D-VHS records hi-resolution HDTV material. DVD plays back (at least for now) low-resolution movies on an ancient NTSC/PAL-standard TV-set.
So how can you compare them? You can't. DVD is a great way of distributing movies and probably recording also in the near future.
But when the HDTV really appears, people are going to suddenly realize that the low resolution of their DVDs doesn't make justice to their new hires TV-sets.
Then what? Movie companies are going to sell us their old movies once again in a better format (probably not D-VHS, though) at a somewhat higher price. Just like they did when the VHS->DVD transition took place.
Of course, we here in Europe don't have to "worry" about consequences of HDTV anytime soon. If ever.
"A common user of the internet" probably uses a 56K modem and pays per minute in Finland, but broadband connections are also widely available and widely used.
I live in an apartment where I could basically choose from 4 different broadband connections: student housing LAN, DSL, cable and wireless WLAN. I'm using the first one of these..
The university has blocked Napster usage, so I can't use it here. It doesn't bother me much, though.. I have other means of getting music..
Napster has been somewhat widely covered in the Finnish media. However, sometimes press oversimplifies things, or even misinforms..
We are going to pay for the bytes in the future, not for the bandwidth.
It makes a lot of sense. The more you surf, the more you pay. Potential bandwidth for an individual surfer, however, should be virtually limitless. There even might not be any monthly fees in the future, you just pay for the bytes transferred.
Question:
As a monthly paying subscriber locked into a phone contract for a product that is clearly unsuitable for commercial use. ( read that I am self employed) who do I approach for compensation ?
The US government. Phones and plans shouldn't be allowed to be tied in one package, they really should be sold seperately, so that a customer can choose what ever phone and what ever service provider he/she wants, and change either one of those whenever he/she wishes to. Just like here in Finland..:)
Credit cards are "rare" in Finland because they are hard to get. You must have a good job before you can apply for a credit card. Teenagers, students etc. are mostly out of the question.
Of course, one can do perfectly well without a credit card in Finland.
It just pisses me off that I can't order stuff across the Atlantic..:)
Direct debit cards basically work just like credit cards, they just don't give you any credit, of course..
"Smart cards" (cards with a microchip) are just about to get common. One can "upload" money (up to about $350) in these cards from an ATM, and use them just like cash for small purchases.
I guess what you mean is that not everybody uses online banking in Finland.
That's right. But they don't use checks either. They either pay they bills with an ATM machine (which really is a form of online banking, too), fysically in a bank (directly from their account with no checks involved), using a "direct billing" system, which allows billers to charge customer's account directly, or by putting the bill in an envelope, dropping it in a sort-of "mailbox" in front of the bank, and letting the bank take care of it from there.
That's right, checks are very rare in Finland (and everywhere in Northern Europe). Sometimes they are used to give somebody money as a present. But really nobody uses them in their daily lives, they are way too cumbersome.
The situation is very similar as with pagers:
they too are VERY popular in the US, but nobody (except doctors) uses them here in Finland. In fact, the pager network is about to get discontinued soon in this country.
Before PayPal goes global, it has to figure out a good way of transferring funds to and from the users. This is a key problem that needs to be solved. Checks are totally out of the question globally, as well as credit cards to some extent. Virtually everyone in the States has a credit card, and they are easy to get. However, this is not the case worldwide, especially among teenagers and young adults, which I suppose are a key group for PayPal.
Online banking and money transferring in general varies a lot between different countries. Being a Finn, the primitive system of the States sometimes amuses me.
Here in Finland online banking has been available for over 15 years. Today, over 50 percent of the country's internet users use online banking. Nobody uses checks. I doubt they even exist in this country.
As far as domestic e-commerce is concerned, nobody uses credit cards. We have several payment options, one of which is an advanced money-transfer system. It basically is a normal online money transfer from one account to another, but allows the retailer to verify the transfer automatically, instantly.
What I'm trying to say is that PayPal has a long way to go to make it globally.
Let's say I made my own DVD-movie, and unambiguosly stated at the back of the DVD-case, that it would be perfectly legal to use DeCSS to play my movie on different platforms and for backup purposes.
So who is MPAA to say that I don't have the right to use DeCSS on my own disc? Or allow the usage of it for others?
Or better yet, what if I INCLUDED the DeCSS software on the DVD-disc itself?
DSL and other fast connections are NOT rare in Europe.
They are rare in UK, however. That's what I've heard.. UK is not "Europe", though. No need to generalize.
I live in a small Finnish city near the Russian border, and we have both DSL and cable available here (cable since 1995!). I'm currently using neither (I could use both), because I have a campus-area network connection.. So I actually have three broadband ways of connecting to the internet, and I could of course use a standard modem too, if I wanted to. I actually did that once, when the campus network had a short malfunction..
The overall tax burden is much heavier here in Finland (and elsewhere in Scandinavia as well) than in the US.
The point is, it's not fair for motorists that so little of the taxes government gets from them (in form of gas tax, vehicle tax and the tax which is added to a new car's price at the time of purchase, which is about 100%...) comes back to motorists in form of road maintenance and construction.
This is especially bad thing here in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia, where distances are far and population density even smaller than in the US.
Europe sucks. The Finnish government, for example, tries to do everything it can to make people drive less. Gas costs about $1.2 a litre, and 2/3 of it is taxes. Only about 10% of the taxes government gets from transportation goes to road construction/maintenance. 90% of it goes elsewere, like keeping the socialistic system up and running. Of course, it's not fair for car owners. The situation is pretty much the same all over Europe.
You lucky bastards. Here in Finland it's impossible to get a credit card unless you have a yearly income of about $20,000 or more. And of course you have to be over 18 years old.. I feel like a second class citizen, because I don't have a credit card and therefore can't order stuff over the Atlantic...:)
Slashdot Mirror
And what about thoughts? Those dirty fantasies about children. Those should be banned also, right?
D-VHS records hi-resolution HDTV material. DVD plays back (at least for now) low-resolution movies on an ancient NTSC/PAL-standard TV-set.
So how can you compare them? You can't. DVD is a great way of distributing movies and probably recording also in the near future.
But when the HDTV really appears, people are going to suddenly realize that the low resolution of their DVDs doesn't make justice to their new hires TV-sets.
Then what? Movie companies are going to sell us their old movies once again in a better format (probably not D-VHS, though) at a somewhat higher price. Just like they did when the VHS->DVD transition took place.
Of course, we here in Europe don't have to "worry" about consequences of HDTV anytime soon. If ever.
Janne
In my opinion, western nations should provide a satellite Internet access to Chinese citizens as a public service - free of charge.
Knowledge is power, and the more Chinese people know about the outside world, the faster democracy will progress in China.
Of course Chinese government could outlaw satellite dishes, but it's not that easy to control. Especially if the dishes are like 5 inches in diameter.
Finland has same track width with Russia, which is pretty convenient. There are both passenger and cargo trains going between these countries.
In the 1940s and 1950s Finland used mostly cargo trains as it paid its huge war intemnities to USSR (in goods, not in cash..).
Janne
Europe & HDTV ==> not going to happen. At least in this century...
This is how it basically should be. Everywhere.
Napster isn't guilty for anything.. Some of its users are.
"A common user of the internet" probably uses a 56K modem and pays per minute in Finland, but broadband connections are also widely available and widely used.
I live in an apartment where I could basically choose from 4 different broadband connections: student housing LAN, DSL, cable and wireless WLAN. I'm using the first one of these..
The university has blocked Napster usage, so I can't use it here. It doesn't bother me much, though.. I have other means of getting music..
Napster has been somewhat widely covered in the Finnish media. However, sometimes press oversimplifies things, or even misinforms..
We are going to pay for the bytes in the future, not for the bandwidth.
It makes a lot of sense. The more you surf, the more you pay. Potential bandwidth for an individual surfer, however, should be virtually limitless. There even might not be any monthly fees in the future, you just pay for the bytes transferred.
- Janne
Ericsson's phones cool? Yeah, right... Small displays, bulky outlook, lack of features compared to Nokia etc..
The US government. Phones and plans shouldn't be allowed to be tied in one package, they really should be sold seperately, so that a customer can choose what ever phone and what ever service provider he/she wants, and change either one of those whenever he/she wishes to. Just like here in Finland.. :)
There's one major problem with Ericsson: It's Swedish! :)
Credit cards are "rare" in Finland because they are hard to get. You must have a good job before you can apply for a credit card. Teenagers, students etc. are mostly out of the question.
:)
Of course, one can do perfectly well without a credit card in Finland.
It just pisses me off that I can't order stuff across the Atlantic..
Direct debit cards basically work just like credit cards, they just don't give you any credit, of course..
"Smart cards" (cards with a microchip) are just about to get common. One can "upload" money (up to about $350) in these cards from an ATM, and use them just like cash for small purchases.
- Janne
WAP-banking has been available for almost a year now here in Finland.. :)
- Janne
I guess what you mean is that not everybody uses online banking in Finland.
That's right. But they don't use checks either. They either pay they bills with an ATM machine (which really is a form of online banking, too), fysically in a bank (directly from their account with no checks involved), using a "direct billing" system, which allows billers to charge customer's account directly, or by putting the bill in an envelope, dropping it in a sort-of "mailbox" in front of the bank, and letting the bank take care of it from there.
Janne
That's right, checks are very rare in Finland (and everywhere in Northern Europe). Sometimes they are used to give somebody money as a present. But really nobody uses them in their daily lives, they are way too cumbersome.
The situation is very similar as with pagers:
they too are VERY popular in the US, but nobody (except doctors) uses them here in Finland. In fact, the pager network is about to get discontinued soon in this country.
Before PayPal goes global, it has to figure out a good way of transferring funds to and from the users. This is a key problem that needs to be solved. Checks are totally out of the question globally, as well as credit cards to some extent. Virtually everyone in the States has a credit card, and they are easy to get. However, this is not the case worldwide, especially among teenagers and young adults, which I suppose are a key group for PayPal.
Online banking and money transferring in general varies a lot between different countries. Being a Finn, the primitive system of the States sometimes amuses me.
Here in Finland online banking has been available for over 15 years. Today, over 50 percent of the country's internet users use online banking. Nobody uses checks. I doubt they even exist in this country.
As far as domestic e-commerce is concerned, nobody uses credit cards. We have several payment options, one of which is an advanced money-transfer system. It basically is a normal online money transfer from one account to another, but allows the retailer to verify the transfer automatically, instantly.
What I'm trying to say is that PayPal has a long way to go to make it globally.
By the way, can DVD-players play unencrypted MPEG2 video? Is it possible to manufacture fully functional DVD-moviedisc without encryption?
Let's say I made my own DVD-movie, and unambiguosly stated at the back of the DVD-case, that it would be perfectly legal to use DeCSS to play my movie on different platforms and for backup purposes.
So who is MPAA to say that I don't have the right to use DeCSS on my own disc? Or allow the usage of it for others?
Or better yet, what if I INCLUDED the DeCSS software on the DVD-disc itself?
I'd say it's pretty bad publicity.
DSL and other fast connections are NOT rare in Europe.
They are rare in UK, however. That's what I've heard.. UK is not "Europe", though. No need to generalize.
I live in a small Finnish city near the Russian border, and we have both DSL and cable available here (cable since 1995!). I'm currently using neither (I could use both), because I have a campus-area network connection.. So I actually have three broadband ways of connecting to the internet, and I could of course use a standard modem too, if I wanted to. I actually did that once, when the campus network had a short malfunction..
The overall tax burden is much heavier here in Finland (and elsewhere in Scandinavia as well) than in the US.
The point is, it's not fair for motorists that so little of the taxes government gets from them (in form of gas tax, vehicle tax and the tax which is added to a new car's price at the time of purchase, which is about 100%...) comes back to motorists in form of road maintenance and construction.
This is especially bad thing here in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia, where distances are far and population density even smaller than in the US.
Europe sucks. The Finnish government, for example, tries to do everything it can to make people drive less. Gas costs about $1.2 a litre, and 2/3 of it is taxes. Only about 10% of the taxes government gets from transportation goes to road construction/maintenance. 90% of it goes elsewere, like keeping the socialistic system up and running. Of course, it's not fair for car owners. The situation is pretty much the same all over Europe.
You know what 'Paska' means in Finnish? Shit..
I thought Divx discs were MEANT to be useless after 48 hours... "This disc will self-destruct in 5 seconds..." ;)
You lucky bastards. Here in Finland it's impossible to get a credit card unless you have a yearly income of about $20,000 or more. And of course you have to be over 18 years old.. I feel like a second class citizen, because I don't have a credit card and therefore can't order stuff over the Atlantic... :)