In Australia a supposed pedophile case was recently thrown out by a judge who considered a fair trial with all the media attention impossible. Ever since judges have applied suppression orders to stop the names going out to the public.
The last thing we need is another codec and/or supporting plugin/application to play it. Particularly as Flash etc. is starting to be the defacto standard.
Just adopt the MPEG4 stack already, if theres patent issues surely they can be resolved fairly easily in the case of the BBC, and these 'other platforms' people ask to be supported can do so easily. (Give them the stream URL to play in Quicktime or VLC)
Some airlines (Singapore Airlines and Emirates) already have in flight phone services in every seat. You swipe your credit card and get billed $6US/minute or something equally outrageous. I haven't travelled internationally in a while, but when it is available the phone is intergrated into the remote for the passengers IFE screen.
If they charge that much, we can assume they will do the same for in flight mobile phone use (or even more; the equipment needs to be paid somehow). OK, they'll probably charge a bit less for US Domestic where some specialised infrastructure is being developed, but still, its going to cost a bit of money. This kind of equipment doesn't necessarily pay for itself, remember Boeing's Connexion?
So, the most likely target audience and users of such service will be those in Business or First class, who on the airlines mentioned above, already enjoy some (or huge) degree of space separation from other passengers. They probably already do use these in-air phones and don't hear any whining about it..
I've tried both XP x64 and Server 2003 x64. While XP x64 had better compatibility (some DirectX games couldn't run due to absent dll's in 2003), it wasn't as stable.
Select your choice: [ ] - Conservative man with glasses [ ] - Younger conservative man with glasses (most dorks selected this) -------- or minor, 'feeder' parties [ ] - Tree hugger whose preferences go to above [ ] - Other miscellaneous anti-nuke, anti-whaling treehuggers [ ] - Extremist christian 'family' party whose preferences go to 1.
What is really disturbing is the top two made their intarwebs filter announcements at the (same?) church conference.
Remember the worlds biggest luddite, Richard Alston? Maybe this guy will turn into him.
Transmit power for 1800/1900 (probably what is in use in NZ)
Actually, it would be 900MHz first. However, 1800MHz fill spectrum is probably utilitized in NZ a lot. In Australia theres plenty of 1800MHz on top of 900MHz due to capacity issues that hit operators a decade ago. AT&T would be using 1900MHz fill in I guess - they've got 5MHz UMTS chewing into that band, but they've had a lot more time to plan out a network. (Pardon my ignorance, I have no idea about US mobile spectrum allocations)
Let first class passengers talk in their seats - they paid plenty of cash for it, and with the upper end airlines (Dubai and Singapore based) having first class cubicles or suites (on SIA A380), noise shouldn't be much of a problem.
Business would be a case for each airline.
Economy - hmm.
Note that Boeing has encouraged 'stand up' spaces on their new/planned airplanes - B747-8I in particular, where passengers can socialize out of their seats. There is also space in the A380 top deck - the front nose section next to the stair case.
My guess is that the primary market for a full mobile-in-air voice service is likely to be the first and business class passengers anyway. Airlines will recover the cost by throwing it in free at those prices, current on-plane phone prices for economy.
Hint: There is no such thing as 'legal' second-hand Autodesk software. They have the most draconian license agreement in existence. Of course, they have the market share to make customers eat it, and as long as the customer makes money they won't care too much - everyone raises the price tag.
They might as well sell computers than only run Autocad etc.. the licensing terms are equivalent to OEM software. Oops, you want to SELL the computer? Sorry, can't do that!
Basically not. The closest to multinational is #2 Telco Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, in turned owned by the Singapore government.
AOHell gave up and sold their user base to Primus Telecommunications, who may be American owned, but not controlled as such.
ISPs won't be bullied by ARIA (australian RIAA) etc. as Aussie's are top pirates (forcing local TV networks to not seasonally delay American imports), and pay a hell of a lot for unfiltered internets. Considering internet here is sold in bandwidth quotas any limiting action above that is considered unacceptable by users and (some) ISP owners alike.
Former government phone monopoly, now privatized and run by evil Americans - Telstra, basically owns 99% of fixed-line infrastructure. (As they are legislated to do so) Captial cities got TWO separate cable networks during the 1990's - one from Optus (who got the first telco license after deregulation), and the other from Telstra, who built one thinking pay TV was the bomb - it wasn't, and both cable networks have actually shrunk by some degree since.
(Note the Optus cable network provided , and was designed to fixed line telephones from the start, which makes up the small percentage of non-Telstra fixed-line infrastuture around.)
However, Telstra, as a monopoly, MUST provide wholesale access to the fixed-line infrastructure, as such most Australians are actually with internet providers who wholesale off Telstra, either over Telstra DSLAM's or their own. The wholesale prices of which have been ENFORCED even DICTATED by the Australian competition authorities, who among other things, refuse to tolerate American crap such as "up to XXX mbps" (Australian consumers, unlike American's, demand full line speed, no lousy contention or else), "unlimited... up to XXX GB" etc.
A federal election issue this year is an FTTN (fibre-to-the-node) rollout to every single location within these captial cities, and an assortment of regional centers. Two proposals are in play - one from Telstra, who set wholesale prices up high because they don't want to share, and their shareholders (investment funds, small % of mon'n'dad investors) who want returns, and the "G9" - favored by many, but the pricing still sucks.
As the majority of Australian internet traffic is to/through the US, Australian bandwidth pricing is dictated by capacity on submarine cables to the US - of which there is only one - running out of "spare" capacity fast*, despite only being turned on a decade ago. Some providers lease additional capacity via Japan, and there are three new submarine cables under planning that are attempting to remedy the bandwidth shortage, either by going to Guam to patch into Japanese capacity, or only up to Hawaii. As I've said, unlike American's, Australian users, after suffering a few years of low broadband speeds, don't tolerate US style bandwidth overselling (those that have tried failed miserably), and as such a lot of ISPs, outside Telstra (who charge almost business rates anyway), we're forced to raise prices due to the increasing use of bittorrent etc.
* even worse the operators of the cable in question, Southern-Cross cable, aren't in a particular hurry to upgrade either.
Being a former Palm user, I'm quite happy with WM6, and theres no way in hell I'm going back.
Unfortunately better quality control is needed from all manufacturers. There seems to be a habit from all sides of sending devices to the shelves with woefully crap software.
PalmSource (who ACCESS bought) wasn't really involved directly with the BeOS purchase, it was purchased before Handspring was acquired and the company was split IIRC.
And when PalmSource did release their new Palm OS (Cobalt), despite a subsequent revision, supposedly at the request of Palm OS licensees, it died because PalmOne (current day "Palm Inc.") weren't interested in the OS they paid for in the first place. No one else wanted to launch an OS clearly superior to PalmOS 5, WinCE and probably the Linux mobile offerings of the day and Cobalt died a silent death. All the licenses bar Palm Inc, and GSPDA didn't launch any further devices, only one has joined (Jaina) and launched since, leading to M$ dominating, not by monopoly, but because they actually have a clue how to co-operate with licensees - not to mention a programming environment which doesn't niche market industry programmers running. PalmSource, realizing this, bought China MobileSoft to concentrate on Linux phones, then was bought by ACCESS, *after Palm lost the bidding race for the IP it use to own*, who, presumably, believes the future is high-end mass-market phones.
Now we have a situation where Palm Inc is selling Windows Mobile based devices as a sheer result on stupidity by Ed Colligan and Co after Handspring and Palm merged.
For those who didn't read: ACCESS doesn't have that much to do with the lack of a legal, original BeOS based environment. Palm Inc. paid for it, split, killed it by proxy, ACCESS doesn't want anything to do with it other than any concrete IP.
"with the Australian dollar about 15% overvalued against the greenback"
Apple products aren't the right products to use when comparing against Australian and overseas prices. Apple Australia has some history of inflating prices sky high, so much that several times in the past the price difference equaled a return ticket to the USA to purchase said companies products. These days the gap is less but frequent overseas travelers could justify it.
XP 64 is a workstation OS (and has always been marketed that way by Microsoft, FYI). Unless you're doing heavy stuff, or your hardware loves it (i.e Dual Opterons with NUMA), stay out. You can chuck all your older hardware while you're at it too. Personally I haven't had any real problems with it, apart from it being a massive I/O hog.
XP 64 is based on the WinServer 2003 x64 base, and IMO, Server 2003 x64 makes a better 64 bit workstation OS. I guess M$ frucked up big time when adding all the consumer end stuff to it. Pity 2003 x64 doesn't have the full multimedia support that its 32 bit version does.
I've been the lonely person in the corner at the Citadel using OS X:(
Support for iCal and its webdav protocol is there, and CalDAV is on the cards. I'll probably bring out the iCal-GroupDAV sync'er I wrote long ago in the near future and present that as a solution in the interim.
I don't personally understand what "trade secrets" nVidia has to hide by keeping their drivers closed off from the public, but it's still their choice.
Open source graphics drivers are a potential goldmine for patent lawsuits. nVidia has accused ATi of driver reverse engineering in the past, so its not going to happen.
it claims ext3 is more stable and will 'soon' match performance with the newer ReiserFS 4.
Gee, ext3 must've matured a lot in the past few years. I stopped using extX filesystems long ago because they lost files after power cuts waay too easily. ( I could bork an old RedHat install simply by pulling the plug/rebooting several times ). Moved to reiser then xfs and barely lost anything if I had to force a reboot.
I wonder if any actual studies have been done on workplace policy... Google is one example of a company which doesn't go all Dilbert PHB on its employees and hope a paycheck will keep 'em there, I wonder if any similar companies exist?
"Bill Gates said years ago that if you worry about internet productivity, you're worrying about people stealing pens from your stationery cupboard... there are bigger things to worry about." To give credit where its due, Bill Gates is right.
If your employees are surfing the net at work and not delivering, maybe PHB's should ask themselves why your employees aren't motived. Perhaps they might actually perform if they see something good out of what they are doing. Oops, I'm asking too much.
One of my class instructors who happens to be the admin for the schools proxy servers actually has some sites (i.e livejournal) redirect to the Playschool (load up that on someones machine and watch people walk past) website instead of letting proxy servers upstream return a fairly bland, BSOD-type block message. Reason? Providing a source of embarassment gets people back to work instead of a hostile BSOD that ticks people off and lowers the morale in general.
On the topic at hand, never mind the porn, can't we ban Big Brother for being offensively stupid?
Lets ban stuff because christian fundamentalist tools don't know what an 'off' button is and believe the entire population is dumb for not believing them! Next some other group will want something else taken off because they also believe the entire population is dumb for not believing them!
Yes, its smut, but if you don't like it, don't watch it and let the networks decide when the lack of ad revenue doesn't justify another reality tv iteration.
SBS should really rush the two South Park Cartoon Wars episodes on air...
Why argue with an external body dominated by guys from a different side of the industry (cad/cam) just to add some capabilities to your platform?
Many on Slashdot would say its to tighten M$'es dominance - true, but they are probably fed up with standards body bloat too - why let an idea slip due to bureaucracy at some working group when you can implement it now yourself and do the standards thing later when your customers FORCE you to.
Interestingly DirectX adoption seemed to accelerate after NVIDIA tightened its market share in the early part of this decade as 'custom' OpenGL render paths for 3dfx and others disappeared (as the hardware vendors did) in games and were replaced with DirectX 6/7 paths.
Slashdot Mirror
In Australia a supposed pedophile case was recently thrown out by a judge who considered a fair trial with all the media attention impossible. Ever since judges have applied suppression orders to stop the names going out to the public.
The last thing we need is another codec and/or supporting plugin/application to play it. Particularly as Flash etc. is starting to be the defacto standard.
Just adopt the MPEG4 stack already, if theres patent issues surely they can be resolved fairly easily in the case of the BBC, and these 'other platforms' people ask to be supported can do so easily. (Give them the stream URL to play in Quicktime or VLC)
Some airlines (Singapore Airlines and Emirates) already have in flight phone services in every seat. You swipe your credit card and get billed $6US/minute or something equally outrageous. I haven't travelled internationally in a while, but when it is available the phone is intergrated into the remote for the passengers IFE screen.
If they charge that much, we can assume they will do the same for in flight mobile phone use (or even more; the equipment needs to be paid somehow). OK, they'll probably charge a bit less for US Domestic where some specialised infrastructure is being developed, but still, its going to cost a bit of money. This kind of equipment doesn't necessarily pay for itself, remember Boeing's Connexion?
So, the most likely target audience and users of such service will be those in Business or First class, who on the airlines mentioned above, already enjoy some (or huge) degree of space separation from other passengers. They probably already do use these in-air phones and don't hear any whining about it..
I've tried both XP x64 and Server 2003 x64. While XP x64 had better compatibility (some DirectX games couldn't run due to absent dll's in 2003), it wasn't as stable.
Well, once you're out of Middle Eastern crapholes you won't be spending on that right?
What is really disturbing is the top two made their intarwebs filter announcements at the (same?) church conference.
Remember the worlds biggest luddite, Richard Alston? Maybe this guy will turn into him.
Transmit power for 1800/1900 (probably what is in use in NZ)
Actually, it would be 900MHz first. However, 1800MHz fill spectrum is probably utilitized in NZ a lot. In Australia theres plenty of 1800MHz on top of 900MHz due to capacity issues that hit operators a decade ago. AT&T would be using 1900MHz fill in I guess - they've got 5MHz UMTS chewing into that band, but they've had a lot more time to plan out a network. (Pardon my ignorance, I have no idea about US mobile spectrum allocations)
Scan and post the letter here. For the lulz.
Who said it had to be in seat?
Let first class passengers talk in their seats - they paid plenty of cash for it, and with the upper end airlines (Dubai and Singapore based) having first class cubicles or suites (on SIA A380), noise shouldn't be much of a problem.
Business would be a case for each airline.
Economy - hmm.
Note that Boeing has encouraged 'stand up' spaces on their new/planned airplanes - B747-8I in particular, where passengers can socialize out of their seats. There is also space in the A380 top deck - the front nose section next to the stair case.
My guess is that the primary market for a full mobile-in-air voice service is likely to be the first and business class passengers anyway. Airlines will recover the cost by throwing it in free at those prices, current on-plane phone prices for economy.
Hint: There is no such thing as 'legal' second-hand Autodesk software. They have the most draconian license agreement in existence. Of course, they have the market share to make customers eat it, and as long as the customer makes money they won't care too much - everyone raises the price tag.
They might as well sell computers than only run Autocad etc.. the licensing terms are equivalent to OEM software. Oops, you want to SELL the computer? Sorry, can't do that!
Basically not. The closest to multinational is #2 Telco Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, in turned owned by the Singapore government.
AOHell gave up and sold their user base to Primus Telecommunications, who may be American owned, but not controlled as such.
ISPs won't be bullied by ARIA (australian RIAA) etc. as Aussie's are top pirates (forcing local TV networks to not seasonally delay American imports), and pay a hell of a lot for unfiltered internets. Considering internet here is sold in bandwidth quotas any limiting action above that is considered unacceptable by users and (some) ISP owners alike.
Former government phone monopoly, now privatized and run by evil Americans - Telstra, basically owns 99% of fixed-line infrastructure. (As they are legislated to do so) Captial cities got TWO separate cable networks during the 1990's - one from Optus (who got the first telco license after deregulation), and the other from Telstra, who built one thinking pay TV was the bomb - it wasn't, and both cable networks have actually shrunk by some degree since.
(Note the Optus cable network provided , and was designed to fixed line telephones from the start, which makes up the small percentage of non-Telstra fixed-line infrastuture around.)
However, Telstra, as a monopoly, MUST provide wholesale access to the fixed-line infrastructure, as such most Australians are actually with internet providers who wholesale off Telstra, either over Telstra DSLAM's or their own. The wholesale prices of which have been ENFORCED even DICTATED by the Australian competition authorities, who among other things, refuse to tolerate American crap such as "up to XXX mbps" (Australian consumers, unlike American's, demand full line speed, no lousy contention or else), "unlimited... up to XXX GB" etc.
A federal election issue this year is an FTTN (fibre-to-the-node) rollout to every single location within these captial cities, and an assortment of regional centers. Two proposals are in play - one from Telstra, who set wholesale prices up high because they don't want to share, and their shareholders (investment funds, small % of mon'n'dad investors) who want returns, and the "G9" - favored by many, but the pricing still sucks.
As the majority of Australian internet traffic is to/through the US, Australian bandwidth pricing is dictated by capacity on submarine cables to the US - of which there is only one - running out of "spare" capacity fast*, despite only being turned on a decade ago. Some providers lease additional capacity via Japan, and there are three new submarine cables under planning that are attempting to remedy the bandwidth shortage, either by going to Guam to patch into Japanese capacity, or only up to Hawaii. As I've said, unlike American's, Australian users, after suffering a few years of low broadband speeds, don't tolerate US style bandwidth overselling (those that have tried failed miserably), and as such a lot of ISPs, outside Telstra (who charge almost business rates anyway), we're forced to raise prices due to the increasing use of bittorrent etc.
* even worse the operators of the cable in question, Southern-Cross cable, aren't in a particular hurry to upgrade either.
Being a former Palm user, I'm quite happy with WM6, and theres no way in hell I'm going back.
Unfortunately better quality control is needed from all manufacturers. There seems to be a habit from all sides of sending devices to the shelves with woefully crap software.
A ton of 32bit games won't run on 64bit (which is idiotic) and a lot of XP games won't run on Vista
Whats stopping you from using the 32bit version? For that matter, I guess you're playing old games too.
64-bit Windows has always been for the high end market where every single bit of hardware and software is certified by the software vendor.
CMS was bought by PalmSource well before they were acquired last year (or was it late 2005?) See PalmCenter
PalmSource (who ACCESS bought) wasn't really involved directly with the BeOS purchase, it was purchased before Handspring was acquired and the company was split IIRC.
And when PalmSource did release their new Palm OS (Cobalt), despite a subsequent revision, supposedly at the request of Palm OS licensees, it died because PalmOne (current day "Palm Inc.") weren't interested in the OS they paid for in the first place. No one else wanted to launch an OS clearly superior to PalmOS 5, WinCE and probably the Linux mobile offerings of the day and Cobalt died a silent death.
All the licenses bar Palm Inc, and GSPDA didn't launch any further devices, only one has joined (Jaina) and launched since, leading to M$ dominating, not by monopoly, but because they actually have a clue how to co-operate with licensees - not to mention a programming environment which doesn't niche market industry programmers running.
PalmSource, realizing this, bought China MobileSoft to concentrate on Linux phones, then was bought by ACCESS, *after Palm lost the bidding race for the IP it use to own*, who, presumably, believes the future is high-end mass-market phones.
Now we have a situation where Palm Inc is selling Windows Mobile based devices as a sheer result on stupidity by Ed Colligan and Co after Handspring and Palm merged.
For those who didn't read: ACCESS doesn't have that much to do with the lack of a legal, original BeOS based environment. Palm Inc. paid for it, split, killed it by proxy, ACCESS doesn't want anything to do with it other than any concrete IP.
"with the Australian dollar about 15% overvalued against the greenback"
Apple products aren't the right products to use when comparing against Australian and overseas prices. Apple Australia has some history of inflating prices sky high, so much that several times in the past the price difference equaled a return ticket to the USA to purchase said companies products. These days the gap is less but frequent overseas travelers could justify it.
XP 64 is a workstation OS (and has always been marketed that way by Microsoft, FYI). Unless you're doing heavy stuff, or your hardware loves it (i.e Dual Opterons with NUMA), stay out. You can chuck all your older hardware while you're at it too. Personally I haven't had any real problems with it, apart from it being a massive I/O hog.
XP 64 is based on the WinServer 2003 x64 base, and IMO, Server 2003 x64 makes a better 64 bit workstation OS. I guess M$ frucked up big time when adding all the consumer end stuff to it. Pity 2003 x64 doesn't have the full multimedia support that its 32 bit version does.
I've been the lonely person in the corner at the Citadel using OS X :(
Support for iCal and its webdav protocol is there, and CalDAV is on the cards. I'll probably bring out the iCal-GroupDAV sync'er I wrote long ago in the near future and present that as a solution in the interim.
I don't personally understand what "trade secrets" nVidia has to hide by keeping their drivers closed off from the public, but it's still their choice.
Open source graphics drivers are a potential goldmine for patent lawsuits. nVidia has accused ATi of driver reverse engineering in the past, so its not going to happen.
Personally I don't care - as long as they work.
it claims ext3 is more stable and will 'soon' match performance with the newer ReiserFS 4.
Gee, ext3 must've matured a lot in the past few years. I stopped using extX filesystems long ago because they lost files after power cuts waay too easily. ( I could bork an old RedHat install simply by pulling the plug/rebooting several times ). Moved to reiser then xfs and barely lost anything if I had to force a reboot.
I wonder if any actual studies have been done on workplace policy... Google is one example of a company which doesn't go all Dilbert PHB on its employees and hope a paycheck will keep 'em there, I wonder if any similar companies exist?
"Bill Gates said years ago that if you worry about internet productivity, you're worrying about people stealing pens from your stationery cupboard... there are bigger things to worry about."
To give credit where its due, Bill Gates is right.
If your employees are surfing the net at work and not delivering, maybe PHB's should ask themselves why your employees aren't motived. Perhaps they might actually perform if they see something good out of what they are doing. Oops, I'm asking too much.
One of my class instructors who happens to be the admin for the schools proxy servers actually has some sites (i.e livejournal) redirect to the Playschool (load up that on someones machine and watch people walk past) website instead of letting proxy servers upstream return a fairly bland, BSOD-type block message. Reason? Providing a source of embarassment gets people back to work instead of a hostile BSOD that ticks people off and lowers the morale in general.
On the topic at hand, never mind the porn, can't we ban Big Brother for being offensively stupid?
Lets ban stuff because christian fundamentalist tools don't know what an 'off' button is and believe the entire population is dumb for not believing them! Next some other group will want something else taken off because they also believe the entire population is dumb for not believing them!
Yes, its smut, but if you don't like it, don't watch it and let the networks decide when the lack of ad revenue doesn't justify another reality tv iteration.
SBS should really rush the two South Park Cartoon Wars episodes on air...
Why argue with an external body dominated by guys from a different side of the industry (cad/cam) just to add some capabilities to your platform?
Many on Slashdot would say its to tighten M$'es dominance - true, but they are probably fed up with standards body bloat too - why let an idea slip due to bureaucracy at some working group when you can implement it now yourself and do the standards thing later when your customers FORCE you to.
Interestingly DirectX adoption seemed to accelerate after NVIDIA tightened its market share in the early part of this decade as 'custom' OpenGL render paths for 3dfx and others disappeared (as the hardware vendors did) in games and were replaced with DirectX 6/7 paths.
You would think with just about every PDA on the market being XScale powerered, that they would be making tons of cash, at least on that...