Insurance and other higher-value necessities are also often much cheaper online, not to mention that the wealth of information available can help to save money (or earn more) in ways other than simply lower prices - free DIY guides, or wider job searches, for example.
What age group is this exactly? I'm in my 20s and whilst I don't know anyone without a mobile phone, I still don't know anyone whose given up their landline either. I just don't know a single person without one.
Everyone I know has a land line, nobody I know uses it for calls - they only pay they line rental because it's a pre-requisite for internet access. I don't have any of my friends' landline numbers stored in my phone, and even if I did they'd inferior to mobiles: semi-regular changes as people move between houses, plus the fact that you just have to call their mobile if they're out of the house anyway. Landlines are, to me, the pipes that net traffic is supplied through, nothing more.
I don't actually mind this state of affairs, though; paying a bit for the infrastructure seems reasonable, whether you're using it for voice or data. Admittedly in the particular case of this article, those who don't already have net access are likely to be the types who do already have a landline for voice calls, but It's worth pointing out that saying "everyone has a landline, so it's not part of the cost of net access" is somewhat circular when those landlines are in many cases only for net access.
The one thing I haven't seen questioned about Wikileaks is the validity of the information. Sure, the accusations fly about bias, whether their goals are morally defensible, whether Assange's alleged sexual proclivities will damage their reputation, and so forth, but even the organisations affected seem to begrudgingly accept that the information is accurate - I'm expecting this release to be similar.
Interestingly, it might even help to quell complaints about an anti-US bias. I've heard a lot of criticism about how they don't dare to say a word against powerful Russian billionaires - it seems that releasing Swiss bank data may well change that.
Whether or not they have used Linux in the past, it seems like the kind of thing that a CS student (even a first year) should be more than capable of handling for themselves. Sure, teach them about the architecture, or give them tasks that will require them to learn more advanced features of the OS, but I'd worry if the submitter really needs to teach the "major ins and outs of the Linux terminal and GUI" to a bunch of prospective computer scientists.
...introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.
I pretty much agree with the rest of your post, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that WebM actually does use Vorbis audio and a Matroska container. I hadn't previously heard of the VP8 video codec, but Google apparently placed all the patents in the public domain, open sourced their implementation, and licensed the specification under Creative Commons.
In light of all that, I'm inclined to support it over H.264, despite the fact I hadn't actually heard of it before I saw this article.
This code-signing thing is about the ability to create new code, not access existing code as I understand it. Am I wrong? (If so, please show me.)
You are not wrong, but I believe Sony's argument is that (as well as allowing the creation of new code) these keys will make it easy to dump and repackage existing copyrighted code in such a way that it can be easily copied and played, presumably on unmodified systems.
Sony's attempt to ban the tool (the encryption keys) regardless of legitimate uses, rather than going after the actual copyright infringers who happen to be making use of that tool is asinine, but who knows which way the courts will side on this one. If they do decide to ban the use of the keys, they may as well follow up by banning sharpies, DVD burners, and any other useful tool that happens to also be usable for copyright infringement.
Which is where this technique comes in. I thought ReCaptcha was going in that direction anyway, since it's used to transcribe old books that couldn't otherwise be OCR'd? Admittedly the crack is not a good thing, and I can't RTFA since it's slashdotted so it may be the case that they've found a way to circumvent rather than solve the captcha, but perhaps the spammers have actually done useful work in improving the accuracy of OCR technology for us?
Interesting, they claim "Unlimited internet for 6 months" for £20. The fine print then reads (as per the/. story) "This Booster comes with a fair use policy of 500MB a month.". Comparatively speaking that actually isn't a bad deal, but is quite simply not unlimited - I'm rather tired of this kind of very blatant false advertising; at least the pay monthly plans are upfront about £x for y MB/month.
I've made a complaint to the ASA, and I suggest any other UK residents reading this do the same.
Which is, frankly, stupid. Either they're willing to offer genuinely unlimited data transfer (within the inherent capabilities of the network), in which case it doesn't matter which device is using it, or they are only willing to offer 'x' GB per month, but they slap on an "unlimited" sticker and hope that the provided hardware keeps you within their unwritten limits. If they aren't willing to offer unlimited data transfer, they shouldn't be allowed to advertise unlimited data transfer, simple as that.
Wishful thinking, I know, but it'd be nice if they were just up-front and treated their customers with a little respect, for once.
As I said further up, that reasoning simply shows their "unlimited" plan for the fraud that it is - all they are really saying by that is that you can have unlimited data if and only if you promise not to actually use it. If they were actually willing to give you "unlimited" data, then it wouldn't matter which device was using it. What they are, in fact, saying is that it's a marketing term only offered because they hope it can't be tested with the hardware provided.
If they think you can't use over 'x' GB per month on an iPhone (a bet they are obviously making, otherwise they wouldn't differentiate iPhone from laptop), set the highest plan cap at 'x' GB (maybe plus 10% just to be sure) and let users do what they damn well please with it. The iPhone users would still get all the data they could eat, and those who want to tether could do so up to the limit that they'd already paid for without overly taxing the network from 'unlimited' use.
If, on the other hand, they actually decided to let you use unlimited data on the iPhone, why the hell couldn't you use that same allocation on your laptop? I'd be tempted to max out the connection 24/7 (only using the phone, of course - wouldn't want to breach their TOS) just on principle, if I had one of those plans.
A "tethering fee" is, to put it bluntly, a stupid concept - if you've been sold a certain allocation of monthly data transfer, you have every right to use that allocation, by phone or by laptop. If your contract states you can use 2GB (or if it states "unlimited", for that matter), but they only wrote the contract in that way because they hoped that the limitations of a handheld device would prevent you from actually using your full entitlement, then they have nobody to blame but themselves if people do start causing problems by having the gall to use up the data they paid for.
Any idea what kind of file size causes the throttling to kick in? I'm surprised it's something as low as tens of MBs. My phone's browser has a little transfer monitor in the corner and most "basic" non-mobile pages clock in at over 1MB, and sometimes up to 5 or 6MB. A throttle set that low could easily interfere with general browsing.
For comparison, that handset came from Three UK, whose plan offers "unlimited" data with a 1GB "fair use" allowance. The false advertising irks me, but speeds tend to be good, and it managed to sustain four laptops over a WiFi tether for a few days when the proper net connection went down.
A quick skim of the article didn't reveal his age, but from the picture I'd guess mid-late 50s; there's every chance that his (presumably) adult children support him in this and would be happy to see him attempt to fulfil his dreams rather than stagnate, even at some significant risk.
The shame is that the companies seem to feel that it's an all or nothing choice. Flash up a big red warning that states "Unsupported software" if you must, but give me the option to use the hardware freely.
Thanks for that - looks like they've done a pretty good job of closing up the UK/US price disparity as well; as someone who had zero interest in the app store before seeing this Slashdot article, I can categorically say that the marketing has worked - I'm actually fairly impressed!
Apologies for replying to myself, but it'd be useful if someone could post the USD prices for comparison - see if they're trying to implement regional price differences (over and above the necessary exchange rate + taxes) or not.
Having just downloaded the update, I find the pricing very interesting. I'm in the UK at the moment, so YMMV if you're elsewhere, but Apple's own software is significantly cheaper on the App store than on DVD from the normal Apple store. I actually used Aperture (Apple's pro photo application) as an example yesterday of something we wouldn't be seeing on the app store - turns out that not only was I wrong, but they've given it a major price cut: £173 for a boxed copy, or £44.99 for a download on the app store. Similarly, iLife sells for £46, but the three component apps are £8.99 each (so £27 total) on the app store. iWork follows the same template: £72 boxed, or £11.99 each for the three apps that it's formed from.
A quick browse through makes it fairly clear that the pricing is rather disparate at the moment - I expect it'll settle down as people have a bit more experience with the store - but the thing that surprises me is the quantity of software at £11.99 or so; some of it seems overpriced, some of it seems reasonable, but in either case I absolutely wasn't expecting that price point to be so popular. It seems too high for a basic utility which may or may not be better than the best OSS offering, and too low for a serious application (although Apple's decision to place their office applications at that price means maybe it is high enough for serious software if they plan to make it up in volume). Whether it survives is anyone's guess, though.
As long as the App store remains a supplement to a general purpose OS, I don't mind too much. It's only really an issue on iOS, where they actively block installations from outside the store - as it stands on OSX it's no different to Steam.
If anything, I'd expect to see "The Google App store for Mac and Windows" come along in the not too distant future, with its own integrated purchasing, backup, and installation infrastructure.
The challenge I linked allows anyone with a claim of "paranormal ability" to design their own scientific test, to be agreed upon by the foundation. Once agreement is reached, the person is tested under supervision by a panel of impartial experts. Theoretically, they then show an astonishing ability, get a nice bundle of cash, and science is greatly advanced by studying what they can do. So far, though, the result has invariably been that the participant looks slightly sheepish when their 'powers' fail to function in the preliminary test.
I always think it's kind of a shame, actually - sceptical as I am, I'd quite like to see some amazing new phenomenon that we can't yet explain.
Firstly, that bears little relation to what I said. Even taking your post at face value, the fact is that we "living things" still do perceive the past but not the future with the senses currently known by science - if it is discovered that we can also perceive the future, it will be above and beyond our current sensory experience, hence ESP. But anyway, we're really just arguing semantics here.
The world just exists in 4 dimensions; it doesn't change.
Slashdot Mirror
Insurance and other higher-value necessities are also often much cheaper online, not to mention that the wealth of information available can help to save money (or earn more) in ways other than simply lower prices - free DIY guides, or wider job searches, for example.
What age group is this exactly? I'm in my 20s and whilst I don't know anyone without a mobile phone, I still don't know anyone whose given up their landline either. I just don't know a single person without one.
Everyone I know has a land line, nobody I know uses it for calls - they only pay they line rental because it's a pre-requisite for internet access. I don't have any of my friends' landline numbers stored in my phone, and even if I did they'd inferior to mobiles: semi-regular changes as people move between houses, plus the fact that you just have to call their mobile if they're out of the house anyway. Landlines are, to me, the pipes that net traffic is supplied through, nothing more.
I don't actually mind this state of affairs, though; paying a bit for the infrastructure seems reasonable, whether you're using it for voice or data. Admittedly in the particular case of this article, those who don't already have net access are likely to be the types who do already have a landline for voice calls, but It's worth pointing out that saying "everyone has a landline, so it's not part of the cost of net access" is somewhat circular when those landlines are in many cases only for net access.
The one thing I haven't seen questioned about Wikileaks is the validity of the information. Sure, the accusations fly about bias, whether their goals are morally defensible, whether Assange's alleged sexual proclivities will damage their reputation, and so forth, but even the organisations affected seem to begrudgingly accept that the information is accurate - I'm expecting this release to be similar.
Interestingly, it might even help to quell complaints about an anti-US bias. I've heard a lot of criticism about how they don't dare to say a word against powerful Russian billionaires - it seems that releasing Swiss bank data may well change that.
Whether or not they have used Linux in the past, it seems like the kind of thing that a CS student (even a first year) should be more than capable of handling for themselves. Sure, teach them about the architecture, or give them tasks that will require them to learn more advanced features of the OS, but I'd worry if the submitter really needs to teach the "major ins and outs of the Linux terminal and GUI" to a bunch of prospective computer scientists.
Obviously you didn't click through any of the links I offered.
Err, unless my brain is misfiring to an unusual extent today, I don't see any links in your GP post.
...introducing something completely new (instead of, say, enhancing and throwing their weight behind Ogg/Vorbis, which in itself would be somewhat irresponsible if less so) seems really crazy.
I pretty much agree with the rest of your post, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that WebM actually does use Vorbis audio and a Matroska container. I hadn't previously heard of the VP8 video codec, but Google apparently placed all the patents in the public domain, open sourced their implementation, and licensed the specification under Creative Commons.
In light of all that, I'm inclined to support it over H.264, despite the fact I hadn't actually heard of it before I saw this article.
This code-signing thing is about the ability to create new code, not access existing code as I understand it. Am I wrong? (If so, please show me.)
You are not wrong, but I believe Sony's argument is that (as well as allowing the creation of new code) these keys will make it easy to dump and repackage existing copyrighted code in such a way that it can be easily copied and played, presumably on unmodified systems.
Sony's attempt to ban the tool (the encryption keys) regardless of legitimate uses, rather than going after the actual copyright infringers who happen to be making use of that tool is asinine, but who knows which way the courts will side on this one. If they do decide to ban the use of the keys, they may as well follow up by banning sharpies, DVD burners, and any other useful tool that happens to also be usable for copyright infringement.
I was bored, but I still couldn't bring myself to do an "other body parts" one.
Again, what's the incentive for either end to reduce those margins?
In theory, to offer superior value to the competitor, thus enticing more customers and therefore making more profit overall despite reduced margins.
It's economics 101, but it does, of course, carry an awful lot of assumptions about non-collusion, informed consumers, and so on.
Which is where this technique comes in. I thought ReCaptcha was going in that direction anyway, since it's used to transcribe old books that couldn't otherwise be OCR'd? Admittedly the crack is not a good thing, and I can't RTFA since it's slashdotted so it may be the case that they've found a way to circumvent rather than solve the captcha, but perhaps the spammers have actually done useful work in improving the accuracy of OCR technology for us?
The tech support guys are moderately well paid by Indian standards, since they have a marketable skill: English language ability.
Simply matching characters on a screen to characters on a keyboard is completely unskilled, and thus evidently nets correspondingly lower pay.
I've made a complaint to the ASA [asa.org.uk], and I suggest any other UK residents reading this do the same.
My mistake - that should've been Ofcom (or perhaps Consumer Direct), not the ASA.
Interesting, they claim "Unlimited internet for 6 months" for £20. The fine print then reads (as per the /. story) "This Booster comes with a fair use policy of 500MB a month.". Comparatively speaking that actually isn't a bad deal, but is quite simply not unlimited - I'm rather tired of this kind of very blatant false advertising; at least the pay monthly plans are upfront about £x for y MB/month.
I've made a complaint to the ASA, and I suggest any other UK residents reading this do the same.
Which is, frankly, stupid. Either they're willing to offer genuinely unlimited data transfer (within the inherent capabilities of the network), in which case it doesn't matter which device is using it, or they are only willing to offer 'x' GB per month, but they slap on an "unlimited" sticker and hope that the provided hardware keeps you within their unwritten limits. If they aren't willing to offer unlimited data transfer, they shouldn't be allowed to advertise unlimited data transfer, simple as that.
Wishful thinking, I know, but it'd be nice if they were just up-front and treated their customers with a little respect, for once.
As I said further up, that reasoning simply shows their "unlimited" plan for the fraud that it is - all they are really saying by that is that you can have unlimited data if and only if you promise not to actually use it. If they were actually willing to give you "unlimited" data, then it wouldn't matter which device was using it. What they are, in fact, saying is that it's a marketing term only offered because they hope it can't be tested with the hardware provided.
If they think you can't use over 'x' GB per month on an iPhone (a bet they are obviously making, otherwise they wouldn't differentiate iPhone from laptop), set the highest plan cap at 'x' GB (maybe plus 10% just to be sure) and let users do what they damn well please with it. The iPhone users would still get all the data they could eat, and those who want to tether could do so up to the limit that they'd already paid for without overly taxing the network from 'unlimited' use.
If, on the other hand, they actually decided to let you use unlimited data on the iPhone, why the hell couldn't you use that same allocation on your laptop? I'd be tempted to max out the connection 24/7 (only using the phone, of course - wouldn't want to breach their TOS) just on principle, if I had one of those plans.
A "tethering fee" is, to put it bluntly, a stupid concept - if you've been sold a certain allocation of monthly data transfer, you have every right to use that allocation, by phone or by laptop. If your contract states you can use 2GB (or if it states "unlimited", for that matter), but they only wrote the contract in that way because they hoped that the limitations of a handheld device would prevent you from actually using your full entitlement, then they have nobody to blame but themselves if people do start causing problems by having the gall to use up the data they paid for.
Any idea what kind of file size causes the throttling to kick in? I'm surprised it's something as low as tens of MBs. My phone's browser has a little transfer monitor in the corner and most "basic" non-mobile pages clock in at over 1MB, and sometimes up to 5 or 6MB. A throttle set that low could easily interfere with general browsing.
For comparison, that handset came from Three UK, whose plan offers "unlimited" data with a 1GB "fair use" allowance. The false advertising irks me, but speeds tend to be good, and it managed to sustain four laptops over a WiFi tether for a few days when the proper net connection went down.
A quick skim of the article didn't reveal his age, but from the picture I'd guess mid-late 50s; there's every chance that his (presumably) adult children support him in this and would be happy to see him attempt to fulfil his dreams rather than stagnate, even at some significant risk.
The shame is that the companies seem to feel that it's an all or nothing choice. Flash up a big red warning that states "Unsupported software" if you must, but give me the option to use the hardware freely.
Thanks for that - looks like they've done a pretty good job of closing up the UK/US price disparity as well; as someone who had zero interest in the app store before seeing this Slashdot article, I can categorically say that the marketing has worked - I'm actually fairly impressed!
Apologies for replying to myself, but it'd be useful if someone could post the USD prices for comparison - see if they're trying to implement regional price differences (over and above the necessary exchange rate + taxes) or not.
Having just downloaded the update, I find the pricing very interesting. I'm in the UK at the moment, so YMMV if you're elsewhere, but Apple's own software is significantly cheaper on the App store than on DVD from the normal Apple store. I actually used Aperture (Apple's pro photo application) as an example yesterday of something we wouldn't be seeing on the app store - turns out that not only was I wrong, but they've given it a major price cut: £173 for a boxed copy, or £44.99 for a download on the app store. Similarly, iLife sells for £46, but the three component apps are £8.99 each (so £27 total) on the app store. iWork follows the same template: £72 boxed, or £11.99 each for the three apps that it's formed from.
A quick browse through makes it fairly clear that the pricing is rather disparate at the moment - I expect it'll settle down as people have a bit more experience with the store - but the thing that surprises me is the quantity of software at £11.99 or so; some of it seems overpriced, some of it seems reasonable, but in either case I absolutely wasn't expecting that price point to be so popular. It seems too high for a basic utility which may or may not be better than the best OSS offering, and too low for a serious application (although Apple's decision to place their office applications at that price means maybe it is high enough for serious software if they plan to make it up in volume). Whether it survives is anyone's guess, though.
As long as the App store remains a supplement to a general purpose OS, I don't mind too much. It's only really an issue on iOS, where they actively block installations from outside the store - as it stands on OSX it's no different to Steam.
If anything, I'd expect to see "The Google App store for Mac and Windows" come along in the not too distant future, with its own integrated purchasing, backup, and installation infrastructure.
The challenge I linked allows anyone with a claim of "paranormal ability" to design their own scientific test, to be agreed upon by the foundation. Once agreement is reached, the person is tested under supervision by a panel of impartial experts. Theoretically, they then show an astonishing ability, get a nice bundle of cash, and science is greatly advanced by studying what they can do. So far, though, the result has invariably been that the participant looks slightly sheepish when their 'powers' fail to function in the preliminary test.
I always think it's kind of a shame, actually - sceptical as I am, I'd quite like to see some amazing new phenomenon that we can't yet explain.
Firstly, that bears little relation to what I said. Even taking your post at face value, the fact is that we "living things" still do perceive the past but not the future with the senses currently known by science - if it is discovered that we can also perceive the future, it will be above and beyond our current sensory experience, hence ESP. But anyway, we're really just arguing semantics here.
The world just exists in 4 dimensions; it doesn't change.
Secondly, entropy begs to differ.