protest movements to differing standards in this regard, than other more conventional political action groups. The vast majority of them, especially on the national level, do not have a unified agreement on the "issue" itself, much less a singular entity calling for singular action for a singular change.
Take something as acute as those who are anti-abortion - one may think, especially from the "outside" pro-choice perspective that they have a unified front of people who just assert to "make abortion illegal", but that is incorrect. There are a variety of anti-abortion groups who have varying belief systems (most religiously focused, but some are not and see it as a secular issue of humanity), views on the issue (some believe only late-term abortions should be outright banned, others believe that all abortions should be banned save for when it would threaten the mother's life and/or resulted from rape or incest, still others find it acceptable only if the fetus was afflicted with birth defects that would leave it a short life of pain outside the womb if any, and finally there are those that oppose it entirely), and finally methods of bringing about change (Some call of legislative bans at various levels of government, others wish to overturn Roe v Wade through a series of Supreme Court decisions, others wish to sway the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to expel abortion performing physicians , while still others want to petition hospitals to refuse the use of their facilities for abortions and deny privileges to physicians who perform etc....).
Be wary; those who call for or oppose a strong united front are practicing a very sly form of propaganda because of its effectiveness at staying under the radar. When Fox News and AM radio personalities state that "Godless communist liberals want to make it illegal for your children to believe in god and turn your children into flaming homosexuals", they're trying to create fear by suggesting there's a nearly unassailable wall of empowered, collective "evil" out to get their target market. This entirely fake supposed assemblage of gay men in red chaps and Karl Marx jock straps who meet every week to drink cosmopolitans and congratulate each other on how many good, Christian boys they've turned into cock-loving slaves of Lenin can only be opposed by all "Real Americans" working together to oppose them with their own "united front" - thus, we see the rise of the Tea Party - where subscribing to the CORRECT singular, ultra-extreme ideology is seen as a strength; in truth, the only strength possible to stop the faux, constructed ideology "at any cost". Its horrible how well this technique works on certain demographics.
That said, the Occupy movements do have a variety of actionable plans for change and attainable goals in mind. This is not a movement that just generically wants "things to get better", but can identify many of the broken pieces of the current machine and plan to fix them. Take October2011.org, which is one of the pages that was started in conjunction with a "push" of the movement into Washington DC. If you head to the "Issues" page, a single click away from the homepage, you'll see the following, which easily proves all the "This movement has no message and doesn't know what they want" crap that corporate media blathered on about during their "fair and balanced" news coverage,...
" 1. Corporatism– firmly establish that money is not speech, corporations are not people, only people have Constitutional rights, end corporate influence over the political process, protect people and the environment from damage by corporations.
2. Wars and Militarism – end wars and occupations, end private for-profit military contractors, reduce the national security state and end the weapons export industry. War crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace must be addressed and those responsible
Comments like this are damaging to the very ability to do as you say. You start off with a general statement that is thoughtful and on the surface, seems to be correct, but go on to repeat an oft-cited untruth which, now with the audience at a state of agreement, skews their view just enough to disparage the very people actually acting in the manner you suggest. The most intellectual of information control campaigns work just this way.
I don't know where people are getting the idea that the Occupy movements have no solutions for the problems they protest against. From the very start, alternate plans have been posed to alter the course of the ship of State away from such dangerous waters. I cannot speak for every encampment of the movement, but in Washington DC at Freedom Plaza I've personally witnessed daily workshops, operating in the truest form of democracy, giving everyone a chance to speak and add their two cents to exactly how to solve the issues at hand and most important combat the disinformation that the other side spreads like wildfire. I've seen third-generation farmers and scientists who worked for the USDA at one time stand together, explaining the damage of corporate agriculture and Monsanto-controlled misinformation that has blighted the land and how simple changes to organic farming standards would impact everything from the dangerous level of pharmaceutical runoff and nitrates in the water supply, to the obesity epidemic. I've seen the rarest of breeds, ethical investment bankers explaining the problems with the system and citing the regulations needed to even begin to fix it, as well as combating the idea that we need to be umbilically tethered to finance as it stands to enjoy modern economics. I've seen regular people speaking about what they know, offering many solutions up for discussion and improvement, for the greater good. These ideas manifest into actions; phone banks that jammed the Capital switchboard, marches to bring the solutions right to those who can, in our current system make changes, and much more. Of course, all of which have been played down in the media and actively in some cases obstructed (pepper spraying 80 year old women really make the point), from their action, yet those involved do not falter. Go to something like October2011.org and read about what is being done, every day.
It is purely by corporate media manipulation and shills bought by the money from their ill-gotten gains that even suggest these people offer only objection with no realistic solutions. The very idea illustrates the degree of control those in power have a the moment and the extent of the issues we face. They don't want the average American to get off his ass, wake up, and start listening. They don't want him walking down to his local movement and getting involved. They don't just want him eating his processed gunk, exhausted from his increasingly low-paying jobs with longer hours, accessing the passive entertainment they provide, too tired to do anything else, they want him to love them and thank them for the privilege, defending his own subjugation at any cost. Long ago a handful of of the smartest and most unethical figured out that they didn't have to hide or curtail their dealings, if they could only control perception significant to ensure that the majority would be too apathetic, cynical, and empty-headed from suckling at the poison teat of their particular form of capitalism, to want to do anything of the issues right in front of their face.
The Occupy movement represents the antithesis of this corporate and finance-controlled state and thus, they work harder than ever to spread misinformation so that people will actively hate, or at least discourage, those who stand the best chance of liberating them. One day every reader here may find himself forced to choose between supporting his liberation or his enslavement; look to the Arab world over the past year and think that it may not be unrealistic to find that if those pressing for their freedom and a
I'm seeing a disappointing amount of "Anonymous is giving them reasons to support SOPA/PIPA/ACTA!"; that's the exact sort of spin that typical corporate-controlled media puts on these situations while trying to appear as if they're not horribly biased to begin with. Its the same sort of despicable falsehood that is spewed in attempting to denigrate the Occupy protests The majority of Anonymous most publicized actions involve either 1) Leaks of confidential information regarding government corruption, including proof of private industry meddling and pulling the strings and 2) DDoS attacks. SOPA/PIPA/ACTA are constantly championed by their proponents as a way to stop copyright infringement, not to have blanket approval to censor at will and mark anyone with a dissenting opinion as a "cyber-criminal". If anyone in an official capacity seems to suggest that the actions of Anonymous are proof of why we need SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, they're exposing their own corrupt agenda!
Anonymous has over the years, through various "official" campaigns, done a lot of good for the Internet and global information at large. The very nature of Anon means that sometimes there will be those that use its mantle to shield their wretched dealings, but this is a minority. Also, specifically on the nature of DDoS attacks, I expect MUCH better of slashdot who should understand their composition and what they're designed to accomplish. Organized DDoS, when all participants are willing, is pretty much an online sit-in or picket-line. These forms of protest are designed to call attention to their grievance by impeding the normal functionality of the offending party. Yes, this can effect business. Yes this can make someone's day less convenient. However, that is the point! People are willing to give up their day and in some cases risk arrest to bring attention to the issue at hand. Its unfortunate that people have become so apathetic today that watching people "throw their bodies on the proverbial gears" barely causes most Americans (shall I say Westerners? Unsure...) to look up, or worst exclaim "How dare they interfere with the machine! The nerve of them being crushed to death to slow the thing down!" I personally feel that, in most circumstances this should not be an illegal action and if it is, it should be a minimal penalty civil infraction. Even today however, in most cases (with the exception of the far-too-frequent corrupt police officer crying "resisting arrest" and employing everything short of intentional deadly force to protesters) it is a misdemeanor or less where those arrested often have charges dropped or a small fine, unlikely to even require a day in court.
Why should this be any different if someone uses a computer? A physical-world denial of service is considered to all but right-wing nutjobs to be worthy of minor punishment, but people try to justify decades-long "cyber-crime" sentences simply because of their own ignorance of technology. A DDoS enacted on a site specifically for reasons of protest is no different and I expect Slashdot users to know better and thus refuse to propagate the erroneous ideal that its a "big scary computer thing that lets hackers steal all your medical records and sell pictures of your child to pedophiles" that corporate-controlled media and technophobic fearmongers push.
The key difference between this UbuntuTV box as I describe it is the power and featureset of Ubuntu Linux behind it, which means that it isn't simply beholden to content providers through normal means. It doesn't have to rely on a sole "app store" or be designed with only processing content from iTunes in mind. As it would have a "real" browser and flash/HTML5/OggTheora/Moonlight etc... it could access all the content streams that are available online; it wouldn't just have to sit around and necessarily wait for whomever to package a streamer app. Users could easily bring their own media from their collection to be played on this UbuntuTV box - BluRay, DVD and CD rips, downloaded content, recorded TV (and, capable of recording TV with some of the features I cited above). On an iDevice and other prefabs its troublesome to proxy into the BBC iPlayer from certain regions, or watch American online streams, but since UbuntuTV would be able to easily use the same workarounds that you do on your PC now, users would have no problem doing so.
The people that provide the content want complete control, but they're willing to capitulate if they smell money - see Netflix's expansion. UbuntuTV Box would have a featureset that many people would use and enjoy, even if the unlikely event of all the mainstream blocking was to occur. Considering it a new UI and "ready-made" feature-package of Ubuntu Linux for a certain task - in this case media consumption - and built on hardware that "just works" in the case of the Box, it is as flexible as any other Ubuntu distribution. Easy for the novice, wide open for the enthusiast. If many people started buying and using UbuntuTV Boxes or loading it on their own HTPCs, then the content providers would, just like with Popcorn Hour and WDTV, want a piece of that pie. It would not be financially viable for them to impede the growth of the platform and in truth the would hitch their wagon just as they have in the past, with greenlighting Hulu, NetFlix, Boxee, Amazon, and other media sources.
These days we've become so used to locked down channels and devices that do little more than provide a vary narrow path for content providers to dictate what they wish. The market needs something better that is made with user experience in mind. It would be good for Ubuntu and good for the users, and give content providers the choice to get in on the platform or see revenue pass them by.
Feel free to read my recent posting history for my opinion on "SmartTVs" - to put it succinctly, they're a waste so long as manufacturer and content provider greed dictate a fragmented, proprietary ecosystem. If Ubuntu wants to really dive into "living room" media, I'd much rather they create a "Ubuntu TV Box" of sorts. Aesthetically pleasing chassis and cutting-edge hardware support (Latest HDMI/DisplayPort, WiDi wireless display technology, 802.11N built in, Gigabit Ethernet, 2+ USB3.0 ports for external drives to source media, possible internal 1TB HDD, sufficient power and hardware support for HD codecs - possibly based on a high end next generation AMD APU setup which would give it quad core processing power for streaming/encoding and a 6000 or 7000 series mid-grade GPU built in. Perhaps include 1 PCI-E x16 3.0 expansion slot for a CableCARD or similar tuner/encoder/recorder card), combined with a custom version of Ubuntu (perhaps taking a few pages from MythBuntu) could show the power of an open platform. With a product sold like this, Ubuntu could lobby for Linux support of CableCARD devices and have an installed base that would make use of them.
Compared to the various proprietary solutions out there, this "UbuTV" box would be far more extensible and be able to integrate all forms of media, frequently updated, and give the user the choice they desire. If Starz releases their HBOGo competitor, simply install support for it. If you subscribe to Netflix, load up that module. Having a default "Just Works" UI, but the ability to install XBMC or MythTV as well would be quite viable. If you want to play games, just load up Desura - it could be the first full-featured distribution variant made to "just work" on a linux Home Theater PC, that would be pre-installed on proper , supported hardware direct with UbuntuTV in mind.
Unfortunately, by leaving this up to the SmartTV manufacturers, I worry this is going to be swift faceplant when "SmartTV" is no longer the buzzword of the moment. I don't want support for updates and hardware to to confined to the whims of Sony, Samsung, and LG. The worst part is when they cheap out on hardware capable of decoding smooth 1080p media for instance, it will reflect badly on UbuntuTV. The TV manufacturers have little interest in really supporting their products long term - they'd much rather you just buy another one. Unless Canonical has made some extremely lucrative offers which frankly I'm not sure is possible much less a good use of their finances, I don't anticipate SmartTV manufacturers going out of their way to make the UbuntuTV experience that great - its just another bullet point for sale. If they had hardware they commissioned and a rising userbase, then they'd have a bit more weight at negotiation. Including the service in SmartTVs could be a decent second step if its "box" made it desirable for the userbase and a true selling point. I also think that Ubuntu needs to work on other aspects of its service, such as Ubuntu One (I'd like to see total cross-platform support. It needs to "out dropbox, dropbox" for the vast majority of users and personally including SpiderOak style encryption is the only way I'd even consider using a service of the type. Furthermore, it needs to support 3rd party content for streaming and the like not just things purchased in the Ubuntu ecosystem. A comprehensive referral system allowing additional data at a rate above competitors would be a good idea as well I'd like to support Ubuntu One, but until it can at least match SpiderOak if not outdo them....).
I don't want to see Ubuntu crash and burn because SmartTV manufacturers don't really give a crap about the product. Its just not a good way to start, putting your entire reputation in a new market at the control of 3rd parties. Releasing two personalized hardware offerings, one as I listed above at the "high end" and a slightly more modest variant similar to a WDTV, along with preparing disc images of customized official UbuntuTV OS offerings meant for users with home-built HTPCs, would be a much better way to start off showcasing UbuntuTV.
While this individual circumstance may just be regarding entertainment, the impetus for such behavior is the very same underlying corruption that has afflicted our nation with such woes. Profit-at-any-cost, hyper-controlling capitalism by way of private industry corrupting government to its corporate whims is responsible from everything from the pitiful state of financial regulations to the lacking affordability of health care. Patenting, locking-down, and refusing to cooperate on standards for entertainment may mean a worse user experience, but when pharmaceutical and medical research/equipment companies do the exact same thing people end up dying because they can't afford their medication or procedure. What's worse is that even more so than entertainment, medical, financial, and private utilities all have a heavy investment of public money, basically holding these necessary services hostage, using public funds to bulk their wallets, and doing the bare minimum in return.
Private sector business in this nation (and many others), regardless of field acts with impunity, devoid of ethics toward any ends that, in the short term, will cause their stock to jump a quarter of a point. Until we start regulating and holding those responsible to account, it will continue.
The biggest impediment to technological progress in many forms of consumer electronics and information is greed by way of lock-in. Everyone has to make their own "thing" that is wholly incompatible with everyone else's thing, even (especially?) if there is an existing player doing well in the market. Right now the cable monopolies pretty much have everyone else by the pubic hair; exclusivity contracts ensuring that many "OnDemand" shows can't be shown elsewhere. Then the big networks/broadcasts have their own gadget (Hulu/Plus), as now are Premium channels like HBOGo and their Cinemax gadget; Showtime/TMC andStarz are catching up. Somewhat agnostic players like Netflix are making headway, but running into barricades because the aforementioned won't simply license their content to Netflix but instead insist on their own player.
All of these locked-down players and streamers need to be coded and ported for varying platforms, with varying levels of quality and openness. Will X be on both Android and iOS? How about Windows Phone and MeeGo? Windows PCs, Xbox360...Linux? Built into the "SmartTV"s of LG and Sony? How about Samsung? On BluRay players? Available online? HD or SD? Back catalog, new releases, or only items 6 months out? Commercial skips, or forced ads? Is it any wonder that people aren't emptying their pockets in droves to subscribe to these service where everything is going to be so limited?
People can't pay a simple, reasonable fee for the content they want and generally have access to it nomatter what, when, or where they may want to watch. Right now, even for those who already have a CableTV subscription, its often easier for certain content, to simply downloaded pirated ripped versions; which come online swiftly, have a fleshed out back catalog, lack commercials, have an up-front listing of the quality, streaming is an option not a requirement, and generally no limits to how the user can watch. Until this is remedied, trying to ask people to pay extra for "SmartTVs" is going to be a farce because 99% of people aren't going to research that only Sony and Samsung TVs over $2500 are authorized to carry HBOGo etc.
Content producers all need to get together and decide on an OPEN, unified system for placing their content online. Lets start with Netflix, the current pack leader who has already been fighting for the right to display content for years. Lets say if everyone, from broadcast, cable, movie studios and even foreign content producers went and licensed their content to Netflix, with the understanding that Netflix will 1) Collect and share revenue from subscriptions and 2) create an open source client for distribution that has a number of important features for users such as lack of commercials, HD resolutions and the ability to download as well as stream. Then we can think about "SmartTVs", where each manufacturer knew all they had to do was support the unified client. Then, no matter if you had a set-top box, home-theater PC add-in card, or software-based setup, a subscriber would still have full access to everything.
Until hubris and greed can be let go, I don't see this happening. Thus, all the scraping about in this market will be a gimmick at best or useless at worst while clueless industry blame users and piracy and demand even more lockdown, thus beginning the circle anew. We need to show we simply won't put up with having content held hostage in this way.
I didn't have a C64 as a kid, moving straight from the whole Apple series and Atari, to 486 DX66 (a monster of gaming power at its inception). However, for those with C64 memories, Commodore isn't dead - check out http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx - you can actually buy a perfect replica C64 keyboard/chassis in which to build a modern PC, or you can buy a prefab one with either Intel Atom or Sandy-Bridge based kit (personally, I'm a little underwhelmed by the hardware chosen in both the prefabs, you can probably do better yourself). Commodore has gone even further by creating a new Linux distribution "Commodore OS Vision" which gives a full featured Linux system (based on Mint) and has all the old Commodore software built in and accessible as well, free to download for anyone (which will spur Linux adoption as well). So if you want to create a retro gaming system, a unique HTPC, or just want to dive into the old C64 software your remember, give it a look! Cool that they're introducing fun, user-controlled computing to a new generation and making a fleshed out Linux distribution that pays homage to the old ways while showing how far we've come.
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qBittorrent is certainly not a bad client but I find it lacking in a very critical security function - blocklists/IPFilters. Unlike many other open source clients like Transmission, Deluge, and (I believe, I haven't used it for awhile) KTorrent, qBT does NOT 1) Allow you to enter the URL of a blocklist file and 2) Automatically update from said blocklist at intervals. Instead, you have to have to download a proper file to a local machine and then manually hit the key to reload/update the blocklist filter. This is cumbersome and often defeats the purpose of blocklists, which are updated swiftly to ensure that anti-P2P organization address blocks are rejected. If anyone is up to the task and wishes to contribute to qBT I'd really suggest adding this functionality to bring it in line with the best of open source clients. Until then, I'll have to give qBittorrent a pass.
I should have been more specific - like OtherOS, this proposed path for OUYA will lock out /concurrent/ use of "normal" content and rooted/hacker/homebrew/custom content which is really what brought me to considering the device. This is why I made my Android example; the right choice was made by Google and other content providers with respect to how using custom ROMs software/rooting/repos/manual APKs etc... does not preclude you from accessing your Google Play purchased content, using "official" applications and other things. Nearly all other "consoles" will do so in the fruitless endeavor of trying to squash piracy and make content providers happy, ironically lowering the chance of future software purchase in the process.
I don't want to purchase a "console" that is built on a modified Android platform that is more locked down than Android itself! Having to boot into a special "open" mode , totally segregated from OUYA's "console" experience is absolutely the wrong path to take. Users will not frequently wish to boot back and forth, which will ultimately mean that they'll spend less time in the OUYA ecosystem chatting, playing games, or purchasing content.
I think the vast majority of those who came to OUYA thinking "finally, someone gets it. " will agree this isn't the way to go. Accept that piracy happens, remember the success of Google Play and others on Android despite the lack of user lockdown, and instead try to actually set out to make the open console you sold OUYA as. Anything less than allowing the normal gaming usage to persist concurrently with rooted/custom user content is a failure in this regard. Do not provide a "Free speech zone" and then tell us that is what you meant by "open", expecting to be lauded.
I pre-ordered an OUYA through Kickstarter (Limited Edition - though I admit I am a little frustrated that the "metal chocolate" LE version requires a $140 commitment and you only get one controller. Really, I think In addition, I expected the kickstarter consoles to be, as most kickstarter software/hardware projects are, significantly cheaper than "normal" preordering, but that isn't the case.), mostly because of its openness. In truth I need a new WDTV/XBMC device for another room so when I saw the OUYA's openness and partnership with XBMC, it seemed a great idea. They have a lot of rhetoric about giving access to the hardware specs, root it if you want and much more, but like a few others have posted here a few recent tweets basically smash that idea to bits.
It appears that the "core experience" is still going to be locked down. "Root it and do what you want" doesn't mean "Root it and put your own apps and software next to ours and stuff you purchase" it seems to mean "Root it and it will be like the former OtherOS PS3 function - nothing 'normal' will work anymore". Sorry, that isn't new. As I just said, the PS3 has already done that and other consoles, if you're willing to give up oh say.. playing games on them, they can be wonderful little boxes to run homebrew and hacked software, off line, to your content. What I wanted to invest in was a console that would allow you to hack around WITHOUT impeding the 'normal' use of the box. After all, even an Android phone or tablet, using rooted variant or even a custom ROM like CyanogenMod, won't preclude you from using all the standard features, including both sideloaded APKs and stuff downloaded from Google Play "officially"! If they've compromised this, then we're looking at a HUGE step back, more akin to that disastrous "OnLive" feces, especially if you need to be online to play official OUYA titles and if content is streamed instead of downloaded.
I hope that it is still early enough in the process that we the community can get in contact with OUYA and ensure that it isn't a DRMed wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. I'm beginning to fear for my pledge.
I'm a great fan of Mozilla's products; they're some of the last remaining open source, cross platform, standards-compliant offerings from a company that isn't building their tech with data mining everything I do, in mind. For those of us that don't want everything completely in "The Cloud" and have interest in privacy, there are few other email clients out there and none I've found better than Thunderbird (especially on Windows - Kmail and Evolution etc... can do well in Linux along with your old school pine/mutt etc...). It works, efficiently.
Thunderbird puts all my email accounts at my command from one central location. It also gives me the "full" compliment of Email features and the option to configure them as I choose. Its also relatively easy to use and setup even for novices; much like Firefox it has found the FOSS holy grail of providing accessibility and tutorials for beginners (see: If you want to set up a gmail, hotmail, or other "normal" webmail account it already knows many of the specifications thereof. It also can easily walk you through setting up a new account for say, your ISPs mail) without compromising features for advanced users. I'm not beholden to "The Cloud" - I can locally store my mail and info as I wish. Its plugin API provides for all sorts of things from international dictionaries to Enigmail to Lightning. For email alone, it has everything I need and quite a few features available if I need them in the future. I
However, I'd like to see it go further and be made into a full fledged Outlook replacement - this is NOT a huge jump. All the pieces are there and it will only take a little time and refinement to make it so. Thunderbird already supports contacts/addressbook/PIM features in open formats. A few more wizards and whatnot and it would likely take care of what most would need and easily at that. Perhaps a few others can suggest some PIM features, but I'm pretty much set...unless they did something like KeePass integration and whatnot for storing various keys and secure data. Calendaring/Tasks is the big one - Lightning/Sunbird is a great start, but they only need a few improvements for both local and remote calendars, but I think with CalDAV and other options we can have a nice open set of calendar formats and some wizarding to make their creation and management easier. Thunderbird could probably even interact with Exchange if necessary, now days. Likewise, Tasks/ToDo could be brought up to par. Finally, the big thing necessary is proper sync support to tie it all together. Multiple calendars with their own tasks, integrating PIM to allow contacts to interact with calendars and their tasks, syncing with various mobile devices etc... all of this stuff could really make Thunderbird a first-rate email/newsgroup/PIM client, able to stand up to Outlook and make most home users and even a great many businesses choose the lock-in free solution instead.
I don't want to see Mozilla let Thunderbird wither on the vine when, for a relatively modest investment of time and energy, it could be polished to a sparkling shine. Mozilla seems to be one of the last bastions of privacy-respecting software for best accessing the Internet on the user's terms AND is capable of bringing that paradigm even to novices with easy to use, efficient software and tons of useful features. When everyone else is creating tools where control is taken out of the user's hands, putting up their walled gardens and making "the cloud" look as attractive as possible, I want Mozilla working hard to improve their tools to show that moving forward doesn't mean giving up what's important. I'm glad that Thunderbird, FOSS as it is, will thankfully not "die", but I think its wrong for Mozilla to toss it onto the back burner when they should be polishing it to a shine. Thunderbird is Mozilla's second most popular and visible software with a wide userbase, and like Firefox it deserves attention necessary to put it atop competitors offerings, and keep it there!
I am currently running my main rig built on an Socket 1366 i7-920 (@ 3.8ghz), X58 chipset Rampage II Extreme, and 6gb of tri-channel RAM (Soon to be 12gb). For my investment, it seemed that Intel's "Enthusiast" socket 1366 made all the right choices. The tech was released early, prior to the mainstream socket 1156, was more advanced (tri-channel RAM and X58 allowed for tons of PCI-E lanes and CrossFireX/SLI without having to choose etc...), the X58 boards didn't have all the foulups necessitating multiple revisions and GEN2/GEN3 as in the mainstream, and the i7-920/930 both had similar specs to the 960 extreme edition save for clock speed and all were open to huge boosts when overclocking. Later, the hex-cores came about for those with the $999 to spend and incredible performance. This rig has kept me near the top performance-wise against the entire socket 1156, and 1155 lineup to date - competitive with Sandy Bridge and even Ivy so many years later.
I was actually looking forward to Sandy Bridge-E and the debut of Socket 2011 to be a second generation 1366 but sadly it seemed Intel flipped about-face with everything meaningful. 2011 based builds came out WAY after Sandy Bridge 1155, the processors were incredibly expensive starting at around $400 for a quad and a semi-decent hex was in the $700 range, X78 high end boards proved even more expensive than X58 at launch, leaving the platform a huge investment for the upgrade. Where was the Core i7-920 analog that had the cache, cores, and features of the extreme edition but was clocked lower (leaving plenty of room for OCing up to and beyond EE specs) for the $250-300 mark? Everything they seemed to do right with Nahalem and Socket 1366 as a whole, which has probably been the best platform investment I've made in years, they've scrubbed for what...? Does Intel just want me upgrading more frequently and paying more for the privilege? Do they not want to "hit it out of the park" anymore in favor of small base hits? It seems in bad taste, even more so if it is done because they aren't afraid of AMD's latest crop of CPUs so they figure they can choke out a few minor steps forward and ratchet the price skyward as there are no alternatives
Thus, I passed by SB-E which I hoped to be the next "big" upgrade and looked toward IB-E but things don't bode well. There seems to be little discussion of IB-E and what is mentioned suggests it wont' be launched until very late this year, leaving it to fall in right before Haswell. There are competing reports if Haswell-E will exist on Socket2011 and not require a new socket change as those who are enjoing SB/IB on 1155 will. I hear nothing about pricing, and if SB-E is any indication, it will be another expensive clusterfuck. If anyone as further information as to IB-E, Haswell's Enthusiast socket, or the future of the Enthusiast platform in general I'd appreciate it, but at the moment it doesn't seem promising. I truly hope that Piledriver can provide solid competition for Ivy Bridge in terms of both single/multithreaded performance at "enthusiast/power user" tasks like gaming, coding, content creation etc... as it would be nice to see AMD bring back the whole "5-10% less performance than Intel at a HUGE monetary savings for the processor and platform itself" that brought all my recent builds save my main rig onto Phenom II X4 or X6 BlackEditions, which serve faithfully.
Ivy Bridge being an incremental upgrade isn't necessarily a huge problem, but I worry more about overall pricing of Intel platforms, Socket 2011's IB-E still in question, Haswell,and the future of the Enthusiast socket/platform as a whole.
I don't see how this can be a true, honest viable metric to make decisions by. First is the major issue at hand - does "Good for the community" mean "Nice guy who generally is a cordial player" or does it mean the more marketing-centric decision of "Is likely to/already has demonstrated the ability to - buy lots of DLC, get lots of other people to buy DLC, refer people to the game in exchange for content, have a well known social media/blog presence, sell one's concept of privacy for a free hat, participate or be involved in the "esports" streamcasting world, get lots of people to vote for them and/or a particular game-related bit of info etc..."?
Despite the fact we usually consider Valve a "good guy", this is a serious issue and I am unwilling to give anyone a free pass when it comes to a monetization scheme in gaming these days. A perfectly affable player who is friendly to newbies, plays well with others, and generally brightens the server but only plays occasionally for shorter bursts of time is far too easy to write off instead of picking the more financially-direct rewarding option. Someone who's a jerk but is worth it to advertisers or spends a lot of money and time on the game is more valuable than X number of casual friendly players. There are all sorts of ways to bend "Its good for the community" to suit your worldview if you wish to justify it. MOBA type games like DOTA have basically proven an extreme example of this - they all pretty much subsist nearly entirely on "serious" gamers who are outright cuntbaskets in their interactions with others; verbal insults at the slightest wrong move is par for the course and there is to date little if anything developers or communities choose to do to change this. Rather, it is embraced because to eliminate these abrasive players is to cut their revenue stream immensely at this point. The very same attitudes pervade the competitive fighting game scene and "E-Sports" play as a whole. "Good for the community" or "likable to play with" doesn't have to mean an affable, respectful person and it is far too easy to overlook all but the most egregious behavior so long as the perpetrator provides a revenue stream.
Secondly, even if it is implemented in an idyllic manner, there is a huge potential for corruption innate in the system because it is either 1) Putting decisions in the hands of fellow players and/or 2) provides known benchmarks and milestones that can then be purposefully achieved/exploited while. "Likable to play with" is completely subjective. Some would rather a top notch player on their team who is a trash-talking, abrasive asshole than a less skilled but friendly player because for them winning makes for a more enjoyable play session regardless of their teammate's attitude. For others, its the reverse. If I piss off someone with enough guild/clan/messageboard/socialnetwork friends and time on their hands, I may be down-voted to oblivion needlessly. If I have a virtual "army" of my own, I can convince them to up-vote myself, which also renders anyone legitimately down-voting me nearly moot as I have to many upvotes to cancel them out, providing a certain amount of buffer. Bribery and threats will be commonplace, as will the formation of webs and networks of players for the purpose of protection, aggression, or just to game the system. If fellow players are at all involved in someone's status, there is little potential for it to work well. If the "achievements" necessary to attain lower priced games and other bonus content are made public, then anyone with the time an inclination will work to game the system. This may end up harming the very community they were put in place to protect. For instance, players may keep more to private servers and well known friends, because the wildcard notion of playing with others could jeopardize their status, which leads to less of an overall community but instead forms tribal groups who hold dominion over small islands.
I cannot see any good coming from such a system as either a perversion of
Anyone interested, I urge you to take a look at and pick up "Shatter! ( www.shattergame.com ) and ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ ) for more info! It takes the pong/breakout game to one of its more in-depth levels I've seen to date. There are horizontal, vertical, and circular playing fields, multi-depth "stage progressions" that take you from the outer shell of a boss to its inner core, weapons and powerups, physics elements (ie destroy an anchor block and all the blocks connected to it will "fall", and you both have a "pull" and "push" ability that can draw in the ball, powerups, and dangerous blocks alike...or push them out to change the impact!), co-op multiplayer modes and mor!
I know it has come to critical acclaim with some indie-styled awards, but I don't know if it is "pong-enough" for this, as it tends more towards the "breakout - single player vision" than the one-on-one table tennis "VS pong". Still, an excellent example in the genre.
For a retro throwback, I urge you to checkout "Wizorb" ( http://www.wizorb.com/ ) which approximates a later-generation NES title graphically, and mixes breakout style play with RPG elements as well! It even has native Linux clients available which you can pick up direct or from Desura (For those who don't know, Desura is an open digital distribution system that favors mods, indie, and alpha titles but also supports AAA games of course. They have a native Linux client, but of course not all games sold on the platform have native linux support, but many do)
One of the best, recent pong/breakout/arkanoid style games I've seen as of recently is just as you describe - Shatter. www.shattergame.com and http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ for more info. It has many levels that spherical/circular in design, sometimes in different "stages" - stage one is against the "front hex" , stage 2 is the "back hex" stage 3 is inside the sphere against the "second-tier front hex and then third-tier front hex" followed by your ship going deeper inside until fighting the "core" in a boss fight.
If we can get by the neckbeard virgin jokes, its actually a good idea for them to specifically target anime-watching (especially the fansub community) in their notes. For years, there has been the complaint that, compared to such offerings as Media Player Classic Home Cinema, especially with lots of external filters from something like the Combined Community Codec Pack, VLC was inferior. Subtitles were not rendered as aesthetically pleasingly, image quality may have suffered, and other factors made VLC a second player choice despite its internal filters and easy accessibility.
The anime fansub community has pioneered the usage of initially arcane formats, expecting exacting quality and often utilizing features that would be an afterthought for most other media. Matroska container formats,H.264/ X264 HD video, Ogg Theora/OGM, multi-channel AAC/OGG/ audio, multiple streams of the aforementioned plus multiple softcoded subtitle options, etc.. showed up prominently in anime fansub encodes long before the general population ever saw them. Some would say their pioneering encoding even helped drive pirate rips of SD and HD content out of old-fashioned AVI containers for everything, besides being a huge boon to localization in any form as these advances helped to move from single language audio and subtitle options hardcoded (or hand-selected-and-renamed-manual-subs) to simple container formats with multiple options. Today, we're seeing many fansub release groups offering 1080p high bitrate MKV with lossless FLAC audio channels and 10-bit color pallets...even for porn!
Anime fansubs/localization has been a quiet but important force in driving online video quality from the days of grainy, option-free rips to a single high-bitrate HD file with several lossless audio channels and subtitles for 8 languages available, often using open specifications and open source codecs to do so. VLC setting the bar for these enthusiasts who really move the media forward is certainly commendable in my opinion, compared to saying "Well, if it runs content purchased off iTunes, its good enough!".
As others have stated, its very easy to see the writing on the wall. Getting your same level of insurance coverage for the same inflation-adjusted price is going to be impossible once the dam has broken and these tracking devices flood onto the market. The "discount" is simply an avoidance of penalty for those that are willing to capitulate to be monitored everywhere they drive. As technology marches on and it has become financially and technically possible for basically monitor everyone as they drive, we have a responsibility that, just like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/PCIP, we make our objection known to make it a bigger pain in the ass for invasive implementation like this. Otherwise, the next step is the Demolition Man / Fifth Element "One Point Has Been Deducted From Your License" or remote speed limiting/deactivation on behalf of next-gen devices that have become truly mandatory after industry-led "studies" proving their effectiveness. Lets not forget that, aside from groovy middle eastern music, "He's got a scan blocker. Must be a criminal. Blast him!" is how future "peace officers" will likely judge those who don't wish to be tracked every second as they drive.
For the past half-century or so driver's insurance has been computed based upon a handful of metrics (some, outdated or misplaced correlation) but mostly by the actual events that occur regarding an account holder. If you wrap your car around a tree frequently because you're drunk, your insurance goes up. That is how it should be. With all the financial services (ie insurance) and corporate money invested in this catastrophe, you can guarantee there's going to be something that kicks your insurance up a few bucks because of some fallacious study done by GoodYear that proves that tire wear equals more accidents. Every part of the automobile is now becoming computerized or at least computer-monitored, and each of those companies is going to want to "prove" that these devices should monitor for things that mean more auto hardware replacements. Don't have the high-end GoodYears with computerized monitoring? Up go your insurance rates. Don't change them when the completely spurious requirements tell you its a "safety" issue to do so? (ie. Tire wear parameters set well in advance of any problems that ultimately will require you to replace your tires 1.5 to twice as fast as you do now). You're a "bad driver for not maintaining your auto" and your rates go through the roof. Soon automobiles will be just very expensive game consoles, where everything within is really owned by someone else and subject to their rules, you just have the "privilege" of paying for them, and this insurance scam is just part of the racket.
This needs to be cut off at the knee-level before the tide can rise any higher. Lets be honest here, we have a small window of opportunity because the majority of the population at this point isn't going to be outraged about this - the frog is being boiled too slowly - so those in the know of the current ills and most likely future implications of this path need to start making a stink about it now. Call your insurance company and ask if they have any plans to implement a plan like this. If they do, explain your displeasure in a mature manner and ask to be escalated up the chain until you can speak to someone who is normally insulated from the displeasure of the policy holders. If you can switch away from a company that has this kind of monitoring to a company that doesn't (and doesn't have it on the table at the moment), tell them you switched specifically because they respect your privacy. For decades insurance has been calculated based on a variety of actual payouts, without the need to track every time you make a hasty turn will no ill effect. Things are changing now because insurance companies figure they can justify overall rate hikes and bigger profits with this spurious policy and most drivers are willing to bend over and give up their privacy just to maintain similar rates. We must show them this is not a profitable course of action!
Short answer: Yes, consoles should be upgradeable. Why? Because I envision a next generation where all games are built to be played standards-compliant PCs. Much like the dedicated Brother Word Processor in my closet, the day of the game console should be at an end because we have a better option. We no longer need to make a single-purpose piece of hardware in order to have an affordable gaming machine. In truth, we have the technology to provide more convergence devices than ever...so why are we going backward?
Money and control. Would you like to have the choice of playing your PS3/X360 titles with online services that don't mind if you have a ton of game images on your hard drive, or the excellent MultiMan or XBMC software for your media? Well, tough shit. Despite the fact you payed between $300-600 for that lump of plastic in your living room, everything you do on it is controlled by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. You don't have to option to play any game you want on an alternative to XLive, so you have to either play by Microsoft's rules, or simply not play online. Why do you have to have the disc in the bloody tray if you install the thing to the HDD (Which, costs more per gigabyte than any "normal" HDD around)? Because Microsoft says so. Would you rather not see ads when you're paying yearly for XboxLive? Tough shit, MS knows you're not leaving because you have nowhere else to play online instead! Your games are basically being held hostage because they exist on these pieces of hardware that by the "benevolence" of their creators, you're given the opportunity to spend money on. So long as you do exactly what they say, pay up and shut up, you may get to play your game...what's left of it after the mandatory DLC-ripping occurs, that is... but do something they don't like and prepare to be hardware-level banned from the only network said hardware is able to work with. Its bloody extortion at this point. Console gaming is becoming more and more expensive, and even convergence devices are attempting to be locked down into "consolized" walled gardens to ensure that user experience and control are always second to hardware and software developer control.
That vast majority of so-called console games are developed on PCs and then "ported" to consoles, using varying SDKs. Sure, there are some easy tricks that you can use if you're absolutely sure you only need to support a very limited set of hardware, but lets be honest now the entire PC software market has developed everything from gaming to speed-trading software that is made to run on PCs that have varying hardware. There's nothing wrong with a handful of specifications on the box; PC gamers and developers haven't lamented this fact for years. If you want to make a game that requires a WiiRemote w/MotionPlus kit for the PC, then do so. Same with a DualShock 3 or X360 Controller - put the required or suggested controller on the bloody box and let us run Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at 1080p if our hardware can handle it. I'd love to see a day when there weren't any "hardware exclusives", no $10 extra fee passed on to the customer for the privilege of playing said titles on a locked down pseudo-PC, and a given game wouldn't be a binary "Yes if you have console X No if you don't" affair.
The entire gaming experience would be much better if the next generation of games were simply programmed for normal PCs, ideally using technology easily portable so that the most hardware and software could be taken into account, especially OS-independent, FOSS technology. Everyone knows that when it comes to multi-platform titles today, the PC version is always the best one (unless its a horrible port) in terms of user access, cost, and modification. Why stay shackled to an antiquated system where a near unrelated entity has full control of the hardware and makes tons of demands to control and enrich themselves from both software developers and users, as opposed to the free and open game platforms we call PCs?
Spectrum does have its limits, but it is not correct to apply true scarcity models toward as you would something like oil. EMS is not a commodity. One hundred years ago, the amount of the spectrum that was useful to transmit data was very limited. Today, we've progressed a long way from the first radios. We're always figuring out how to get more out of the spectrum we have, and nowhere near all of it is currently "used" at the moment. Remember "HD Radio" - adding additional channels in-between current FM channels? It is unlikely we'll ever reach "peak" spectrum. In addition, EMS is extremely easy to repurpose. One of the big issues recently is what to do with the former analog TV broadcast spectrum frequencies. If you have a good authoritative govt (yes, it has to be government or else the people that profit from the status quo will do everything in their power to prevent buggy whips from going out of style. Its bad enough now that business tries to influence government to do this, but if it was only up to business there would be nobody looking out for the good of the public as that is just not profitable to make an expensive change while you're currently soaking up the finances) office that says "Hey, after X date Y spectrum will no longer be used for Q, since we've been pretty much winding down Q for awhile. We'll have some research time, and then decide of R or S would be a better use of Y spectrum". There's no complex "recycling" that results in some spectrum being destroyed in the process, you simply repurpose .
So spectrum doesn't have to be handled in the one-size-fits-all way that business wants to turn everything into a commodity to be traded at will. However, if it was, there are still way better ways to make money from public resources and ensure said resources profit actually is returned to the public, something that rarely if ever happens at current. I urge you to think outside the box a bit, as it appears you're encumbering yourself with what people who want to profit from selling everything and anything on the market as a private resource, have told us is a "rule", when in truth its simply an oft-repeated falsehood that makes the few rich at the cost of the many.
The fact that it has been managed poorly, often intentionally so over the past decade by those who WANT anything related to government or regulation to fail (ie. see: Postal service being cut-loose in terms of funding and expected to make it as a "business" while still acting under Congressional control as if they were the Department of the Post Office and thus making decisions that don't make money. That was a decision engineered specifically to make the efficient Post Office into something that private couriers could compete with, after much UPS/FedEx whingeing and whining.).
The FCC was created as a regulatory oversight for communications. It should do that job well. The fact that it isn't is a fault of a number of decisions meant to make it appear chaotic, inefficient, and unhelpful so that everyone with a private industry solution can say "Oh we can't trust that GUBBERMINT AGENCY look at how bad they are. Look, why don't you push some taxpayer money at my/my friend's/my constituent's business to clean up the mess that government inevitably makes!". I'm not saying they're perfect, but if they were reformed into the agency they were designed to be without private industry money and lobby interference buying officials, they'd easily be able to execute their mission as intended.
Just because something is public owned doesn't mean its unregulated, as I noted in my original post. As others have posted, you simply make sure there are standards. GSM works really well on a handful of frequencies for instance, and even better in European and Asian nations where governments get involved. If we didn't have companies dicking around trying to monopolize a given band within the spectrum , we could easily have even more efficient use. Much of the mobile telephone communication around the world happens exclusively on a handful of frequencies (GSM) and there are no problems with "sharing" without having some private entity bitching that only THEY should be able to use the 900mhz band and won't be able to do their job otherwise - that's a USA-style greed invented issue.
Also, applying these principles to hardware involved in broadcasting is another huge benefit we don't enjoy here in the USA. Verizon owns all the CDMA towers and ATT owns nearly all the GSM towers, allowing them to restrict access to anyone else; T-mo had to actually start putting up their OWN towers. Yes, both ATT and Verizon capitulated slightly to allow licensing access, but only to avoid anti-monopolistic laws that generally allow them to continue doing exactly what they're doing - high prices, little choice. These companies, despite the fact they are hugely subsidized with taxpayer dollars to put up the infrastructure, retain control. This hurts competition and public value. In nations where communications and information infrastructure is subsidized in a way that We The People actually own the towers (or the copper, or the fiber etc..) no matter who was contracted to build them, prices are lower, there are more standards, and performance is off the charts.
Nearly the entire world enjoys cheaper mobile communication, largely because of strong government regulations to ensure that infrastructure benefits those taxpayers that subsidized it, standards are adhered to, and it even opens the field for competition because new players know that they won't have to license their own spectrum, build hardware for use on said spectrum, or build their own towers/broadcasting equipment that is proprietary - they can simply come in and compete without those kinds of barriers to entry. Much like how the Interstate Highway System allowed America to rise out of the dark ages of unpaved, unmetered, halfassed toll and back roads, by providing a unified, high-"bandwidth" quality system, that is implemented everywhere not just where it was profitable to do so, doing the same for information/communication infrastructure will enable us to take a big leap forward.
Information Infrastructure is just as important as roads and dams; we've seen the problems of deregulation and putting our critical infrastructure in the hands of private interests who only do what is profitable at the moment. Lets learn from the past and do better; there's already a portion of the world proving the success so its not even broaching new territory so much as it is playing catch up with the rest of the first world. However, we can't do that unless we give up the fear of the word "public" and the idea that private industry and finance are the panacea for everything - in most cases unless they're properly regulated with a watchful, empowered entity, they're actually the plague instead.
The FCC absolutely needs to have the regulative authority to say "You can't bid on this without having the money to pay for it, being willing to actually develop on it instead of just sitting on your ass and holding it to lock down competitors until you feel threatened, being willing to roll out development on your new spectrum in rural areas and you have to either keep prices below X or subsidize plans for low-income Americans", but that's at a bare minimum. This bill basically allows anyone who buys spectrum rights to do well... whatever they want with it, even if its to the detriment of everyone save for their own business. Even worse, it prevents the FCC from giving away rights to unlicensed spectrum - Hundt talked about how Wi-Fi would never have come to pass if this bill was in place years ago. I don't want every single possible frequency needlessly licensed to someone with the money to buy it. However, I disagree when it comes to what he says about oligopolistic practices; unless you force fragmentation to a point that is foolish, OR do the right thing and make unlicensed (WiFi, Bluetooth etc..) spectrum and/or public-held "free" spectrum capable of the kind of performance, you'll run into a de-facto oligopoly as the one we have now in telecom/mobile data.
However, I feel the answer to this issue is relatively simple - stop spectrum auctions and in truth remove private ownership of spectrum entirely. The FCC is an absolutely necessary government function. We need someone to say "Look, these bands are for military communication, these are for emergency services, and these can be used for broadcasting music etc.... if everyone sticks to the frequency as assigned, we won't have any problem. Fuck it up and start playing country music over the missile telemetry channel and we're going to crack some skulls, fine your ass, and take away your right to broadcast". Leaving it up to private sector greed doesn't work, just like with any other decision it becomes "He who has the most money, wins". Why are we allowing parts of the spectrum to be licensed exclusively for private use? Why not just make all spectrum public? Note, this does not mean "unregulated", but it does mean that we'd have a lot better outcome then trying to let a corrupt market decide. There is absolutely no benefit to auctions for exclusivity in the private sector. In truth, the private sector will fare better by having public access to various frequencies. Want to make the next generation long-distance WiMax-like technology? Oh, crap...well, Google bought up all the rights to the spectrum that you thought would work for you. Having the FFC say "All that analogTV open space is now available for this sort of communication usage" means that anyone who wants to build something to work on said frequency is allowed to do so. It also means that your equipment won't be totally useless if Goog-Fi is removed from "beta" because of issues, and thus anyone who built any devices (especially those paying Google for the privilege) is SOL because their hardware only works on frequencies that belong to Google for the next 20 years. Public control and access of the electromagnetic spectrum is good for the public and the benevolent private sector.
A bill such as this is certainly an insult to the public and furthers the "Money means power" agenda of those who can't get enough of either. However, we shouldn't just fight to return things to the status quo, but rather return control of the spectrum to the public good.
I've read a lot of discussion about getting off this rock before things that will happen millions of years in the future. My concerns are a lot more immediate, lest we won't be here to worry about solar expansion, heat death, or a world-ending collision. Not to mention we're just learning about quantum physics (Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell for instance, funneled his experience into funding and promoting lots of research into quantum physics and noetic science) and realizing that there's a whole lot more to the laws of the universe than we've thought. I'm undoubtedly for manned space exploration and I believe that doing so will provide nigh-unlimited benefit to our terrestrial population. Think of many of the scientific advances that have come from our short space program thus far, encumbered by inefficiency and cut budgets, profit motive always getting in the way. Hell, look over to the former Soviet program and look at all the scientific research that came out of there, some of which was squashed later for various political reasons.
The greatest enemies we have to manned space exploration and the benefits it could confer upon humanity, are greed and shortsightedness. Even during the height of US and Soviet space programs, there were times when someone forgot to double check, pushed something ahead because they wanted X to happen before Y or on Z date, etc..and it led to brave, highly trained men and women dying. There are heartbreaking stories that have come out of Cosmonaut corps (including a close friend of Yuri Gagarin) where you can hear someone as they realize they're about to suffocate or burn to death on reentry, cursing those who ignored engineering reports because they wanted the flight to happen on an anniversary of a Russian victory for morale reasons. We had our own share of issues, though not nearly as many (Challenger Explosion could have been prevented; there was ample evidence of failure of O-rings based on temperature and either the design could have been updated and the O-rings replaced or the mission could have been called off - truthfully both should have happened - until a better temp profile was available in a later launch window. Because of previous delays and the Shuttle program being ordered to basically launch as much as possible, as fast as possible or lose funding, those Astronauts died).
Greed interceded here even when these programs were the "darling" of their nations, under relatively strict controls and had disastrous effects, so I shutter to think what would happen if, as some suggest, space exploration became a venture exclusively of private industry. You want BP refining the fuel for your ship with their paid-off safety inspectors? Comfortable with Halliburton enough that you stake your life on them using the money for the project on buying the right titanium alloy, instead of a cheaper one and using the rest of the money for hookers and cocaine? When you're seated on a giant explosive would you not at all be worried that the launch date was set before the end of the fiscal year so that stock prices could rise from your successful launch? On the other side, could you spend years investing your time and energy into engineering the next big push into manned spaceflight (with all of your research retained and owned exclusively by Lockheed Martin Space Ventures) only to find that you're out of a job and your Miracle Material (that you believe could revolutionize medical nanotechnology) will have its schematic relegated to a basement server somewhere never to see the light of day in spaceflight or other uses, all because a minor, totally unseen and easily fixable exhaust problem meant people sold LMSV stock and thus "confidence" was down, so the board decided to scrap everything associated with the mission and start from scratch, causing their stock to rebound with the "new product" they were now backing; meanwhile, actual space flight and associated progress never happens. This cycle repeats for quite a few years and LMSV has an
So, Elop, MS's installed "Service Pack" for Nokia is trying to deflect blame for their ho-hum OS onto someone else? Nothing new. I've only used Windows Phone in demo settings and I've been underwhelmed enough; its trying to be iOS in terms of "experience" and popularity but doesn't want to totally let go of the customization of Android. It seems like everything Windows Phone is doing, someone else is doing better unless you're just totally enamored with Microsoft products. I can see when Windows 8 gets here there will be a lot more convergence between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
That said, I'm as pissed as any here about MS cash infusion and installed puppet diverting or just plain firing so many good Linux and QT developers while calling for an end to Maemo and MeeGo development. My old N900 here sits beside me and it probably doesn't have much life left. When I purchased it, I was looking forward to Harmattan and MeeGo to be installed upon it, followed by my next phone being one of a handful of high-end MeeGo devices. Maemo5 was to be the last "Geeks Only" OS, and that Harmattan/MeeGo would break triumphantly into the public view, with the kind of polish, UI and features that the iOS user could love, without compromising the Linux-loving hacker from adding his favorite repositories and apt-getting what was needed, or freely developing software for the thing without having to beg for a dev kit and agree to capitulate to giving censor rights to a major corporation. From what we see regarding the N9, this was certainly on target - it doesn't surprise me that people are going out of their way to find one despite Nokia's attempt to hide them in the mud, so to speak. Now, imagine if this happened a few years back as it would have done so without MS meddling in Nokia's affairs, and I'm guessing that MeeGo (7 or 8) by now could easily be one of the major, well known mobile operating systems, where it is just second nature to develop your app for iOS, Android, and MeeGo. I have to admit that the lack of "normal" apps affected me with the N900 - when MMORPGs made their mobile authenticators, they didn't consider porting them to Maemo platforms. However, it was looking that MeeGo would have no problem running Android applications, especially at the beginning of its presence before it was popular enough for big-name application developers to add MeeGo to its list of must-launch-upon mobile OSes. Especially considering that there were already working variants of Alien Dalvik that allowed you to run Android apps on a Maemo/MeeGo phone as close to native as they run on their their own, MeeGo could likely be one of the dominant OSes around.
Microsoft's cash flow gives them the ability to basically throw money at a sinking ship if it is in their best interest to do so to sink other, more vulnerable ships. They can afford to subsidize every Windows Phone sold if it means killing MeeGo and putting the world's biggest phone manufacturer under their thumb while, (as they may have planned) trying to get Windows Phones to market cheaper than everyone else. Unfortunately, people just aren't excited enough about Windows Phone which seems to be "meh" in every way so they're not taking the bait. While I'll never buy a Windows Phone just because of what they did to MeeGo, they're finding that even Joe Mobile doesn't want their product. I'm guessing that in time, if they can't manage to bring out some killer new feature with Win8 and WinPhone8 on the magnitude of "Your Phone is now an Xbox360 ! Install to disk on your home console and its uploaded to the Live Cloud, so you can play on your Windows Phone 8! Supports built in connections for 4 X360 controllers and voice with or without headset! Phone camera is Kinect-compliant on every WinPhone 8! Want to play on the big screen? Just use the included HDMI cable! All for free with your XLive subscription!", they'll probably fade into the ether as Windows Mobile did; likely even faster because they don't have an entrenched PDA and business phone community.
I think it is important to remember not to hold Occupy and other protest movements to differing standards in this regard, than other more conventional political action groups. The vast majority of them, especially on the national level, do not have a unified agreement on the "issue" itself, much less a singular entity calling for singular action for a singular change.
Take something as acute as those who are anti-abortion - one may think, especially from the "outside" pro-choice perspective that they have a unified front of people who just assert to "make abortion illegal", but that is incorrect. There are a variety of anti-abortion groups who have varying belief systems (most religiously focused, but some are not and see it as a secular issue of humanity), views on the issue (some believe only late-term abortions should be outright banned, others believe that all abortions should be banned save for when it would threaten the mother's life and/or resulted from rape or incest, still others find it acceptable only if the fetus was afflicted with birth defects that would leave it a short life of pain outside the womb if any, and finally there are those that oppose it entirely), and finally methods of bringing about change (Some call of legislative bans at various levels of government, others wish to overturn Roe v Wade through a series of Supreme Court decisions, others wish to sway the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to expel abortion performing physicians , while still others want to petition hospitals to refuse the use of their facilities for abortions and deny privileges to physicians who perform etc....).
Be wary; those who call for or oppose a strong united front are practicing a very sly form of propaganda because of its effectiveness at staying under the radar. When Fox News and AM radio personalities state that "Godless communist liberals want to make it illegal for your children to believe in god and turn your children into flaming homosexuals", they're trying to create fear by suggesting there's a nearly unassailable wall of empowered, collective "evil" out to get their target market. This entirely fake supposed assemblage of gay men in red chaps and Karl Marx jock straps who meet every week to drink cosmopolitans and congratulate each other on how many good, Christian boys they've turned into cock-loving slaves of Lenin can only be opposed by all "Real Americans" working together to oppose them with their own "united front" - thus, we see the rise of the Tea Party - where subscribing to the CORRECT singular, ultra-extreme ideology is seen as a strength; in truth, the only strength possible to stop the faux, constructed ideology "at any cost". Its horrible how well this technique works on certain demographics.
That said, the Occupy movements do have a variety of actionable plans for change and attainable goals in mind. This is not a movement that just generically wants "things to get better", but can identify many of the broken pieces of the current machine and plan to fix them. Take October2011.org, which is one of the pages that was started in conjunction with a "push" of the movement into Washington DC. If you head to the "Issues" page, a single click away from the homepage, you'll see the following, which easily proves all the "This movement has no message and doesn't know what they want" crap that corporate media blathered on about during their "fair and balanced" news coverage,...
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1. Corporatism– firmly establish that money is not speech, corporations are not people, only people have Constitutional rights, end corporate influence over the political process, protect people and the environment from damage by corporations.
2. Wars and Militarism – end wars and occupations, end private for-profit military contractors, reduce the national security state and end the weapons export industry. War crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace must be addressed and those responsible
Comments like this are damaging to the very ability to do as you say. You start off with a general statement that is thoughtful and on the surface, seems to be correct, but go on to repeat an oft-cited untruth which, now with the audience at a state of agreement, skews their view just enough to disparage the very people actually acting in the manner you suggest. The most intellectual of information control campaigns work just this way.
I don't know where people are getting the idea that the Occupy movements have no solutions for the problems they protest against. From the very start, alternate plans have been posed to alter the course of the ship of State away from such dangerous waters. I cannot speak for every encampment of the movement, but in Washington DC at Freedom Plaza I've personally witnessed daily workshops, operating in the truest form of democracy, giving everyone a chance to speak and add their two cents to exactly how to solve the issues at hand and most important combat the disinformation that the other side spreads like wildfire. I've seen third-generation farmers and scientists who worked for the USDA at one time stand together, explaining the damage of corporate agriculture and Monsanto-controlled misinformation that has blighted the land and how simple changes to organic farming standards would impact everything from the dangerous level of pharmaceutical runoff and nitrates in the water supply, to the obesity epidemic. I've seen the rarest of breeds, ethical investment bankers explaining the problems with the system and citing the regulations needed to even begin to fix it, as well as combating the idea that we need to be umbilically tethered to finance as it stands to enjoy modern economics. I've seen regular people speaking about what they know, offering many solutions up for discussion and improvement, for the greater good. These ideas manifest into actions; phone banks that jammed the Capital switchboard, marches to bring the solutions right to those who can, in our current system make changes, and much more. Of course, all of which have been played down in the media and actively in some cases obstructed (pepper spraying 80 year old women really make the point), from their action, yet those involved do not falter. Go to something like October2011.org and read about what is being done, every day.
It is purely by corporate media manipulation and shills bought by the money from their ill-gotten gains that even suggest these people offer only objection with no realistic solutions. The very idea illustrates the degree of control those in power have a the moment and the extent of the issues we face. They don't want the average American to get off his ass, wake up, and start listening. They don't want him walking down to his local movement and getting involved. They don't just want him eating his processed gunk, exhausted from his increasingly low-paying jobs with longer hours, accessing the passive entertainment they provide, too tired to do anything else, they want him to love them and thank them for the privilege, defending his own subjugation at any cost. Long ago a handful of of the smartest and most unethical figured out that they didn't have to hide or curtail their dealings, if they could only control perception significant to ensure that the majority would be too apathetic, cynical, and empty-headed from suckling at the poison teat of their particular form of capitalism, to want to do anything of the issues right in front of their face.
The Occupy movement represents the antithesis of this corporate and finance-controlled state and thus, they work harder than ever to spread misinformation so that people will actively hate, or at least discourage, those who stand the best chance of liberating them. One day every reader here may find himself forced to choose between supporting his liberation or his enslavement; look to the Arab world over the past year and think that it may not be unrealistic to find that if those pressing for their freedom and a
I'm seeing a disappointing amount of "Anonymous is giving them reasons to support SOPA/PIPA/ACTA!"; that's the exact sort of spin that typical corporate-controlled media puts on these situations while trying to appear as if they're not horribly biased to begin with. Its the same sort of despicable falsehood that is spewed in attempting to denigrate the Occupy protests The majority of Anonymous most publicized actions involve either 1) Leaks of confidential information regarding government corruption, including proof of private industry meddling and pulling the strings and 2) DDoS attacks. SOPA/PIPA/ACTA are constantly championed by their proponents as a way to stop copyright infringement, not to have blanket approval to censor at will and mark anyone with a dissenting opinion as a "cyber-criminal". If anyone in an official capacity seems to suggest that the actions of Anonymous are proof of why we need SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, they're exposing their own corrupt agenda!
Anonymous has over the years, through various "official" campaigns, done a lot of good for the Internet and global information at large. The very nature of Anon means that sometimes there will be those that use its mantle to shield their wretched dealings, but this is a minority. Also, specifically on the nature of DDoS attacks, I expect MUCH better of slashdot who should understand their composition and what they're designed to accomplish. Organized DDoS, when all participants are willing, is pretty much an online sit-in or picket-line. These forms of protest are designed to call attention to their grievance by impeding the normal functionality of the offending party. Yes, this can effect business. Yes this can make someone's day less convenient. However, that is the point! People are willing to give up their day and in some cases risk arrest to bring attention to the issue at hand. Its unfortunate that people have become so apathetic today that watching people "throw their bodies on the proverbial gears" barely causes most Americans (shall I say Westerners? Unsure...) to look up, or worst exclaim "How dare they interfere with the machine! The nerve of them being crushed to death to slow the thing down!" I personally feel that, in most circumstances this should not be an illegal action and if it is, it should be a minimal penalty civil infraction. Even today however, in most cases (with the exception of the far-too-frequent corrupt police officer crying "resisting arrest" and employing everything short of intentional deadly force to protesters) it is a misdemeanor or less where those arrested often have charges dropped or a small fine, unlikely to even require a day in court.
Why should this be any different if someone uses a computer? A physical-world denial of service is considered to all but right-wing nutjobs to be worthy of minor punishment, but people try to justify decades-long "cyber-crime" sentences simply because of their own ignorance of technology. A DDoS enacted on a site specifically for reasons of protest is no different and I expect Slashdot users to know better and thus refuse to propagate the erroneous ideal that its a "big scary computer thing that lets hackers steal all your medical records and sell pictures of your child to pedophiles" that corporate-controlled media and technophobic fearmongers push.
The key difference between this UbuntuTV box as I describe it is the power and featureset of Ubuntu Linux behind it, which means that it isn't simply beholden to content providers through normal means. It doesn't have to rely on a sole "app store" or be designed with only processing content from iTunes in mind. As it would have a "real" browser and flash/HTML5/OggTheora/Moonlight etc... it could access all the content streams that are available online; it wouldn't just have to sit around and necessarily wait for whomever to package a streamer app. Users could easily bring their own media from their collection to be played on this UbuntuTV box - BluRay, DVD and CD rips, downloaded content, recorded TV (and, capable of recording TV with some of the features I cited above). On an iDevice and other prefabs its troublesome to proxy into the BBC iPlayer from certain regions, or watch American online streams, but since UbuntuTV would be able to easily use the same workarounds that you do on your PC now, users would have no problem doing so.
The people that provide the content want complete control, but they're willing to capitulate if they smell money - see Netflix's expansion. UbuntuTV Box would have a featureset that many people would use and enjoy, even if the unlikely event of all the mainstream blocking was to occur. Considering it a new UI and "ready-made" feature-package of Ubuntu Linux for a certain task - in this case media consumption - and built on hardware that "just works" in the case of the Box, it is as flexible as any other Ubuntu distribution. Easy for the novice, wide open for the enthusiast. If many people started buying and using UbuntuTV Boxes or loading it on their own HTPCs, then the content providers would, just like with Popcorn Hour and WDTV, want a piece of that pie. It would not be financially viable for them to impede the growth of the platform and in truth the would hitch their wagon just as they have in the past, with greenlighting Hulu, NetFlix, Boxee, Amazon, and other media sources.
These days we've become so used to locked down channels and devices that do little more than provide a vary narrow path for content providers to dictate what they wish. The market needs something better that is made with user experience in mind. It would be good for Ubuntu and good for the users, and give content providers the choice to get in on the platform or see revenue pass them by.
Feel free to read my recent posting history for my opinion on "SmartTVs" - to put it succinctly, they're a waste so long as manufacturer and content provider greed dictate a fragmented, proprietary ecosystem. If Ubuntu wants to really dive into "living room" media, I'd much rather they create a "Ubuntu TV Box" of sorts. Aesthetically pleasing chassis and cutting-edge hardware support (Latest HDMI/DisplayPort, WiDi wireless display technology, 802.11N built in, Gigabit Ethernet, 2+ USB3.0 ports for external drives to source media, possible internal 1TB HDD, sufficient power and hardware support for HD codecs - possibly based on a high end next generation AMD APU setup which would give it quad core processing power for streaming/encoding and a 6000 or 7000 series mid-grade GPU built in. Perhaps include 1 PCI-E x16 3.0 expansion slot for a CableCARD or similar tuner/encoder/recorder card), combined with a custom version of Ubuntu (perhaps taking a few pages from MythBuntu) could show the power of an open platform. With a product sold like this, Ubuntu could lobby for Linux support of CableCARD devices and have an installed base that would make use of them.
Compared to the various proprietary solutions out there, this "UbuTV" box would be far more extensible and be able to integrate all forms of media, frequently updated, and give the user the choice they desire. If Starz releases their HBOGo competitor, simply install support for it. If you subscribe to Netflix, load up that module. Having a default "Just Works" UI, but the ability to install XBMC or MythTV as well would be quite viable. If you want to play games, just load up Desura - it could be the first full-featured distribution variant made to "just work" on a linux Home Theater PC, that would be pre-installed on proper , supported hardware direct with UbuntuTV in mind.
Unfortunately, by leaving this up to the SmartTV manufacturers, I worry this is going to be swift faceplant when "SmartTV" is no longer the buzzword of the moment. I don't want support for updates and hardware to to confined to the whims of Sony, Samsung, and LG. The worst part is when they cheap out on hardware capable of decoding smooth 1080p media for instance, it will reflect badly on UbuntuTV. The TV manufacturers have little interest in really supporting their products long term - they'd much rather you just buy another one. Unless Canonical has made some extremely lucrative offers which frankly I'm not sure is possible much less a good use of their finances, I don't anticipate SmartTV manufacturers going out of their way to make the UbuntuTV experience that great - its just another bullet point for sale. If they had hardware they commissioned and a rising userbase, then they'd have a bit more weight at negotiation. Including the service in SmartTVs could be a decent second step if its "box" made it desirable for the userbase and a true selling point. I also think that Ubuntu needs to work on other aspects of its service, such as Ubuntu One (I'd like to see total cross-platform support. It needs to "out dropbox, dropbox" for the vast majority of users and personally including SpiderOak style encryption is the only way I'd even consider using a service of the type. Furthermore, it needs to support 3rd party content for streaming and the like not just things purchased in the Ubuntu ecosystem. A comprehensive referral system allowing additional data at a rate above competitors would be a good idea as well I'd like to support Ubuntu One, but until it can at least match SpiderOak if not outdo them....).
I don't want to see Ubuntu crash and burn because SmartTV manufacturers don't really give a crap about the product. Its just not a good way to start, putting your entire reputation in a new market at the control of 3rd parties. Releasing two personalized hardware offerings, one as I listed above at the "high end" and a slightly more modest variant similar to a WDTV, along with preparing disc images of customized official UbuntuTV OS offerings meant for users with home-built HTPCs, would be a much better way to start off showcasing UbuntuTV.
While this individual circumstance may just be regarding entertainment, the impetus for such behavior is the very same underlying corruption that has afflicted our nation with such woes. Profit-at-any-cost, hyper-controlling capitalism by way of private industry corrupting government to its corporate whims is responsible from everything from the pitiful state of financial regulations to the lacking affordability of health care. Patenting, locking-down, and refusing to cooperate on standards for entertainment may mean a worse user experience, but when pharmaceutical and medical research/equipment companies do the exact same thing people end up dying because they can't afford their medication or procedure. What's worse is that even more so than entertainment, medical, financial, and private utilities all have a heavy investment of public money, basically holding these necessary services hostage, using public funds to bulk their wallets, and doing the bare minimum in return.
Private sector business in this nation (and many others), regardless of field acts with impunity, devoid of ethics toward any ends that, in the short term, will cause their stock to jump a quarter of a point. Until we start regulating and holding those responsible to account, it will continue.
The biggest impediment to technological progress in many forms of consumer electronics and information is greed by way of lock-in. Everyone has to make their own "thing" that is wholly incompatible with everyone else's thing, even (especially?) if there is an existing player doing well in the market. Right now the cable monopolies pretty much have everyone else by the pubic hair; exclusivity contracts ensuring that many "OnDemand" shows can't be shown elsewhere. Then the big networks/broadcasts have their own gadget (Hulu/Plus), as now are Premium channels like HBOGo and their Cinemax gadget; Showtime/TMC andStarz are catching up. Somewhat agnostic players like Netflix are making headway, but running into barricades because the aforementioned won't simply license their content to Netflix but instead insist on their own player.
All of these locked-down players and streamers need to be coded and ported for varying platforms, with varying levels of quality and openness. Will X be on both Android and iOS? How about Windows Phone and MeeGo? Windows PCs, Xbox360...Linux? Built into the "SmartTV"s of LG and Sony? How about Samsung? On BluRay players? Available online? HD or SD? Back catalog, new releases, or only items 6 months out? Commercial skips, or forced ads? Is it any wonder that people aren't emptying their pockets in droves to subscribe to these service where everything is going to be so limited?
People can't pay a simple, reasonable fee for the content they want and generally have access to it nomatter what, when, or where they may want to watch. Right now, even for those who already have a CableTV subscription, its often easier for certain content, to simply downloaded pirated ripped versions; which come online swiftly, have a fleshed out back catalog, lack commercials, have an up-front listing of the quality, streaming is an option not a requirement, and generally no limits to how the user can watch. Until this is remedied, trying to ask people to pay extra for "SmartTVs" is going to be a farce because 99% of people aren't going to research that only Sony and Samsung TVs over $2500 are authorized to carry HBOGo etc.
Content producers all need to get together and decide on an OPEN, unified system for placing their content online. Lets start with Netflix, the current pack leader who has already been fighting for the right to display content for years. Lets say if everyone, from broadcast, cable, movie studios and even foreign content producers went and licensed their content to Netflix, with the understanding that Netflix will 1) Collect and share revenue from subscriptions and 2) create an open source client for distribution that has a number of important features for users such as lack of commercials, HD resolutions and the ability to download as well as stream. Then we can think about "SmartTVs", where each manufacturer knew all they had to do was support the unified client. Then, no matter if you had a set-top box, home-theater PC add-in card, or software-based setup, a subscriber would still have full access to everything.
Until hubris and greed can be let go, I don't see this happening. Thus, all the scraping about in this market will be a gimmick at best or useless at worst while clueless industry blame users and piracy and demand even more lockdown, thus beginning the circle anew. We need to show we simply won't put up with having content held hostage in this way.
I didn't have a C64 as a kid, moving straight from the whole Apple series and Atari, to 486 DX66 (a monster of gaming power at its inception). However, for those with C64 memories, Commodore isn't dead - check out http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx - you can actually buy a perfect replica C64 keyboard/chassis in which to build a modern PC, or you can buy a prefab one with either Intel Atom or Sandy-Bridge based kit (personally, I'm a little underwhelmed by the hardware chosen in both the prefabs, you can probably do better yourself). Commodore has gone even further by creating a new Linux distribution "Commodore OS Vision" which gives a full featured Linux system (based on Mint) and has all the old Commodore software built in and accessible as well, free to download for anyone (which will spur Linux adoption as well). So if you want to create a retro gaming system, a unique HTPC, or just want to dive into the old C64 software your remember, give it a look! Cool that they're introducing fun, user-controlled computing to a new generation and making a fleshed out Linux distribution that pays homage to the old ways while showing how far we've come.