Give me a phone with hardware at least as good as the N900 (including the physical keyboard) and an OS that is as hackable as Maemo on the N900 is (i.e. nothing at all to prevent you replacing any and all parts of the firmware, 100% open kernel etc) and it will be my next phone (assuming Android vendors like HTC and Motorola dont start becoming more open in the meantime and assuming a 3G version of OpenMoko doesn't appear)
Bonus points if it includes Nokia Maps Navigation for Australia like other Nokias have.
Right now, the only "hackable" phone I know of with a physical keyboard is the N900 and the software stack on that phone doesn't seem to have a future (even less so if MeeGo is DOA or never appears)
The OpenMoko Freerunner has no physical keyboard and a cellular radio that's worse than what one finds is most entry-level phones from the big names.
The Nexus One has no physical keyboard and I am not 100% on how open the software stack is.
The HTC DeeZire Z has a physical keyboard but the software stack is locked down tight.
The browser on these set-top-boxes are generally close to a desktop browser anyway so just pretend to be a desktop browser and the sites cant block you.
Although in the Google case, I think Google does NOT want to piss off the media companies by attempting to lie to web sites just so their Google TV boxes can download content the media companies dont want them downloading.
If you are writing open-source or mass-market crypto (especially mass-market crypto implementing off-the-shelf algorithims), then yes, the export requirements have been relaxed.
But if you want to ship prototypes, one-off crypto, custom algorithims and the like, you still need to jump through some hoops AFAIK.
The boat idea is good if you can find connectivity back to the shore.
Put it in international waters or the waters of a nation where western copyright law doesnt apply
If the government of the nation you are docked with starts caring about western copyright law (like when Russia started caring about allofmp3 due to pressure from the US to clean up its house ready for WTO membership), you just weigh anchor and move to another country.
Another option is to find a country where the government doesnt like the US all that much (more specifically, one that wont listen if the US and western nations start asking them to do stuff) and where the government doesnt care about western IP laws and set up a datacenter there. Use it for hosting torrent sites and also for hosing all the stuff that would be a DMCA violation if the country had a DMCA.
Find a country where you can set up (and get a local TLD from their country registrar) and not worry about censorship from the government.
Western governments cant sieze/shutdown the domain since they have no control over the registrar in whatever country. They cant walk into a foriegn country and sieze/shutdown servers or equipment.
Maybe Cuba would be a good choice. They have a long history of not caring about anything the US and the west wants them to do.
And if you make sure that cubans cant get to the content on your site (and give the the government enough money) censorship probably wouldnt be a problem
Instead of being non-neutral and discriminating against BitTorrent and other things, the solution to the bandwidth problem is bandwidth limits. Just give everyone 500GB per month or whatever (maybe with different pricing for different amounts so that light users dont have to pay as much as heavy users). If you exceed the limit, you get shaped to 64kbps or something until the end of the billing cycle. And add an option to buy more data if you run out.
ISPs wont do that though because the REAL reason they are messing with BitTorrent and other things is because these alternatives COMPETE with the content they provide themselves (i.e. BitTorrent competing with Comcast cable)
They havent started interfering with sites like YouTube yet but I am sure its only a matter of time before an ISP has the guts to try it.
Australia has been using paper ballots ever since the states joined together to create this country and it works just fine. Even allows for easy recounts in disputed (or close) contests (as happened in our recent election)
For the US, just scale up the number of counters in relation to the number of voters.
All this talk about electronic machines, punch cards, scantron machines etc is just stupid. Paper was used for elections for many years before they invented all this electronic and mechanical crap and it worked just fine.
Both countries elected new leaders (Obama in the US, Clegg in the UK). Both leaders (and their parties) promised real change. Less aggressionist foriegn policy. Less violations of civil liberties. Winding back the crap done by the previous government. Less acting on behalf of vested interests and more acting on behalf of the people who elected them.
Yet, both governments and their parties have delivered essentailly NONE of the things they promised and seem to be going the other way. The UK seems to think 1984 is an instruction manual for how to run a government. And the US isnt that much better.
Is there a SANE country out there? One that has: A government that doesn't violate its citizens civil liberties No censorship Decent Internet links Good jobs in software development Good standard of living Everyone speaks English
Oh and dont suggest India, there is no way I could live in a country where eating a nice jucy steak is against the national religion.
Buying one of these devices is stupid when there are ways to accomplish exactly the same thing from any number of devices that Sony can't ban, restrict or block including at least one model of calculator.
We need the vendors like Linksys, Belkin, Apple, Netgear, Motorola and others who make the home routers, cable/ADSL modems and modem/router combos to start supporting IPv6.
Thats why you get one computer, update it, spend some time making sure the old apps run and if they do, roll it out companywide. If they dont run, you either dont roll the updates out or you find newer versions of the apps that do run.
Companies that refuse to update past IE6 or update the JVM or whatever because they have known incompatibilities with important apps are fine. Companies that refuse to update because there MIGHT be issuse (and they dont know either way because no-one has bothered to do some testing) are the problem.
Have these been fixed on OSX yet? If not, even more reason for Oracle to take back control of Java on OSX from Apple (who dont seem to care about Java anymore)
Good to see at least one ISP realizing that returning anything other than NXDOMAIN for non-existant domains is a VERY bad idea. I hope other ISPs (and DNS providers and registrars) see sense and disable their wildcarding.
Doesn't make Comcast any less evil though (they wont stop being evil until they stop messing with BitTorrent, stop fighting any efforts to create competitors in their areas and adopt the principles of Net Neutrality)
I see a lot of people making claims that "OpenOffice and Word wont format documents the same way so I cant use OpenOffice" but I have yet to see any actual evidence (e.g. screenshots of both OO and Word showing the difference)
I think it would be benificial for someone to set up an archive containing a pile of freely redistributable documents made in various versions of Office all of which fail in some way when rendering in Open Office, along with details of why they fail.
It would be like the ffmpeg multimedia samples archive that contains samples of all kinds of audio and video formats that play just fine in whatever program but have problems in FFMPEG.
This would allow people who want to work on OpenOffice to grab a document, see how it should render and see how it renders now and put some work into fixing it. I for one would like to contribute to OpenOffice (or rather LibreOffice) and make it better able to render Word documents (every document it renders closer to Word is one less reason for some PHB or user to say no to OpenOffice)
Around here I can get a generic box (either complete or, like my last PC purchase, complete except for bits I already have like the hard disk) from any number of small computer shops.
No need to worry that my system has a proprietary Dell power supply thats going to take the best part of a week to get here (and yes, where I am, stuff takes a long time to get here if its gotta be sent by post/courier). I can just go to any PC shop and buy a new one and be back up and running that day.
And I can be 100% sure that every piece of the system runs just fine under all the OS's I might want to run on the device, that drivers for Windows are available on the Windows CD or manufacturers website and that drivers for Linux are in the Gentoo repos.
They should ban forced arbitration clauses in any one-sided contract including credit cards, telecommunications service, cable service and utility service.
The first bad guy to come up with a way to make a something that has the same effect on people as marijuana yet to a normal observer (i.e. anyone without the ability to do chemical analysis on it) looks just like something perfectly harmless that people would normally carry around with them in their pockets will make a killing.
If HTC would sell me a phone with the looks and hardware of the new Windows 7 HTC 7 Pro (including the physical keyboard) or the HTC Desire Z (again including the physical keyboard) running Android 2.2 (sense or stock, dont much care), supporting 2100MHz and 900MHz UMTS bands and with no locks whatsoever (i.e. no locks against replacing the kernel, root filesystem or other elements of the phone and no locks againts rooting the phone) then I would buy one as my next phone. Oh and they need to have a full source release available. (for those things on the handset that are GPL)
Same deal if Motorola put the Droid 2 looks and hardware (with the 2100/900 UMTS instead of CDMA) in a handset with no locks whatsoever and full source release available, that would be my next phone.
As neither vendor seems to want to do that, my next phone is unlikely to be from either vendor.
The problem is that vendors are STILL shipping brand new handsets based on Android 1.x (Sony is the most guilty of this) even though 2.x has been out more than long enough for handset makers to start shipping that.
on-demand content wouldn't be a problem if the cable companies and the electonics companies could agree on things.
The electronics companies like TiVO want on-demand content, pay-per-view, EPGs etc delivered in standard meta-data forms that the boxes can just parse and display in their own UIs.
Cable companies want on-demand content, pay-per-view, EPGs etc delivered via application programs that get run on the set-top-box. This allows the cable companies to control the UI (they want to be sure cable company content is clearly distinct from content pulled from places like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu etc and isnt seen by consumers as "just another choice" when they go to select content to watch). The cable companies also want the use of the application programs so they can provide interactive content, games, voting/polls and other things that benifit the cable company or make them money.
tru2way was supposed to be the answer but cable companies are dragging their feet on rolling it out and electronics companies are not implementing it in their products.
Slashdot Mirror
Give me a phone with hardware at least as good as the N900 (including the physical keyboard) and an OS that is as hackable as Maemo on the N900 is (i.e. nothing at all to prevent you replacing any and all parts of the firmware, 100% open kernel etc) and it will be my next phone (assuming Android vendors like HTC and Motorola dont start becoming more open in the meantime and assuming a 3G version of OpenMoko doesn't appear)
Bonus points if it includes Nokia Maps Navigation for Australia like other Nokias have.
Right now, the only "hackable" phone I know of with a physical keyboard is the N900 and the software stack on that phone doesn't seem to have a future (even less so if MeeGo is DOA or never appears)
The OpenMoko Freerunner has no physical keyboard and a cellular radio that's worse than what one finds is most entry-level phones from the big names.
The Nexus One has no physical keyboard and I am not 100% on how open the software stack is.
The HTC DeeZire Z has a physical keyboard but the software stack is locked down tight.
The browser on these set-top-boxes are generally close to a desktop browser anyway so just pretend to be a desktop browser and the sites cant block you.
Although in the Google case, I think Google does NOT want to piss off the media companies by attempting to lie to web sites just so their Google TV boxes can download content the media companies dont want them downloading.
Is this particular kind of funky advanced math used for anything in crypto or information security and does this new speedup help crack that?
If you are writing open-source or mass-market crypto (especially mass-market crypto implementing off-the-shelf algorithims), then yes, the export requirements have been relaxed.
But if you want to ship prototypes, one-off crypto, custom algorithims and the like, you still need to jump through some hoops AFAIK.
The boat idea is good if you can find connectivity back to the shore.
Put it in international waters or the waters of a nation where western copyright law doesnt apply
If the government of the nation you are docked with starts caring about western copyright law (like when Russia started caring about allofmp3 due to pressure from the US to clean up its house ready for WTO membership), you just weigh anchor and move to another country.
Another option is to find a country where the government doesnt like the US all that much (more specifically, one that wont listen if the US and western nations start asking them to do stuff) and where the government doesnt care about western IP laws and set up a datacenter there. Use it for hosting torrent sites and also for hosing all the stuff that would be a DMCA violation if the country had a DMCA.
Find a country where you can set up (and get a local TLD from their country registrar) and not worry about censorship from the government.
Western governments cant sieze/shutdown the domain since they have no control over the registrar in whatever country.
They cant walk into a foriegn country and sieze/shutdown servers or equipment.
Maybe Cuba would be a good choice.
They have a long history of not caring about anything the US and the west wants them to do.
And if you make sure that cubans cant get to the content on your site (and give the the government enough money) censorship probably wouldnt be a problem
Instead of being non-neutral and discriminating against BitTorrent and other things, the solution to the bandwidth problem is bandwidth limits.
Just give everyone 500GB per month or whatever (maybe with different pricing for different amounts so that light users dont have to pay as much as heavy users).
If you exceed the limit, you get shaped to 64kbps or something until the end of the billing cycle. And add an option to buy more data if you run out.
ISPs wont do that though because the REAL reason they are messing with BitTorrent and other things is because these alternatives COMPETE with the content they provide themselves (i.e. BitTorrent competing with Comcast cable)
They havent started interfering with sites like YouTube yet but I am sure its only a matter of time before an ISP has the guts to try it.
Its not brand new. Its an old 747-200 series airframe that has reached the end of its life and is no longer economical to fly.
Australia has been using paper ballots ever since the states joined together to create this country and it works just fine.
Even allows for easy recounts in disputed (or close) contests (as happened in our recent election)
For the US, just scale up the number of counters in relation to the number of voters.
All this talk about electronic machines, punch cards, scantron machines etc is just stupid.
Paper was used for elections for many years before they invented all this electronic and mechanical crap and it worked just fine.
Any country that would want to ban a sandwitch THAT cool (and tasty looking) is clearly screwed up beyond all hope of help.
Both countries elected new leaders (Obama in the US, Clegg in the UK).
Both leaders (and their parties) promised real change. Less aggressionist foriegn policy. Less violations of civil liberties. Winding back the crap done by the previous government. Less acting on behalf of vested interests and more acting on behalf of the people who elected them.
Yet, both governments and their parties have delivered essentailly NONE of the things they promised and seem to be going the other way.
The UK seems to think 1984 is an instruction manual for how to run a government. And the US isnt that much better.
Is there a SANE country out there?
One that has:
A government that doesn't violate its citizens civil liberties
No censorship
Decent Internet links
Good jobs in software development
Good standard of living
Everyone speaks English
Oh and dont suggest India, there is no way I could live in a country where eating a nice jucy steak is against the national religion.
Buying one of these devices is stupid when there are ways to accomplish exactly the same thing from any number of devices that Sony can't ban, restrict or block including at least one model of calculator.
We need the vendors like Linksys, Belkin, Apple, Netgear, Motorola and others who make the home routers, cable/ADSL modems and modem/router combos to start supporting IPv6.
And we need ISPs to start supporting IPv6 too.
Thats why you get one computer, update it, spend some time making sure the old apps run and if they do, roll it out companywide.
If they dont run, you either dont roll the updates out or you find newer versions of the apps that do run.
Companies that refuse to update past IE6 or update the JVM or whatever because they have known incompatibilities with important apps are fine. Companies that refuse to update because there MIGHT be issuse (and they dont know either way because no-one has bothered to do some testing) are the problem.
Have these been fixed on OSX yet? If not, even more reason for Oracle to take back control of Java on OSX from Apple (who dont seem to care about Java anymore)
Good to see at least one ISP realizing that returning anything other than NXDOMAIN for non-existant domains is a VERY bad idea. I hope other ISPs (and DNS providers and registrars) see sense and disable their wildcarding.
Doesn't make Comcast any less evil though (they wont stop being evil until they stop messing with BitTorrent, stop fighting any efforts to create competitors in their areas and adopt the principles of Net Neutrality)
I see a lot of people making claims that "OpenOffice and Word wont format documents the same way so I cant use OpenOffice" but I have yet to see any actual evidence (e.g. screenshots of both OO and Word showing the difference)
I think it would be benificial for someone to set up an archive containing a pile of freely redistributable documents made in various versions of Office all of which fail in some way when rendering in Open Office, along with details of why they fail.
It would be like the ffmpeg multimedia samples archive that contains samples of all kinds of audio and video formats that play just fine in whatever program but have problems in FFMPEG.
This would allow people who want to work on OpenOffice to grab a document, see how it should render and see how it renders now and put some work into fixing it. I for one would like to contribute to OpenOffice (or rather LibreOffice) and make it better able to render Word documents (every document it renders closer to Word is one less reason for some PHB or user to say no to OpenOffice)
Around here I can get a generic box (either complete or, like my last PC purchase, complete except for bits I already have like the hard disk) from any number of small computer shops.
No need to worry that my system has a proprietary Dell power supply thats going to take the best part of a week to get here (and yes, where I am, stuff takes a long time to get here if its gotta be sent by post/courier). I can just go to any PC shop and buy a new one and be back up and running that day.
And I can be 100% sure that every piece of the system runs just fine under all the OS's I might want to run on the device, that drivers for Windows are available on the Windows CD or manufacturers website and that drivers for Linux are in the Gentoo repos.
They should ban forced arbitration clauses in any one-sided contract including credit cards, telecommunications service, cable service and utility service.
The first bad guy to come up with a way to make a something that has the same effect on people as marijuana yet to a normal observer (i.e. anyone without the ability to do chemical analysis on it) looks just like something perfectly harmless that people would normally carry around with them in their pockets will make a killing.
At a minimum any rules mandating analog cable (such as rules requiring OTA stations to be made available over analog cable) should ALL be removed.
Anyone who gets their TV over analog cable should obtain a digital cable box, a digital ATSC box or both.
If HTC would sell me a phone with the looks and hardware of the new Windows 7 HTC 7 Pro (including the physical keyboard) or the HTC Desire Z (again including the physical keyboard) running Android 2.2 (sense or stock, dont much care), supporting 2100MHz and 900MHz UMTS bands and with no locks whatsoever (i.e. no locks against replacing the kernel, root filesystem or other elements of the phone and no locks againts rooting the phone) then I would buy one as my next phone. Oh and they need to have a full source release available. (for those things on the handset that are GPL)
Same deal if Motorola put the Droid 2 looks and hardware (with the 2100/900 UMTS instead of CDMA) in a handset with no locks whatsoever and full source release available, that would be my next phone.
As neither vendor seems to want to do that, my next phone is unlikely to be from either vendor.
The problem is that vendors are STILL shipping brand new handsets based on Android 1.x (Sony is the most guilty of this) even though 2.x has been out more than long enough for handset makers to start shipping that.
If Fox would hurry up and release the 3D Blu-Ray of Avatar, that would probably sell some 3DTVs and glasses.
on-demand content wouldn't be a problem if the cable companies and the electonics companies could agree on things.
The electronics companies like TiVO want on-demand content, pay-per-view, EPGs etc delivered in standard meta-data forms that the boxes can just parse and display in their own UIs.
Cable companies want on-demand content, pay-per-view, EPGs etc delivered via application programs that get run on the set-top-box. This allows the cable companies to control the UI (they want to be sure cable company content is clearly distinct from content pulled from places like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu etc and isnt seen by consumers as "just another choice" when they go to select content to watch). The cable companies also want the use of the application programs so they can provide interactive content, games, voting/polls and other things that benifit the cable company or make them money.
tru2way was supposed to be the answer but cable companies are dragging their feet on rolling it out and electronics companies are not implementing it in their products.