I didn't say is was affordable enough, but IMO it's worth waiting it out - if the networks save their money they can deploy a nice 4G infrastructure and make some money on useful service. If they go for 3G now they'll be out of pocket and at about the time they expect their 3G plans to come to fruition 4G will be full-deployment ready and they'll already have blown the cash on an inferior setup. 3G is a better network than 2G, but not enough better if 4G will be available in a few years.
Lets just say you were to use your phone for internet access (via GPRS or something), the majority of mobile providers' internet costs are huge (as you would expect since most of them charge by the kilobyte) so it can't really be used for that.
World != US.
I use my phone for the net all the time - it's got a full version of Opera on it and it's more portable and affordable than the laptop which I don't have. Here in the UK the GPRS charges on my O2 contract are included in my package with the voice messages, SMS and MMS. Since going over from PAYG to contract I've never paid them anything more than my 25/month standard line rental. Also, even if the phone didn't have the storage a laptop card with a direct connection to the 4G network (as T-Mobile are doing with 3G in the UK now) would give you nice fast internet even out of WiFi range. Finally, if the bandwidth is so high the charges to use 1% of that bandwidth would be quite low, and that'd still give a mobile/laptop a faster speed than my DSL landline.
You don't want 3G. We have it in the UK and it sucks - the only thing it's good for is cheap calls (massive extra bandwidth = voice calls not taking as much network percentage = less money needed). The data rates aren't as good as advertised and don't have the coverage of the perfectly adequate GPRS (over 98% UK coverage for 2G, IIRC). The handsets are also uber-bricks with no features you can't get a better version of on a 2G smartphone like the P900 or Nokia 6600.
If you have 3G it will fail (as it is doing here) and the networks, having lost billions on the 3G network contracts from the gov't, will not be enthusiastic about spending yet more on 4G which is fast enough to be really useful.
Facial recognition is probably a more plausible reason than iris scanning - apparently it has very good ID rates now, and can be done very stealthily. AFAIK all methods of eye scan still need extremely close proximity to the camera but will get a definite result whereas facial recognition might pull up 5 possible matches from a random security camera photo. Seems to me it'd be easy to do with two standard digital pics and it'd be more useful for tracking people since they're on many more security cameras in a day than eye scans.
If you catch someone, fingerprint check. If you're looking for them, face check from CCTV footage across the state. It seems to make sense.
This is a syndrome I really don't get, and it's worryingly common. Intelligent people go into gibbering moron mode when they see technology, and I don't know why. Nobody would ask how to use a CD player or VCR - you put the media in the space - why do people assume a floppy is more complex?
A classic example that happened to me this week was when I got out my iPod to put some music on - a friend asked my how the hell I knew how to use that thing. I pointed out it has play, pause and skip track buttons just like her Sony Discman she uses regularly but she simply refused to believe it was simple just because it's vaguely computer-like.
It's unfortunate, however, that DBs like this have a habit of publicising vulnerabilities without telling the software authors first. IMO if you find a problem you should tell the software dev team, give them a chance to fix it and then publicise the vulnerability along with the patch, minimising the impact that crackers could have with the info.
I do agree that if the software developers are uncooperative then publicise the software problems, worst case scenario with OSS someone else can patch it. What irritates me is when people make a problem public without giving anyone a chance to get a fix out the door.
USB keyboards and mice do work on the Xbox in certain standard setup screens and the standard, unmodded system is running a custom Win2k kernel, so it is probably possible. Whether it is doable without access to the source may be another matter, however.
But mod chips were really designed with one thing in mind - allowing you to circumvent the in-built protection of consoles, to play copied games.
They were designed to circumvent the protection, but they are not neccesarily for use with copied games. Imports are a big thing - they're out earlier and usually cheaper, I've had Final Fantasy XI since well before Christmas but here in the UK it won't be out for a long while yet. As well as imports there is the issue that's just come along with this generation of consoles - they're basically PCs so by unlocking that capability in an Xbox and adding a 120GB drive you have a nice media server with built in TV-out, front USB ports and at $3.50 (or whatever MS is selling them at now) they're a damn good deal, much cheaper than a full PC.
it's convenient to have someone to do distribution, marketing, etc. for you
But for the sake of that convenience to some, who get multi-million dollar contracts, the others are essentially shut out and if they do get signed they get miniscule royalties. It'd be easy enough to do something like combine the iTunes store with audioscrobbler thus handling advertising and distribution, with the added bonus of lowering prices and increasing profits to the artists.
I didn't think of how hard the legal issues would be to follow up for the individuals without the industry, but do they really get much benefit from the RIAA suits anyway? If not then why would them not chasing every last illegal copy result in less money?
Maybe a dumb question, but how do I tell if a company is an RIAA member or not? It'd be nice to have a page I can just type a label into and see if they're RIAA or not:-)
The point is that copyright infringement is a crime, and the recording industry associations have the duty to find and prosecute those who commit it. (emphasis mine)
Why? The recording industry association don't create music, the recording industry association aren't needed to get the music out to the public anymore, the recording industry don't give the settlements to the artists and finally the recording industry lobby the fines up to rediculous amounts that would bankrupt any normal person and then offer to settle displaying that they don't need the fines to be as high as they are (the average settlement is just a few percent of the original charge, if they can afford to carry on this way then the fines are disporportionate) and that they are purely extorting money since nobody can afford to risk the full fine.
If the artists submitted the songs straight to ITMS, Magnatune, Napster or a similar system they could sell them at half the price and still make a greater amount since the middlemen who take most of the profit are gone. In the past artists couldn't set up CD presses or advertise themselves, but now they just need some studio time and a website - the RIAA and co. are redundant. With this system the artists could also, quite fairly, sue copyright infringers for the value that they deprived the artist of (say $50 per song to account for repeated uploads, and force them to pay legal fees if they loose).
If there's a gaping hole in this argument feel free to point it out, but I don't see anything that the artists can't do themselves/pay for independently rather than signing their rights to the RIAA's companies.
This might sound naive, but can the US gov't still take my moon land when I am in the UK and I bought it from a seller in the UK (it is legit, I checked it all out and it's not one of those fake ones)? I never really thought of the consequences, and to be honest I got the land more for geek factor than as a serious investment, but it would be irritating if I lost it nonetheless.
K3B is as good in terms of ease of use and GUI, but in my experience it makes about 5 times the number of coasters as Nero. Maybe just a default setting I forgot to change, but if I didn't see it then your average newbie won't and wasting DVD-Rs isn't cheap.
You're still thinking in terms of 'old linux'. There is no need to learn anything to install Mandrake - it does it automagically (although if you want to configure you can). Many normal Windows users who just use web+email don't want to spend time watching people use Linux and learning the system, yet they are the perfect market since they wouldn't miss any of the features on Windows that geeks like myself do miss (namely Flash MX, Photoshop and games). Let them install with no knowledge and learn to use at their own pace, don't force them to learn first thus convincing them to stick with what they know (Windows) because it's good enough and less effort.
The publicity could work, but to be honest the first thing I thought was 'They got a million from sending email? I can send email!'
I've got just about enough morality not to go into spamming, but it sure it'd be an easy and very lucrative job for a geek that knows what they're doing. I wish I was more unscrupulous.
You'd save $4 and loose 97 channels. Most people would just pay the extra few dollars (I know I would) because it's much better value for money, thus leaving the situation unchanged.
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I didn't say is was affordable enough, but IMO it's worth waiting it out - if the networks save their money they can deploy a nice 4G infrastructure and make some money on useful service. If they go for 3G now they'll be out of pocket and at about the time they expect their 3G plans to come to fruition 4G will be full-deployment ready and they'll already have blown the cash on an inferior setup. 3G is a better network than 2G, but not enough better if 4G will be available in a few years.
Lets just say you were to use your phone for internet access (via GPRS or something), the majority of mobile providers' internet costs are huge (as you would expect since most of them charge by the kilobyte) so it can't really be used for that.
World != US.
I use my phone for the net all the time - it's got a full version of Opera on it and it's more portable and affordable than the laptop which I don't have. Here in the UK the GPRS charges on my O2 contract are included in my package with the voice messages, SMS and MMS. Since going over from PAYG to contract I've never paid them anything more than my 25/month standard line rental. Also, even if the phone didn't have the storage a laptop card with a direct connection to the 4G network (as T-Mobile are doing with 3G in the UK now) would give you nice fast internet even out of WiFi range. Finally, if the bandwidth is so high the charges to use 1% of that bandwidth would be quite low, and that'd still give a mobile/laptop a faster speed than my DSL landline.
You don't want 3G. We have it in the UK and it sucks - the only thing it's good for is cheap calls (massive extra bandwidth = voice calls not taking as much network percentage = less money needed). The data rates aren't as good as advertised and don't have the coverage of the perfectly adequate GPRS (over 98% UK coverage for 2G, IIRC). The handsets are also uber-bricks with no features you can't get a better version of on a 2G smartphone like the P900 or Nokia 6600.
If you have 3G it will fail (as it is doing here) and the networks, having lost billions on the 3G network contracts from the gov't, will not be enthusiastic about spending yet more on 4G which is fast enough to be really useful.
Facial recognition is probably a more plausible reason than iris scanning - apparently it has very good ID rates now, and can be done very stealthily. AFAIK all methods of eye scan still need extremely close proximity to the camera but will get a definite result whereas facial recognition might pull up 5 possible matches from a random security camera photo. Seems to me it'd be easy to do with two standard digital pics and it'd be more useful for tracking people since they're on many more security cameras in a day than eye scans.
If you catch someone, fingerprint check. If you're looking for them, face check from CCTV footage across the state. It seems to make sense.
No, his wardriving program just went out of range of the hotspot. As soon as he drives past another WiFi connection it'll be back up.
While they would be near useless in open warfare, city strikes or even police duties could use them in certain situations.
This is a syndrome I really don't get, and it's worryingly common. Intelligent people go into gibbering moron mode when they see technology, and I don't know why. Nobody would ask how to use a CD player or VCR - you put the media in the space - why do people assume a floppy is more complex?
A classic example that happened to me this week was when I got out my iPod to put some music on - a friend asked my how the hell I knew how to use that thing. I pointed out it has play, pause and skip track buttons just like her Sony Discman she uses regularly but she simply refused to believe it was simple just because it's vaguely computer-like.
Little digital audio player with Microsoft 'Janus' technology.... Meet my digital-in connector =D
Microsoft...meet bash on head from my iPod.
Absolutely great idea :-)
It's unfortunate, however, that DBs like this have a habit of publicising vulnerabilities without telling the software authors first. IMO if you find a problem you should tell the software dev team, give them a chance to fix it and then publicise the vulnerability along with the patch, minimising the impact that crackers could have with the info.
I do agree that if the software developers are uncooperative then publicise the software problems, worst case scenario with OSS someone else can patch it. What irritates me is when people make a problem public without giving anyone a chance to get a fix out the door.
You do realise that the browser you are currently using can be pointed at pr0n when /. gets boring, don't you?
But I thought it was America's duty to liberate people? Now I'm just confused!
USB keyboards and mice do work on the Xbox in certain standard setup screens and the standard, unmodded system is running a custom Win2k kernel, so it is probably possible. Whether it is doable without access to the source may be another matter, however.
But mod chips were really designed with one thing in mind - allowing you to circumvent the in-built protection of consoles, to play copied games.
They were designed to circumvent the protection, but they are not neccesarily for use with copied games. Imports are a big thing - they're out earlier and usually cheaper, I've had Final Fantasy XI since well before Christmas but here in the UK it won't be out for a long while yet. As well as imports there is the issue that's just come along with this generation of consoles - they're basically PCs so by unlocking that capability in an Xbox and adding a 120GB drive you have a nice media server with built in TV-out, front USB ports and at $3.50 (or whatever MS is selling them at now) they're a damn good deal, much cheaper than a full PC.
it's convenient to have someone to do distribution, marketing, etc. for you
But for the sake of that convenience to some, who get multi-million dollar contracts, the others are essentially shut out and if they do get signed they get miniscule royalties. It'd be easy enough to do something like combine the iTunes store with audioscrobbler thus handling advertising and distribution, with the added bonus of lowering prices and increasing profits to the artists.
I didn't think of how hard the legal issues would be to follow up for the individuals without the industry, but do they really get much benefit from the RIAA suits anyway? If not then why would them not chasing every last illegal copy result in less money?
Maybe a dumb question, but how do I tell if a company is an RIAA member or not? It'd be nice to have a page I can just type a label into and see if they're RIAA or not :-)
The point is that copyright infringement is a crime, and the recording industry associations have the duty to find and prosecute those who commit it. (emphasis mine)
Why? The recording industry association don't create music, the recording industry association aren't needed to get the music out to the public anymore, the recording industry don't give the settlements to the artists and finally the recording industry lobby the fines up to rediculous amounts that would bankrupt any normal person and then offer to settle displaying that they don't need the fines to be as high as they are (the average settlement is just a few percent of the original charge, if they can afford to carry on this way then the fines are disporportionate) and that they are purely extorting money since nobody can afford to risk the full fine.
If the artists submitted the songs straight to ITMS, Magnatune, Napster or a similar system they could sell them at half the price and still make a greater amount since the middlemen who take most of the profit are gone. In the past artists couldn't set up CD presses or advertise themselves, but now they just need some studio time and a website - the RIAA and co. are redundant. With this system the artists could also, quite fairly, sue copyright infringers for the value that they deprived the artist of (say $50 per song to account for repeated uploads, and force them to pay legal fees if they loose).
If there's a gaping hole in this argument feel free to point it out, but I don't see anything that the artists can't do themselves/pay for independently rather than signing their rights to the RIAA's companies.
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
What exactly did I say that was idiotic there?
This might sound naive, but can the US gov't still take my moon land when I am in the UK and I bought it from a seller in the UK (it is legit, I checked it all out and it's not one of those fake ones)? I never really thought of the consequences, and to be honest I got the land more for geek factor than as a serious investment, but it would be irritating if I lost it nonetheless.
No, the moon land could be valuable in future. It probably won't, but it could - especially if you buy it for a child and they keep it into adulthood.
A digital image is not going to rise in value because it is not tangible property and it can be easily reproduced.
K3B is as good in terms of ease of use and GUI, but in my experience it makes about 5 times the number of coasters as Nero. Maybe just a default setting I forgot to change, but if I didn't see it then your average newbie won't and wasting DVD-Rs isn't cheap.
You're still thinking in terms of 'old linux'. There is no need to learn anything to install Mandrake - it does it automagically (although if you want to configure you can). Many normal Windows users who just use web+email don't want to spend time watching people use Linux and learning the system, yet they are the perfect market since they wouldn't miss any of the features on Windows that geeks like myself do miss (namely Flash MX, Photoshop and games). Let them install with no knowledge and learn to use at their own pace, don't force them to learn first thus convincing them to stick with what they know (Windows) because it's good enough and less effort.
The publicity could work, but to be honest the first thing I thought was 'They got a million from sending email? I can send email!'
I've got just about enough morality not to go into spamming, but it sure it'd be an easy and very lucrative job for a geek that knows what they're doing. I wish I was more unscrupulous.
You'd save $4 and loose 97 channels. Most people would just pay the extra few dollars (I know I would) because it's much better value for money, thus leaving the situation unchanged.