Not true.. since (most legitimate) porn sites are *gasp* content based and not dependent on ad revenue so much as subscription revenue. They are interested in maximizing the page views of POTENTIAL SUBSCRIBERS, in general those with an actual inkling to download adult content. Everyone else is wasting their bandwidth..
Most of the people spamming and installing malicious pop-up-ware aren't the content providers, but rather advertisers who get paid by driving people to the site. I think the adult webmasters would be really interested in changing this paradigm a bit, and instead have a system by which these people don't drive the masses in general to their sites, but rather those (and only those) they can actually sell to. It's called targetted marketing, and it really does work in almost every discipline.
So from the content providers perspective a.sex TLD might make sense. The potential filtering is actually GOOD for their business.. It neatly solves a ton of legal and liability issues, while instantly identifying legitimate prospects for them to market to effectively.
I scanned through all of the comments, because I was about to post the exact same thing. Well said.
The company I work for has a number of policies, and in return I have the "treat me like a fricking adult" policy. I've often butted head with management over time and leave issues.
Through a number of compromises I'm now open to working the occasional 10 hour day, while in exchange they're willing to deal with the occasional 2 hour lunch and slightly odd hours (to avoid rush hour). It's a comrpomise that works for both of us, and in the end it's created the groundwork for a work environment that respects me as a person, rather than a resource. It sounds like the company this guy works for sees it's employees as something other than adults, and it's upt to him to either a) try to fix it or b) move on to somewhere that already has.
[quote]it's basically the best way to make money, next to taking advantage of lonely guys (pornsites, strippers) and taking advantage of lazy people (remote control, clapper[/quote]
Uhm, isn't the point to provide something useful for people (creating value for them)? So strippers, pornsites, remote controls, and the clapper don't take advantage of people.. they simple provide a good or service that people find valuable.
Scamming people is a whole different story.. This guy is a scammer, he doesn't appear to even have a PRODUCT.
The media exxagarating everything for entertainment is dying.. certain cavalier news organizations are sticking to something called 'the truth', you can read about it in the next wired.
Funny, we built a fully autonomous robot capable of self navigation on a budget of less than $5,000 (University research fund money). It was even capable of responding to hand signals (as long as you where wearing a red shirt:) ) and doing useful work based on those.
It had it's shortcomings, primarily due to the platform we built it on. It didn't have the neccesary sensors/mechanics needed to do TRULY useful tasks (such as pour beer), but we accomplished quite a bit on a very very tight budget.
In my experience, money is rarely a significant indicator of a projects ability to succeed.
I write software to make money, yet I'm completely 100% worried about writing solid, bug free, easy to use applications. Microsoft is a corporation, true, but Microsoft doesn't write code.. the PEOPLE that work for Microsoft do. The Microsoft engineers i've met all seem very interested in making great products.. they're not motivated by market share, but by the quality of their work.
You can (and rightfully so) argue that market conditions and corporate strategy force these engineers to make compromises they may not have to make in the open source world.. There are such things as deadlines in the corporate world after all..
At the end of the day, however, I think you'll find that the engineers that write code for Microsoft are motivated by much the same things as those who work on Linux.
The article talks about the primary difference between P2P and the other technologies as being that in general P2P networks share the content for free, and this is an incredibly important distinction.
After all, if no money is changing hands then there is zero opportunity for artists/content providers to be compensated. You can't reward the creator while protecting the medium (as in the case of the cable industry) because there is nothing to protect it with..
This is a case where free is only good for the end user, not so much for those needing to make a living off the works they produce.
The author of the above diatribe is like a largely computer-literate 'thinker' who has been slowly coaxed into believing that all corporations are inherently evil, greedy, and altogether worthless entities. It's a rather popular view, so it's understandable.
The only problem is, it's not true. There are literally thousands of acts of true benevolence on the parts of major corporations every day. There are the prototypical examples (such as Ben and Jerries Ice Cream), Hasbro (huge toy donations, a rather cool playground building initiative, orphanges), Target (large contributor to a number of charities and charity work), etc... There are countless corporate charity programs that touch everything from education to midnight basketball programs.
Yes, corporations enjoy certain tax benefits from donations. Their motivations are varied ('goodwill' generated form charity work is considered a marketing tool after all), but the results are generally quite good.
The problem with the blanket statements of corporate greed is that they fail to recognize that corporations are mostly made up of good people, who enjoy helping others. Having worked at several publicly traded companies, it seems that every charitable endeavor didn't begin with the marketing department, but rather a rather motivated employee who enlisted the help of the company in THEIR cause.
So keep in mind, that while big corporations are definitely powerful and self interested entities, they can be very good to their communities and societies in general. I'm not saying that a general bit of wariness when dealing with mega-corps is a bad thing (we certainly haven't been diligent enough in the past), but to blanket them as evil is both shortsighted and ignorant.
Sadly, their conclusions are usually WAY off base because the law is written to be deliberately difficult to understand without a legal education.
This isn't true.. as a matter of fact most law is fairly easy to understand. The language, while often very verbose, is also generally very pointed and is actually quite straightforward. Most first year law students will tell you how struck they are that laws are that easy to understand.
What lawyers REALLY do is understand laws in the context of OTHER laws. So while understanding a singular law (like the DMCA, interpretation notwithstanding) may be relatively easy, understanding how it overlaps and interacts with all of the other laws on the books does require a degree in research science (otherwise known as 'law school':) ). Law is incredibly complex when you consider the volumes and volumes of laws and interpretations of laws that often apply to one single case point, and a good lawyer is one who has a handle on that.
I don't think the original poster was really arguing for civility, but rather rationale discourse.
Almost EVERY political debate (from the local barbershop to congress itself) almost always turns into a series of liberal/conservative insults. Instead of arguing the issues, we simply state our case and say 'if you disagree it's cause your a stupid liberal/conservative and being liberal/conservative is evil'. That's pretty much where the 'debate' begins and ends.
We need to get past that and start focusing on the actual issues. Argue from your position, that's fine, but don't dismiss the opposing viewpoint as being evil. Hell, walk into Barnes and Noble some time and look at the entire section of books about how evil liberals and liberalism are (several of which from Ann Coulter).. it's unbelievable really.
What your missing here is that this article is about a outsourced call center. They really do (typically) get paid by the call, and not by the quality of the service they provide.
That's the whole problem with this particular shop. They use average call time as the be-all-end-all statistic because it's 1:1 with the amount of money they make as a call center. If you spend 30 minutes on ANY call, your in trouble because that's time that could have been spent completeing 2 or even 3 additional calls. It's not really average call time they are interested in, but customer thoroughput.
The answer is 'yes'. In particular for those really hard to find programming positions here. We are in desperate need of Symbian developers. True, experienced, symbian guys with solid C++ skills. Those aren't easy people to find, and a local ad doesn't turn up a whole lot of qualified candidates.
For us the ONLY option are these big time job boards, as they give us the best chance of finding qualified candidates.
I have been pulled over/stopped by police 26 times (the vast majority before I was 18 in Arkansas which has a teen curfew, so I probably deserved it.)
In each of those cases I ALWAYS asked for (and received) identification and badge numbers from the police officers involved. It's only affected me in a positive way. When you ask for bade numbers and identification you are basically letting the police officer know 'I know your limits, and I'm going to hold you accountable.'
I've known several police officers in a social sense, and I've discussed this with all of them. They all, to a man (and one woman), have the same response. They don't begrudge a citizen looking out for themeselves, and asking for ID has the affect of raising THEIR awareness that they need to be careful.
The exception to this however is when people use bade requests as a delaying tactic or a method of not answering questions. As with most things in life, you need to know the right TIME to ask for this information.
Most 'new' things are generally 'better' than old things.. That's because most of the time new things are simply the logical evolution of old things. (Disclaimer: You can find thousands of counter-examples for this, there are obviously a lot of factors involved here.. but I think the basic point holds).
The Y proposal is very evolutionary. It uses the collective experience gained from the successes and failures of X to build a better mousetrap. I would certainly expect it to improve upon what X does while keeping those things that work and work well. A LOT has changed in terms of tools, technology, and know-how since X was designed... why not put those idea to work in a new system?
There is no free music on the radio, on tv, or on satellite.
In the radio case, music is almost ALWAYS accompanied by commercials. You are 'paying' for the music by being advertised to. In economics terms we would say that you are creating value for the radio station (which tranlates into $$$) as a target for advertising during the commercial breaks. They play valuable music, you listen and hopefully stick around for the commercials. It's not free, your just not paying for it (although the radio station most definitely is).
On the other mediums (TV/Satellite) you are paying for it as well. Those are almost always content 'stations' provided by the satellite/tv company as part of your subscription. Your subscription fees go to subsidize these 'value add' channels.
I work in software. I write software for a living, and I expect to get paid for it. I provide valuable expertise that I use to build (hopefully) a very valuable product.
Yet my work is 'performed' only once (when I code it) and yet is run on a playback device (that others already paid for) over and over again. By your logic, I should only be able to sell one copy of any software that I write.
After all, I'm asking for a 'stream of endless payments' for not doing anything but making copies of what I already have.
That is completely ludicrous. The fact of the matter is that the value of my software is not in it's creation, but in the continuing value it provides. You may open it 1000000 times, and everytime it is likely to prove useful to you (otherwise why would you use it?). When you are buying the software you are really buying the hours and hours of hard work that I put into building it.
It's the same exact thing here. Sure, you can make money on live performances. However, creating copies of performances and providing on demand playback of those performances is EXTREMELY valuable as well. It entertains people, it passes time, it comforts.. recorded music has many functions. When you buy a CD your aren't buying a bucket of bits, but rather you are paying for the hard work and talent that went into producing those copies. You listen to music because it's valuable, but it's value lies not in it's physical qualities but in it's end result.
Artists do not only create art from the need to express themselves. Artists are motivated by many many things, and money is one of them. Many of the greatest painters throughout history worked almost solely on comission after all. You'll find that 'starving artists' starve not because they are true artists but because people do not find their works particularly valuable. The value of art has more to do with it's age and fame of the artist (often not gained until well after death) then the quality of the painting itself.
So I fail to see the problem. It sounds to me like you want a free lunch. You want to enjoy the VALUE provided by this music, without having to give anything in return. I would find it hard to beleive that you would expect someone to cut your hair (something presumably valuable) and yet not pay for it when you leave. Why is a recording different? Just because it's easy to copy it doesn't make it right.
I do agree that C++ as an application programming language is nearing it's apex, but the VAST majority of application development is still done in C++.
In certain discplines (handheld/cellphone development) it's an absolute neccesity. The other tools simply don't exist or lack the support needed to be truly useful.
The truly laughable part is that SCO appears to be going for a sort of bad-faith breach of contract approach. Which is funny in many ways, but primarily because it appears like IBM was essentially hedging it's bets (standard practice at big blue actually) and covering as many angles as they could.
Every time we have an SCO story this is brought up.
Postal fraud requires intent. Your going to have to prove that SCO knowingly and intentionally attempted to defraud those 1500 recipients. I don't beleive that's the case, and you'll have a very difficult time PROVING it.
I think SCO beleives their claims (at least at the higher levels). I beleive that they THINK that they own this code and that the Linux kernel infringes on it. All of that is HEAVILY debatable, quite possibly laughable.. but attempting to enforce your perceived IP rights is not postal fraud. It's stupid, it's a waste of time, but it's not illegal.
This hits the nail squarely on the head. When every game costs me at least a buck to play, I look at it for a second and just go home. Why sink 20 bucks into an hour of gaming when I can get all of the time I want on my console/pc/whatever at home?
For the foreseeable future, you will no trouble getting a 'phone only' phone.. There are still a lot of pieces to the wireless market (infrastructure, carriers, cell phone manufacturers at the highest levels)..
Within a company like Nokia they have many phones in development at all times. Their strategy has always been to target individual phones and very precise markets. If you just want basic phone service, Nokia has a phone for you (not a Symbian phone). If you want more they can do that to.
This works out well for Nokia (they move HUGE volumes in those lower end phones) and the carriers who are interested in getting both the high end (data plans, unlimited minutes, etc..) and the low end (emergency calls only) using their networks. Having worked with many different cell phone manufacturers (we develop for various Symbian flavors) and carriers I'm pretty confident that this is not going to be changing any time soon. They are always VERY concerned about pricing themselves out of the lower end consumer, while wanting to maximize they're return from the higher end. It's a really amazing balancing act, but the end result is that there are (and likely will be) phones for almost every taste.
Is this really meant as a replacement for the fitting room? It seems like it accomplishes two things to me.. 1) It lets the shopper try a wide range of different looks and styles really quickly. Instead of having to try everything on to see what it looks like, you can use this as sort of a shopping filter to see if that shirt and those pants really DO go together. After you have a few outfit combinations that you like, you then actually try them on for fit and 'real world' look. This is a GOD SEND for any man that has a wife that likes (no loves) the mall.
2) It was mentioned in the article, but it goes a ways towards solving a lot of the problems (visualization problems) associated with shopping online.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true.. since (most legitimate) porn sites are *gasp* content based and not dependent on ad revenue so much as subscription revenue. They are interested in maximizing the page views of POTENTIAL SUBSCRIBERS, in general those with an actual inkling to download adult content. Everyone else is wasting their bandwidth..
.sex TLD might make sense. The potential filtering is actually GOOD for their business.. It neatly solves a ton of legal and liability issues, while instantly identifying legitimate prospects for them to market to effectively.
Most of the people spamming and installing malicious pop-up-ware aren't the content providers, but rather advertisers who get paid by driving people to the site. I think the adult webmasters would be really interested in changing this paradigm a bit, and instead have a system by which these people don't drive the masses in general to their sites, but rather those (and only those) they can actually sell to. It's called targetted marketing, and it really does work in almost every discipline.
So from the content providers perspective a
The libertarian in me says 'F-that'.
I scanned through all of the comments, because I was about to post the exact same thing. Well said.
The company I work for has a number of policies, and in return I have the "treat me like a fricking adult" policy. I've often butted head with management over time and leave issues.
Through a number of compromises I'm now open to working the occasional 10 hour day, while in exchange they're willing to deal with the occasional 2 hour lunch and slightly odd hours (to avoid rush hour). It's a comrpomise that works for both of us, and in the end it's created the groundwork for a work environment that respects me as a person, rather than a resource. It sounds like the company this guy works for sees it's employees as something other than adults, and it's upt to him to either a) try to fix it or b) move on to somewhere that already has.
[quote]it's basically the best way to make money, next to taking advantage of lonely guys (pornsites, strippers) and taking advantage of lazy people (remote control, clapper[/quote]
Uhm, isn't the point to provide something useful for people (creating value for them)? So strippers, pornsites, remote controls, and the clapper don't take advantage of people.. they simple provide a good or service that people find valuable.
Scamming people is a whole different story.. This guy is a scammer, he doesn't appear to even have a PRODUCT.
This is from the same guy that claims there is no Saddam Hussein:)
The media exxagarating everything for entertainment is dying.. certain cavalier news organizations are sticking to something called 'the truth', you can read about it in the next wired.
Funny, we built a fully autonomous robot capable of self navigation on a budget of less than $5,000 (University research fund money). It was even capable of responding to hand signals (as long as you where wearing a red shirt:) ) and doing useful work based on those.
It had it's shortcomings, primarily due to the platform we built it on. It didn't have the neccesary sensors/mechanics needed to do TRULY useful tasks (such as pour beer), but we accomplished quite a bit on a very very tight budget.
In my experience, money is rarely a significant indicator of a projects ability to succeed.
I write software to make money, yet I'm completely 100% worried about writing solid, bug free, easy to use applications. Microsoft is a corporation, true, but Microsoft doesn't write code.. the PEOPLE that work for Microsoft do. The Microsoft engineers i've met all seem very interested in making great products.. they're not motivated by market share, but by the quality of their work.
You can (and rightfully so) argue that market conditions and corporate strategy force these engineers to make compromises they may not have to make in the open source world.. There are such things as deadlines in the corporate world after all..
At the end of the day, however, I think you'll find that the engineers that write code for Microsoft are motivated by much the same things as those who work on Linux.
The article talks about the primary difference between P2P and the other technologies as being that in general P2P networks share the content for free, and this is an incredibly important distinction.
After all, if no money is changing hands then there is zero opportunity for artists/content providers to be compensated. You can't reward the creator while protecting the medium (as in the case of the cable industry) because there is nothing to protect it with..
This is a case where free is only good for the end user, not so much for those needing to make a living off the works they produce.
The author of the above diatribe is like a largely computer-literate 'thinker' who has been slowly coaxed into believing that all corporations are inherently evil, greedy, and altogether worthless entities. It's a rather popular view, so it's understandable.
The only problem is, it's not true. There are literally thousands of acts of true benevolence on the parts of major corporations every day. There are the prototypical examples (such as Ben and Jerries Ice Cream), Hasbro (huge toy donations, a rather cool playground building initiative, orphanges), Target (large contributor to a number of charities and charity work), etc... There are countless corporate charity programs that touch everything from education to midnight basketball programs.
Yes, corporations enjoy certain tax benefits from donations. Their motivations are varied ('goodwill' generated form charity work is considered a marketing tool after all), but the results are generally quite good.
The problem with the blanket statements of corporate greed is that they fail to recognize that corporations are mostly made up of good people, who enjoy helping others. Having worked at several publicly traded companies, it seems that every charitable endeavor didn't begin with the marketing department, but rather a rather motivated employee who enlisted the help of the company in THEIR cause.
So keep in mind, that while big corporations are definitely powerful and self interested entities, they can be very good to their communities and societies in general. I'm not saying that a general bit of wariness when dealing with mega-corps is a bad thing (we certainly haven't been diligent enough in the past), but to blanket them as evil is both shortsighted and ignorant.
Sadly, their conclusions are usually WAY off base because the law is written to be deliberately difficult to understand without a legal education.
This isn't true.. as a matter of fact most law is fairly easy to understand. The language, while often very verbose, is also generally very pointed and is actually quite straightforward. Most first year law students will tell you how struck they are that laws are that easy to understand.
What lawyers REALLY do is understand laws in the context of OTHER laws. So while understanding a singular law (like the DMCA, interpretation notwithstanding) may be relatively easy, understanding how it overlaps and interacts with all of the other laws on the books does require a degree in research science (otherwise known as 'law school':) ). Law is incredibly complex when you consider the volumes and volumes of laws and interpretations of laws that often apply to one single case point, and a good lawyer is one who has a handle on that.
I don't think the original poster was really arguing for civility, but rather rationale discourse.
Almost EVERY political debate (from the local barbershop to congress itself) almost always turns into a series of liberal/conservative insults. Instead of arguing the issues, we simply state our case and say 'if you disagree it's cause your a stupid liberal/conservative and being liberal/conservative is evil'. That's pretty much where the 'debate' begins and ends.
We need to get past that and start focusing on the actual issues. Argue from your position, that's fine, but don't dismiss the opposing viewpoint as being evil. Hell, walk into Barnes and Noble some time and look at the entire section of books about how evil liberals and liberalism are (several of which from Ann Coulter).. it's unbelievable really.
What your missing here is that this article is about a outsourced call center. They really do (typically) get paid by the call, and not by the quality of the service they provide.
That's the whole problem with this particular shop. They use average call time as the be-all-end-all statistic because it's 1:1 with the amount of money they make as a call center. If you spend 30 minutes on ANY call, your in trouble because that's time that could have been spent completeing 2 or even 3 additional calls. It's not really average call time they are interested in, but customer thoroughput.
The answer is 'yes'. In particular for those really hard to find programming positions here. We are in desperate need of Symbian developers. True, experienced, symbian guys with solid C++ skills. Those aren't easy people to find, and a local ad doesn't turn up a whole lot of qualified candidates.
For us the ONLY option are these big time job boards, as they give us the best chance of finding qualified candidates.
I have been pulled over/stopped by police 26 times (the vast majority before I was 18 in Arkansas which has a teen curfew, so I probably deserved it.)
In each of those cases I ALWAYS asked for (and received) identification and badge numbers from the police officers involved. It's only affected me in a positive way. When you ask for bade numbers and identification you are basically letting the police officer know 'I know your limits, and I'm going to hold you accountable.'
I've known several police officers in a social sense, and I've discussed this with all of them. They all, to a man (and one woman), have the same response. They don't begrudge a citizen looking out for themeselves, and asking for ID has the affect of raising THEIR awareness that they need to be careful.
The exception to this however is when people use bade requests as a delaying tactic or a method of not answering questions. As with most things in life, you need to know the right TIME to ask for this information.
Most 'new' things are generally 'better' than old things.. That's because most of the time new things are simply the logical evolution of old things. (Disclaimer: You can find thousands of counter-examples for this, there are obviously a lot of factors involved here.. but I think the basic point holds).
The Y proposal is very evolutionary. It uses the collective experience gained from the successes and failures of X to build a better mousetrap. I would certainly expect it to improve upon what X does while keeping those things that work and work well. A LOT has changed in terms of tools, technology, and know-how since X was designed... why not put those idea to work in a new system?
There is no free music on the radio, on tv, or on satellite.
In the radio case, music is almost ALWAYS accompanied by commercials. You are 'paying' for the music by being advertised to. In economics terms we would say that you are creating value for the radio station (which tranlates into $$$) as a target for advertising during the commercial breaks. They play valuable music, you listen and hopefully stick around for the commercials. It's not free, your just not paying for it (although the radio station most definitely is).
On the other mediums (TV/Satellite) you are paying for it as well. Those are almost always content 'stations' provided by the satellite/tv company as part of your subscription. Your subscription fees go to subsidize these 'value add' channels.
I couldn't disagree with this more.
I work in software. I write software for a living, and I expect to get paid for it. I provide valuable expertise that I use to build (hopefully) a very valuable product.
Yet my work is 'performed' only once (when I code it) and yet is run on a playback device (that others already paid for) over and over again. By your logic, I should only be able to sell one copy of any software that I write.
After all, I'm asking for a 'stream of endless payments' for not doing anything but making copies of what I already have.
That is completely ludicrous. The fact of the matter is that the value of my software is not in it's creation, but in the continuing value it provides. You may open it 1000000 times, and everytime it is likely to prove useful to you (otherwise why would you use it?). When you are buying the software you are really buying the hours and hours of hard work that I put into building it.
It's the same exact thing here. Sure, you can make money on live performances. However, creating copies of performances and providing on demand playback of those performances is EXTREMELY valuable as well. It entertains people, it passes time, it comforts.. recorded music has many functions. When you buy a CD your aren't buying a bucket of bits, but rather you are paying for the hard work and talent that went into producing those copies. You listen to music because it's valuable, but it's value lies not in it's physical qualities but in it's end result.
Artists do not only create art from the need to express themselves. Artists are motivated by many many things, and money is one of them. Many of the greatest painters throughout history worked almost solely on comission after all. You'll find that 'starving artists' starve not because they are true artists but because people do not find their works particularly valuable. The value of art has more to do with it's age and fame of the artist (often not gained until well after death) then the quality of the painting itself.
So I fail to see the problem. It sounds to me like you want a free lunch. You want to enjoy the VALUE provided by this music, without having to give anything in return. I would find it hard to beleive that you would expect someone to cut your hair (something presumably valuable) and yet not pay for it when you leave. Why is a recording different? Just because it's easy to copy it doesn't make it right.
I do agree that C++ as an application programming language is nearing it's apex, but the VAST majority of application development is still done in C++.
In certain discplines (handheld/cellphone development) it's an absolute neccesity. The other tools simply don't exist or lack the support needed to be truly useful.
The truly laughable part is that SCO appears to be going for a sort of bad-faith breach of contract approach. Which is funny in many ways, but primarily because it appears like IBM was essentially hedging it's bets (standard practice at big blue actually) and covering as many angles as they could.
Every time we have an SCO story this is brought up.
Postal fraud requires intent. Your going to have to prove that SCO knowingly and intentionally attempted to defraud those 1500 recipients. I don't beleive that's the case, and you'll have a very difficult time PROVING it.
I think SCO beleives their claims (at least at the higher levels). I beleive that they THINK that they own this code and that the Linux kernel infringes on it. All of that is HEAVILY debatable, quite possibly laughable.. but attempting to enforce your perceived IP rights is not postal fraud. It's stupid, it's a waste of time, but it's not illegal.
This hits the nail squarely on the head. When every game costs me at least a buck to play, I look at it for a second and just go home. Why sink 20 bucks into an hour of gaming when I can get all of the time I want on my console/pc/whatever at home?
For the foreseeable future, you will no trouble getting a 'phone only' phone.. There are still a lot of pieces to the wireless market (infrastructure, carriers, cell phone manufacturers at the highest levels)..
Within a company like Nokia they have many phones in development at all times. Their strategy has always been to target individual phones and very precise markets. If you just want basic phone service, Nokia has a phone for you (not a Symbian phone). If you want more they can do that to.
This works out well for Nokia (they move HUGE volumes in those lower end phones) and the carriers who are interested in getting both the high end (data plans, unlimited minutes, etc..) and the low end (emergency calls only) using their networks. Having worked with many different cell phone manufacturers (we develop for various Symbian flavors) and carriers I'm pretty confident that this is not going to be changing any time soon. They are always VERY concerned about pricing themselves out of the lower end consumer, while wanting to maximize they're return from the higher end. It's a really amazing balancing act, but the end result is that there are (and likely will be) phones for almost every taste.
Not to mention that you can change the port knocking sequence depending on date, time of day, etc.. and build that into the knocking algorithm.
Is this really meant as a replacement for the fitting room? It seems like it accomplishes two things to me.. 1) It lets the shopper try a wide range of different looks and styles really quickly. Instead of having to try everything on to see what it looks like, you can use this as sort of a shopping filter to see if that shirt and those pants really DO go together. After you have a few outfit combinations that you like, you then actually try them on for fit and 'real world' look. This is a GOD SEND for any man that has a wife that likes (no loves) the mall.
2) It was mentioned in the article, but it goes a ways towards solving a lot of the problems (visualization problems) associated with shopping online.