BTC transactions are utterly and completely traceable, that's kind of the point. They are anonymous, though. So what these criminals will do is pay some poor sap to set up a BTC wallet, send the bitcoins to him, let him convert them to currency on his bank account, after which the criminals will simply withdraw the money from an ATM using his card. As long as you have no relationship to the middleman and if he keeps his mouth shut (or better yet: has no clue as to who you are), you're safe. Criminals use this method all the time.
Austria generates around 2/3rds of its electricity with hydro, by far the easiest and cheapest form of large-scale renewable power. Hydro power generation doesn't vary between day and night; daily weather conditions do not affect it (their plants do produce less in winter though). Also, at the moment, hydro is pretty much the only solution we have to the big problem that plagues any large deployment of other renewable power sources: energy storage. That means having a lot of hydro facilities affects the economics of your solar and wind farms too, in a big way. If you want to compare how countries are doing on renewables or how cheaply they are able to generate it, you do have to account for hydro capacity as it is a huge factor. My own country's capacity sadly is pretty much zero at the moment, though there are plans to dam and drain parts of the North Sea: not useful for generating energy, but it can be used to store it.
That's still pretty good. What is the actual price though; the article didn't mention this. Roof tiles are quite common here (pretty much every roof has them), and mine need replacing soon as they are over 75 years old. So naturally I am interested.
If they are as expensive as regular tiles, the good news is that you might as well cover the whole roof in these things for a uniform look, not just the side that faces the sun.
IIRC, it had something to do with setting off the explosives. I've no idea how hard it is to detect explosives disguised as a battery, but apparently it is pretty hard to disguise an ignition circuit on the x-ray. If you have the explosives with you in the cabin, you don't need that circuit.
There are actual terrorists here in Europe, and a couple of sympathizers who might become terrorists. If there is a credible threat from the Middle East, then that threat extends to Europe as well. I'd like to know how credible this threat is to begin with.
I wouldn't want my employer spend a bunch of money to monitor my biometrics to determine my "interruptability", and of course use that data for "other purposes" as well, while they could simply give me a red light controlled by a switch. Red=do not disturb (and what the hell does yellow mean in this case?) Strangely, the article mentions that manual actions such as turning on a red light, putting up a sign, wearing headphones or closing the door to the office were perceived as "too cumbersome".
Even so, customers do not always realise this. For example: people loved the recent offer from a European telco, where music streamed from Spotify and a few others to mobile phones would not be counted towards the monthly data allowance. Even people using a music service not included in the offer didn't mind too much; they might be disappointed at missing out on a nice deal but nothing would change for the worse for them. That idea got shot down by Net Neutrality rules which pissed a lot of people off: "Thanks to this stupid rule (worse: thanks to "Brussels"), we now have to pay for music streaming again." Which is exactly why the telco made this offer in the first place despite net neutrality rules already in place, I suspect. Riling up the masses.
People seem to be buying the positive message from telcos about rescinding net neutrality rules, and it resonates especially well with the "we hate government intervention" crowd. "No more rules that forbid us from making you a great offer". "Less rules means a fertile ground for innovative business". They don't see or understand the negative aspects. For instance: I don't agree that investing in bandwidth is cheaper; telcos hate net neutrality because it forces them to do exactly that. It is far cheaper to not invest in bandwidth and instead prioritize traffic in such a way that the popular services still come through at a good speed, to the detriment of anything less popular. A few people might grumble but as long as Netflix and Facebook still perform well, the masses won't object. In fact they will probably blame poor performance on the shitty server of whatever service they are trying to access.
It's a silly question. The question should be: should the government pay for veterans to attend schools, period. If yes, then by all means also include code schools if they meet whatever criteria and standards are set.
Yeah, it is useful in a few cases. But in order for me to be motivated to keep it charged, it'll have to be a little bit better. And in order for me to strap it to my wrist every morning, it'll have to look a bit better. I don't mind spending around €1000 for a smart watch that looks good, i.e. has a well made metal case and a good metal or leather strap, but I don't want to spend that much on something that looks good but will be obsolete in a couple of years. If they can commit to a certain form factor for like a decade and offer an upgrade program where they'll swap out the guts for a reasonable fee, then they'll have a winner in my book.
It was that I felt like I was more productive when using it. I wasn't wasting time tweeting nonsense or sending emoji in ephemeral messages. I was sending important emails, working with my colleagues in Slack, creating and completing to-do lists, and adding appointments to my calendar. I was Getting Shit Done
Dear god not this tired old trope again: "iPhones and Android phones are toys; Blackberries are for work". Or even better: "for business". The distinction is sending lame tweets or important emails, and what makes the difference is the bloody keyboard!? Or is it that he didn't install the Twitter app? He does mention some other more relevant characteristics: a screen ratio that (according to him) is better suited for email, and a long-ish battery life.
The KeyOne is a phone for a very specific person, one that longs for the days when the BlackBerry Bold was the most important device in the office
Those days are long gone; it ended the second employees were allowed to use their iOS or Android device for work email, and ditched their company-provided BB en masse. In other words, the KeyOne is for dinosaurs like the reviewer. Or perhaps for Android users who prefer a physical keyboard. Or who like a device that allows them to pretend to be a step above mere peons who weren't issued corporate BBs in the past. That's fair enough, but please don't pretend that this thing is magically better suited for business like the old BBs weren't.
"a punishment", sure. But you know the legislators have gone off the rails when pirating a movie potentially carries a stiffer penalty than going into a store, threatening and physically harming the shopkeeper with a weapon, then making off with the physical DVD. (a quick google reveals UK sentencing guidelines of 7-12 years for a robbery with the highest category of harm and culpability)
Maybe, or Monkey Island. But they are different types of games. Oregon Trail was the first successful instance of what we now call educational or "serious" games.
Having made an impact on popular society is also one of the criteria. World of Warcraft wasn't groundbreaking in terms of gaming, but it certainly was the first of its kind to break into the mainstream, and with the most influence on culture by far. For the record: I loved UO and some of the similar games that came after it like LoTRO or AoC, and I hated everything about WoW, but I still think it's the latter one that deserves to be in this list if one has to choose.
Kinda agree on HALO and Sim City, but the problem with these lists is that someone is always going to be pissed off no matter what you choose.
Back in tbe days of Windows 7 I was changing PC components regularly. My understanding is that Windows got the serial nr or at least mark and model of a couple of components, and would lock out if too many components were different (after which a support guy could sort things out). I have swapped graphics cards, motherboards and hard disks several times in one machine (sometimes doing a reinstall as well) but I have never had my Windows code refused (and it wasn't a corporate code either). Maybe we in Europe were on a different scheme.
That sounds like a decent scheme for cinemas, but for home viewing it's not going to work. Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV, or that I have to go and obtain new keys for everything in my collection. Sounds like a lot of hassle... and here I'll repeat an age old bit of wisdom regarding cumbersome DRM: many people pirate stuff not because they don't want to pay, but because pirates offer a better product: Free of DRM and ads, often in a choice of formats and bitrates suitable for playback on a variety of devices (including offline playing), available for immediate download. With DRM you are not protecting your content effectively, but you are punishing your legitimate paying customers. Hell of a way to run a business.
Though I agree that the idea of some form of tamper proof DRM scheme for home viewing still appears to be the industry's wet dream. They really ought to take a cue from the music industry who have embraced the idea of convenience first, and in a lot of cases have agreed to do away with DRM
HDMI offers end to end encryption (HDCP) of the playback chain, or attempts to. Theoretically a player could refuse to play certain discs if the chain isn't encrypted, but in practice it's a clunky mechanism that confuses and infuriates consumers with unpredictable failures and weird error messages. And there are ways to strip HDCP from HDMI. But if they manage to properly enforce encryption and convince every manufacturer to fully comply, then you'll be hard pressed to tap into the chain. You might be able to grab signals going to the TVs panel and turn them back into a video stream, but it's not easy.
Of course the thing about torrents and the pointlessness of any DRM is that this only has to happen once.
Point is: we don't/shouldn't need country-specific licenses. These things make sense in the world of broadcast TV with a one-off screening, not in the world of streaming or downloading where viewing can take place anytime, anywhere. I suppose in some cases you want or have to make country-specific deals when you are dealing with national entities or when you want to offer lower prices in developing countries for instance. But in the case of companies like Netflix it makes no sense. Charge by view instead of by country: 10 views in the Netherlands ought to be just as valuable as 10 views in the States if charged per view, so offer the license thusly. And yes: at first glance this will be a less valuable license deal, since with per-country licenses the smaller countries usually get shafted on the price (per viewer) as well. But what is more valuable to rights holders: a per-country license so expensive that the likes of Netflix are never going to pick it up for certain countries, or a per-view license in those countries resulting in even just a 1% penetration?
There's a bit more to it. An alderman around here once said: "There is tremendous pressure to build concensus and get something going, and the effort to reach an agreement on how to proceed is considerable. Once that has happened there is no going back, even if everyone thinks the agreement is shit. And in politics, everyone is focused on passing motions, any motion, the contents do not matter all that much, let alone that we ever evaluate the effectiveness later on"
If you cannot or will not offer your TV show in my country, then I'm not even depriving you of potential income by pirating that show. How is that theft? In your example, you might argue that you hope to sell the show on DVD at some point in the future, after you've settled the dispute. In that case I agree that it would be wrong to download the show, and it would certainly be wrong to make and sell bootleg copies. Or maybe you want to have the show on TV first, maybe as an exclusive, before offering it on Netflix. That's fair enough if the terms are within reason, but such licensing models (including the idea to negotiate licenses for different media and rights for other countries separately) are what gives rise to smaller regions getting the shaft in case of US content, and some content never making its way outside its country of origin. That goes counter to the spirit of copyright, which exists to promote the creation and proliferation of art. The royalties that go to those involved in the process are a means, not an end. In that spirit I'd be much in favour of (shock horror!) government putting limitations on the artificial scarcity that may be created in license agreements. But it seems we're going in the opposite direction, with copyright terms being extended again and again, and a USA that is very aggressively pushing for other countries to conform to its notion of copyright that serves the creators rather than the public.
I'm hoping that Netflix will start flexing its muscles a bit more. Same as Apple did when they started selling songs online, when the music industry was still very much used to the album model. Now they've gone to a pay-per-play model, with most distributors offering an all you can eat subscription. I'm hoping the TV and movie industry will make the same shift at some point. Not because I want to pay less but because I want to pirate less, and this region crap and artificial scarcity make no sense in a pay-per-play situation.
What about those who pay for Netflix but aren't getting content in a timely manner (most series), see content disappear after a year (there's been a terrible purge here recently), or aren't getting the content at all? The availability and selection in certain smaller countries is kind of rubbish compared to what one gets in the US or the UK. So yes, in some cases even Netflix subscribers have to resort to Bittorrent. Maybe this is due to outdated license models, where one can buy the rights to show something in country X for a period of Y months or some such, instead of a license granting the right to show it everywhere for a certain amount per view. In the meantime I sure hope my country will at some point revive its old policy on piracy: "If content isn't available legally, then we don't prosecute people who pirate it". If you don't sell your content here, you should have no recourse against pirates; remember that copyright is not a natural right but something cooked up to encourage production and distribution of cultural works, by granting artists a temporary monopoly that enables them to make some money off their creation. I will pay for content, but if you will not take my money I have zero moral objections to availing myself of your works by other means.
I agree. I love the convenience of being able to buy book whereever I am, but the online bookstores are rather rubbish (it's not just Kindle, Kobo suffers from similar issues) and the tools to manage your library are terrible. There's a hell of a lot of room for improvement in the UX alone.
But the idea of e-readers itself is great... I use one with e-ink, the book reading part works great, and the screen is comfortable in any light. And it offers no distractions the way a tablet or laptop does, so I don't count using an e-reader as "screen time"
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BTC transactions are utterly and completely traceable, that's kind of the point. They are anonymous, though. So what these criminals will do is pay some poor sap to set up a BTC wallet, send the bitcoins to him, let him convert them to currency on his bank account, after which the criminals will simply withdraw the money from an ATM using his card. As long as you have no relationship to the middleman and if he keeps his mouth shut (or better yet: has no clue as to who you are), you're safe. Criminals use this method all the time.
Common sense would dictate that a system that goes unpatched for a certain period of time loses its certification automatically.
Austria generates around 2/3rds of its electricity with hydro, by far the easiest and cheapest form of large-scale renewable power. Hydro power generation doesn't vary between day and night; daily weather conditions do not affect it (their plants do produce less in winter though). Also, at the moment, hydro is pretty much the only solution we have to the big problem that plagues any large deployment of other renewable power sources: energy storage. That means having a lot of hydro facilities affects the economics of your solar and wind farms too, in a big way. If you want to compare how countries are doing on renewables or how cheaply they are able to generate it, you do have to account for hydro capacity as it is a huge factor. My own country's capacity sadly is pretty much zero at the moment, though there are plans to dam and drain parts of the North Sea: not useful for generating energy, but it can be used to store it.
That's still pretty good. What is the actual price though; the article didn't mention this. Roof tiles are quite common here (pretty much every roof has them), and mine need replacing soon as they are over 75 years old. So naturally I am interested.
If they are as expensive as regular tiles, the good news is that you might as well cover the whole roof in these things for a uniform look, not just the side that faces the sun.
IIRC, it had something to do with setting off the explosives. I've no idea how hard it is to detect explosives disguised as a battery, but apparently it is pretty hard to disguise an ignition circuit on the x-ray. If you have the explosives with you in the cabin, you don't need that circuit.
There are actual terrorists here in Europe, and a couple of sympathizers who might become terrorists. If there is a credible threat from the Middle East, then that threat extends to Europe as well. I'd like to know how credible this threat is to begin with.
I wouldn't want my employer spend a bunch of money to monitor my biometrics to determine my "interruptability", and of course use that data for "other purposes" as well, while they could simply give me a red light controlled by a switch. Red=do not disturb (and what the hell does yellow mean in this case?) Strangely, the article mentions that manual actions such as turning on a red light, putting up a sign, wearing headphones or closing the door to the office were perceived as "too cumbersome".
Even so, customers do not always realise this. For example: people loved the recent offer from a European telco, where music streamed from Spotify and a few others to mobile phones would not be counted towards the monthly data allowance. Even people using a music service not included in the offer didn't mind too much; they might be disappointed at missing out on a nice deal but nothing would change for the worse for them. That idea got shot down by Net Neutrality rules which pissed a lot of people off: "Thanks to this stupid rule (worse: thanks to "Brussels"), we now have to pay for music streaming again." Which is exactly why the telco made this offer in the first place despite net neutrality rules already in place, I suspect. Riling up the masses.
People seem to be buying the positive message from telcos about rescinding net neutrality rules, and it resonates especially well with the "we hate government intervention" crowd. "No more rules that forbid us from making you a great offer". "Less rules means a fertile ground for innovative business". They don't see or understand the negative aspects. For instance: I don't agree that investing in bandwidth is cheaper; telcos hate net neutrality because it forces them to do exactly that. It is far cheaper to not invest in bandwidth and instead prioritize traffic in such a way that the popular services still come through at a good speed, to the detriment of anything less popular. A few people might grumble but as long as Netflix and Facebook still perform well, the masses won't object. In fact they will probably blame poor performance on the shitty server of whatever service they are trying to access.
It's a silly question. The question should be: should the government pay for veterans to attend schools, period. If yes, then by all means also include code schools if they meet whatever criteria and standards are set.
Yeah, it is useful in a few cases. But in order for me to be motivated to keep it charged, it'll have to be a little bit better. And in order for me to strap it to my wrist every morning, it'll have to look a bit better. I don't mind spending around €1000 for a smart watch that looks good, i.e. has a well made metal case and a good metal or leather strap, but I don't want to spend that much on something that looks good but will be obsolete in a couple of years. If they can commit to a certain form factor for like a decade and offer an upgrade program where they'll swap out the guts for a reasonable fee, then they'll have a winner in my book.
It was that I felt like I was more productive when using it. I wasn't wasting time tweeting nonsense or sending emoji in ephemeral messages. I was sending important emails, working with my colleagues in Slack, creating and completing to-do lists, and adding appointments to my calendar. I was Getting Shit Done
Dear god not this tired old trope again: "iPhones and Android phones are toys; Blackberries are for work". Or even better: "for business". The distinction is sending lame tweets or important emails, and what makes the difference is the bloody keyboard!? Or is it that he didn't install the Twitter app? He does mention some other more relevant characteristics: a screen ratio that (according to him) is better suited for email, and a long-ish battery life.
The KeyOne is a phone for a very specific person, one that longs for the days when the BlackBerry Bold was the most important device in the office
Those days are long gone; it ended the second employees were allowed to use their iOS or Android device for work email, and ditched their company-provided BB en masse. In other words, the KeyOne is for dinosaurs like the reviewer. Or perhaps for Android users who prefer a physical keyboard. Or who like a device that allows them to pretend to be a step above mere peons who weren't issued corporate BBs in the past. That's fair enough, but please don't pretend that this thing is magically better suited for business like the old BBs weren't.
When people make the effort to learn a second language, English is still the most popular choice by a huge margin, beating the #2 choice by a factor 2
"a punishment", sure. But you know the legislators have gone off the rails when pirating a movie potentially carries a stiffer penalty than going into a store, threatening and physically harming the shopkeeper with a weapon, then making off with the physical DVD. (a quick google reveals UK sentencing guidelines of 7-12 years for a robbery with the highest category of harm and culpability)
Maybe, or Monkey Island. But they are different types of games. Oregon Trail was the first successful instance of what we now call educational or "serious" games.
Having made an impact on popular society is also one of the criteria. World of Warcraft wasn't groundbreaking in terms of gaming, but it certainly was the first of its kind to break into the mainstream, and with the most influence on culture by far. For the record: I loved UO and some of the similar games that came after it like LoTRO or AoC, and I hated everything about WoW, but I still think it's the latter one that deserves to be in this list if one has to choose.
Kinda agree on HALO and Sim City, but the problem with these lists is that someone is always going to be pissed off no matter what you choose.
Back in tbe days of Windows 7 I was changing PC components regularly. My understanding is that Windows got the serial nr or at least mark and model of a couple of components, and would lock out if too many components were different (after which a support guy could sort things out). I have swapped graphics cards, motherboards and hard disks several times in one machine (sometimes doing a reinstall as well) but I have never had my Windows code refused (and it wasn't a corporate code either). Maybe we in Europe were on a different scheme.
That sounds like a decent scheme for cinemas, but for home viewing it's not going to work. Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV, or that I have to go and obtain new keys for everything in my collection. Sounds like a lot of hassle... and here I'll repeat an age old bit of wisdom regarding cumbersome DRM: many people pirate stuff not because they don't want to pay, but because pirates offer a better product: Free of DRM and ads, often in a choice of formats and bitrates suitable for playback on a variety of devices (including offline playing), available for immediate download. With DRM you are not protecting your content effectively, but you are punishing your legitimate paying customers. Hell of a way to run a business.
Though I agree that the idea of some form of tamper proof DRM scheme for home viewing still appears to be the industry's wet dream. They really ought to take a cue from the music industry who have embraced the idea of convenience first, and in a lot of cases have agreed to do away with DRM
HDMI offers end to end encryption (HDCP) of the playback chain, or attempts to. Theoretically a player could refuse to play certain discs if the chain isn't encrypted, but in practice it's a clunky mechanism that confuses and infuriates consumers with unpredictable failures and weird error messages. And there are ways to strip HDCP from HDMI. But if they manage to properly enforce encryption and convince every manufacturer to fully comply, then you'll be hard pressed to tap into the chain. You might be able to grab signals going to the TVs panel and turn them back into a video stream, but it's not easy.
Of course the thing about torrents and the pointlessness of any DRM is that this only has to happen once.
Compliance + robots = ED209
Point is: we don't/shouldn't need country-specific licenses. These things make sense in the world of broadcast TV with a one-off screening, not in the world of streaming or downloading where viewing can take place anytime, anywhere. I suppose in some cases you want or have to make country-specific deals when you are dealing with national entities or when you want to offer lower prices in developing countries for instance. But in the case of companies like Netflix it makes no sense. Charge by view instead of by country: 10 views in the Netherlands ought to be just as valuable as 10 views in the States if charged per view, so offer the license thusly. And yes: at first glance this will be a less valuable license deal, since with per-country licenses the smaller countries usually get shafted on the price (per viewer) as well. But what is more valuable to rights holders: a per-country license so expensive that the likes of Netflix are never going to pick it up for certain countries, or a per-view license in those countries resulting in even just a 1% penetration?
There's a bit more to it. An alderman around here once said: "There is tremendous pressure to build concensus and get something going, and the effort to reach an agreement on how to proceed is considerable. Once that has happened there is no going back, even if everyone thinks the agreement is shit. And in politics, everyone is focused on passing motions, any motion, the contents do not matter all that much, let alone that we ever evaluate the effectiveness later on"
If you cannot or will not offer your TV show in my country, then I'm not even depriving you of potential income by pirating that show. How is that theft? In your example, you might argue that you hope to sell the show on DVD at some point in the future, after you've settled the dispute. In that case I agree that it would be wrong to download the show, and it would certainly be wrong to make and sell bootleg copies. Or maybe you want to have the show on TV first, maybe as an exclusive, before offering it on Netflix. That's fair enough if the terms are within reason, but such licensing models (including the idea to negotiate licenses for different media and rights for other countries separately) are what gives rise to smaller regions getting the shaft in case of US content, and some content never making its way outside its country of origin. That goes counter to the spirit of copyright, which exists to promote the creation and proliferation of art. The royalties that go to those involved in the process are a means, not an end. In that spirit I'd be much in favour of (shock horror!) government putting limitations on the artificial scarcity that may be created in license agreements. But it seems we're going in the opposite direction, with copyright terms being extended again and again, and a USA that is very aggressively pushing for other countries to conform to its notion of copyright that serves the creators rather than the public.
I'm hoping that Netflix will start flexing its muscles a bit more. Same as Apple did when they started selling songs online, when the music industry was still very much used to the album model. Now they've gone to a pay-per-play model, with most distributors offering an all you can eat subscription. I'm hoping the TV and movie industry will make the same shift at some point. Not because I want to pay less but because I want to pirate less, and this region crap and artificial scarcity make no sense in a pay-per-play situation.
What about those who pay for Netflix but aren't getting content in a timely manner (most series), see content disappear after a year (there's been a terrible purge here recently), or aren't getting the content at all? The availability and selection in certain smaller countries is kind of rubbish compared to what one gets in the US or the UK. So yes, in some cases even Netflix subscribers have to resort to Bittorrent. Maybe this is due to outdated license models, where one can buy the rights to show something in country X for a period of Y months or some such, instead of a license granting the right to show it everywhere for a certain amount per view. In the meantime I sure hope my country will at some point revive its old policy on piracy: "If content isn't available legally, then we don't prosecute people who pirate it". If you don't sell your content here, you should have no recourse against pirates; remember that copyright is not a natural right but something cooked up to encourage production and distribution of cultural works, by granting artists a temporary monopoly that enables them to make some money off their creation. I will pay for content, but if you will not take my money I have zero moral objections to availing myself of your works by other means.
I agree. I love the convenience of being able to buy book whereever I am, but the online bookstores are rather rubbish (it's not just Kindle, Kobo suffers from similar issues) and the tools to manage your library are terrible. There's a hell of a lot of room for improvement in the UX alone.
But the idea of e-readers itself is great... I use one with e-ink, the book reading part works great, and the screen is comfortable in any light. And it offers no distractions the way a tablet or laptop does, so I don't count using an e-reader as "screen time"