Not to mention that he only provided handwaving to back up his assertions.
He starts out with the observation that the iPhone on EDGE feels faster than an E61i on UMTS, and draws the incorrect conclusion that EDGE must be better than UMTS for web browsing. Then he goes and makes up a lot of mumbo jumbo "explanations" for why that is; I could go on a point for point debunk, but this article has already wasted enough of my limited time on this planet.
In fact, UMTS (and especially HSDPA) not only has better bandwidth than EDGE/EGPRS but also has lower latency. He didn't even bother to look up the specs.
Insert obligatory rant on the declining quality of articles posted to/. here.
Add light sensitive (a scattering of photodiodes or similar). You don't care for stuff far away anyway; all you care about is changes in light/colour over areas of the back so no optics needed.
And that is better than shameless self-promotion of a apple fanboi blog where you consistently write articles that has only a tenuous connection to reality? Your ability to take random quotes to confirm your already preconceived views is second to none.
I'm not familiar with the details in all of Europe, but the rules are as I understand fairly consistent.
All carriers must allow unlocked phones on their network, as long as you have a valid SIM card for that carrier. Just like you can hook any device to your POTS connection, as long as you have a contract with a landline telco.
Carriers can sell subsidised locked phones, but the maximum lock time is between 12-24 months depending on country. After that time, the carrier must provide an unlock code to the subscriber in order to unlock the phone.
For Apple to stay within eu regulations, you will see legally unlocked phones on eBay no less than 12 months after the iPhone goes on sale in Europe.
It is rather common for game manufacturers to remove StarForce or other cd-tethering protection after the game has been out for a while. So, like, MS issued a no-cd patch for IE7 then?
Businesses have too much riding on Linux for it to fail.
Exactly. Which is why I found the following part of the article so puzzling: "Historically speaking, Linux has never "been about the money," so why should it start now?"
Linux development has pretty much always been directed to some extent by money. IBM and others pour cash and time into Linux because they want it to run well on servers, so to claim that the "conservative"/server faction is less about money than the "liberal"/desktop side rings untrue.
Anyway, the desktop experience is mostly about the GUIs. As far as the kernel goes, there isn't that much that needs tweaking for desktops - mainly the IO and process schedulers. And it isn't that unusual for distros to maintain their own set of patches, so if the worst comes to pass (e.g. kernel has scheduler that won't play mp3s without skipping) the desktop distros will just have to do that job.
Yeah, I really don't get that. If I were in a flippant mood, I'd say something like "ils sont fous ces americains, only in America would people complain about a price drop".
What exactly were the complainers so angry about? iSuppli and pretty much everyone not affected by the RDF knew Apple had a large margin on the thing. That Apple would eventually lower the margin to be more in line with what the other handset mfgs has was a given. If you bought the phone, you evidently thought it was worth the $600. If you didn't, why did you buy it? One might argue that Apple gouged the early adopters, but that is par for the course in tech - happens with anything from the latest nVidia card to CPUs. So it seems counter-intuitive that the anger was about the price drop itself, at least not for those who have a realistic understanding of the market. I'd venture a guess that it had more to do with the iPhone losing its caché, the price change moved it from the 'louis vitton' range of expensive designer gadgets to the more pedestrian. Simply put, it lost its magic.
What is interesting is what Jobs will take home this whole ordeal. Not only did it take press and buzz away from the new iPods, but it probably also taught him that the Apple faithful do not look kindly on price drops. So iPhone2, or whatever the next hot iThing will be, is less likely to see a significant price drop.
That would be a Chewbacca defence. **AA's point is that digital enables perfect copies, so the 100th generation copy is just as good as the 1st. Which is different from analog because you can only go so many generations before the nth gen copy is craptastic. Ain't got nothing to do with selling access to pipes one sends bits over. The old PSTN is pretty much only analog the last mile to your house anyway, most of the telco network is digital.
"because they could degrade performance for our other customers"
That would be a question of billing structure. If someone f.ex. builds a device that sends so many SMSes that the network goes bonkers, increase the cost of SMSes.
The argument they will make, and will be most difficult to counter, is that when the cell cos bought access to the spectrum in the FCC auction there was no requirement to provide open access. Changing it to open now would be a retroactive change of the terms, and that it would "lower the value" of the spectrum.
Which means that the best chance of success is to ask the FCC to attach 'Carterphone' terms when they auction off new parts of the spectrum. Which is incidentally one of the things that Google asked for - and got - in the upcoming 700MHz auction (and that verizon is going to the courts to stop).
Is there a web site describing the effective ways to do this
I'm unfortunately not aware of any efforts to try to organise a campaign. Then again I live in Europe, so staying up to date on efforts to fix the US cell phone market isn't a top priority for me.
But the argument is quite straight forward:
"As long as I pay for a phone line, I am allowed to connect any device of my choosing to it - such as a fax machine - provided that the machine does not cause damage to the telephone company's network. Why is it that I don't have the same right when I pay for a cell phone line?"
Switch to a GSM carrier, obviously. While it is possible for GSM carriers to play some tricks and control-games, it is very limited compared to the kind of control the CDMA carriers exert.
mobile phone bill of rights..while including some good points, it is missing the most important one - the right to use any compatible handset as long as one has a contract. That is, the wireless equivalent of the ruling that forced AT&T to allow any equipment to be connected to the phone lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
It is a bad and frustrating situation, but complaining about it on/. is not likely to have much of an impact (well, except for the immediate gratification of blowing off some steam). So vote with your wallet and choose the carrier that exert the least control on handsets, complain to your representatives in government, complain to the FCC, get the media to cover the issue....
The FCC should have enacted Carterphone-style regulations on the carriers long ago. If you want that to change, start complaining to the FCC, write your congresscritter, get an exposé on 60 Minutes, vote with your wallet...
The same criticism can be directed at Guttman too. I'd wish he would cut down on all the editorializing and MS-is-evil innuendo; he has valid points but those would be much more effective if he could just stick to the facts.
for the majority of people/. is at least one sigma away from the majority. For many people here - programmers, tinkerers, general gadget geeks - the OS does matter because it determines to a large degree the openness and tinkerability of the device.
As for feature stripped firmware, that's mostly a problem with the carriers (and especially US carriers at that) acting like they have the right to decide how devices connecting to their network should behave. One way to stop that abuse is to make the phone OS modifiable.
Am I the only one that can feel my brain slowly melting each time I read a roughlydrafted article?
It baffles me how it is possible for a presumptively intelligent person to consistently write stream-of-conciousness articles that take random quotes from all over the place in order to support an argument that has only the faintest connection to reality.
A phone home would also server as a version check, that's some small value.
What kind of 'copy protection' to use depends in part on what kind of software it is.
Ideally, instead of inconveniencing the paying customer you should try to look at ways to give them some sort of additional benefit compared to those using the cracked/pirated version. To give some examples - a cd-key that enable online multiplayer in games, a good printed manual, access to support/community forums on the manufacturers website, access to updates/fixes.
One thing to note about Paradox is that they make complex strategy games. Their entire 'copy protection' seems to evolve around providing an excellent printed manual.
What kind of 'copy protection' to use depends in part on what kind of software it is. Ideally, you want to give the paying customer some sort of advantage over those using the cracked/pirated version. That can range from a cd-key that enable online multiplayer in games to a good printed manual to access to support/community forums on the manufacturers website.
but the firmware on the wireless card is running, effectively, at a higher privilege level than your kernel
True. If you don't have an IOMMU that enables the kernel to control which address space that is accessible from your ether/wifi/gfx etc card, the firmware on the device can access everything on the bus that it is attached to; with PCI/PCI-E that's pretty much complete root. But that is a universal problem and not a problem with binary blobs per se, nasty code is nasty code whether it is a binary blob uploaded to the device through the driver or hardwired in ROM on the card. Not to mention the tricks a BIOS can play, especially now that virtualisation support is becoming common in CPUs. Or say a keyboard that includes a keylogger and a little bit of flash, and dumps the log when a particular key sequence is entered.
It boils down to 'who do you trust'. To be absolutely sure there is no malign stuff in there, you'd have to build everything yourself but that's neither economically nor practically feasible.
(Come to think of it, (ab)using firmware might also be used to circumvent the DRM and TPM stuff that PCs are increasingly becoming infested with.)
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that he only provided handwaving to back up his assertions.
/. here.
He starts out with the observation that the iPhone on EDGE feels faster than an E61i on UMTS, and draws the incorrect conclusion that EDGE must be better than UMTS for web browsing. Then he goes and makes up a lot of mumbo jumbo "explanations" for why that is; I could go on a point for point debunk, but this article has already wasted enough of my limited time on this planet.
In fact, UMTS (and especially HSDPA) not only has better bandwidth than EDGE/EGPRS but also has lower latency. He didn't even bother to look up the specs.
Insert obligatory rant on the declining quality of articles posted to
In the dark, I always use backlight (or would it be called frontlight if you put backlight on the back?). ;-)
Or perhaps use 'where are the fingers at' as a visual cue/aid to help your accuracy, but that operating the device wouldn't depend on it.
Add light sensitive (a scattering of photodiodes or similar). You don't care for stuff far away anyway; all you care about is changes in light/colour over areas of the back so no optics needed.
It looks like you're being distracted. Would you like help?
He had no warlord, either.
And that is better than shameless self-promotion of a apple fanboi blog where you consistently write articles that has only a tenuous connection to reality? Your ability to take random quotes to confirm your already preconceived views is second to none.
I'm not familiar with the details in all of Europe, but the rules are as I understand fairly consistent.
All carriers must allow unlocked phones on their network, as long as you have a valid SIM card for that carrier. Just like you can hook any device to your POTS connection, as long as you have a contract with a landline telco.
Carriers can sell subsidised locked phones, but the maximum lock time is between 12-24 months depending on country. After that time, the carrier must provide an unlock code to the subscriber in order to unlock the phone.
For Apple to stay within eu regulations, you will see legally unlocked phones on eBay no less than 12 months after the iPhone goes on sale in Europe.
It is rather common for game manufacturers to remove StarForce or other cd-tethering protection after the game has been out for a while. So, like, MS issued a no-cd patch for IE7 then?
Every alternate day I choose alternative browsers.
Did I get that right?
Or as they were called on usenet, members of the Scary Devil Monastery.
Businesses have too much riding on Linux for it to fail.
Exactly. Which is why I found the following part of the article so puzzling: "Historically speaking, Linux has never "been about the money," so why should it start now?"
Linux development has pretty much always been directed to some extent by money. IBM and others pour cash and time into Linux because they want it to run well on servers, so to claim that the "conservative"/server faction is less about money than the "liberal"/desktop side rings untrue.
Anyway, the desktop experience is mostly about the GUIs. As far as the kernel goes, there isn't that much that needs tweaking for desktops - mainly the IO and process schedulers. And it isn't that unusual for distros to maintain their own set of patches, so if the worst comes to pass (e.g. kernel has scheduler that won't play mp3s without skipping) the desktop distros will just have to do that job.
Yeah, I really don't get that. If I were in a flippant mood, I'd say something like "ils sont fous ces americains, only in America would people complain about a price drop".
What exactly were the complainers so angry about? iSuppli and pretty much everyone not affected by the RDF knew Apple had a large margin on the thing. That Apple would eventually lower the margin to be more in line with what the other handset mfgs has was a given. If you bought the phone, you evidently thought it was worth the $600. If you didn't, why did you buy it? One might argue that Apple gouged the early adopters, but that is par for the course in tech - happens with anything from the latest nVidia card to CPUs. So it seems counter-intuitive that the anger was about the price drop itself, at least not for those who have a realistic understanding of the market. I'd venture a guess that it had more to do with the iPhone losing its caché, the price change moved it from the 'louis vitton' range of expensive designer gadgets to the more pedestrian. Simply put, it lost its magic.
What is interesting is what Jobs will take home this whole ordeal. Not only did it take press and buzz away from the new iPods, but it probably also taught him that the Apple faithful do not look kindly on price drops. So iPhone2, or whatever the next hot iThing will be, is less likely to see a significant price drop.
"digital is different"
That would be a Chewbacca defence. **AA's point is that digital enables perfect copies, so the 100th generation copy is just as good as the 1st. Which is different from analog because you can only go so many generations before the nth gen copy is craptastic. Ain't got nothing to do with selling access to pipes one sends bits over. The old PSTN is pretty much only analog the last mile to your house anyway, most of the telco network is digital.
"because they could degrade performance for our other customers"
That would be a question of billing structure. If someone f.ex. builds a device that sends so many SMSes that the network goes bonkers, increase the cost of SMSes.
The argument they will make, and will be most difficult to counter, is that when the cell cos bought access to the spectrum in the FCC auction there was no requirement to provide open access. Changing it to open now would be a retroactive change of the terms, and that it would "lower the value" of the spectrum.
Which means that the best chance of success is to ask the FCC to attach 'Carterphone' terms when they auction off new parts of the spectrum. Which is incidentally one of the things that Google asked for - and got - in the upcoming 700MHz auction (and that verizon is going to the courts to stop).
Is there a web site describing the effective ways to do this
I'm unfortunately not aware of any efforts to try to organise a campaign. Then again I live in Europe, so staying up to date on efforts to fix the US cell phone market isn't a top priority for me.
But the argument is quite straight forward:
"As long as I pay for a phone line, I am allowed to connect any device of my choosing to it - such as a fax machine - provided that the machine does not cause damage to the telephone company's network. Why is it that I don't have the same right when I pay for a cell phone line?"
Which did you mean?
..while including some good points, it is missing the most important one - the right to use any compatible handset as long as one has a contract. That is, the wireless equivalent of the ruling that forced AT&T to allow any equipment to be connected to the phone lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
/. is not likely to have much of an impact (well, except for the immediate gratification of blowing off some steam). So vote with your wallet and choose the carrier that exert the least control on handsets, complain to your representatives in government, complain to the FCC, get the media to cover the issue....
Switch to a GSM carrier, obviously. While it is possible for GSM carriers to play some tricks and control-games, it is very limited compared to the kind of control the CDMA carriers exert.
mobile phone bill of rights
It is a bad and frustrating situation, but complaining about it on
Yeah, well screw the US.
The FCC should have enacted Carterphone-style regulations on the carriers long ago. If you want that to change, start complaining to the FCC, write your congresscritter, get an exposé on 60 Minutes, vote with your wallet...
The same criticism can be directed at Guttman too. I'd wish he would cut down on all the editorializing and MS-is-evil innuendo; he has valid points but those would be much more effective if he could just stick to the facts.
for the majority of people /. is at least one sigma away from the majority. For many people here - programmers, tinkerers, general gadget geeks - the OS does matter because it determines to a large degree the openness and tinkerability of the device.
As for feature stripped firmware, that's mostly a problem with the carriers (and especially US carriers at that) acting like they have the right to decide how devices connecting to their network should behave. One way to stop that abuse is to make the phone OS modifiable.
That's a beautiful hack, snarfed. :-)
Would you happen to have a fix for mac fanboys modding me flamebait for pointing out what should be blindingly obvious, too?
Am I the only one that can feel my brain slowly melting each time I read a roughlydrafted article?
It baffles me how it is possible for a presumptively intelligent person to consistently write stream-of-conciousness articles that take random quotes from all over the place in order to support an argument that has only the faintest connection to reality.
So in short it is a loadlin that works from WinNT.
Yeah, compared to ooxml it is a slowtard.
A phone home would also server as a version check, that's some small value.
What kind of 'copy protection' to use depends in part on what kind of software it is.
Ideally, instead of inconveniencing the paying customer you should try to look at ways to give them some sort of additional benefit compared to those using the cracked/pirated version. To give some examples - a cd-key that enable online multiplayer in games, a good printed manual, access to support/community forums on the manufacturers website, access to updates/fixes.
Paradox Entertainment
One thing to note about Paradox is that they make complex strategy games. Their entire 'copy protection' seems to evolve around providing an excellent printed manual.
What kind of 'copy protection' to use depends in part on what kind of software it is. Ideally, you want to give the paying customer some sort of advantage over those using the cracked/pirated version. That can range from a cd-key that enable online multiplayer in games to a good printed manual to access to support/community forums on the manufacturers website.
but the firmware on the wireless card is running, effectively, at a higher privilege level than your kernel
True. If you don't have an IOMMU that enables the kernel to control which address space that is accessible from your ether/wifi/gfx etc card, the firmware on the device can access everything on the bus that it is attached to; with PCI/PCI-E that's pretty much complete root. But that is a universal problem and not a problem with binary blobs per se, nasty code is nasty code whether it is a binary blob uploaded to the device through the driver or hardwired in ROM on the card. Not to mention the tricks a BIOS can play, especially now that virtualisation support is becoming common in CPUs. Or say a keyboard that includes a keylogger and a little bit of flash, and dumps the log when a particular key sequence is entered.
It boils down to 'who do you trust'. To be absolutely sure there is no malign stuff in there, you'd have to build everything yourself but that's neither economically nor practically feasible.
(Come to think of it, (ab)using firmware might also be used to circumvent the DRM and TPM stuff that PCs are increasingly becoming infested with.)