OK, fine, but that doesn't mean that VOIP shouldn't be wiretappable. Perhaps all those other methods should be monitored as well, perhaps not. But if you make it clear that VOIP can't be wiretapped, then even the smart terrorists you do fear will just use VOIP.
Besides that, wiretapping is used much more for criminal investigations, listening in to organised crime and whatnot. And it makes some sense to put such provisions in place now, before VOIP becomes commonplace and it's much harder to retrofit the whole system.
As one poster said above (very astutely, IMHO), wiretapping is either good or bad as a whole. If it's bad, get rid of it altogether, even on POTS lines. If it's good, what possible reason would there be to grant VOIP a special exception that cell phone, faxes and landline phones don't have? Remember, it's the abuse of the system you fear, not the system itself. So rather than give exceptions to one area, try to implement rules to prevent abuse as much as possible.
On the plus side, it should automagically explode all the super-evil RFID tracking tags in your razors and potato chip bags and whatnot. It's nice to trade one form of surveillance for another, and this sure would be faster than putting each individual item in the microwave oven one at a time!
As others have pointed out, it is nice to be able to view two screens side-by-side. At with a 1050-pixel vertical resolution, you still fit a fair amount on screen.
However, I think as you point out, lots of people do watch DVDs on their computer. I'm a student who's fortunate enough to have a 20 Cinema Display (widescreen, obv.). However, I have no TV. I haven't seen the need to buy a TV. My Cinema Display is crystal clear, plenty big enough for watching movies, and I hook my G5 up to a decent sound system. For me to buy a TV that would be noticeably better than my monitor would cost far more money than I could even remotely justify.
So why is this so bad? It may not be what you want it for, but obviously there's enough of a demand to justify this change. If the majority wanted 4x3 displays, the manufacturers wouldn't be making this change. I this may just be one of those cases where you happen to be in the minority opinion. Which is fine, but it's unreasonable to expect the manufacturers to cater to that opinion.
I agree. While in general, I wouldn't want to haul that 19" Samsung around all day, it seems like the perfect compromise for a business person. You bring the computer part to the office, where a full-sized monitor awaits you. If you need to make a presentation with a projector, your scren can be omitted (I know PowerPoint let's you have visual cues and extra text on a second screen, but for many presentations that's irrelevant). At the end of the day, you bring home the computer, and can use it at home for gaming/browsing/yet more work, by connecting it to your monitor there. Hell, if you're lucky enough to afford a Plasma screen, hook it up to watch a DVD in your living room! I agree with the parent post-if you don't think of this as a laptop, but rather a luggable computer that happens to come with a (detachable) matching monitor, it actually is a cool form factor.
I'd have to check my class notes, but I think my stats class would say that I was making a joke. Evidently not a very funny one, but the attempt was there, nonetheless.
Hey, I took Stats in my undergrad! If some prisoners were let out early, and other let out late, then it should all average out to zero! So really, the software works just fine in the aggregate! Typical Slashdot, can't see the forest for the trees!
One of my favourite quotations of all time (source unknown):
"If you're going to criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticise them, you're a mile away. And you have their shoes."
I also plan to stick with my 3rd gen for awhile (mainly because my Burton Amp Pack backpack requires the remote port), but if all that's holding you back is the lack of charger, why not use the charger from your 3rd-gen iPod? The 5th gen (video) iPods can still charge over Firewire, just not sync over it. So, why not just hang on to the charger and firewire-to-dock-port cable from your 3G iPod, for when you travel?
Actually , if you look at Apple's Tech Specs page for the iPod, you'll see that the new iPods do in fact allow for high-quality recording. At the moment, I don't know of any input devices that support it (since all recording accessories were designed for the older generations of iPods, which only featured low-res recording), but I have no doubt they will come.
With the exception of Canada, the countries mentioned have a tremendous advanage regarding broadband penetration, and that is relative population density.
Wrong. Look it up and you'll see that the USA has a larger population density than countries such as Finland (mentioned in the article), Sweden and Australia (in addition to Canada, as you mentioned), all of which have much better broadband coverage than the US.
I think it's high time we stopped letting cell companies and ISPs get away with using this as an excuse. It's just not nearly true enough to be the real reason. Monopolistic practices and campaign financing are the real reasons.
I still think this is greedy of Apple. I mean, look at the uproar here on Slashdot when the RIAA wanted a cut of the money Apple made from iPods. Everyone, myself included, posted comments to the effect of "iPod sales increase music sales, so the RIAA should be happy with the increased profit, and not get greedy by directly tapping profits made on the iPod"
Well, this is the same thing. Having a wide array of accessories helps sales of iPods. I know that if I buy an iPod, I can elegantly connect it to my car, I can buy a backpack that controls it from the strap (actually, I already own one, but the point remains), I can use a wide variety of FM transmitters designed SPECIFICALLY for the iPod, I can choose from a plethora of cases, etc etc etc. This makes an iPod even more attractive than its competitors, and helps Apple's sales. Apple is just being greedy by demanding a direct cut of the accessories' profits.
4:23AM weirdness? Your time stamp says 4:44AM. Did it really take you 21 minutes to write that post? Be honest now, you were "researching" high-res pr0n at the same time, weren't you?
The power supply is no problem, the processor will be very slow compared to todays computers if it is to be truely flexible.
Yeah, but we're talking about something that's displaying text and basic graphics. It doesn't have to be a multi-core 64-bit server CPU to show text and basic graphics
Of course, the risk of that is instant-deniability. The newspaper makes some big gaffe that would get them in trouble, and they can pull it instantly, no paper trail (so to speak). The technology isn't inherently dngerous, but could open up some new realms for abuse.
I don't know how high the power requirements are, but what about something like the Kinetic Power for watches? Basically, they have self-winding main springs that are wound by the motion of the wearers wrist (spare us the obvious jokes). I don't have a link, but I know some of them can retain power for weeks, even after being removed from the wearer's wrist. They even had one that would go into lower pwoer mode if removed for a while, and would track the time for years. One flick of the wrist a year later and it would instantly snap to the right time.
Now, put one of these on an eNewspaper, and just carrying the thing in your briefcase might be enough to keep it charged.
My undergrad used WebCT and I actually liked it. I wish all my profs had used it. I know it's far from perfect, and the interface is a little plain, but for a basic course website, it was great. Lecture notes, old exams, whatever, were generally easy to find. Some classes had message boards, others had online quizzes.
It was much more easily discoverable than the alternative, which was every professor having their own site, often stored in different locations on different web servers, with different layouts. Having everything look similar, in one location, was by far the better choice.
I really like the new iPods et al. but there's one thing I think is a major drawback-the lack of remote port. I like the remote itself, but more than that, a number of accessories (I own an iTrip and a Burton Amp Pack myself for my 3G iPod) which rely on the remote port. The iTrip I don't mind re-buying if need be, as it's only $35, but the Amp Pack costs almost as much as the iPod itself! Now, Burton may offer a way to buy the electronics portion (perhaps connecting to the dock port), but if not, my Amp Pack becomes much less useful if I ever want to upgrade my iPod.
OK, now do the RIAA/MPAA/whatever-AA really lose that much money due to fileswapping, piracy, video-taping, etc., that it is even financially worth all this bad PR? Or are they just run by a bunch of outright bastards who like being thought of as professional killjoys?
You're missing the point. It's not that they lose that much money, it's that they might lose much more in the future. Right now, comparatively few people download movies and TV shows. But, give it twenty years, and that may change. As major developing-nation populations (i.e. China and India) start to approach prosperity, the RIAA wants to make sure that their content can, and is locked down, and that we're used to it being so. That way, the U.S. can push these developing nations to adopt similar measures "in the name of piracy prevention".
Remember, had people not gotten totally hooked on Napster (back in the days before it sucked), there wouldn't be such an ingrained culture of downloading now. We have all these crazy notions of "rights" relating to things we legitimately paid money for; the MPAA wants to try to stop such insane, pinko ideas from spreading too far. This move is an ounce of prevention, not a pound of cure. And it's a lot easier for such dinos companies to do than it is to develop new, working business models.
The possibility of Marine effect is quite real. Past Navy experiments have had serious deleterious effects on marine life.
As to why, because whales, dolphins et al. are intelligent, endangered creatures. It doesn't mean you give up everything (or even that you give up this technology) to protect them, but it sure as hell means you consider the ramifications and at least look for alternative methods that don't kill some of the most advanced creatures on this planet.
You know, I used to think the same thing. All I wanted was a small, light, no-ringtones, no-camera, black-and-white-screen phone. But I just moved to the UK and bought a Samsung E350 slider phone. It has an MP3/AAC player, a camera, a colour screen, Java games and all that.
But you know what? It's small, the battery life is as good as any other phone I've ever owned (including black-and-white bare basics phones). It weighs next to nothing, the call quality is good, and I just don't use the games or any other extraneous features.
And wouldn't you know it? Within a day of getting the USb cable for the phone, I set my ringtone to an MP3 of the Star Wars theme song (from the Rebellion's medal ceremony at the end of A New Hope). And I took a goofy self-portrait for my wallpaper. Why not? It's fun, a little silly, but entertaining.
I think the "I just want a simple phone!" is at times overstated. What I really want is a phone that doesn't make too many compromises for extra features. I don't need video recording capabilities, but if it can add them without sacrificing size or battery life, I'm not too worried. And besides, I do like gadgets (and I can't imagine I'm alone in that regard, especially not on Slashdot), so why wouldn't I want my phone to be gadgety?
I think we geeks are just more sensitive to tradeoffs. There are a lot of phones that are heavy on features, but sacrifice basic useability to get there. The Microsoft Word of phones, if you will. But there also exist phones that are good compromises. Just don't use the features you don't need.
The article says that this phone features Wi-Fi connectivity. Does that mean it is (or might soon be) possible to connect via something like Skype and make free calls to other Skype users (or cheap calls to actual phones) without consuming airtime? Because that would indeed be an extremely cool feature.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, fine, but that doesn't mean that VOIP shouldn't be wiretappable. Perhaps all those other methods should be monitored as well, perhaps not. But if you make it clear that VOIP can't be wiretapped, then even the smart terrorists you do fear will just use VOIP.
Besides that, wiretapping is used much more for criminal investigations, listening in to organised crime and whatnot. And it makes some sense to put such provisions in place now, before VOIP becomes commonplace and it's much harder to retrofit the whole system.
As one poster said above (very astutely, IMHO), wiretapping is either good or bad as a whole. If it's bad, get rid of it altogether, even on POTS lines. If it's good, what possible reason would there be to grant VOIP a special exception that cell phone, faxes and landline phones don't have? Remember, it's the abuse of the system you fear, not the system itself. So rather than give exceptions to one area, try to implement rules to prevent abuse as much as possible.
On the plus side, it should automagically explode all the super-evil RFID tracking tags in your razors and potato chip bags and whatnot. It's nice to trade one form of surveillance for another, and this sure would be faster than putting each individual item in the microwave oven one at a time!
I'm not sure. Why not ask that question on Google Answers? Finding out has to be worth *at least* $2.50
As others have pointed out, it is nice to be able to view two screens side-by-side. At with a 1050-pixel vertical resolution, you still fit a fair amount on screen.
However, I think as you point out, lots of people do watch DVDs on their computer. I'm a student who's fortunate enough to have a 20 Cinema Display (widescreen, obv.). However, I have no TV. I haven't seen the need to buy a TV. My Cinema Display is crystal clear, plenty big enough for watching movies, and I hook my G5 up to a decent sound system. For me to buy a TV that would be noticeably better than my monitor would cost far more money than I could even remotely justify.
So why is this so bad? It may not be what you want it for, but obviously there's enough of a demand to justify this change. If the majority wanted 4x3 displays, the manufacturers wouldn't be making this change. I this may just be one of those cases where you happen to be in the minority opinion. Which is fine, but it's unreasonable to expect the manufacturers to cater to that opinion.
I agree. While in general, I wouldn't want to haul that 19" Samsung around all day, it seems like the perfect compromise for a business person. You bring the computer part to the office, where a full-sized monitor awaits you. If you need to make a presentation with a projector, your scren can be omitted (I know PowerPoint let's you have visual cues and extra text on a second screen, but for many presentations that's irrelevant). At the end of the day, you bring home the computer, and can use it at home for gaming/browsing/yet more work, by connecting it to your monitor there. Hell, if you're lucky enough to afford a Plasma screen, hook it up to watch a DVD in your living room! I agree with the parent post-if you don't think of this as a laptop, but rather a luggable computer that happens to come with a (detachable) matching monitor, it actually is a cool form factor.
Hmmmmm.... Slashdotted already.
I have a hunch this guy's web stats are going to show a MASSIVE influx of FireFox users, then a long period of downtime...
I'd have to check my class notes, but I think my stats class would say that I was making a joke. Evidently not a very funny one, but the attempt was there, nonetheless.
Hey, I took Stats in my undergrad! If some prisoners were let out early, and other let out late, then it should all average out to zero! So really, the software works just fine in the aggregate! Typical Slashdot, can't see the forest for the trees!
One of my favourite quotations of all time (source unknown):
"If you're going to criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticise them, you're a mile away. And you have their shoes."
I also plan to stick with my 3rd gen for awhile (mainly because my Burton Amp Pack backpack requires the remote port), but if all that's holding you back is the lack of charger, why not use the charger from your 3rd-gen iPod? The 5th gen (video) iPods can still charge over Firewire, just not sync over it. So, why not just hang on to the charger and firewire-to-dock-port cable from your 3G iPod, for when you travel?
Actually , if you look at Apple's Tech Specs page for the iPod, you'll see that the new iPods do in fact allow for high-quality recording. At the moment, I don't know of any input devices that support it (since all recording accessories were designed for the older generations of iPods, which only featured low-res recording), but I have no doubt they will come.
Did they trademark 'BlackMail' too?
Hey! We call that "AfricanAmericanMail" now, you insensitive clod!
Ha! Now, for once, if they don't include your precious ogg support, it'll be your own fault for not pushing it enough!
With the exception of Canada, the countries mentioned have a tremendous advanage regarding broadband penetration, and that is relative population density.
Wrong. Look it up and you'll see that the USA has a larger population density than countries such as Finland (mentioned in the article), Sweden and Australia (in addition to Canada, as you mentioned), all of which have much better broadband coverage than the US.
I think it's high time we stopped letting cell companies and ISPs get away with using this as an excuse. It's just not nearly true enough to be the real reason. Monopolistic practices and campaign financing are the real reasons.
I still think this is greedy of Apple. I mean, look at the uproar here on Slashdot when the RIAA wanted a cut of the money Apple made from iPods. Everyone, myself included, posted comments to the effect of "iPod sales increase music sales, so the RIAA should be happy with the increased profit, and not get greedy by directly tapping profits made on the iPod"
Well, this is the same thing. Having a wide array of accessories helps sales of iPods. I know that if I buy an iPod, I can elegantly connect it to my car, I can buy a backpack that controls it from the strap (actually, I already own one, but the point remains), I can use a wide variety of FM transmitters designed SPECIFICALLY for the iPod, I can choose from a plethora of cases, etc etc etc. This makes an iPod even more attractive than its competitors, and helps Apple's sales. Apple is just being greedy by demanding a direct cut of the accessories' profits.
4:23AM weirdness? Your time stamp says 4:44AM. Did it really take you 21 minutes to write that post? Be honest now, you were "researching" high-res pr0n at the same time, weren't you?
The power supply is no problem, the processor will be very slow compared to todays computers if it is to be truely flexible.
Yeah, but we're talking about something that's displaying text and basic graphics. It doesn't have to be a multi-core 64-bit server CPU to show text and basic graphics
Of course, the risk of that is instant-deniability. The newspaper makes some big gaffe that would get them in trouble, and they can pull it instantly, no paper trail (so to speak). The technology isn't inherently dngerous, but could open up some new realms for abuse.
I don't know how high the power requirements are, but what about something like the Kinetic Power for watches? Basically, they have self-winding main springs that are wound by the motion of the wearers wrist (spare us the obvious jokes). I don't have a link, but I know some of them can retain power for weeks, even after being removed from the wearer's wrist. They even had one that would go into lower pwoer mode if removed for a while, and would track the time for years. One flick of the wrist a year later and it would instantly snap to the right time.
Now, put one of these on an eNewspaper, and just carrying the thing in your briefcase might be enough to keep it charged.
My undergrad used WebCT and I actually liked it. I wish all my profs had used it. I know it's far from perfect, and the interface is a little plain, but for a basic course website, it was great. Lecture notes, old exams, whatever, were generally easy to find. Some classes had message boards, others had online quizzes.
It was much more easily discoverable than the alternative, which was every professor having their own site, often stored in different locations on different web servers, with different layouts. Having everything look similar, in one location, was by far the better choice.
I really like the new iPods et al. but there's one thing I think is a major drawback-the lack of remote port. I like the remote itself, but more than that, a number of accessories (I own an iTrip and a Burton Amp Pack myself for my 3G iPod) which rely on the remote port. The iTrip I don't mind re-buying if need be, as it's only $35, but the Amp Pack costs almost as much as the iPod itself! Now, Burton may offer a way to buy the electronics portion (perhaps connecting to the dock port), but if not, my Amp Pack becomes much less useful if I ever want to upgrade my iPod.
OK, now do the RIAA/MPAA/whatever-AA really lose that much money due to fileswapping, piracy, video-taping, etc., that it is even financially worth all this bad PR? Or are they just run by a bunch of outright bastards who like being thought of as professional killjoys?
You're missing the point. It's not that they lose that much money, it's that they might lose much more in the future. Right now, comparatively few people download movies and TV shows. But, give it twenty years, and that may change. As major developing-nation populations (i.e. China and India) start to approach prosperity, the RIAA wants to make sure that their content can, and is locked down, and that we're used to it being so. That way, the U.S. can push these developing nations to adopt similar measures "in the name of piracy prevention".
Remember, had people not gotten totally hooked on Napster (back in the days before it sucked), there wouldn't be such an ingrained culture of downloading now. We have all these crazy notions of "rights" relating to things we legitimately paid money for; the MPAA wants to try to stop such insane, pinko ideas from spreading too far. This move is an ounce of prevention, not a pound of cure. And it's a lot easier for such dinos companies to do than it is to develop new, working business models.
The possibility of Marine effect is quite real. Past Navy experiments have had serious deleterious effects on marine life.
As to why, because whales, dolphins et al. are intelligent, endangered creatures. It doesn't mean you give up everything (or even that you give up this technology) to protect them, but it sure as hell means you consider the ramifications and at least look for alternative methods that don't kill some of the most advanced creatures on this planet.
Re: I want a super-simple phone.
You know, I used to think the same thing. All I wanted was a small, light, no-ringtones, no-camera, black-and-white-screen phone. But I just moved to the UK and bought a Samsung E350 slider phone. It has an MP3/AAC player, a camera, a colour screen, Java games and all that.
But you know what? It's small, the battery life is as good as any other phone I've ever owned (including black-and-white bare basics phones). It weighs next to nothing, the call quality is good, and I just don't use the games or any other extraneous features.
And wouldn't you know it? Within a day of getting the USb cable for the phone, I set my ringtone to an MP3 of the Star Wars theme song (from the Rebellion's medal ceremony at the end of A New Hope). And I took a goofy self-portrait for my wallpaper. Why not? It's fun, a little silly, but entertaining.
I think the "I just want a simple phone!" is at times overstated. What I really want is a phone that doesn't make too many compromises for extra features. I don't need video recording capabilities, but if it can add them without sacrificing size or battery life, I'm not too worried. And besides, I do like gadgets (and I can't imagine I'm alone in that regard, especially not on Slashdot), so why wouldn't I want my phone to be gadgety?
I think we geeks are just more sensitive to tradeoffs. There are a lot of phones that are heavy on features, but sacrifice basic useability to get there. The Microsoft Word of phones, if you will. But there also exist phones that are good compromises. Just don't use the features you don't need.
The article says that this phone features Wi-Fi connectivity. Does that mean it is (or might soon be) possible to connect via something like Skype and make free calls to other Skype users (or cheap calls to actual phones) without consuming airtime? Because that would indeed be an extremely cool feature.