In Moscow, subway system have been using contactless RF Card since 1998. You wave the card at sensor and that's it (same as SpeedPass for gas station). Really fast, rechargeable, easy to use.
They say one guy was hiding RF card uner his cap, and then amazed controller ladies by taking a bow in front of sensor. Of course it worked and it'd let him through:)
".. Do you know that the first memory implant was designed to give people perfect life? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe..." Hm... Long term memory failure:)
So far I see lots of people complaining about RF performance of T68*. If it's a replacement, will they finally have radio tract performance of at least Samsung phones or, even better, Motorola?:) Otherwise you have to carry two phones. This new toy for taking pictures, and regular Samsung s105 to actually talk:)
1. Add enhanced greeting to Sendmail to allow certificate. Someone like Verisign (or even better -- open-source related company:) ) gives certificates to ISPs or anyone else, who wants/needs to use it. Every user has to be authenticated before using sendmail of that company to send messages out. That way tracking spam becomes easy -- you know sending ISP, field in message includes user ID. Number of messages one userid can send a day is limited (at ISP). Privileged (and more expensive) userid can send more, being certified as mailing list and/or legitimate mass mailing (announcements etc)
2. Certificates get revoked from companies that break the rules (based on complain?). Fly-by-night spam ISPs would have to get new certificates under new legal name and pay new fees -- expensive and inefficient to allow them to pose as legitimate sender.
3. Mail coming through non-certificated sources gets thrown out/declined/marked "SPAM" with option for user to kill it automatically.
So Covad will partner with company, providing voice service over their internet connection (Vonage for example), big deal. But the big deal is, as I understand, that new high speed networks don't need to be shared. With this Bell's argument that "we don't want to build out into rural areas cause we'd have to share" is no longer valid, and they will have to build out to gain much wanted monopoly. Of course there's also a chance the whole thing gets thrown out by a court.
Low Frequency Vibrations Make People Happy
on
Soundless Music?
·
· Score: 1
Yesss!:) Look at all those massaging chairs people bought over the time. Wonderful vibrations, make you feel nice and comfortable.
Rrrrrring! "Good morning Ma'm, we are calling today to conduct a survey about consumer debt. What APRs do you have on your credit card? Do you know that YYY Inc offers easy way to get rid of the debt? On the scale from 1 to 10, how interested are you in getting low APR? *click*" Rrrrrring! "Good morning Ma'm, we are calling to conduct a survey about consumer awareness of SuperCleaningShmining line of products *click*" Rrrrrring!...:)
From PDF one can see, that Sun asks not for mere "put us on desktop" but to be carried on any product, containing.NET(page 10 of PDF) which (allthough not specificly listed) would include all Pocket PCs and Server products. While having Java pre-loaded on desktop versions is, of course, reasonable, having Sun's environment piggybacking on pocket pc is not. Arument about market tipping from Java to.NET (in terms of developers) is based on survey and projections from Evans Data ignores development tool availability and/or usability (in other words there's Visual Basic for Dummies, but I have not seen any IDE that would let a Dummy User to generate Java Application -- except for Macromedia FX). Good things in this injunction for Microsoft are:
1. No more litigation. Once Sun supplied Microsoft with it's runtime environment it cannot sure Microsoft in regard of this matter (bye bye other lawsuit)
2. Microsoft will be able to blame problems on included Java platform and charge users extra to resolve them (if any).
3. Must carry does not mean "can't be removed". So it is possible that first question user will see after starting system will be "Would you like to remove Sun's Java Runtime environment, to save space and resources?" with button YES set as default:)
One letter, of course, is dismissed easily. A hundred -- probably too. A thousand -- well, it will be reported to the boss. Ten thousand -- CNN has 35sec long mention of "mail campaign". A hundred thousand -- RIAA's eye flash with "$18.00 x 5 x 100000 = 9 MILLION DOLLARS! WE LOOSE 9 MILLION DOLLARS!":)
Imagine you as a world renowed pottery master. You make new designs that sell millions of copies, get praises from critics. Because you're really really good at it. And then crowd starts to scream around you "Now you Mister Potter stop this nonsence this instant! Think how many sculptures of nekkid ladies can you make and how it would advance the business of selling nekkid sculptures! Go ahead, make one right now!". Strange, isn't it? Yet it's ok to do so to video game developers. If at certain point artist decides to move to another area -- it's his own business. If he keeps making creations of the same kind, nobody should complain.
Article says users get storage on server where they can put their file and then "share" them. So all it boils down to is a big server, where you can upload something and then pass the bookmark to it to another user. Given that more and more of independent hosting providers support mobile platform, such p2p "invention" is not important, though it can be branded as "3G killer app". Given that users will have to upload files to the storage place, it probably will be done through home computer. And at that point it's easier to send email to a friend, with link to user's homepage with file, rather than try to do it through the telephone (with less speed and more surcharges).
What a meager million bucks can do against multimillion dollar lobby?:) I think it's very naive to expect any major changes and/or law corrections. A good commercial, asking people vote for candidates that support removal of opressive/excessive copyright restriction night be of more help.
Xerox has lost trademark protection in Russia. Because of their oversuccessive marketing campaign, any photocopier is called "Xerox" (I guess it's a photocopy of story with Kangaroo as the animal name). Wonderful combinations such as "Xerox from Canon" sprang into life and are common these days there.:)
"Unnamed CDMA company" is almost certainly Sprint PCS. With start of Virgin Mobile service (any Best Buy/Circuit city has their phones) they finally got into virtual provider business. The only problem is Virgin became the first company to do it:) Given their phone price is $99 but minutes are much cheaper I don't think this one will survive competition...
:) Hey, as soon as I will be able to buy laptop from Apple that will compete with IBM's Celeron based models for $800, I will agree that Macs can cost same amount as PCs.
After reading his "timings" I decided to try to open same sites in IE. On my machine (PIII 350, Win NT with IE 6) Fark was under 3 seconds, The Tech Zone - 2 seconds, ClubVibes -- 3 seconds, Sputnik - 1 second + 2 seconds for flash to start. FutureLooks - 3 seconds. I guess all those huge margins are nothing more than hickups in guy's internet connection.
In case you did not look at main menu, Tivo in US has video clips and other stuff from **** (major store). Before it was commercials about cars. I only wonder if they actually record it from on-the-air paid presentation or download via modem (I bet it's the latter as content is branded "Exclusive"). Modem download of ~15-20 minutes of video is ok. But if it gets to one hour of commercial downloading I am going to sell this pesky little box and use software-only solution:)
p.s. exclusive content to my oppinion is quite crappy. they should have known I don't like it as they have my preferences lined up...
Yay. If they're so popular there, why not fold other countries operations, and stay in Asian market with a little plug-me-in-IE tool? I mean that is how it all started, right? And if there's such a demand from kanji-typing public to use natural language for domain names, they will just go and download this little tool to continue to use it. Or ALL of Asia is not big enough for them to exist? Or users would rather type long-ugly-english-domain-names.com instead of spending 2 minutes of downloading? Straaaaaange.
Think about it, some guy comes up with "disconnected" version of AOL keywords and calls them "real names". Then goes and tries to sell it, finally seducing Microsoft, promising everyone will soon forget what "type in www.reallystrangeandlongdomain.com" is and replace it with "type in really strange and long into browser's address bar". Of course the whole idea failed, because people who need (and use) keywords instead of address without searching do use AOL:) Those who are capable of using search engine and typing addresses themselves do not use AOL and don't need the real names as well...
One of such lawsuits was dropped. In att wireless newsgroup there was a storm of messages about the suite. But there is even more questions about the merit of this litigation: 1. Affiliate definition (page 13, paragraph 56). I can be in "ROAMING" area, does that mean roamer is an affiliate? Even though I was charged for it? 2. Paragparh 58 is not true for VoiceStream -- they allow you to unlock your phone and use different SIM card, and different SID-related logic 3. Handset with incompatible standards cannot be moved to another carrier even if it was possible (as well as special software for network-depended features). 4. Paragraph 62 is baseless. There are dual-system (and triple-system) telephones, those that support TDMA and GSM, TDMA/AMPS and GSM 5. Paragraph 64: carriers still offer cheap/free/subsidised phones of correct system. Therefore argument "I want my GSM nokia on Sprint" is not valid. Consumer benefits of having old model from different system ported onto new carrier network are questionable at least. GSM Phones (VoiceStream) can be ported if needed, and carriers do not prevent people from buying unlocked (and very expensive;) ) phones for the full price.
I would love if they instead sued FCC for imposing charges that actually represent undeclared tax and can be up to 30% of the service cost (which is true for land lines as well) and for allowing postponding of Cellular Number Portability requirement. I bet it will be postponed again this year;)
Earthlink does not have that advantage in Austin. It might depend on Area but: TWA RR in austin is cheaper than Earthlink ($39.95) It has had free installation for a long time Same speed, tech support, refunds for those rare times when it's down. Earthlink says in it's agreement that:
Using a personal account for high volume or commercial use (e.g., revenue generation, advertising, etc.) is prohibited.
If it isn't the same as prohibition to maintain web server...:) Though at $8/month hosting is now cheap for almost everyone
I think the best way to get support from Mozilla would be to add IE Compatible mode. Either through preferences or a new custom flag-tag (). So that ALL of the parsing/paining logic (as well as javascript) would behave EXACTLY as IE. I am sick and tired hunting javascript bugs (trees initialized only AFTER the document is loaded with a whole bunch of "nice" side effects if you try to use IE code). Sizing in tables is just off, word wrapping is weird (to say at least) and so on and so forth.
Leave this new "Mozilla" mode for experimentating web developers, for the rest of us -- give us IE-Compatible browser:)
Or you will see "Made for IE" buttons all over again
Well... I saw Shrek in Digital Cinema.
It sucked. Small artefacts on screen and not better picture overall.
Also as i understand not all movies were released directly in digital format. And many are simply transferred.
So for now I think it's too expensive and doesn't provide any major quality improvement over regular analog projector (and I mean GOOD projector, not something cheap and old).
Evening news:
Today an undeground nail polish producer was arrested for making illegal substance to protect limited-play discs from limiting the play. Ever since limited play discs were adopted by movie studios all legal make-up companies stopped manufacturing of clear nail polish, as a thin layer of it, applied to the surface of the disc, prevents it from expiring. Last week authorities confiscated 20 gallon clean nail polish liquid from illegal alien, trying to smuggle it in through Mexican border, and today an undeground lab got busted.
In Entertainment news: Britney Spears new video release "My Smashing Songs" on limited play dvds have to be unlocked first by bathing th disc in diet pepsi. Dr. Pepper claims it can also be washed in diet Dr. Pepper, though quality of playback is not guaranteed...
Slashdot Mirror
In Moscow, subway system have been using contactless RF Card since 1998. You wave the card at sensor and that's it (same as SpeedPass for gas station). Really fast, rechargeable, easy to use.
:)
They say one guy was hiding RF card uner his cap, and then amazed controller ladies by taking a bow in front of sensor. Of course it worked and it'd let him through
".. Do you know that the first memory implant was designed to give people perfect life? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. ..." :)
Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe
Hm... Long term memory failure
So far I see lots of people complaining about RF performance of T68*. If it's a replacement, will they finally have radio tract performance of at least Samsung phones or, even better, Motorola? :) :)
Otherwise you have to carry two phones. This new toy for taking pictures, and regular Samsung s105 to actually talk
1. Add enhanced greeting to Sendmail to allow certificate. Someone like Verisign (or even better -- open-source related company :) ) gives certificates to ISPs or anyone else, who wants/needs to use it. Every user has to be authenticated before using sendmail of that company to send messages out. That way tracking spam becomes easy -- you know sending ISP, field in message includes user ID. Number of messages one userid can send a day is limited (at ISP). Privileged (and more expensive) userid can send more, being certified as mailing list and/or legitimate mass mailing (announcements etc)
:)
2. Certificates get revoked from companies that break the rules (based on complain?). Fly-by-night spam ISPs would have to get new certificates under new legal name and pay new fees -- expensive and inefficient to allow them to pose as legitimate sender.
3. Mail coming through non-certificated sources gets thrown out/declined/marked "SPAM" with option for user to kill it automatically.
That's it.
So Covad will partner with company, providing voice service over their internet connection (Vonage for example), big deal.
But the big deal is, as I understand, that new high speed networks don't need to be shared. With this Bell's argument that "we don't want to build out into rural areas cause we'd have to share" is no longer valid, and they will have to build out to gain much wanted monopoly.
Of course there's also a chance the whole thing gets thrown out by a court.
Yesss! :) Look at all those massaging chairs people bought over the time. Wonderful vibrations, make you feel nice and comfortable.
Rrrrrring! ... :)
"Good morning Ma'm, we are calling today to conduct a survey about consumer debt.
What APRs do you have on your credit card?
Do you know that YYY Inc offers easy way to get rid of the debt? On the scale from 1 to 10, how interested are you in getting low APR? *click*"
Rrrrrring!
"Good morning Ma'm, we are calling to conduct a survey about consumer awareness of SuperCleaningShmining line of products *click*"
Rrrrrring!
From PDF one can see, that Sun asks not for mere "put us on desktop" but to be carried on any product, containing .NET(page 10 of PDF) which (allthough not specificly listed) would include all Pocket PCs and Server products. While having Java pre-loaded on desktop versions is, of course, reasonable, having Sun's environment piggybacking on pocket pc is not. .NET (in terms of developers) is based on survey and projections from Evans Data ignores development tool availability and/or usability (in other words there's Visual Basic for Dummies, but I have not seen any IDE that would let a Dummy User to generate Java Application -- except for Macromedia FX).
:)
Arument about market tipping from Java to
Good things in this injunction for Microsoft are:
1. No more litigation. Once Sun supplied Microsoft with it's runtime environment it cannot sure Microsoft in regard of this matter (bye bye other lawsuit)
2. Microsoft will be able to blame problems on included Java platform and charge users extra to resolve them (if any).
3. Must carry does not mean "can't be removed". So it is possible that first question user will see after starting system will be "Would you like to remove Sun's Java Runtime environment, to save space and resources?" with button YES set as default
One letter, of course, is dismissed easily. A hundred -- probably too. A thousand -- well, it will be reported to the boss. Ten thousand -- CNN has 35sec long mention of "mail campaign". A hundred thousand -- RIAA's eye flash with "$18.00 x 5 x 100000 = 9 MILLION DOLLARS! WE LOOSE 9 MILLION DOLLARS!" :)
Imagine you as a world renowed pottery master. You make new designs that sell millions of copies, get praises from critics. Because you're really really good at it.
And then crowd starts to scream around you "Now you Mister Potter stop this nonsence this instant! Think how many sculptures of nekkid ladies can you make and how it would advance the business of selling nekkid sculptures! Go ahead, make one right now!".
Strange, isn't it? Yet it's ok to do so to video game developers. If at certain point artist decides to move to another area -- it's his own business. If he keeps making creations of the same kind, nobody should complain.
Authors, providing guarantee, that script and/or movie made by it will get at least four Oscar nominations get extra points :)
Article says users get storage on server where they can put their file and then "share" them. So all it boils down to is a big server, where you can upload something and then pass the bookmark to it to another user. Given that more and more of independent hosting providers support mobile platform, such p2p "invention" is not important, though it can be branded as "3G killer app".
Given that users will have to upload files to the storage place, it probably will be done through home computer. And at that point it's easier to send email to a friend, with link to user's homepage with file, rather than try to do it through the telephone (with less speed and more surcharges).
What a meager million bucks can do against multimillion dollar lobby? :)
I think it's very naive to expect any major changes and/or law corrections. A good commercial, asking people vote for candidates that support removal of opressive/excessive copyright restriction night be of more help.
Xerox has lost trademark protection in Russia. :)
Because of their oversuccessive marketing campaign, any photocopier is called "Xerox" (I guess it's a photocopy of story with Kangaroo as the animal name).
Wonderful combinations such as "Xerox from Canon" sprang into life and are common these days there.
"Unnamed CDMA company" is almost certainly Sprint PCS. With start of Virgin Mobile service (any Best Buy/Circuit city has their phones) they finally got into virtual provider business. The only problem is Virgin became the first company to do it :) Given their phone price is $99 but minutes are much cheaper I don't think this one will survive competition...
:)
Hey, as soon as I will be able to buy laptop from Apple that will compete with IBM's Celeron based models for $800, I will agree that Macs can cost same amount as PCs.
After reading his "timings" I decided to try to open same sites in IE. On my machine (PIII 350, Win NT with IE 6) Fark was under 3 seconds, The Tech Zone - 2 seconds, ClubVibes -- 3 seconds, Sputnik - 1 second + 2 seconds for flash to start. FutureLooks - 3 seconds.
I guess all those huge margins are nothing more than hickups in guy's internet connection.
In case you did not look at main menu, Tivo in US has video clips and other stuff from **** (major store). Before it was commercials about cars. :)
I only wonder if they actually record it from on-the-air paid presentation or download via modem (I bet it's the latter as content is branded "Exclusive"). Modem download of ~15-20 minutes of video is ok. But if it gets to one hour of commercial downloading I am going to sell this pesky little box and use software-only solution
p.s. exclusive content to my oppinion is quite crappy. they should have known I don't like it as they have my preferences lined up...
Yay. If they're so popular there, why not fold other countries operations, and stay in Asian market with a little plug-me-in-IE tool? I mean that is how it all started, right? And if there's such a demand from kanji-typing public to use natural language for domain names, they will just go and download this little tool to continue to use it. Or ALL of Asia is not big enough for them to exist? Or users would rather type long-ugly-english-domain-names.com instead of spending 2 minutes of downloading?
Straaaaaange.
Think about it, some guy comes up with "disconnected" version of AOL keywords and calls them "real names". Then goes and tries to sell it, finally seducing Microsoft, promising everyone will soon forget what "type in www.reallystrangeandlongdomain.com" is and replace it with "type in really strange and long into browser's address bar". Of course the whole idea failed, because people who need (and use) keywords instead of address without searching do use AOL :) Those who are capable of using search engine and typing addresses themselves do not use AOL and don't need the real names as well...
One of such lawsuits was dropped. ;) ) phones for the full price.
;)
In att wireless newsgroup there was a storm of messages about the suite.
But there is even more questions about the merit of this litigation:
1. Affiliate definition (page 13, paragraph 56). I can be in "ROAMING" area, does that mean roamer is an affiliate? Even though I was charged for it?
2. Paragparh 58 is not true for VoiceStream -- they allow you to unlock your phone and use different SIM card, and different SID-related logic
3. Handset with incompatible standards cannot be moved to another carrier even if it was possible (as well as special software for network-depended features).
4. Paragraph 62 is baseless. There are dual-system (and triple-system) telephones, those that support TDMA and GSM, TDMA/AMPS and GSM
5. Paragraph 64: carriers still offer cheap/free/subsidised phones of correct system. Therefore argument "I want my GSM nokia on Sprint" is not valid. Consumer benefits of having old model from different system ported onto new carrier network are questionable at least. GSM Phones (VoiceStream) can be ported if needed, and carriers do not prevent people from buying unlocked (and very expensive
I would love if they instead sued FCC for imposing charges that actually represent undeclared tax and can be up to 30% of the service cost (which is true for land lines as well) and for allowing postponding of Cellular Number Portability requirement. I bet it will be postponed again this year
Earthlink does not have that advantage in Austin.
:)
It might depend on Area but:
TWA RR in austin is cheaper than Earthlink ($39.95)
It has had free installation for a long time
Same speed, tech support, refunds for those rare times when it's down.
Earthlink says in it's agreement that:
Using a personal account for high volume or commercial use (e.g., revenue generation, advertising, etc.) is prohibited.
If it isn't the same as prohibition to maintain web server...
Though at $8/month hosting is now cheap for almost everyone
I think the best way to get support from Mozilla would be to add IE Compatible mode. Either through preferences or a new custom flag-tag (). So that ALL of the parsing/paining logic (as well as javascript) would behave EXACTLY as IE. I am sick and tired hunting javascript bugs (trees initialized only AFTER the document is loaded with a whole bunch of "nice" side effects if you try to use IE code). Sizing in tables is just off, word wrapping is weird (to say at least) and so on and so forth. :)
Leave this new "Mozilla" mode for experimentating web developers, for the rest of us -- give us IE-Compatible browser
Or you will see "Made for IE" buttons all over again
Well... I saw Shrek in Digital Cinema.
It sucked. Small artefacts on screen and not better picture overall.
Also as i understand not all movies were released directly in digital format. And many are simply transferred.
So for now I think it's too expensive and doesn't provide any major quality improvement over regular analog projector (and I mean GOOD projector, not something cheap and old).
Evening news:
:)
Today an undeground nail polish producer was arrested for making illegal substance to protect limited-play discs from limiting the play. Ever since limited play discs were adopted by movie studios all legal make-up companies stopped manufacturing of clear nail polish, as a thin layer of it, applied to the surface of the disc, prevents it from expiring. Last week authorities confiscated 20 gallon clean nail polish liquid from illegal alien, trying to smuggle it in through Mexican border, and today an undeground lab got busted.
In Entertainment news: Britney Spears new video release "My Smashing Songs" on limited play dvds have to be unlocked first by bathing th disc in diet pepsi. Dr. Pepper claims it can also be washed in diet Dr. Pepper, though quality of playback is not guaranteed...
p.s. as usual -- everything above is made up