"This is outrageous" was among the comments heard fom Jack Ripov, spokesman of the TBAA, the Text Book Association of America.
He also stated that, "Selling those books at such low prices in America is obviously going to hurt quality. We spend a lot of money to make that our customers only receive top notch quality products. Now the market gets swamped with british textbooks that spell words like color or aluminun wrong, hurting the spelling of many students here, yes, very undermining what this country stands for. But we will not watch this idly!"
This comment is obviously a reference to the soon to be introduced move to region-encoded textbooks.
When asked how region-encoded textbooks would work, Mr Ripov was kind of enough to supply us with some basic details. "You see, everyone who wants to use a textbook will get a new device implanted into his brain ensuring that they only use textbooks from their Region. If you would start to read a textbook from another region, the device would simply tap into a neural interface and deactivate your eyes, effectively stopping you from violating our IP rights." When asked what about persons who would not have such a device implanted into their brains, Ripov replied: "Well, obviously we will have to deal with those unamerican IP-terrorists as well, but we have a strong case there that reading a textbook without a brain control device is in violation of the DMCA, and we will not hesitate to enfore our rights in court."
The translation is quite okay.
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Being a native German speaker as well, and just having read the article in German and then English, I think the translation was done fairly well, and I doubt there is need for a better one.
ISP: We'll have to cut your net access! We detected several dozen computers simultaneously accesing the net through our service, while the contract only allows you one! Customer: Uh, I only have one box, I just love to have 30 windows of VMWARE open at once. How better to show off system performance! ISP: arglllll
I mean, if the customer says he uses VMware, what's the ISP gonna do? Cut off the line without real evidence? I'd assume there are enough people who'd not mind a lawsuit.
And because bandwith is such a terrible thing to waste, here's another mirror for the UnrealDemo. I wonder just how much my little machine can take, but if it's only a few people (haha, on slashdot) it should be fairly fast.
Well, Europe is not very homogenous, there are more and there are less advanced areas. Imho Sweden is the most developed country of this planet, technology-wise.
You have mentioned Bredbandsbolaget which is prolly the best ISP in the world. I am (unfortunately) not from Sweden, but I wished I was. 10 mbit to your home, for the price of 30$ per month. No traffic limit, and the line not only delivers those 10 mbit on paper, but also in reality, I've seen it with my own eyes more than once.
Together with a friend from Sweden I am running a webserver on one of those lines, and we're now at some 400 gigs of traffic per month and this line just works like a charm.
10 cent to receive an SMS? I pay less than that for sending one from my cell phone, and not a penny for receiving one. Neither does anyone else in this country.
Hell, I don't know of a single country here in Europe where you have to pay for receiving SMS, in some even sending is free. 10 cent, for that I can get some 150kbyte of traffic on my GPRS account and use it to send a few dozen SMS from my notebook.
With these prices it is no wonder cell phone technology in the States is behind most of Europe.
It seems to me the internet is fairly resistant. If it wasn't in the news I would not know about KPNQwests problems, I have yet to see problems with my traffic. Not to say those do not exist, but I don't think they are too big.
The other network providers have enough capacity to take the additional traffic, since they all built huge lines (and thus have financial issues) and are operating nowhere near 100%.
Bill: "Did it work?" Steve: "Yes, and they only asked 10 millions for it." Bill: "That cheap. The company didn't ask more?" Steve: "Yes. It's actually all money for bribing their higher-ups." Bill: "Splendid. So they will start selling machines with Linux. Monopoly, my judge? No, we don't have one. See, even Walmart sells Linux Machines. So how dare those States say we have a monopoly." Steve: "And the best thing is, all the strupid peons will order software along, and when they realize it wont work, they will blame Linux for it, and get Windows for the machine. So we will even increase our retail Sales." Bill: "Damn Steve, your evil beats mine. You should really ask Slashdot for an icon of your own!" Steve: "So how's the other plan going?" Bill: "Fine, fine. With the RIAA and the MPAA on our Side we can't fail. And once DRM is a must, we will crush those Linux Geeks." Steve: "Yes, Yes. But the young Torvalds. He could be very useful for us if he joined us. Can you arrange that?" Bill: "He will either join us, or die..."
Yes, compared to Finland, the US of A have a very big landmass. But compared to Finland, they also have a lot more inhabitants. So what really counts is the population density. I don'T have the numbers, but I don't think the difference will be very big then.
I think the 3 countries in the world with the biggest cell phone usage (as by percentage of ppl owning a cell phone) are Sweden, Finland and Austria. Both Sweden and Finland are only lightly populated in their northern parts, and Austria is covered by a lot of mountains. I've been to two of these countries, namely Sweden and Austria, and the networks are great. Even at the top of some mountain, you have clear quality.
The neat thing, however, is the pricing, this is where some countries are really ahead. For example, if you are a company, some providers don't charge at all for calls within the company, all you pay is the monthly fee. That's really a big advantage for companies.
There are even similar offerings for private persons, ie, an Austrian provider let's you phone within their network for free during night hours if you've charged your prepad phone with at least 25 within the last 30 days.
Re:it seems the US is the only decent place net wi
on
Ghana's Digital Dilemma
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, I wouldn't say this. There are other decent places, not my country, Austria, where I have cable, but cable means 128kbit (it's limited to that speed).
But take a look at Scandinavia, especially Sweden, and this is the real paradise netwise, where even the US pales in comparison. A 10mbit line (both directions, no traffic limit) for 30 bucks a month. And those 10 mbit are not only on the paper, but reality. A friend of mine from sweden and me are running a server on that line (a 10mbit line is a terrible thing to waste, why not get a Terabyte of pr0n traffic per month *g*) and while looged in via ssh I have seen downloads up to 1.1 megabyte/s.
Add awesome health care, high tech everywhere, and you've got the perfect country. Truly, Sverige är mycket vackert. If the booze wasn'T that expensive, I'd move!
I don't think you really know what you are talking? Well, living some what, 5 miles from the border to Germany, I may be able to give you some insight.
The banning of computer games is in no way anywhere close to the banning of nazism.
The banning of games is handled by an institution called BPjS/BPjM. If they think a game is too brutal, violent shows too much blood etc, it will be banned from sale to minors, banned from advertisement, and banned from being displayed in shops. It is then more or less dead, and all the minors download a copy from the net or order it abroad. So yes. Stupid institution.
2) As for nazism. This is a Law in Germany, and this law was actually imposed by the USA after WWII. So whether banning nazism works or not, it was the decision of the USA.
now... you would think by now the USA would know better...
As much as I am against the banning of cs sales to minors, I must make one thing clear. Banning the sales to minors has absolutely nothing to do with censorship. Else it would be censorship as well if a minor wasn't allowed to buy porn. Sorry, but you messed two totally different things up here.
Still, glad to see they didn't ban it, I am neither from Germany, nor do I play cs, but still, I like the gaming community.
Well, concerning this topic, I just had to think of the most recent Microsoft advertisment, which, btw, made me laugh tears!
Have a look:
http://www.koehntopp.de/kris/msad.jpg
Slashdot Mirror
What? Are you telling me I won't get any money from Bill Gates!
All those thousands of mails I forwarded for nothing?
This can not be true!
"This is outrageous" was among the comments heard fom Jack Ripov, spokesman of the TBAA, the Text Book Association of America.
He also stated that, "Selling those books at such low prices in America is obviously going to hurt quality. We spend a lot of money to make that our customers only receive top notch quality products. Now the market gets swamped with british textbooks that spell words like color or aluminun wrong, hurting the spelling of many students here, yes, very undermining what this country stands for. But we will not watch this idly!"
This comment is obviously a reference to the soon to be introduced move to region-encoded textbooks.
When asked how region-encoded textbooks would work, Mr Ripov was kind of enough to supply us with some basic details.
"You see, everyone who wants to use a textbook will get a new device implanted into his brain ensuring that they only use textbooks from their Region. If you would start to read a textbook from another region, the device would simply tap into a neural interface and deactivate your eyes, effectively stopping you from violating our IP rights."
When asked what about persons who would not have such a device implanted into their brains, Ripov replied: "Well, obviously we will have to deal with those unamerican IP-terrorists as well, but we have a strong case there that reading a textbook without a brain control device is in violation of the DMCA, and we will not hesitate to enfore our rights in court."
Being a native German speaker as well, and just having read the article in German and then English, I think the translation was done fairly well, and I doubt there is need for a better one.
I can already imagine conversations like this:
ISP: We'll have to cut your net access! We detected several dozen computers simultaneously accesing the net through our service, while the contract only allows you one!
Customer: Uh, I only have one box, I just love to have 30 windows of VMWARE open at once. How better to show off system performance!
ISP: arglllll
I mean, if the customer says he uses VMware, what's the ISP gonna do? Cut off the line without real evidence? I'd assume there are enough people who'd not mind a lawsuit.
And because bandwith is such a terrible thing to waste, here's another mirror for the UnrealDemo.
I wonder just how much my little machine can take, but if it's only a few people (haha, on slashdot) it should be fairly fast.
Well, Europe is not very homogenous, there are more and there are less advanced areas. Imho Sweden is the most developed country of this planet, technology-wise.
/. effect?
You have mentioned Bredbandsbolaget which is prolly the best ISP in the world. I am (unfortunately) not from Sweden, but I wished I was. 10 mbit to your home, for the price of 30$ per month. No traffic limit, and the line not only delivers those 10 mbit on paper, but also in reality, I've seen it with my own eyes more than once.
Together with a friend from Sweden I am running a webserver on one of those lines, and we're now at some 400 gigs of traffic per month and this line just works like a charm.
Wonder if we could handle the
10 cent to receive an SMS? I pay less than that for sending one from my cell phone, and not a penny for receiving one. Neither does anyone else in this country.
Hell, I don't know of a single country here in Europe where you have to pay for receiving SMS, in some even sending is free. 10 cent, for that I can get some 150kbyte of traffic on my GPRS account and use it to send a few dozen SMS from my notebook.
With these prices it is no wonder cell phone technology in the States is behind most of Europe.
It seems to me the internet is fairly resistant. If it wasn't in the news I would not know about KPNQwests problems, I have yet to see problems with my traffic. Not to say those do not exist, but I don't think they are too big.
The other network providers have enough capacity to take the additional traffic, since they all built huge lines (and thus have financial issues) and are operating nowhere near 100%.
Meanwhile, in a deep cavern below Redmond...
Bill: "Did it work?"
Steve: "Yes, and they only asked 10 millions for it."
Bill: "That cheap. The company didn't ask more?"
Steve: "Yes. It's actually all money for bribing their higher-ups."
Bill: "Splendid. So they will start selling machines with Linux. Monopoly, my judge? No, we don't have one. See, even Walmart sells Linux Machines. So how dare those States say we have a monopoly."
Steve: "And the best thing is, all the strupid peons will order software along, and when they realize it wont work, they will blame Linux for it, and get Windows for the machine. So we will even increase our retail Sales."
Bill: "Damn Steve, your evil beats mine. You should really ask Slashdot for an icon of your own!"
Steve: "So how's the other plan going?"
Bill: "Fine, fine. With the RIAA and the MPAA on our Side we can't fail. And once DRM is a must, we will crush those Linux Geeks."
Steve: "Yes, Yes. But the young Torvalds. He could be very useful for us if he joined us. Can you arrange that?"
Bill: "He will either join us, or die..."
Yes, compared to Finland, the US of A have a very big landmass. But compared to Finland, they also have a lot more inhabitants. So what really counts is the population density. I don'T have the numbers, but I don't think the difference will be very big then.
I think the 3 countries in the world with the biggest cell phone usage (as by percentage of ppl owning a cell phone) are Sweden, Finland and Austria. Both Sweden and Finland are only lightly populated in their northern parts, and Austria is covered by a lot of mountains. I've been to two of these countries, namely Sweden and Austria, and the networks are great. Even at the top of some mountain, you have clear quality.
The neat thing, however, is the pricing, this is where some countries are really ahead. For example, if you are a company, some providers don't charge at all for calls within the company, all you pay is the monthly fee. That's really a big advantage for companies.
There are even similar offerings for private persons, ie, an Austrian provider let's you phone within their network for free during night hours if you've charged your prepad phone with at least 25 within the last 30 days.
Well, I wouldn't say this.
There are other decent places, not my country, Austria, where I have cable, but cable means 128kbit (it's limited to that speed).
But take a look at Scandinavia, especially Sweden, and this is the real paradise netwise, where even the US pales in comparison.
A 10mbit line (both directions, no traffic limit) for 30 bucks a month. And those 10 mbit are not only on the paper, but reality.
A friend of mine from sweden and me are running a server on that line (a 10mbit line is a terrible thing to waste, why not get a Terabyte of pr0n traffic per month *g*) and while looged in via ssh I have seen downloads up to 1.1 megabyte/s.
Add awesome health care, high tech everywhere, and you've got the perfect country. Truly, Sverige är mycket vackert. If the booze wasn'T that expensive, I'd move!
The banning of computer games is in no way anywhere close to the banning of nazism.
The banning of games is handled by an institution called BPjS/BPjM. If they think a game is too brutal, violent shows too much blood etc, it will be banned from sale to minors, banned from advertisement, and banned from being displayed in shops. It is then more or less dead, and all the minors download a copy from the net or order it abroad. So yes. Stupid institution.
2) As for nazism. This is a Law in Germany, and this law was actually imposed by the USA after WWII. So whether banning nazism works or not, it was the decision of the USA.
now... you would think by now the USA would know better...
As much as I am against the banning of cs sales to minors, I must make one thing clear. Banning the sales to minors has absolutely nothing to do with censorship. Else it would be censorship as well if a minor wasn't allowed to buy porn. Sorry, but you messed two totally different things up here.
Still, glad to see they didn't ban it, I am neither from Germany, nor do I play cs, but still, I like the gaming community.
Well, concerning this topic, I just had to think of the most recent Microsoft advertisment, which, btw, made me laugh tears! Have a look: http://www.koehntopp.de/kris/msad.jpg