Hmm, funnily enough the ones I've seen (well, the Sony one which is really the only one I have seen) is too big for me.
I just want an e-book reader that I can easily hold in one hand. I'm using an ipaq at the moment which is almost the right size, but a little bit too small - another inch or so wider would probably be good. Then I could comfortably hold it in one hand whilst reading in almost any position.
I suspect e-book readers are still too far away though due to the DRM issues. The Sony one is probably the best tech, but its crippled by lack of available titles. I've been keeping an eye out for the Hanlin Ebook after seeing it posted in a Slashdot thread ages ago, but I haven't seen any of these over my side of the pond (Australia). They look good, but again you're short on titles - at least they'll read a huge variety of formats though.
"Q: Does FFmpeg use proprietary/patented intellectual property? A: Yes. There is a lot of multimedia available in proprietary/patented formats so it becomes necessary to support such formats and even reverse engineer them where required."
Who should be liable here - the developers of FFMpeg for including this patented code without paying the royalty fees, developers that incorporate FFMpeg into their products, people that use FFMpeg derivatives to do stuff with video (I assume Google is one of these as FFMpeg is/was one of their Summer of Code projects), or people that just use FFMpeg to play video? Or, of course, all of the above.
With that in mind, I find it MINDBOGGLING that the parties involved here made so much noise about the leaked key. All it does is draw attention to one specific problem.
Instead, they should have ignored it and quietly gone about the process of changing keys and revoking the compromised key - which, correct me if I'm wrong, was one of the major design features of this whizbang new system. They could have even claimed a small PR victory showing how well their design has worked and how well it protected the rights of their licensees.
Instead they've made a massive mess, drawn more attention to how useless DRM is, made themselves looked like jerks, and simply highlighted the availability of pirated HD DVD content. The only people that are winning here are the lawyers!
Yikes, while I agree almost 100% with everything you've said....
You know, I have never driven under the speed limit - mostly I have driven 15 to 20% over. Should I go to jail for that, too? ... I think this is a poor analogy. Copyright infringement doesn't physically hurt anyone else. It's even arguable as to the negative effects on the copyright owners.
Speeding has no effect either - until you actually hit someone. The risks of speeding are that you'll kill people; the risks of copyright infringement is that artists will starve, Brad Pitt will have to fish food out of bins, etc.
So yes, I think there is an argument that you should go to jail if you speed. There's a lot of processes in place (at least here in Australia) to give you fair change to adapt your behaviour - speeding tickets, loss of license, car confiscation, and finally - if they weren't enough of a deterrent - they throw you in the slammer.
The FAQ says 'A "connector" product is currently in beta' - that sort of implies the connector will be a separate standalone, well, product - perhaps commercial? Is that right or will it also be open source?
I assume from your posts in this thread that it will be open source but just wanted to clarify:)
I wonder if they can tweak the ratio so that the chips run 10% faster but consume 40% less energy. Chips are pretty fast now, but battery life is still a bit of an issue - I'd be really interested to see if they could eke a few more hours out of portable devices (for example) and I'd be happy to keep it at the same speed.
I'll start worrying about China leeching off the movie industry when I see Brad Pitt pawing through rubbish bins looking for a feed:)
While I think it's pretty low that China would sanction this sort of behaviour, I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, really. It's sort of funny that the park manager (in the article linked) tries to deny that it's actually based on Disney and that the characters are all original creations - and apparently the people in the character costumes willingly admit they're playing Disney characters!
But worst of all, they never really had a use. They all take time to boot, so there isn't much use as a dayrunner. They have no keyboard, so word processing is out. And forget photoshop. What, exactly, are you supposed to do with one? Play halo? Web development? This is a REALLY EXCELLENT POINT.
As the device size shrinks, so does the usability. Absence of a keyboard means quick input is effectively not possible, so a small device that you need to do a lot of input on is useless.
I'm looking for a new mobile phone, and I want to get something that runs Windows Mobile that syncs with Outlook and runs a few other apps I've been using on my Ipaq. Unfortunately most of the ones that run Windows Mobile are all stylus-based - and thus very big.
I don't want to do a lot of input on it - it's mostly for reminding me about my appointments. That is, my READ needs are much greater than my WRITE needs. But because they've catered too much for writing, it blows out the size - and thus doesn't make it useful for my needs.
Obviously it's not like I'm spoiled for choice in the mobile phone market, but still I just find it weird that there's so many usability issues with these things.
You were shocked a webcam on a chip no bigger than a quarter inch square was bad? Yeh, with that in mind, I was actually surprised about how _good_ it was.
Completely offtopic, but my first thought when reading this was the phrase "Bussard Ramjet", which I've read in various sci-fi novels (most notably 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle) - lo and behold, it is the same Bussard. Science is cool!
I object to the idea that a site that's designed using modern web standards costs more. I believe it would cost less to do it correctly, especially in terms of maintenance, over the long run. It's not like you write a web page once and just leave it there... I object to it too - unfortunately, that's just the way it is. How many developers out there had to go back and rework their sites for IE7, even if they did adhere to standards? I know we did.
I imagine getting all married to IE is probably something a well dressed MS rep talked them into and now it's too late to go back.
The point of my post was that historically, people could justify doing IE-only sites because it was most of the market and noone had ever heard of Firefox. Now more eyeballs are hitting your webpages with Firefox this is no longer an option.
It costs more to write code that works seamlessly on all browsers, especially if you're making a fancy pants site. I don't really think this is arguable; the fact of the matter is there are IE quirks that you have to cater for if you want your site to render exactly the same as it does in Firefox.
Speaking as a web developer, our company could sit here and happily churn out IE-only code. The vast majority of our clients would never even notice that their sites don't work in - what did you call it? Godzilla Firecat? Never heard of it. We obviously choose to cater to as many users as we can (in fact we develop for Firefox first and foremost), because its good practice.
You're right - there probably isn't going to be discussion like I mention. The average web developer will probably just build for IE and leave it at that, sadly.
Surely there has to be at least ONE firm that is circling around the people getting sued by the RIAA looking at ways they can counter-claim. One firm with a lot of expertise in this area would get a lot of business from thousands of defendants, by the sounds of things.
Web Developer: Fine - we can do all that and reach 90% of the market and it will cost $x. Or we can build a cross-browser site that will cost $y and reach 99% of the market.
Business: Well, $x is less than $y and 90% is still a lot of people. Do the first thing.
...titled "CD sales rise despite downloads", right here:
AS DIGITAL music hogs the headlines, the humble CD has made a comeback at the cash register. However, music retailers may still be feeling the pinch. Figures released by the Australian Recording Industry Association yesterday show an increase of almost 8 per cent in the volume of wholesale physical music products, such as CDs, in 2006 compared with 2005, despite a decrease of more than 5 per cent in overall revenue.
I've got no problems with YouTube making some money of it, but I agree that the lion's share should go to the content creator.
Looking at it in the same way as the traditional model of content production going out to distribution outlets (record shops, video shops, etc) - each person got a cut along the way.
If youtube gave a cut of ad profits (I'm sure defining an amount deemed "fair" by both parties would be a Herculean effort in itself) to the content creators, then surely everyone would be happy. Viacom could still put all their stuff on their own website and take all the moneyz from that, but farm out distribution to other large networks so they get more eyeballs, and hence more dollars.
(I've been watching more of Daily Show off the Comedy Central site. The player is OK, but I prefer youtube for a few reasons (easier to search, I can watch entire shows or at least larger segments, etc)).
Re:I were one of the cracking groups...
on
AACS Cracked Again
·
· Score: 1
So, question - once one of these things is exploited, does that not mean that every disc printed up to the point that the keys are revoked can be ripped (or otherwise copied)?
I'll happily accept ad-supported TV shows if it means I don't have to pay for them.
I'd happily download an xvid with embedded ads of the latest Sopranos episode, especially if I have the right to format shift it. I wouldn't bother removing the ads - sure, I might skip through them, but they're THERE and I'd probably see them.
This means I wouldn't have to shell out AU$60 to buy part one of Season 6 on DVD.
Religion cannot build an airplane, and science cannot explain a Creator. They are mutually exclusive. Because some one believes in one, doesn't mean they can't believe in the other, even if you don't understand this.
I think you misunderstand the point of science. You don't need to believe in science. It just is. That's the cool thing about it!
Science could quite easily explain a Creator, if such a thing existed and there was evidence to support it. However, all the facts point to this not being the case.
Just looking at my cellphone - its quite small and the area for the battery appears to be really quite efficient in terms of design. There's almost no wasted air space - its just a flat rectangle with a couple of holes for the electrodey bits to connect into the actual body of the phone (this is like a 3 year old Nokia 6600 or something; far from the pinnacle of awesome phones).
There is definitely *some* impact on the design though - like the case needs to be removable, which means it needs to be multiple parts, have little divots to get your fingernails into, etc - but they don't really seem to impact the thing much in terms of overall space.
Never really considered it to this much detail before; I'm sure its an interesting problem to have if you're trying to manufacture things like this in volume.
... I've been trying to buy a copy of Windows XP here [Brisbane, Australia] for weeks now. Pretty much every single software retail vendor that I've been to just tells me its not possible to buy it any more - they just try to foist a copy of Vista on to me.
There's a few places I can still get OEM (and a few places that seem to have old copies lying around here and there), but if you're Random McRandalot and listen to what sales people are pitching, you can't get XP any more - so why not try Vista?
Speaking as the "friend that can do it for them" for most of my friends who would buy something like this, I'd rather not have to do it.
The only advantage I can see for Apple in not making the batteries easily replacable is so they can skin people on post-warranty support and maintenance. It might make manufacturing easier or something maybe because there's less parts or something, maybe?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, funnily enough the ones I've seen (well, the Sony one which is really the only one I have seen) is too big for me.
I just want an e-book reader that I can easily hold in one hand. I'm using an ipaq at the moment which is almost the right size, but a little bit too small - another inch or so wider would probably be good. Then I could comfortably hold it in one hand whilst reading in almost any position.
I suspect e-book readers are still too far away though due to the DRM issues. The Sony one is probably the best tech, but its crippled by lack of available titles. I've been keeping an eye out for the Hanlin Ebook after seeing it posted in a Slashdot thread ages ago, but I haven't seen any of these over my side of the pond (Australia). They look good, but again you're short on titles - at least they'll read a huge variety of formats though.
Here's an example - probably bad, because it's not based on Microsoft patents (as far as I know, anyway).
FFMpeg's legal page clearly states:
"Q: Does FFmpeg use proprietary/patented intellectual property?
A: Yes. There is a lot of multimedia available in proprietary/patented formats so it becomes necessary to support such formats and even reverse engineer them where required."
Who should be liable here - the developers of FFMpeg for including this patented code without paying the royalty fees, developers that incorporate FFMpeg into their products, people that use FFMpeg derivatives to do stuff with video (I assume Google is one of these as FFMpeg is/was one of their Summer of Code projects), or people that just use FFMpeg to play video? Or, of course, all of the above.
With that in mind, I find it MINDBOGGLING that the parties involved here made so much noise about the leaked key. All it does is draw attention to one specific problem.
Instead, they should have ignored it and quietly gone about the process of changing keys and revoking the compromised key - which, correct me if I'm wrong, was one of the major design features of this whizbang new system. They could have even claimed a small PR victory showing how well their design has worked and how well it protected the rights of their licensees.
Instead they've made a massive mess, drawn more attention to how useless DRM is, made themselves looked like jerks, and simply highlighted the availability of pirated HD DVD content. The only people that are winning here are the lawyers!
Speeding has no effect either - until you actually hit someone. The risks of speeding are that you'll kill people; the risks of copyright infringement is that artists will starve, Brad Pitt will have to fish food out of bins, etc.
So yes, I think there is an argument that you should go to jail if you speed. There's a lot of processes in place (at least here in Australia) to give you fair change to adapt your behaviour - speeding tickets, loss of license, car confiscation, and finally - if they weren't enough of a deterrent - they throw you in the slammer.
Aside from that though - totally agree
The FAQ says 'A "connector" product is currently in beta' - that sort of implies the connector will be a separate standalone, well, product - perhaps commercial? Is that right or will it also be open source?
:)
I assume from your posts in this thread that it will be open source but just wanted to clarify
The only time I'll believe an email is from my bank is when its encrypted with my PGP key and digitally signed.
I wonder if they can tweak the ratio so that the chips run 10% faster but consume 40% less energy. Chips are pretty fast now, but battery life is still a bit of an issue - I'd be really interested to see if they could eke a few more hours out of portable devices (for example) and I'd be happy to keep it at the same speed.
I'll start worrying about China leeching off the movie industry when I see Brad Pitt pawing through rubbish bins looking for a feed :)
While I think it's pretty low that China would sanction this sort of behaviour, I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, really. It's sort of funny that the park manager (in the article linked) tries to deny that it's actually based on Disney and that the characters are all original creations - and apparently the people in the character costumes willingly admit they're playing Disney characters!
As the device size shrinks, so does the usability. Absence of a keyboard means quick input is effectively not possible, so a small device that you need to do a lot of input on is useless.
I'm looking for a new mobile phone, and I want to get something that runs Windows Mobile that syncs with Outlook and runs a few other apps I've been using on my Ipaq. Unfortunately most of the ones that run Windows Mobile are all stylus-based - and thus very big.
I don't want to do a lot of input on it - it's mostly for reminding me about my appointments. That is, my READ needs are much greater than my WRITE needs. But because they've catered too much for writing, it blows out the size - and thus doesn't make it useful for my needs.
Obviously it's not like I'm spoiled for choice in the mobile phone market, but still I just find it weird that there's so many usability issues with these things.
Completely offtopic, but my first thought when reading this was the phrase "Bussard Ramjet", which I've read in various sci-fi novels (most notably 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle) - lo and behold, it is the same Bussard. Science is cool!
I imagine getting all married to IE is probably something a well dressed MS rep talked them into and now it's too late to go back.
The point of my post was that historically, people could justify doing IE-only sites because it was most of the market and noone had ever heard of Firefox. Now more eyeballs are hitting your webpages with Firefox this is no longer an option.It costs more to write code that works seamlessly on all browsers, especially if you're making a fancy pants site. I don't really think this is arguable; the fact of the matter is there are IE quirks that you have to cater for if you want your site to render exactly the same as it does in Firefox.
Speaking as a web developer, our company could sit here and happily churn out IE-only code. The vast majority of our clients would never even notice that their sites don't work in - what did you call it? Godzilla Firecat? Never heard of it. We obviously choose to cater to as many users as we can (in fact we develop for Firefox first and foremost), because its good practice.
You're right - there probably isn't going to be discussion like I mention. The average web developer will probably just build for IE and leave it at that, sadly.
Surely there has to be at least ONE firm that is circling around the people getting sued by the RIAA looking at ways they can counter-claim. One firm with a lot of expertise in this area would get a lot of business from thousands of defendants, by the sounds of things.
Business: Build us a website that does a,b,c.
Web Developer: Fine - we can do all that and reach 90% of the market and it will cost $x. Or we can build a cross-browser site that will cost $y and reach 99% of the market.
Business: Well, $x is less than $y and 90% is still a lot of people. Do the first thing.
I've got no problems with YouTube making some money of it, but I agree that the lion's share should go to the content creator.
Looking at it in the same way as the traditional model of content production going out to distribution outlets (record shops, video shops, etc) - each person got a cut along the way.
If youtube gave a cut of ad profits (I'm sure defining an amount deemed "fair" by both parties would be a Herculean effort in itself) to the content creators, then surely everyone would be happy. Viacom could still put all their stuff on their own website and take all the moneyz from that, but farm out distribution to other large networks so they get more eyeballs, and hence more dollars.
(I've been watching more of Daily Show off the Comedy Central site. The player is OK, but I prefer youtube for a few reasons (easier to search, I can watch entire shows or at least larger segments, etc)).
So, question - once one of these things is exploited, does that not mean that every disc printed up to the point that the keys are revoked can be ripped (or otherwise copied)?
I'll happily accept ad-supported TV shows if it means I don't have to pay for them.
I'd happily download an xvid with embedded ads of the latest Sopranos episode, especially if I have the right to format shift it. I wouldn't bother removing the ads - sure, I might skip through them, but they're THERE and I'd probably see them.
This means I wouldn't have to shell out AU$60 to buy part one of Season 6 on DVD.
Online polls:
1) Website puts up poll
2) Some fanboy/miscreant/jerk notices poll and starts canvassing all the likeminded people he knows
3) Poll results are rendered completely useless and uninteresting
I think you misunderstand the point of science. You don't need to believe in science. It just is. That's the cool thing about it!
Science could quite easily explain a Creator, if such a thing existed and there was evidence to support it. However, all the facts point to this not being the case.
Just looking at my cellphone - its quite small and the area for the battery appears to be really quite efficient in terms of design. There's almost no wasted air space - its just a flat rectangle with a couple of holes for the electrodey bits to connect into the actual body of the phone (this is like a 3 year old Nokia 6600 or something; far from the pinnacle of awesome phones).
There is definitely *some* impact on the design though - like the case needs to be removable, which means it needs to be multiple parts, have little divots to get your fingernails into, etc - but they don't really seem to impact the thing much in terms of overall space.
Never really considered it to this much detail before; I'm sure its an interesting problem to have if you're trying to manufacture things like this in volume.
... I've been trying to buy a copy of Windows XP here [Brisbane, Australia] for weeks now. Pretty much every single software retail vendor that I've been to just tells me its not possible to buy it any more - they just try to foist a copy of Vista on to me.
There's a few places I can still get OEM (and a few places that seem to have old copies lying around here and there), but if you're Random McRandalot and listen to what sales people are pitching, you can't get XP any more - so why not try Vista?
Speaking as the "friend that can do it for them" for most of my friends who would buy something like this, I'd rather not have to do it.
The only advantage I can see for Apple in not making the batteries easily replacable is so they can skin people on post-warranty support and maintenance. It might make manufacturing easier or something maybe because there's less parts or something, maybe?