Here in australia, you can buy a phone from at least one carrier that would cost you nothing up front. It would also NOT be locked to the carriers network. If you want to leave before the end of the 2 year contract, you would have to pay an exit fee.
So, for phones that are on a contract, the phone companies do not need to lock the phones to their network. They do it anyway so that its more difficult for you to switch carriers at the end of the contract (or to break the contract, pay the exit fees and switch carriers or to upgrade to a new phone and use the old phone on another network or whatever)
I have a Motorola L6 connected to Telstra Australia and it works just fine. I dont have to set the time on it, nor do I have to change anything when daylight saving comes on, the network/towers do both.
An analogy to what is going on here would be a suspected drug dealer using a cash register with a receipt functionality to handle the cash for the drugs but with the receipt functionality turned off. The cash register still retains the information whilst the transaction is in process but does not retain it after the transaction is over.
Just like forcing you to turn on the receipt printing functionality would be covered under the law against forcing you to incriminate yourself, so should forcing you to start logging IP addresses connecting to your server. IANAL so I don't know how the law would treat the cash register example and whether they could force you to enable the receipt printing functionality or not.
Basically the cable companies have a proposal for 2-way cablecard that uses OCAP (a java variant) to handle all 2-way communications including SDV, Pay-Per-View, Video On Demand, full program guide info and interactivity.
The device makers (who put cablecard slots in their devices) have another proposal that implements most 2-way features including SDV, PPV, VOD and program guide via a standardized interface with OCAP and programs downloaded from the cable company being only used for interactive content. This is good for the device manufacturers since they don't need a JAVA VM in their device.
The cable companies want to force OCAP down everyones throat because they want to be sure that every device that does 2-way cable can do their nice fat moneymaking interactive games and such.
The thing about Covad though is that even though Qwest would still own the copper pair, Covad would own the DSLAM and the routers and IP hardware. Unless there is something else in there, Qwest never even touches your data at the IP level (and can't do anything nasty to it)
Is that they have obligations with all kinds of 3rd parties and they have to take steps to make sure that iplayer content is NOT viewable by anyone without a TV license and is NOT viewable after however long the service lets you view content for. Which generally means DRM. And right now Microsoft Windows Media DRM is the only viable solution for video DRM (unless you count DRM from Real Media which is just as bad and installed on far less computers than Windows Media DRM)
Classpath is not useless (even with the sun JDK). For one thing, it is the only way to get a fully open source implementation of the JAVA Cryptography libraries (I don't get how the FSF implementation of these libraries can be distributed without any problems yet Sun is unable to distribute their own implementations, citing "export controls". Or have the FSF already gone through the same export control process that Sun are presumably in the process of going through?)
But does Ubuntu have an appropriate French Canadian localization? Selling a French France localization wouldn't work (since the languages are too different) and they can't sell just english either (because of the law) so they would need to do a French Canadian localization for Ubuntu.
Also, I don't believe there are laws in France requiring items to be sold in French.
A linux distro where I can download an ISO and install from that ISO and get a version of ffmpeg and friend that doesn't have 90% of the media formats disabled.
Re:DRM in current use that hasnt been cracked yet
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 1
Got any links to the CAMs that can do it? I am sure quite a few people would love a box that can do Foxtel Digital here in australia (with a valid legal fox smart card obviously) that isn't one of the crappy Foxtel boxes.
DRM in current use that hasnt been cracked yet
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 1
NDS VideoGuard sattelite and cable TV encryption Super Audio CD copy protection DVD Audio copy protection Starforce copy protection for games (actually I don't know how far the latest work goes in cracking it)
Here in Australia, most ATMs give out 20s and 50s. I think I have seen ATMs at the local casino complex that give out 100s. Never seen an ATM that gives out 10s, 5s or coins (we have $1 and $2 coins here)
If you have a physical safe in your house, are you legally required to open it if the cops ask you to? If you don't, can the cops use that as evidence against you?
The right way for law enforcement to treat encrypted data on a disk is to treat it the same as a combination safe (with the password being like the combination to the safe)
That last bit should have been: A lot of the high end cellphones out (e.g. RAZR, Chocolate and other new fancy phones from other manufacturers) are all about "fashion". I don't WANT a phone that is designed to look good next to a Gucci handbag.
1.Lack of competition in the US cellphone market, mostly thanks to the way the FCC divided up spectrum geographically so you end up with Sprint Nextel having the best coverage in one area, Verizon having the best coverage in another area, and AT&T having the best coverage in another area with no-one being able to obtain enough spectrum in the other guys areas to actually compete with them. Here in australia you have a choice of 4 different operators (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and "3") and all of them are fiercely competitive with each other for business.
2.Flawed pricing structures for the service. If they did what carriers in Australia do and actually charged you for the data you transfered over GPRS/EDGE/3G/etc they wouldn't need to stop you using it for anything usefull... Offering Unlimited* data (*we reserve the right to cut you off if you use it for anything more than checking your email once in a blue moon) is a BIG part of the problem. Change the business model so that people using lots of mobile data is actually PROFITABLE for the phone company and things would be better.
3.FUD from the carriers like "Allowing unsigned JAVA apps to make TCP/IP connections is a security risk to our network" (you can bet that if there was a way to legally ban the FIC Neo OpenMoko phone from their network, AT&T would do it)
4.Lack of innovation in cellphone designs. Where (for example) is the cellphone built specifically to be rugged enough for use by people who toss their phones about a lot? (e.g. people on a construction site) Where (for example) is the cellphone with no confusing features, really large buttons and really large screen aimed at older people or people with vision or fine motor disabilities? Where (for example) are the cellphones that have all the features of current top of the line phones EXCEPT for the camera. Something for the people who visit sites where cameras and camera phones are banned.
Most of the cellphones out (e.g. RAZR, Chocolate and other new fancy phones from other carriers are all about
The #1 reason I want something like EFI is to eliminate the world of proprietary bootloaders/selection mechanisms for good. Essentially the BIOS would be the one that displays the list of boot options.
Unfortunatly no vendor that supports EFI (including all Linux distros I have seen) gets it totally right (where any boot time configuration options are handled through EFI and not through another bootloader)
The problem is that all of the "think of the children" people are concerned more with stopping the kids accessing porn (never mind that those same people used to trade porn magazines behind the shed at school when they were that age) and less about tackling the REAL dangers like identity theft, privacy, fraud etc
No, first application should be a VoIP application that can work over EDGE and WiFi and seamlessly switch between the 2 (i.e. not dropping the VoIP call if the iPhone switches from EDGE to WiFi or vice versa)
1.Adding extra crap just to keep the movie studios and record companies happy 2.Adding features that make Vista appear to be more secure instead of features that actually make it more secure. 3.Changing the driver model and forcing hardware vendors to rewrite the drivers 4.Too many editions. Aeroglass should have been part of Home Basic with the media crap (like DVD authoring, HD movie maker, media center etc) and other Home Premium addons being released as a seperate extra pack. Enterprise should not exist as a seperate edition. BitLocker and other features should have been added to vista Business. Enterprise would then only exist as a modified version of Business capable of running in "I can install this to all my machines and have them activate off my corporate license server without having to activate them all manually" type mode. So have Vista Home, Vista Addons (all the stuff currently in Home Premium), Vista Business and Vista Ultimate (plus the no media player versions of Home and Business) and 5.Vista attempts to make a "clean break" in some areas (e.g. with the new Windows Presentation Foundation UI toolkit) yet it is still full of a decade or more of cruft. Why can't Microsoft pull an Apple and do a clean slate new set of APIs and run the old APIs as a seperate subsystem (similar to how Services For Unix works) which talks to the new APIs.
Clearly XHTML is inferior to HTML otherwise the people behind this push for HTML 5.0 would be pushing for XHTML 2.0 instead. But why is XHTML worse than HTML?
The issue here is that van guy (or ebay guy) is selling the product at a price that is BELOW what the big retailer has to sell it at to stay in business/make a profit. When the big retailers see that, they see their business suffering (as consumers increasingly use the internet to find cheap stuff) and may consider scaling back their purchase/display/whatever of the item involved.
An example that I saw recently of where this happened was with Panasonic DVD recorders in Australia. A number of online stores with almost no overhead where buying Panasonic DVD recorders at wholesale price and selling them for prices lower than what the big name electrical stores like Harvey Norman, Retravision and JB Hi-Fi had to sell them at to make a profit. The big retailers complained (because lots of people were coming into their stores to check out the products then leaving and buying them online at a cheaper price) and Panasonic stopped selling to the online stores.
All that will happen is that people will continue to do what they do now, that is, when they hear something on the radio (internet or otherwise) they will either buy the song/CD or they will go to and download it.
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Here in australia, you can buy a phone from at least one carrier that would cost you nothing up front. It would also NOT be locked to the carriers network. If you want to leave before the end of the 2 year contract, you would have to pay an exit fee.
So, for phones that are on a contract, the phone companies do not need to lock the phones to their network. They do it anyway so that its more difficult for you to switch carriers at the end of the contract (or to break the contract, pay the exit fees and switch carriers or to upgrade to a new phone and use the old phone on another network or whatever)
I have a Motorola L6 connected to Telstra Australia and it works just fine. I dont have to set the time on it, nor do I have to change anything when daylight saving comes on, the network/towers do both.
An analogy to what is going on here would be a suspected drug dealer using a cash register with a receipt functionality to handle the cash for the drugs but with the receipt functionality turned off. The cash register still retains the information whilst the transaction is in process but does not retain it after the transaction is over.
Just like forcing you to turn on the receipt printing functionality would be covered under the law against forcing you to incriminate yourself, so should forcing you to start logging IP addresses connecting to your server. IANAL so I don't know how the law would treat the cash register example and whether they could force you to enable the receipt printing functionality or not.
Isn't that what the chinese do?
Basically the cable companies have a proposal for 2-way cablecard that uses OCAP (a java variant)
to handle all 2-way communications including SDV, Pay-Per-View, Video On Demand, full program guide info and interactivity.
The device makers (who put cablecard slots in their devices) have another proposal that implements most 2-way features including SDV, PPV, VOD and program guide via a standardized interface with OCAP and programs downloaded from the cable company being only used for interactive content. This is good for the device manufacturers since they don't need a JAVA VM in their device.
The cable companies want to force OCAP down everyones throat because they want to be sure that every device that does 2-way cable can do their nice fat moneymaking interactive games and such.
The thing about Covad though is that even though Qwest would still own the copper pair, Covad would own the DSLAM and the routers and IP hardware. Unless there is something else in there, Qwest never even touches your data at the IP level (and can't do anything nasty to it)
Is that they have obligations with all kinds of 3rd parties and they have to take steps to make sure that iplayer content is NOT viewable by anyone without a TV license and is NOT viewable after however long the service lets you view content for. Which generally means DRM. And right now Microsoft Windows Media DRM is the only viable solution for video DRM (unless you count DRM from Real Media which is just as bad and installed on far less computers than Windows Media DRM)
Classpath is not useless (even with the sun JDK). For one thing, it is the only way to get a fully open source implementation of the JAVA Cryptography libraries (I don't get how the FSF implementation of these libraries can be distributed without any problems yet Sun is unable to distribute their own implementations, citing "export controls". Or have the FSF already gone through the same export control process that Sun are presumably in the process of going through?)
But does Ubuntu have an appropriate French Canadian localization? Selling a French France localization wouldn't work (since the languages are too different) and they can't sell just english either (because of the law) so they would need to do a French Canadian localization for Ubuntu.
Also, I don't believe there are laws in France requiring items to be sold in French.
A linux distro where I can download an ISO and install from that ISO and get a version of ffmpeg and friend that doesn't have 90% of the media formats disabled.
Got any links to the CAMs that can do it?
I am sure quite a few people would love a box that can do Foxtel Digital here in australia (with a valid legal fox smart card obviously) that isn't one of the crappy Foxtel boxes.
NDS VideoGuard sattelite and cable TV encryption
Super Audio CD copy protection
DVD Audio copy protection
Starforce copy protection for games (actually I don't know how far the latest work goes in cracking it)
Maybe if Apple wasnt using a fork of an ancient version of GNU as (one that predates libbfd IIRC)...
Here in Australia, most ATMs give out 20s and 50s. I think I have seen ATMs at the local casino complex that give out 100s. Never seen an ATM that gives out 10s, 5s or coins (we have $1 and $2 coins here)
If you have a physical safe in your house, are you legally required to open it if the cops ask you to? If you don't, can the cops use that as evidence against you?
The right way for law enforcement to treat encrypted data on a disk is to treat it the same as a combination safe (with the password being like the combination to the safe)
That last bit should have been:
A lot of the high end cellphones out (e.g. RAZR, Chocolate and other new fancy phones from other manufacturers) are all about "fashion". I don't WANT a phone that is designed to look good next to a Gucci handbag.
1.Lack of competition in the US cellphone market, mostly thanks to the way the FCC divided up spectrum geographically so you end up with Sprint Nextel having the best coverage in one area, Verizon having the best coverage in another area, and AT&T having the best coverage in another area with no-one being able to obtain enough spectrum in the other guys areas to actually compete with them. Here in australia you have a choice of 4 different operators (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and "3") and all of them are fiercely competitive with each other for business.
2.Flawed pricing structures for the service. If they did what carriers in Australia do and actually charged you for the data you transfered over GPRS/EDGE/3G/etc they wouldn't need to stop you using it for anything usefull...
Offering Unlimited* data (*we reserve the right to cut you off if you use it for anything more than checking your email once in a blue moon) is a BIG part of the problem. Change the business model so that people using lots of mobile data is actually PROFITABLE for the phone company and things would be better.
3.FUD from the carriers like "Allowing unsigned JAVA apps to make TCP/IP connections is a security risk to our network" (you can bet that if there was a way to legally ban the FIC Neo OpenMoko phone from their network, AT&T would do it)
4.Lack of innovation in cellphone designs. Where (for example) is the cellphone built specifically to be rugged enough for use by people who toss their phones about a lot? (e.g. people on a construction site) Where (for example) is the cellphone with no confusing features, really large buttons and really large screen aimed at older people or people with vision or fine motor disabilities? Where (for example) are the cellphones that have all the features of current top of the line phones EXCEPT for the camera. Something for the people who visit sites where cameras and camera phones are banned.
Most of the cellphones out (e.g. RAZR, Chocolate and other new fancy phones from other carriers are all about
The #1 reason I want something like EFI is to eliminate the world of proprietary bootloaders/selection mechanisms for good. Essentially the BIOS would be the one that displays the list of boot options.
Unfortunatly no vendor that supports EFI (including all Linux distros I have seen) gets it totally right (where any boot time configuration options are handled through EFI and not through another bootloader)
The problem is that all of the "think of the children" people are concerned more with stopping the kids accessing porn (never mind that those same people used to trade porn magazines behind the shed at school when they were that age) and less about tackling the REAL dangers like identity theft, privacy, fraud etc
No, first application should be a VoIP application that can work over EDGE and WiFi and seamlessly switch between the 2 (i.e. not dropping the VoIP call if the iPhone switches from EDGE to WiFi or vice versa)
In fact, according to the GPL, even if you DO change GCC, you aren't required to publish the changes except to anyone who gets the GCC binaries.
1.Adding extra crap just to keep the movie studios and record companies happy
2.Adding features that make Vista appear to be more secure instead of features that actually make it more secure.
3.Changing the driver model and forcing hardware vendors to rewrite the drivers
4.Too many editions. Aeroglass should have been part of Home Basic with the media crap (like DVD authoring, HD movie maker, media center etc) and other Home Premium addons being released as a seperate extra pack. Enterprise should not exist as a seperate edition. BitLocker and other features should have been added to vista Business. Enterprise would then only exist as a modified version of Business capable of running in "I can install this to all my machines and have them activate off my corporate license server without having to activate them all manually" type mode. So have Vista Home, Vista Addons (all the stuff currently in Home Premium), Vista Business and Vista Ultimate (plus the no media player versions of Home and Business)
and 5.Vista attempts to make a "clean break" in some areas (e.g. with the new Windows Presentation Foundation UI toolkit) yet it is still full of a decade or more of cruft. Why can't Microsoft pull an Apple and do a clean slate new set of APIs and run the old APIs as a seperate subsystem (similar to how Services For Unix works) which talks to the new APIs.
Clearly XHTML is inferior to HTML otherwise the people behind this push for HTML 5.0 would be pushing for XHTML 2.0 instead. But why is XHTML worse than HTML?
The issue here is that van guy (or ebay guy) is selling the product at a price that is BELOW what the big retailer has to sell it at to stay in business/make a profit. When the big retailers see that, they see their business suffering (as consumers increasingly use the internet to find cheap stuff) and may consider scaling back their purchase/display/whatever of the item involved.
An example that I saw recently of where this happened was with Panasonic DVD recorders in Australia. A number of online stores with almost no overhead where buying Panasonic DVD recorders at wholesale price and selling them for prices lower than what the big name electrical stores like Harvey Norman, Retravision and JB Hi-Fi had to sell them at to make a profit. The big retailers complained (because lots of people were coming into their stores to check out the products then leaving and buying them online at a cheaper price) and Panasonic stopped selling to the online stores.
All that will happen is that people will continue to do what they do now, that is, when they hear something on the radio (internet or otherwise) they will either buy the song/CD or they will go to and download it.