Indeed - the Government's current strategy for touting the "benefits" of the new national ID card and database scheme are:
1. Put up the price of the passport (used to be £30-40 a few years ago, it's £77 now, and when it merges with the ID card in a couple of years, it'll be £93 plus £30 processing fees).
2. Start insisting that more and more places require ID (one example of this is that the police are now increasingly requiring that pubs and clubs introduce a ID scanning policy - of everyone, even if they know you're old enough). Conveniently make it so that only a passport or ID card can be used, ignoring the perfectly good (and cheap) existing forms of voluntary ID such as the CitizenCard.
3. Say: Look how great the ID card is, you can use it for this, and it "only" costs £30 (plus an extra £30 processing fees that we won't mention), cheaper than the now inflated-cost passport. Following on from my pub/club example, here we are - the BBC very kindly reproduce the spin from the Government press release.
Citation where GPL authors have behaved in a manner like the OP talked about, please?
And even if we did return to 14 years for copyright, including for GPL, I don't see why that's a problem. Yeah, it means that someone will be able to use and modify a 1995 Linux without distributing the source - OMG!
And what do you think it will be like in 5 or 10 years' time?
The bottom line is that, aside from the legislation being bad for many reasons, it will be outpaced by technology in a matter of years. The flip side is that the Government uses this as as argument for mandatory monitoring and registration of mobile networks - we need to be watchful of this, before it's too late.
Unfortunately there is already a catch - thanks to "OMG Think Of The Children" paranoia, all mobile broadband in the UK (AFAIK) has censorship turned on by default. There's no information on this when you buy it - they simply refuse to offer the service that you've paid for, even if you buy in person and you're obviously an adult. And it catches far more than porn sites - in some cases, I've been blocked by sites that aren't "adult" in the slightest. And the only way to turn it off is to either use a credit card, or show up with proof of age, both of which would allow them to identify you. Even if you're way over 18, and it ought to be bloody stupid to even consider asking for proof of age
So? Who cares? Is it relevant to the story - I mean, do they tell us what the model of all the computers they use? What about the companies involved in the construction of the radio telescope?
The sad thing is, this probably wouldn't have made Slashdot if another phone had been used.
I agree with the other poster too - if he had have used another phone, it wouldn't have been mentioned. Because most people just get on and use products - they don't stop and say "Hey isn't this cool, I can do this on my Iphone", giving a free advert to Apple, even though everyone else can do the same thing.
- I'm posting this using a Windows PC with Intel Core Duo processor *ding dong ding dong* -
I'm curious why they chose the Iphone? I mean, spot the odd one out - for every other technology, they list either the dominant leader, or if there isn't one, they put the generic name. But for some reason, the Iphone gets chosen, at only a few per cent market share. Why? Or is this just yet another case of jumping on the Apple product placement bandwagon?
If anything, they should list Nokia, but as no one's dominant in the mobile market (Nokia have "only" 40%), it's probably better to stick with the perfectly good word we already have for the device they are referring to: a phone (or mobile phone, smartphone, etc, if you prefer).
To answer the article, no I don't think my Iphone is cool, because I don't have one.
Although on second thoughts, it's true that only a minority of the population had access to torches on hills, so I guess the comparison is fair.
Before Apple fans respond saying I'm wrong, please avoid: * Redefining the mobile market to some subset category that includes Iphones but excludes most other phones. * Relying on anecdotes, what your friends have, what gets publicity, instead of hard market data. * Redefining market share to mean something other than market share (e.g., dubious subjective terms like "mind share"). Thank you.
Yes, obviously those are the only two choices in the market. The remaining 95+% are a figment of your imagination.
(Seriously though, check out a phone store, don't rely on Slashdot for news on the phone market, as it only covers Apple and Google, which represent less than 5% of the mobile market.)
I disagree he was painting himself as a moral person - he was upfront about that fact that he couldn't protest in this manner, and so it was clear that he wasn't trying to paint himself this way.
It's unclear how this kind of protest would work anyway, since Opera is free.
So if I get a doctors note for a sore back but Manulife have pictures of me enjoying a football match then they have no right to reverse the doctors' diagnosis?
Oh, almost straight out of TFA: "It's not as if somebody had a broken back and there was a picture of them carrying a load of bricks," Lavin said. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape."
So no, it's not like that at all.
I agree that Manulife are in the wrong here
Right, that's all that matters here.
but think it's going a bit far to suggest that an insurance company has to take every doctors opinion as law.
Er, how about we take the law as law? As in, if there's a dispute, it's surely ultimately up to a court to decide - the company can't just arbitrarily decide itself whether to pay out or not, anymore than she can arbitrarily decide she's not going to pay them the insurance fees.
And I'd damn well hope a court of law places a doctor's opinion over Facebook pics or the insurance company.
If we're looking at the $1.92 million for 24 songs, let's call that $24 ($1 a song) - that would mean every song would have had to have been each uploaded 80,000 times. And that's still assuming every copy is a lost sale.
It's all very well claiming that uploading can cause more loss, but you're still many orders of magnitudes off trying to come up with the batshit RIAA style damages.
How much data would that have to be? 1.92 million copies, say an average of 4MB each, gives 7.68 TB of data. Even uploading 10 GBs a day continuously, that'd still take over 2 years!
Putting the EULA on a website is irrelevant - it's still only presented to people after purchase.
By your logic, MS owe me a million dollars, because the EULA on my website says that's what MS agree to do if they sell me any software. It's no good telling me they weren't aware of the EULA, they should've read my website, or asked to read it when I bought it in the store...
Imagine a human overlay - the person's random thoughts would appear on the screen; hot women would be highlighted; and in the bottom right corner would be a beautifully rendered rotating image of a DNA double helix.
You first - let's have actions, not words. Start a database with such information, with the information freely available for these companies to use. If they're really "children" compared to you, this should be no trouble, right?
A different CPU isn't a fundamental problem, but it needs to be transparent for users (e.g., fat binaries that can run on both) and tools available for both developers to easily create such things. Most people have better things to do than port an application just to get it to work, if they even have the skills. And yes, Linux is great, a large proportion of the market would like to run Windows, just as they like to on desktops, laptops and netbooks, myself included.
I don't care if software is non-free - I'm not RMS, I'd like a platform that can run whatever software I want, whatever its licence. That's the freedom I want.
Pandora looks great, but is it a phone? I thought it was just a handheld, which therefore just makes smaller than a netbook, but isn't an example of a phone anyway. The issue was about whether phones will make netbooks obsolete.
Yeah, the netbook one is a load of rubbish. Netbooks fill a nice gap between small phones and laptops. A phone is too small to do a lot of computer work comfortably, but a netbook is as small as a computer can be made, without having these problems.
Then there's the fact that phones are horribly locked down, as well as incompatible with PCs. Hopefully at some point in the future we'll be able to buy a phone that basically is a PC, running the same OS and software. But until that happens, I'm glad that netbooks are around.
TFA claims that phones will "catch up" - well phones aren't going to catch up in size, unless they turn into a netbook (in which case, it's stupid to say it's a phone, and not a netbook). And they show no signs of becoming more open, either.
Why rummage around in my pocket, when I can just glance at my wrist?
The article isn't entirely wrong - I do know some people who say they no longer bother with a watch now that they have a phone. But I think it's wrong to say it will make watches obsolete.
He could download a cheaper app from a competing site. Oh wait, he can't, because he's an Iphone user. Unless he hacks his phone. Apple - It Just Works!
Well, at least 99% of phone users don't have this problem, as they don't use an Iphone. They just download whatever apps they like, from whatever site they like, often free of charge.
Sure, for any other platform this is how it works, but for the Iphone, surely this is the problem? I could write it myself, but then I have the worry of what if Apple don't approve my "app"? What about the fee I have to pay them?
Your argument works for open platforms, but it demonstrates why Apple's policy is such a problem.
(As an aside, I love how whilst on any other Slashdot story about piracy, the vast majority of comments are in favour of filesharing, and against the RIAA etc. But with Apple stories, it's always the other way around - suddenly piracy is an evil evil thing, how dare we steal from those poor Iphone developers!)
Get real - any other platform, people release that kind of thing, and far more than that, for free. My phone runs plenty of free Java applications, but you don't get that choice on the Iphone. Not that that justifies piracy - it justifies not buying a damn Iphone in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed - the Government's current strategy for touting the "benefits" of the new national ID card and database scheme are:
1. Put up the price of the passport (used to be £30-40 a few years ago, it's £77 now, and when it merges with the ID card in a couple of years, it'll be £93 plus £30 processing fees).
2. Start insisting that more and more places require ID (one example of this is that the police are now increasingly requiring that pubs and clubs introduce a ID scanning policy - of everyone, even if they know you're old enough). Conveniently make it so that only a passport or ID card can be used, ignoring the perfectly good (and cheap) existing forms of voluntary ID such as the CitizenCard.
3. Say: Look how great the ID card is, you can use it for this, and it "only" costs £30 (plus an extra £30 processing fees that we won't mention), cheaper than the now inflated-cost passport. Following on from my pub/club example, here we are - the BBC very kindly reproduce the spin from the Government press release.
Citation where GPL authors have behaved in a manner like the OP talked about, please?
And even if we did return to 14 years for copyright, including for GPL, I don't see why that's a problem. Yeah, it means that someone will be able to use and modify a 1995 Linux without distributing the source - OMG!
And what do you think it will be like in 5 or 10 years' time?
The bottom line is that, aside from the legislation being bad for many reasons, it will be outpaced by technology in a matter of years. The flip side is that the Government uses this as as argument for mandatory monitoring and registration of mobile networks - we need to be watchful of this, before it's too late.
Unfortunately there is already a catch - thanks to "OMG Think Of The Children" paranoia, all mobile broadband in the UK (AFAIK) has censorship turned on by default. There's no information on this when you buy it - they simply refuse to offer the service that you've paid for, even if you buy in person and you're obviously an adult. And it catches far more than porn sites - in some cases, I've been blocked by sites that aren't "adult" in the slightest. And the only way to turn it off is to either use a credit card, or show up with proof of age, both of which would allow them to identify you. Even if you're way over 18, and it ought to be bloody stupid to even consider asking for proof of age
So? Who cares? Is it relevant to the story - I mean, do they tell us what the model of all the computers they use? What about the companies involved in the construction of the radio telescope?
The sad thing is, this probably wouldn't have made Slashdot if another phone had been used.
I agree with the other poster too - if he had have used another phone, it wouldn't have been mentioned. Because most people just get on and use products - they don't stop and say "Hey isn't this cool, I can do this on my Iphone", giving a free advert to Apple, even though everyone else can do the same thing.
- I'm posting this using a Windows PC with Intel Core Duo processor *ding dong ding dong* -
I'm curious why they chose the Iphone? I mean, spot the odd one out - for every other technology, they list either the dominant leader, or if there isn't one, they put the generic name. But for some reason, the Iphone gets chosen, at only a few per cent market share. Why? Or is this just yet another case of jumping on the Apple product placement bandwagon?
If anything, they should list Nokia, but as no one's dominant in the mobile market (Nokia have "only" 40%), it's probably better to stick with the perfectly good word we already have for the device they are referring to: a phone (or mobile phone, smartphone, etc, if you prefer).
To answer the article, no I don't think my Iphone is cool, because I don't have one.
Although on second thoughts, it's true that only a minority of the population had access to torches on hills, so I guess the comparison is fair.
Before Apple fans respond saying I'm wrong, please avoid:
* Redefining the mobile market to some subset category that includes Iphones but excludes most other phones.
* Relying on anecdotes, what your friends have, what gets publicity, instead of hard market data.
* Redefining market share to mean something other than market share (e.g., dubious subjective terms like "mind share").
Thank you.
Wow, the Iphone does better compared to a phone you hate. I, and 98% of the market, choose neither...
Indeed - sadly we've got people thinking that Iphone OS and OS X are the same OS too, due to the same mistake.
Yes, obviously those are the only two choices in the market. The remaining 95+% are a figment of your imagination.
(Seriously though, check out a phone store, don't rely on Slashdot for news on the phone market, as it only covers Apple and Google, which represent less than 5% of the mobile market.)
...being a subset of Windows.
Then maybe they should first sue those other news sites.
I disagree he was painting himself as a moral person - he was upfront about that fact that he couldn't protest in this manner, and so it was clear that he wasn't trying to paint himself this way.
It's unclear how this kind of protest would work anyway, since Opera is free.
Ran out of Iphone stories today.
So if I get a doctors note for a sore back but Manulife have pictures of me enjoying a football match then they have no right to reverse the doctors' diagnosis?
Oh, almost straight out of TFA: "It's not as if somebody had a broken back and there was a picture of them carrying a load of bricks," Lavin said. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape."
So no, it's not like that at all.
I agree that Manulife are in the wrong here
Right, that's all that matters here.
but think it's going a bit far to suggest that an insurance company has to take every doctors opinion as law.
Er, how about we take the law as law? As in, if there's a dispute, it's surely ultimately up to a court to decide - the company can't just arbitrarily decide itself whether to pay out or not, anymore than she can arbitrarily decide she's not going to pay them the insurance fees.
And I'd damn well hope a court of law places a doctor's opinion over Facebook pics or the insurance company.
I hope she sues.
If we're looking at the $1.92 million for 24 songs, let's call that $24 ($1 a song) - that would mean every song would have had to have been each uploaded 80,000 times. And that's still assuming every copy is a lost sale.
It's all very well claiming that uploading can cause more loss, but you're still many orders of magnitudes off trying to come up with the batshit RIAA style damages.
How much data would that have to be? 1.92 million copies, say an average of 4MB each, gives 7.68 TB of data. Even uploading 10 GBs a day continuously, that'd still take over 2 years!
Putting the EULA on a website is irrelevant - it's still only presented to people after purchase.
By your logic, MS owe me a million dollars, because the EULA on my website says that's what MS agree to do if they sell me any software. It's no good telling me they weren't aware of the EULA, they should've read my website, or asked to read it when I bought it in the store...
Imagine a human overlay - the person's random thoughts would appear on the screen; hot women would be highlighted; and in the bottom right corner would be a beautifully rendered rotating image of a DNA double helix.
You first - let's have actions, not words. Start a database with such information, with the information freely available for these companies to use. If they're really "children" compared to you, this should be no trouble, right?
A different CPU isn't a fundamental problem, but it needs to be transparent for users (e.g., fat binaries that can run on both) and tools available for both developers to easily create such things. Most people have better things to do than port an application just to get it to work, if they even have the skills. And yes, Linux is great, a large proportion of the market would like to run Windows, just as they like to on desktops, laptops and netbooks, myself included.
I don't care if software is non-free - I'm not RMS, I'd like a platform that can run whatever software I want, whatever its licence. That's the freedom I want.
Pandora looks great, but is it a phone? I thought it was just a handheld, which therefore just makes smaller than a netbook, but isn't an example of a phone anyway. The issue was about whether phones will make netbooks obsolete.
Well isn't it good for Apple that they can just decide for themselves whose warranties to uphold, and whose to ignore.
Yeah, the netbook one is a load of rubbish. Netbooks fill a nice gap between small phones and laptops. A phone is too small to do a lot of computer work comfortably, but a netbook is as small as a computer can be made, without having these problems.
Then there's the fact that phones are horribly locked down, as well as incompatible with PCs. Hopefully at some point in the future we'll be able to buy a phone that basically is a PC, running the same OS and software. But until that happens, I'm glad that netbooks are around.
TFA claims that phones will "catch up" - well phones aren't going to catch up in size, unless they turn into a netbook (in which case, it's stupid to say it's a phone, and not a netbook). And they show no signs of becoming more open, either.
Why rummage around in my pocket, when I can just glance at my wrist?
The article isn't entirely wrong - I do know some people who say they no longer bother with a watch now that they have a phone. But I think it's wrong to say it will make watches obsolete.
He could download a cheaper app from a competing site. Oh wait, he can't, because he's an Iphone user. Unless he hacks his phone. Apple - It Just Works!
Well, at least 99% of phone users don't have this problem, as they don't use an Iphone. They just download whatever apps they like, from whatever site they like, often free of charge.
Sure, for any other platform this is how it works, but for the Iphone, surely this is the problem? I could write it myself, but then I have the worry of what if Apple don't approve my "app"? What about the fee I have to pay them?
Your argument works for open platforms, but it demonstrates why Apple's policy is such a problem.
(As an aside, I love how whilst on any other Slashdot story about piracy, the vast majority of comments are in favour of filesharing, and against the RIAA etc. But with Apple stories, it's always the other way around - suddenly piracy is an evil evil thing, how dare we steal from those poor Iphone developers!)
Yeah, $0.99 is a bargain for something that displays an image, and even animates it.
Get real - any other platform, people release that kind of thing, and far more than that, for free. My phone runs plenty of free Java applications, but you don't get that choice on the Iphone. Not that that justifies piracy - it justifies not buying a damn Iphone in the first place.
In the UK I could pick up an unlocked iPhone for around $900
A bargain! Yes, I think the OP's point still stands.
and that's going for a brand new legitimate purchase from a reputable retailer
Legitimate? As opposed to off the back of the lorry? Yeah, I suppose Iphones aren't so expensive if you consider that purchase route.