If it's open, it's perfectly reasonable to assume you're welcome to use it.
I'd certainly leave wifi access open to less connected neighbours/visitors/newly moved in/between connections/etc. Bandwidth restricted, and placed in a controlled firewall zone, certainly, but I can spare a few kbps as a friendly gesture. I know I'd appreciate it myself, so why not be charitable when it costs you little or nothing?
In a fully competetive economy, it would be close to zero, yes. However, as most of the economy is vastly more competetive than the monopoly protected industries, the efficiency of resources spent on the protected industries is far lower. For example, due to the protection afforded, those industries can spend vastly higher proportions of capital on zero or negative-wealth activities like marketing.
So, ultimately, a lot of the money spent on intellectual 'property' is a net loss to the economy, and intellectual property violations result in higher wealth and growth in the economy as a whole, due to the more efficient resource utilization in other sectors.
In fact, it's just as much a $250 billion _gain_ for other industry sectors. Most moviegoers do not print their own money, so $15 spent on a movie is $15 not spent elsewhere. And very likely spent in a more efficient, competetive sector, thus creating a higher level of wealth in the economy as a whole than supporting a movie execs coke habit would.
"International trade is not an internal affair, by definition."
Intellectual 'property' isnt an international trade issue, it's a national taxation and monopoly grant issue. Despite the MAFIAA organizations propaganda it has no place on a free trade agenda.
'but "stupid" would not be a word I would use to describe them.'
Of course, by engaging in the rampant exploitation they do they undermine any reason for the law to protect their monopoly rights, effectively proving that the artists and creators would be better off with a pure taxation/incentive construction, and letting the free market drive prices on distribution, marketing and production.
Sawing off the branch you're sitting on falls squarely under the heading "stupid", in this case, greedy-stupid, as their long term prospects arent particularly good.
Or maybe he's referring to the fact that kids now understand that copyright means the RIAA corps take the money that should be going to creative talent.
Or maybe they're trying to lay low and hope the shitstorm they've provoked doesnt end up in a legal blowback essentially removing their entire legal foundation.
There's a limit to the amount of press and education you want when you're basically parasites or people might get ideas.
"Shhhh, we, the citizens, are making good money building this stuff."
You could be making just as good money building more useful stuff. Except, of course, there arent any state funds for the more useful stuff because they're used for military stuff.
Dont kid yourself, excessive military industry is a net loss for the citizens and the economy as a whole; like with any other artificial transfer of funds the jobs and resources gained in one sector are lost in other sectors, and the non-competetive output is usually not a net wealth creation within the economy. Instead of an automotive worker and a car, or a construction worker and a house, you get a missile builder and a missile.
"or they are going to force the content providers who gobble bandwidth to pay more."
The content providers arent gobbling any specific bandwidth, the gobbling is done entirely by the customer. If they want to charge customers for accessing high-bandwidth sites, they're entirely free do that.
As the current situation is, I wouldnt really call it a global economy. Something more like a segragated economy, where the main trick is to move work to one place, while keeping prices artificially high in another through legislation, then reaping the profits on the market discrepancy and allowing a rapid transfer of funds from the middle class.
A good step towards restoring a free market and getting something even remotely like a 'global economy' would be to reconstruct the intellectual 'property' monopoly legislation from scratch. Western, and american, labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!) if they didnt have to fund, directly, and indirectly, huge grotesquely inefficient copyright and patent taxation financed monopolies.
"When they get cheaper they will probably be good for computer backup if anything."
Perhaps. But with the current rate of SATA disk price/size decrease, I suspect both formats will already be obsolete by the time they hit palatable pricing. Might as well get another disk for the computer backups.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"If the networks can no longer count on people watching at least some ads, how are they to pay for content?"
Technological advances have cut costs across the whole industry, yet the monopoly protected businesses costs go on rising all the time. Have you considered the possibility that, in fact, the content is expensive because it's protected, not the other way around?
Opensource has shown us software can be produced at a fraction of the cost. Music has been freely produced for centuries. We're seeing more and more freely produced approaching quality pictures.
Maybe the networks dont have to charge consumers, maybe the producers need to damn well cut their coke habits down a notch.
"Are you interested in paying even more for cable TV then?"
Are you? Every serious analysis of the pricing shows that more protection equals _higher_ pricing. The day you're locked into a clockwork orange type setup in front of the TV, you can be damn sure the commercial break isnt ending. Ever.
Almost every other economic sector has to play by free market rules; it's time for the IP sectors to do the same.
"the chances of being caught without an alibi decreases"
You're assuming they'll be interested in looking for exonerating evidence.
You do realize that there have been cases where people facing execution have had the prosecutor oppose DNA tests that could exonerate them, right?
How hard do you think it is to 'forget' to requisition exonerating cctv tapes before they've been erased?
There are a lot of times when many of the involved parties in the justice system are more interested in nailing _a_ guy than the _bad_ guy. And with enough data to pick and choose from, you can always find someone you can create a sufficiently convincing case against.
The only way an orwellian surveillance society can be acceptable is if the vast amount of data is only ever allowed to be used to rule suspects out, thus increasing the accuracy of the judicial systems. The opportunities for misuse are too great to allow it otherwise.
"The result is that numerous organizations in Russia receive royalties for the use of foreign artistic works, but never pass on that money to the artists"
With the way a lot of the music industry works, it looks like they'll fit right in.
"These collecting agencies are thieves and frauds because they accept money while pretending to represent artists", said Eric Baptiste
Yeah, well, pot, meet kettle, you two will get along fine.
"(groundless searches, SLAP-style shutdowns, excessive destruction of property)"
Both groundless searches and excessive destruction of property would be possible in this case; there has been no attempt whatsoever of the parties to in any way hide what they're doing, there has been public debate on the issue, there have been court cases giving credible support to the idea that linking is not infringement, everything's been open and available. Even seizing the actual pirate bay servers might be excessive, there is no grounds to suspect any destruction or tampering with evidence would be done; the parties in question do not consider their content illegal.
Basically it reeks of intimidation. Anyone around you doing something the MPAA doesnt like? Never mind if it's illegal or not, better get them to stop, or _you_ will be targeted. Collective punishment without due process.
They even took DNA from the _legal counsel_. In a possible contributory IP infringement case?? What are they going to use that for? As it has no value as evidence whatsoever, one can only assume they're planning to place it on some other crimescene or hand it to foreign intelligence. I cant think of any reasonable reason to take it, so the conclusion has to be they have some unreasonable purpose.
This isnt justice. This is state-sponsored political terrorism.
"antirust laws and the like exist to protect consumers, not protect businesses from competition"
The laws to protect businesses from competition can instead be found under the heading 'intellectual property laws'.
Personally, I dont think I knew any self respecting geek those days who'd be caught dead buying Rambus RAM. Their name was shit from the day their patent troll behaviour hit the news.
"IP laws exist to encourage society continue to innovate."
Lets ignore for a moment that that's just propaganda stemming back to the very invention of intellectual monopoly, and imagine that actually was the idea, how would you construct such a system to ensure the absolute maximum amount of innovation for the least cost to society?
Lets take a look at the current system. If we look at, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, a cursory look over the average finances of a pharmacorp shows about 15-20% are spent on research. If we are nice, and assume that a century of limited competition hasnt affected their efficiency, that's still means we're only getting a fifth of our moneys worth; we'd get _five_ times as much research if we paid for it outright with taxes instead of indirectly through medical insurance expenses.
Lets take a look at music. Of the money spent paying for CD's, not even a tenth goes to the artist. We could get _ten times_ as many artists for the same cost. The current costs, in terms of marketing, etc, are encouraged through the monopoly power (marketing is a far more efficient force multiplier when you dont risk competition undercutting you), but those were _not_ what you wanted to encourage.
Lets take a look at software. Here we're really making a lie out of the IP myth. The pervasiveness and advances of copyleft software indicates we could theoretically get a close to current level of advances with more or less no cost to the economy. The money spent on software isnt money coming from nowhere, it's money that means companies have to forego other investments; if they could have the software at no cost, how much further would they get in other areas?
Still, it can be argued that society would gain from having talented individuals spending their whole time doing what they do best.
Such a system would have a few fundamental construction criteria;
* It should finance as many creative people as possible at the lowest possible cost to maximize creative input.
* It should not prevent derivative works, but still finance the various parties to the creation.
* It should encourage disclosure and allow for any distribution media, to encourage dissemination and adoption throughout society.
* It should not penalize adoption of new and better products.
* It should have a minimum of administrative overhead and need little or no legal skill for the independent creator.
* The economic efficiency should be easily measurable
* It should be under democratic fiscal control
With these criteria, the current systems fail in almost every aspect.
Personally I would design such a system around the fundamental concept of financing the actual creative talent; you could, for example, have an attributive rights system where an original creator would earn a stipend (maxing out at a very good standard of living) depending on the distribution and copying of his work (media would be able to freely distribute any material, as long as they register number of distributed copies, etc). To ensure disclosure, the invention and/or creative work would have to be registered to qualify for stipend payout, and it should probably have a minimum level of material added. Financing should probably be done through a flat taxation scheme to avoid the current situation where new and supposedly better products carry a heavy burden for adopters, thus slowing the diffusion through society and as such depriving society of efficiency. Etc.
You can derive your own system from the criteria, or add and/or remove criteria as you feel like, but keep in mind, the goal should be to encourage innovation and dissemination of such, and nothing else, in the most efficent way possible.
And there's aluminium, and there's milk, and there's screwdrivers.
The existence of other products does not a free market make, and monopolistic competition for the consumers disposable income does not create the economic efficiency that free market competition on commodity pricing does.
On a free market, competition forces the price to fall towards the cost of production, driving production into ever higher efficiency to create profit margins. This in itself means more wealth is created for the same amount of effort, thus creating an ever more wealthy economy, and benefiting society as a whole.
So, seen the price of a CD lately? If 'the market' had 'sorted it out', it ought to be around a few cents for the more widely produced mass produced products. Oops, nope, not there. And the amortized cost of Windows should be a couple of bucks. Oh, not there either.
Seems the market isnt sorting things out that good, eh?
"There's absolutely nothing that would justify any legal intervention or any other meddling with the market in this case."
Indeed. Intellectual monopoly legislation needs to be removed. There is nothing that justifies the legal intervention of copyrights or patents in the market, and the damage is obvious.
He also attempts to claim the GPL v3 will prevent DRM code from being written;
McAllister: "But not, apparently, under the new FSF order. In this new worldview, DRM is Wrong. It is verboten. And who knows what other algorithm or subroutine might be cast out next; but who are we to question?"
He's wrong, of course, as far as I've seen the GPL v3 DRM restrictions are intended to prevent DRM that _prevents the GPL code from being modified_, not GPL code that does DRM. Perfectly consistent within the RMS/GPL/FSF worldview.
"Well, thanks Neil McAllister, I bet you would also have advised Mr Stallman that the market would sort out software in 1985?"
Oh, truly, 'the market' has always done really well with government backed monopoly grants like copyright and patents. Sounds like Mr. McAllister needs to read up on free market economics.
"You can see pretty clearly how DRM fits in there - and if you don't believe in DRM on software, why on earth would you for content?"
Indeed. A good suggestion for the author would be; if, at any time, you think the FSF inconsistent, you are quite likely missing something, and would do well to keep your mouth shut as your foot appears to be hovering in front of it.
Pigs will fly before RMS changes.
McAllister: "That good reputation can only be damaged by turning a movement into a crusade"
Ah, that line explains it all. The guy's gone senile and actually thinks it *is* 1985.
"Second, there are numerous examples of bridges that have had structural flaws."
And the very concept of road construction is very much a trial and error with thousands of people actually getting _killed_ every year, often because of known problems that should have been fixed to provide a safer infrastructure.
"They'd much rather give you a phone that costs $50 more than forfeit all the money they won't get from you not using the 'premium' services"
Indeed. Unfortunately, by neglecting the connectivity area, they're setting themselves up for a huge fall as the nearly-net of similar WLAN capable devices become ubiquitous. Why pay dearly for those services when you can get the same service for free?
Quite a bit, which is more or less the point. Extra dividends when you're getting an embarrasing pile of money you dont know what to do with means you've been underpaying by a lot for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
"Just because it is open,"
If it's open, it's perfectly reasonable to assume you're welcome to use it.
I'd certainly leave wifi access open to less connected neighbours/visitors/newly moved in/between connections/etc. Bandwidth restricted, and placed in a controlled firewall zone, certainly, but I can spare a few kbps as a friendly gesture. I know I'd appreciate it myself, so why not be charitable when it costs you little or nothing?
"Surely the net effect is zero"
In a fully competetive economy, it would be close to zero, yes. However, as most of the economy is vastly more competetive than the monopoly protected industries, the efficiency of resources spent on the protected industries is far lower. For example, due to the protection afforded, those industries can spend vastly higher proportions of capital on zero or negative-wealth activities like marketing.
So, ultimately, a lot of the money spent on intellectual 'property' is a net loss to the economy, and intellectual property violations result in higher wealth and growth in the economy as a whole, due to the more efficient resource utilization in other sectors.
"it's not an actual loss of $250 billion,"
In fact, it's just as much a $250 billion _gain_ for other industry sectors. Most moviegoers do not print their own money, so $15 spent on a movie is $15 not spent elsewhere. And very likely spent in a more efficient, competetive sector, thus creating a higher level of wealth in the economy as a whole than supporting a movie execs coke habit would.
"International trade is not an internal affair, by definition."
Intellectual 'property' isnt an international trade issue, it's a national taxation and monopoly grant issue. Despite the MAFIAA organizations propaganda it has no place on a free trade agenda.
'but "stupid" would not be a word I would use to describe them.'
Of course, by engaging in the rampant exploitation they do they undermine any reason for the law to protect their monopoly rights, effectively proving that the artists and creators would be better off with a pure taxation/incentive construction, and letting the free market drive prices on distribution, marketing and production.
Sawing off the branch you're sitting on falls squarely under the heading "stupid", in this case, greedy-stupid, as their long term prospects arent particularly good.
Or maybe he's referring to the fact that kids now understand that copyright means the RIAA corps take the money that should be going to creative talent.
Or maybe they're trying to lay low and hope the shitstorm they've provoked doesnt end up in a legal blowback essentially removing their entire legal foundation.
There's a limit to the amount of press and education you want when you're basically parasites or people might get ideas.
"Microsoft had 34 billion of pure profit on 42 billion in revenue"
In other news, Microsofts customers lost 34 billion due to anticompetetive practices and protective legislation.
You may prefer to be Microsoft, but I know whose customer I prefer not to be.
"Shhhh, we, the citizens, are making good money building this stuff."
You could be making just as good money building more useful stuff. Except, of course, there arent any state funds for the more useful stuff because they're used for military stuff.
Dont kid yourself, excessive military industry is a net loss for the citizens and the economy as a whole; like with any other artificial transfer of funds the jobs and resources gained in one sector are lost in other sectors, and the non-competetive output is usually not a net wealth creation within the economy. Instead of an automotive worker and a car, or a construction worker and a house, you get a missile builder and a missile.
"or they are going to force the content providers who gobble bandwidth to pay more."
The content providers arent gobbling any specific bandwidth, the gobbling is done entirely by the customer. If they want to charge customers for accessing high-bandwidth sites, they're entirely free do that.
But good luck finding customers.
"Google's traffic on their networks?"
Google has no traffic on their networks. Any traffic from google to the consumer within their network is the consumers traffic.
"A global economy is coming."
As the current situation is, I wouldnt really call it a global economy. Something more like a segragated economy, where the main trick is to move work to one place, while keeping prices artificially high in another through legislation, then reaping the profits on the market discrepancy and allowing a rapid transfer of funds from the middle class.
A good step towards restoring a free market and getting something even remotely like a 'global economy' would be to reconstruct the intellectual 'property' monopoly legislation from scratch. Western, and american, labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!) if they didnt have to fund, directly, and indirectly, huge grotesquely inefficient copyright and patent taxation financed monopolies.
"When they get cheaper they will probably be good for computer backup if anything."
Perhaps. But with the current rate of SATA disk price/size decrease, I suspect both formats will already be obsolete by the time they hit palatable pricing. Might as well get another disk for the computer backups.
"If the networks can no longer count on people watching at least some ads, how are they to pay for content?"
Technological advances have cut costs across the whole industry, yet the monopoly protected businesses costs go on rising all the time. Have you considered the possibility that, in fact, the content is expensive because it's protected, not the other way around?
Opensource has shown us software can be produced at a fraction of the cost. Music has been freely produced for centuries. We're seeing more and more freely produced approaching quality pictures.
Maybe the networks dont have to charge consumers, maybe the producers need to damn well cut their coke habits down a notch.
"Are you interested in paying even more for cable TV then?"
Are you? Every serious analysis of the pricing shows that more protection equals _higher_ pricing. The day you're locked into a clockwork orange type setup in front of the TV, you can be damn sure the commercial break isnt ending. Ever.
Almost every other economic sector has to play by free market rules; it's time for the IP sectors to do the same.
"the chances of being caught without an alibi decreases"
You're assuming they'll be interested in looking for exonerating evidence.
You do realize that there have been cases where people facing execution have had the prosecutor oppose DNA tests that could exonerate them, right?
How hard do you think it is to 'forget' to requisition exonerating cctv tapes before they've been erased?
There are a lot of times when many of the involved parties in the justice system are more interested in nailing _a_ guy than the _bad_ guy. And with enough data to pick and choose from, you can always find someone you can create a sufficiently convincing case against.
The only way an orwellian surveillance society can be acceptable is if the vast amount of data is only ever allowed to be used to rule suspects out, thus increasing the accuracy of the judicial systems. The opportunities for misuse are too great to allow it otherwise.
"The result is that numerous organizations in Russia receive royalties for the use of foreign artistic works, but never pass on that money to the artists"
With the way a lot of the music industry works, it looks like they'll fit right in.
"These collecting agencies are thieves and frauds because they accept money while pretending to represent artists", said Eric Baptiste
Yeah, well, pot, meet kettle, you two will get along fine.
"(groundless searches, SLAP-style shutdowns, excessive destruction of property)"
Both groundless searches and excessive destruction of property would be possible in this case; there has been no attempt whatsoever of the parties to in any way hide what they're doing, there has been public debate on the issue, there have been court cases giving credible support to the idea that linking is not infringement, everything's been open and available. Even seizing the actual pirate bay servers might be excessive, there is no grounds to suspect any destruction or tampering with evidence would be done; the parties in question do not consider their content illegal.
Basically it reeks of intimidation. Anyone around you doing something the MPAA doesnt like? Never mind if it's illegal or not, better get them to stop, or _you_ will be targeted. Collective punishment without due process.
They even took DNA from the _legal counsel_. In a possible contributory IP infringement case?? What are they going to use that for? As it has no value as evidence whatsoever, one can only assume they're planning to place it on some other crimescene or hand it to foreign intelligence. I cant think of any reasonable reason to take it, so the conclusion has to be they have some unreasonable purpose.
This isnt justice. This is state-sponsored political terrorism.
"antirust laws and the like exist to protect consumers, not protect businesses from competition"
The laws to protect businesses from competition can instead be found under the heading 'intellectual property laws'.
Personally, I dont think I knew any self respecting geek those days who'd be caught dead buying Rambus RAM. Their name was shit from the day their patent troll behaviour hit the news.
"IP laws exist to encourage society continue to innovate."
Lets ignore for a moment that that's just propaganda stemming back to the very invention of intellectual monopoly, and imagine that actually was the idea, how would you construct such a system to ensure the absolute maximum amount of innovation for the least cost to society?
Lets take a look at the current system. If we look at, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, a cursory look over the average finances of a pharmacorp shows about 15-20% are spent on research. If we are nice, and assume that a century of limited competition hasnt affected their efficiency, that's still means we're only getting a fifth of our moneys worth; we'd get _five_ times as much research if we paid for it outright with taxes instead of indirectly through medical insurance expenses.
Lets take a look at music. Of the money spent paying for CD's, not even a tenth goes to the artist. We could get _ten times_ as many artists for the same cost. The current costs, in terms of marketing, etc, are encouraged through the monopoly power (marketing is a far more efficient force multiplier when you dont risk competition undercutting you), but those were _not_ what you wanted to encourage.
Lets take a look at software. Here we're really making a lie out of the IP myth. The pervasiveness and advances of copyleft software indicates we could theoretically get a close to current level of advances with more or less no cost to the economy. The money spent on software isnt money coming from nowhere, it's money that means companies have to forego other investments; if they could have the software at no cost, how much further would they get in other areas?
Still, it can be argued that society would gain from having talented individuals spending their whole time doing what they do best.
Such a system would have a few fundamental construction criteria;
* It should finance as many creative people as possible at the lowest possible cost to maximize creative input.
* It should not prevent derivative works, but still finance the various parties to the creation.
* It should encourage disclosure and allow for any distribution media, to encourage dissemination and adoption throughout society.
* It should not penalize adoption of new and better products.
* It should have a minimum of administrative overhead and need little or no legal skill for the independent creator.
* The economic efficiency should be easily measurable
* It should be under democratic fiscal control
With these criteria, the current systems fail in almost every aspect.
Personally I would design such a system around the fundamental concept of financing the actual creative talent; you could, for example, have an attributive rights system where an original creator would earn a stipend (maxing out at a very good standard of living) depending on the distribution and copying of his work (media would be able to freely distribute any material, as long as they register number of distributed copies, etc). To ensure disclosure, the invention and/or creative work would have to be registered to qualify for stipend payout, and it should probably have a minimum level of material added. Financing should probably be done through a flat taxation scheme to avoid the current situation where new and supposedly better products carry a heavy burden for adopters, thus slowing the diffusion through society and as such depriving society of efficiency. Etc.
You can derive your own system from the criteria, or add and/or remove criteria as you feel like, but keep in mind, the goal should be to encourage innovation and dissemination of such, and nothing else, in the most efficent way possible.
"There's Magnatune, there's eMusic."
And there's aluminium, and there's milk, and there's screwdrivers.
The existence of other products does not a free market make, and monopolistic competition for the consumers disposable income does not create the economic efficiency that free market competition on commodity pricing does.
On a free market, competition forces the price to fall towards the cost of production, driving production into ever higher efficiency to create profit margins. This in itself means more wealth is created for the same amount of effort, thus creating an ever more wealthy economy, and benefiting society as a whole.
So, seen the price of a CD lately? If 'the market' had 'sorted it out', it ought to be around a few cents for the more widely produced mass produced products. Oops, nope, not there. And the amortized cost of Windows should be a couple of bucks. Oh, not there either.
Seems the market isnt sorting things out that good, eh?
"There's absolutely nothing that would justify any legal intervention or any other meddling with the market in this case."
Indeed. Intellectual monopoly legislation needs to be removed. There is nothing that justifies the legal intervention of copyrights or patents in the market, and the damage is obvious.
He also attempts to claim the GPL v3 will prevent DRM code from being written;
McAllister: "But not, apparently, under the new FSF order. In this new worldview, DRM is Wrong. It is verboten. And who knows what other algorithm or subroutine might be cast out next; but who are we to question?"
He's wrong, of course, as far as I've seen the GPL v3 DRM restrictions are intended to prevent DRM that _prevents the GPL code from being modified_, not GPL code that does DRM. Perfectly consistent within the RMS/GPL/FSF worldview.
"Well, thanks Neil McAllister, I bet you would also have advised Mr Stallman that the market would sort out software in 1985?"
Oh, truly, 'the market' has always done really well with government backed monopoly grants like copyright and patents. Sounds like Mr. McAllister needs to read up on free market economics.
"You can see pretty clearly how DRM fits in there - and if you don't believe in DRM on software, why on earth would you for content?"
Indeed. A good suggestion for the author would be; if, at any time, you think the FSF inconsistent, you are quite likely missing something, and would do well to keep your mouth shut as your foot appears to be hovering in front of it.
Pigs will fly before RMS changes.
McAllister: "That good reputation can only be damaged by turning a movement into a crusade"
Ah, that line explains it all. The guy's gone senile and actually thinks it *is* 1985.
"Second, there are numerous examples of bridges that have had structural flaws."
And the very concept of road construction is very much a trial and error with thousands of people actually getting _killed_ every year, often because of known problems that should have been fixed to provide a safer infrastructure.
"I personally do not mind paying for my connection on a per Kb basis."
You will when someone decides to dump a few thousand dollars worth of unasked for traffic your way.
"They'd much rather give you a phone that costs $50 more than forfeit all the money they won't get from you not using the 'premium' services"
Indeed. Unfortunately, by neglecting the connectivity area, they're setting themselves up for a huge fall as the nearly-net of similar WLAN capable devices become ubiquitous. Why pay dearly for those services when you can get the same service for free?
"Ditto, except I'd not describe a 2megapixel camera as `useless` because clearly it isn't."
Once you've had it in your pocket for a month it is. Optics and pocket lint arent compatible.
Quite a bit, which is more or less the point. Extra dividends when you're getting an embarrasing pile of money you dont know what to do with means you've been underpaying by a lot for a long time.