I bought the $5 keyfob for paypal and ebay, (plus it works on my verisign openid provider) and this phishing problem is no longer an issue for me.
They can get my paypal username and password, but they still need the electronic key that only *I* have. I suggest anyone who actually uses paypal get one of these, they are trivial to use and paypal is selling them incredibly cheaply.
Oh, the delicious amusement that struck me at seeing this article about sleep deprivation appear at 3:30AM (Pacific time zone, United States).
Clearly you mean 6:30am, a perfectly valid time for new news, lest ye be disrespecting the Eastern Standard Tribe...
Performing the steps in a system is not prior art to defining that system.
That said, if the "waiter" was following written instructional guidelines on exactly when to start handing out free meals, that's a whole other issue entirely. Those instructions would have a chance at qualifying as prior art.
On your point of "luck" about the GP's claim of speeds, you missed that he said HSDPA, which is sometimes called "3.5g" it's much faster than 3G, it's just similar enough tech to not warrant considering it a new generation of connectivity.
Just wanted to clear that up for anyone following this for bandwidth curiosities.
Why should people who understand voluntarily help these people if it's clear they won't help themselves?
Although I often feel the way you seem to based on your rant, I have been able to take two steps back and observe the unfortunate reality.
We all swim in the same pool and no matter what a person does, it impacts the rest of us in some way. There is no such thing as a person doing something that only hurts them. Even if the effects on the rest of us are minimal, when someone takes a crap on themselves in this pool, eventually it's going to wash off of them and float over to US and we may as well try to prevent that before it happens.
Identify theft, for instance, ultimately costs various middle-men agencies billions of dollars every year. That cost doesn't just magically disappear. It comes back in merchant fees and increased interest rates. It raises the general cost of everything and that most certainly affects you, and me, and everyone else involved in the economy.
Even the most self-centered philosophy would teach you to help others if only to prevent them from hurting you.
It used to be completely free for folks with business accounts like I have. They apparently stopped that promotion but I managed to get mine for free when they were still doing it. Still $5 was awesome compared to verisign's price of around $30. On top of that, I had almost $5 sitting in my paypal balance and no use for it so in my very human mind;) it was basically 75 cents.
Now if someone would just start using OpenID. Almost nothing useful consumes OpenID yet! I have one site that I use for work that does, and one "to do" site, toodledo.com, that I used to use for my iPhone todo lists but even that site is rarely visited. That plus about 1000 blog sites seems to be all that consume it.
Google seems to be preparing to provide an openid, which is rather useless to me since I'd much rather use my secure verisign provider. But I digress. OpenID may not be the best implementation of this kind of single-sign-on service but at least it is getting some attention.
I'm more than ready to trade in my 100's of logins around the web for just one.
I have this verisign pip setup and have a key. It is essentially human delivered asymmetrical authentication. It's great security; plus, it works with the $5 keyfob from PayPal!
It's trivial. It is the same as every other fishing attack. When you login with your OpenID it will forward you to your OpenID provider's page to login. The phishing attack simply forwards you to their OWN OpenID page. They only need to mock up a few common provider pages (AOL, Yahoo?) and that's enough for a phishing scam.
That said, some of the nicer OpenID providers fight against this. Some offer useless features like showing you a picture you selectd out of a huge group of 7 or 8 choices:P but some have real features. For example, verisign has a provider, pip.verisignlabs.com. You have several ways to improve your security with this provider that are all optional. The first and most important is that you can disable that forwarding behavior such that you as a user must login there first before it will ever authorize a website. You then know without a doubt if you're being phished.
But even better than that is that they support those little random number generating key fobs. For $5 I bought one of these from paypal.com. It happens to be exactly the same kind that works with verisign's site as well. So I just registered it into verisign's page. Now when I login to my OpenID my password is a deterrent but even if everyone knew it, they would STILL need my keyfob to log in. After entering my password it requests a 6 digit code which is only available by generating it with the little keyfob. Think asymmetric encryption based on a time oriented physical device. It's very secure. The correct code changes every 30 seconds. Given that it's 6 numbers, it would be incredibly difficult to crack and therefore not a viable target for a cracker/phisher.
If it sounds inconvenient keep it mind that I merely need to visit verisign's page and login once for all the sites that would authenticate against it. On top of that, they offer a firefox plugin for use with the non-forwarding mechanism to give you back that convenience of auto-forwarding with the security that a local client can verify. I haven't tried it though so I can't analyze the difficulty of phishing THAT thing directly.
Now this kind of keyfob thing isn't for everyone. They also allow you to associate your SanDisk U3 enabled security USB keys with the system (all U3 devices are capable of this at least on Windows). And I think there may be one other two factor option.
The greatest part is that this security is offered automatically to any sites consuming OpenID. So now I just hope more places will let me login with an associated openid, because as it is now, my todo list is very secure (toodledo.com). Though at least one important site I visit supports OpenID logins (BaseCamp/GroupHub).
The New York Times, in the meantime, has accused Google of a Microsoft fixation. It's more like Ballmer has a Google fixation. Microsoft really can't stand being second to anybody in any field...
Look, the guy just wants a really efficient way to find more chairs to throw.
Winston, the main character, lived within view of the headquarters of The Party of Oceania which would presumably house Big Brother if he actually existed. The location was called Airstrip One, which according to Winston, used to be known as London.
Aren't there humans doing CAPTCHA? What is the cost there? I think slashdotters focus more on technology, but putting up a cheap and workable system to get humans anywhere to do this is also important. That is what the summary refers to when stating a cost of USD$0.01 per captcha. Using humans, wrangled in one way or another, to solve the captcha.
The point here is that a hacker would rather get 15000 for free, than 100000 for $1000 in a day. The fact that this method is apparently getting 33000 or something, is rather excellent to these people.
That's a good point about BREW. I often forget about BREW since it only shows up on CDMA devices, which are most associated with the rather closed-minded Verizon, and the oft-illegally-operated Sprint. That doesn't negate its validity though. The BREW devices are commonly very locked down and remotely lockable even.
However, I would draw this out as an apparently culture divide between the companies who chose the technologies they chose. GSM is the interoperable tech for the world, it makes sense it would be attractive to people/businesses who support more open platforms. Look around the world, the most open smart devices are GSM phones.
So while there are definitely scary examples, let's remember that the iPhone is A) An apple product and B) a GSM device by nature. Despite Apple's preference for controlled platforms, they are not about platform lock-in. This is an easy mistake to make and a difficult difference to distinguish. Apple benefits from limiting technological differences in their platforms for the sake of providing better support, through improved predictability. They benefit from this at every level of development.
They could maintain that control by saying "If you turn off secure application mode, we can't support your problems any further than helping you reset your phone."
Still, idle speculation on all of this is pretty pointless until real information comes out.
I don't understand people who exclude portables from such comparisons, but for those who realize their validity, don't you think the GameBoy should win this spot?
The DS is by and far the most successful video game machine ever, beating records repeatedly throughout its life cycle, and STILL outselling all the other consoles.
The DS exists because Nintendo made handheld gaming successful and relevant to real developers with the GameBoy.
And personally, my favorite experiences with gaming were on GameBoy and its derivatives.
Spelling it "Windoze" and "M$" just makes me think you're a moron. You're not a moron, are you? Why would you want me to think that? Hey, man, ease up. My bro there sounds like a mature man of 14 wise years. He's just tryin' to lay the truth on you, for real. He ain't gotta do no code review, he got that shizzle memorized, yo. He's pimpin that junk in binary, it ain't even on our level. True talk, he's down with the open source life-style like a mutha. He's the kind of real playa who's got spreadsheets printed out all over his bedsheets, in ODF format for sure.
Microsoft better watch out when he rolls deep with his leet skillz, he'll bust a cap in that closed source shiznit. Word.
Uh hem: This article is about SNOPES.COM not SNOOP.COM. Who let the dawgs out?
Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but where does it say that Apple is not going to allow free app downloads?
It's not that Apple not going to allow free app downloads - the issue is how much Apple will charge to sign your app.
If the charge is anything other than $0, it becomes impractical for third party developers to offer their apps for free.
Apple could easily take the route of S60v3, and allow the conscientious user to disable the security requirement. Furthemore, if they were to copy UIQ3.x then the signing would only matter if you wanted core device access to automated usage of trusted components.
For example, if a malicious app writer could get you to install their app on your phone, they could use it to call 1-900 dialers or spread a virus right from your phone. They could benefit in no way and it wouldn't stop malware authors. Many who create software merely to be a nuisance and cost others money.
They could write an app that stole pics from the cam and uploaded them, spying on you.
A signing system that allowed unsigned apps to do the basic normal things an app could do possibly requiring permission for certain things (like net access or modification of databases such as the contact library) would work great and give the kind of security users should have on any platform anyway.
Of course, it will be a shame if a user is not able to give 100% rights to any app they happen to trust, signature or otherwise. For-pay certification schemes are just dirty, and ineffective in the long run.
Regardless of what they do, the FUD and fear from users is clear that Apple is very successful in getting all the uninformed geeks uproariously panicked about something they don't understand. I'd say that also indicates their success in reaching a market not formerly penetrated in this way with this kind of device. That's a good thing no matter what happens with this particular device.
And as a truly responsible geek, you really should go out and look at the pre-existing signed application schemes before you continue this nonsensical panic. Even if you only look at the ones I've referenced here today (Nokia's S60v3+ and Sony Ericsson's UIQ3.x)
DRM is fine for a subscription service. This is essentially the same idea, but instead of paying a monthly fee, you are seeing ads and presumably generating revenue stream for the company serving you the songs.
The tradeoff is that you have more restrictions on how you can use the music you download.
DRM itself, technologically is severely flawed. The utility of it is not flawed at all, it is in fact, a very good idea in the benefit of the copyright owners. Unfortunately, no matter how good that idea is, nobody has managed to execute it in a way that actually works. The consumers have to deal with questions of compatibility worse than almost any media technology they have ever encountered. The rights of the people are violated by preventing fair use. The copyright holders don't actually get the protection they think they have because the technology is flawed by design. We invent ridiculous laws that are primarily used entirely outside of their original intent (DMCA).
On the topic of fair use and DMCA. I haven't seen anyone musing about the reversal of rights here. If we were to take an optimists view of the DMCA, it would exist to help protect the rights of the copyright owners. But, what of the rights of all people, the largest group? We should have a law that requires any technology to allow for fair use of copyrighted materials without unnecessary hinderance. This law would be supported by original intent for precedent from fair use provisions in the copyright law.
This law would make all DRM in its current form illegal. It would all have to be updated to allow excerpts to be made for whatever use we the people dream up. Furthermore, anti-competition laws should support requiring all DRM schemes, if any should continue to exist, be made usable publicly without license or secret by all potential recipients.
Furthermore, and this is very important: It should be illegal to insinuate any form of ownership over any encumbered artifact, song, document, or otherwise. This is an outright lie. Nobody owns a DRM encumbered song. A term like "purchase song" is a lie. And while I realize I will get arguments about how all copyrighted material is licensed and never owned, I don't really care. The laws are meant to support the people in a fair way. People have come to understand after decades of purchasing music, that they OWN their copy. Let's not forget that personal ownership of property is one of the basic tenets in the foundation of The United States of America. If we are unable to own a copy of a song, then at the very least, we should be clearly instructed and educated on the package in which we receive it, virtual or physical, that we're merely licensed to use the item.
An entire industry is trying to wrest an understanding built through ignorance and convention on the part of both sides of the purchase. It's too late to "go backsies" on this now. So I suggest that all media where the copyright owner wishes to revoke the concept of ownership from the purchaser be treated as the exception, not the rule. This media should require a very obvious and contrasted warning about this ownership in a consumer friendly form. It should not be hidden in legal threats, it should be simple truth:
LICENSE - By paying for this media, the purchaser is not granted ownership of the contents. The purchaser is granted license to consume the contents in a restricted way."
Or something, hopefully even more daunting. Basically, de facto understanding is being exploited by the media companies to benefit their marketing attempts and this should not be allowed. By continuing to insinuate ownership, they are having their cake and eating it too.
Seems like there could be a rather solid market out there to continue the status quo, at least for a while until the HD penetration numbers rise.
"solid market"... "HD Penetration"... ok... are you trying to subconsciously advertise a porn distribution service here!? Because I'd like to know where I should sign...
I completely agree with the parent and wish to add another example: Muse.
I have all of this band's albums, non-DRM, CD distribution. The quality is piss-poor. It's like they recorded it in their garage. But I have seen these guys in concert twice personally, and listened to live recordings. They are phenomenal in concert. While I enjoy listening to the albums, they will never beat the concert experience.
I'm happy to plop down as much as $150 for two tickets to any Muse show that comes through town. I'll never pay $150 for the same time period worth of recorded entertainment, no matter how it's distributed.
Pubtrans is pretty much garbage in most areas. Of course, if you can overcome your huge sense of self worth, you'll find that busses and trains are not nearly as bad as you think, even with the homeless.
But, have you considered, even for a moment, that if regular people, penny pinchers if you will, saw such an undesirable situation in driving, and their money being spent regardless (taxes) that they might push for higher quality public transportation, benefiting everyone?
I realize, as a realistic and cynical person, that it's more likely for people to just spend more to sit alone in their SUV, but at some point there will be a threshold crossed, where tolled roads become so expensive that a person is extremely foolish to avoid solving the problem. Those foolish people can continue to be so, and reduce the overall burden of costs of maintenance for everyone or they can figure out a solution whether it be car pools or public transportation.
I believe you have underestimated the greed factor here.
AT&T operating as an ISP for a recently rolled out fiber project in my area started offering a lower priced plan for more limited speeds and total bandwidth usage per month. The target use is the dial-up user who doesn't see a need for super high speeds and ever expanding promises, but would like a reliable always on connection that could at least support VoIP and such things.
They aren't the ONLY ISP for this fiber rollout, so they do have direct competition in this market. That could explain their willingness to try such a plan.
Or was that rhetorical...?? Then.. eight! Yes eight!
Seriously though, as a universal console owner, I'd peg it at about five 5 star titles, and maybe 10-12 4 star and the rest is a sudden drop like most consoles. It's really the same graph, just... more jagged due to fewer total games. But you know, it has been a year. There are quite a few games on the shelf to look at.
Count the same stats you care about (for whatever reason) for the 360 right now, and then compare to the PS3 in one year.
Also let's not forget how subjective such things are. I enjoy all of the consoles one way or another but for me, the 360 is where I have the most trouble finding games I enjoy. I literally own two games for the console, and have rented a number of others. I own 5 for the PS3 (where my metric comes from) as well as anumber of PS2 and PS1 games. Oh I do own one original Xbox game so I guess you can add that one in.
18 Wii games + 20 VC games...
29 DS games...
8 PSP games:)
And to answer your question, yes I do live in console gaming heaven right now hehe
How many people have asked seemingly appropriate questions about "How do I use 45 usb devices at once?!" "How will I hook up 4 monitors to this?!" and my personal favorite "Derr where's the microphone?"
Ugh. Where have you all been? This is a subnotebook. This is not meant to be your only computer. This is meant to slip into your folio for your bike ride to the cafe. This is meant for travelers who are not trying to render video on the airplane. There are uses for this computer. It is not intended to replace your desktop. Isn't that obvious?
Now, besides the high likelihood that the thing has a built in mic like all other macs, you have bluetooth. That's B L U E T O O T H. It's this fantastic new technology that lets you wirelessly connect a headset to a device, along with a variety of other features nobody ever uses.
If you're wondering how to hook this up to your monitors you're DOING IT WRONG. The *only* reason it has a dvi port is for connecting to a projector! And if you're really savvy you've got yourself a bluetooth enabled projector that lets you export your screen. Hell, I have had 2 different cell phones that worked with such projectors... really, the slashdot crowd is sadly uninformed about new tech.
Now for those who have seen and/or held the device. I wonder, does it have a fan? I'd be enamored if not. Even so, it's a pretty slick superlight machine, and I'd love to be sliding into my folio for the ride to work at... wherever I feel like working:)
Oh, and before I go, I cannot post on MWSF day without pointing out where we are in the The Apple Product Cycle:
The haters offer their assessment. The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like, "Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?" become matters of life and death.
Actually, that's exactly what Sony's BRAVIA system does. Get a Bravia tv, a/v receiver, and blu-ray player, then they all communicate. It's limited functionally for now, but the pathway is there, and the example is in homes as we discuss this.
Besides the technological capability of doing this all in IR. I don't know why you'd want to propagate something with such limits (line of sight) when a standards based RF solution exists. A remote need not be anything more than a HID device. There is already a standard profile for this that many mobile phones implement. Bluetooth was invented for this kind of thing anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Subvocal embedded comm links, and HUDs either in contacts or also embedded. Along with everything else from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
I bought the $5 keyfob for paypal and ebay, (plus it works on my verisign openid provider) and this phishing problem is no longer an issue for me.
They can get my paypal username and password, but they still need the electronic key that only *I* have. I suggest anyone who actually uses paypal get one of these, they are trivial to use and paypal is selling them incredibly cheaply.
Clearly you mean 6:30am, a perfectly valid time for new news, lest ye be disrespecting the Eastern Standard Tribe...
Performing the steps in a system is not prior art to defining that system.
That said, if the "waiter" was following written instructional guidelines on exactly when to start handing out free meals, that's a whole other issue entirely. Those instructions would have a chance at qualifying as prior art.
On your point of "luck" about the GP's claim of speeds, you missed that he said HSDPA, which is sometimes called "3.5g" it's much faster than 3G, it's just similar enough tech to not warrant considering it a new generation of connectivity.
Just wanted to clear that up for anyone following this for bandwidth curiosities.
They are obviously copying the QNX developer attraction marketing ploy. http://www.thepocketgeek.com/
Although I often feel the way you seem to based on your rant, I have been able to take two steps back and observe the unfortunate reality.
We all swim in the same pool and no matter what a person does, it impacts the rest of us in some way. There is no such thing as a person doing something that only hurts them. Even if the effects on the rest of us are minimal, when someone takes a crap on themselves in this pool, eventually it's going to wash off of them and float over to US and we may as well try to prevent that before it happens.
Identify theft, for instance, ultimately costs various middle-men agencies billions of dollars every year. That cost doesn't just magically disappear. It comes back in merchant fees and increased interest rates. It raises the general cost of everything and that most certainly affects you, and me, and everyone else involved in the economy.
Even the most self-centered philosophy would teach you to help others if only to prevent them from hurting you.
Now if someone would just start using OpenID. Almost nothing useful consumes OpenID yet! I have one site that I use for work that does, and one "to do" site, toodledo.com, that I used to use for my iPhone todo lists but even that site is rarely visited. That plus about 1000 blog sites seems to be all that consume it.
Google seems to be preparing to provide an openid, which is rather useless to me since I'd much rather use my secure verisign provider. But I digress. OpenID may not be the best implementation of this kind of single-sign-on service but at least it is getting some attention.
I'm more than ready to trade in my 100's of logins around the web for just one.
I have this verisign pip setup and have a key. It is essentially human delivered asymmetrical authentication. It's great security; plus, it works with the $5 keyfob from PayPal!
It's trivial. It is the same as every other fishing attack. When you login with your OpenID it will forward you to your OpenID provider's page to login. The phishing attack simply forwards you to their OWN OpenID page. They only need to mock up a few common provider pages (AOL, Yahoo?) and that's enough for a phishing scam.
:P but some have real features. For example, verisign has a provider, pip.verisignlabs.com. You have several ways to improve your security with this provider that are all optional. The first and most important is that you can disable that forwarding behavior such that you as a user must login there first before it will ever authorize a website. You then know without a doubt if you're being phished.
That said, some of the nicer OpenID providers fight against this. Some offer useless features like showing you a picture you selectd out of a huge group of 7 or 8 choices
But even better than that is that they support those little random number generating key fobs. For $5 I bought one of these from paypal.com. It happens to be exactly the same kind that works with verisign's site as well. So I just registered it into verisign's page. Now when I login to my OpenID my password is a deterrent but even if everyone knew it, they would STILL need my keyfob to log in. After entering my password it requests a 6 digit code which is only available by generating it with the little keyfob. Think asymmetric encryption based on a time oriented physical device. It's very secure. The correct code changes every 30 seconds. Given that it's 6 numbers, it would be incredibly difficult to crack and therefore not a viable target for a cracker/phisher.
If it sounds inconvenient keep it mind that I merely need to visit verisign's page and login once for all the sites that would authenticate against it. On top of that, they offer a firefox plugin for use with the non-forwarding mechanism to give you back that convenience of auto-forwarding with the security that a local client can verify. I haven't tried it though so I can't analyze the difficulty of phishing THAT thing directly.
Now this kind of keyfob thing isn't for everyone. They also allow you to associate your SanDisk U3 enabled security USB keys with the system (all U3 devices are capable of this at least on Windows). And I think there may be one other two factor option.
The greatest part is that this security is offered automatically to any sites consuming OpenID. So now I just hope more places will let me login with an associated openid, because as it is now, my todo list is very secure (toodledo.com). Though at least one important site I visit supports OpenID logins (BaseCamp/GroupHub).
Look, the guy just wants a really efficient way to find more chairs to throw.
Winston, the main character, lived within view of the headquarters of The Party of Oceania which would presumably house Big Brother if he actually existed. The location was called Airstrip One, which according to Winston, used to be known as London.
Big Brother was British.
The point here is that a hacker would rather get 15000 for free, than 100000 for $1000 in a day. The fact that this method is apparently getting 33000 or something, is rather excellent to these people.
That's a good point about BREW. I often forget about BREW since it only shows up on CDMA devices, which are most associated with the rather closed-minded Verizon, and the oft-illegally-operated Sprint. That doesn't negate its validity though. The BREW devices are commonly very locked down and remotely lockable even.
However, I would draw this out as an apparently culture divide between the companies who chose the technologies they chose. GSM is the interoperable tech for the world, it makes sense it would be attractive to people/businesses who support more open platforms. Look around the world, the most open smart devices are GSM phones.
So while there are definitely scary examples, let's remember that the iPhone is A) An apple product and B) a GSM device by nature. Despite Apple's preference for controlled platforms, they are not about platform lock-in. This is an easy mistake to make and a difficult difference to distinguish. Apple benefits from limiting technological differences in their platforms for the sake of providing better support, through improved predictability. They benefit from this at every level of development.
They could maintain that control by saying "If you turn off secure application mode, we can't support your problems any further than helping you reset your phone."
Still, idle speculation on all of this is pretty pointless until real information comes out.
I don't understand people who exclude portables from such comparisons, but for those who realize their validity, don't you think the GameBoy should win this spot?
The DS is by and far the most successful video game machine ever, beating records repeatedly throughout its life cycle, and STILL outselling all the other consoles.
The DS exists because Nintendo made handheld gaming successful and relevant to real developers with the GameBoy.
And personally, my favorite experiences with gaming were on GameBoy and its derivatives.
Just my 2c..
Microsoft better watch out when he rolls deep with his leet skillz, he'll bust a cap in that closed source shiznit. Word.
Uh hem: This article is about SNOPES.COM not SNOOP.COM. Who let the dawgs out?
It's not that Apple not going to allow free app downloads - the issue is how much Apple will charge to sign your app.
If the charge is anything other than $0, it becomes impractical for third party developers to offer their apps for free.
Apple could easily take the route of S60v3, and allow the conscientious user to disable the security requirement. Furthemore, if they were to copy UIQ3.x then the signing would only matter if you wanted core device access to automated usage of trusted components.
For example, if a malicious app writer could get you to install their app on your phone, they could use it to call 1-900 dialers or spread a virus right from your phone. They could benefit in no way and it wouldn't stop malware authors. Many who create software merely to be a nuisance and cost others money.
They could write an app that stole pics from the cam and uploaded them, spying on you.
A signing system that allowed unsigned apps to do the basic normal things an app could do possibly requiring permission for certain things (like net access or modification of databases such as the contact library) would work great and give the kind of security users should have on any platform anyway.
Of course, it will be a shame if a user is not able to give 100% rights to any app they happen to trust, signature or otherwise. For-pay certification schemes are just dirty, and ineffective in the long run.
Regardless of what they do, the FUD and fear from users is clear that Apple is very successful in getting all the uninformed geeks uproariously panicked about something they don't understand. I'd say that also indicates their success in reaching a market not formerly penetrated in this way with this kind of device. That's a good thing no matter what happens with this particular device.
And as a truly responsible geek, you really should go out and look at the pre-existing signed application schemes before you continue this nonsensical panic. Even if you only look at the ones I've referenced here today (Nokia's S60v3+ and Sony Ericsson's UIQ3.x)
DRM is fine for a subscription service. This is essentially the same idea, but instead of paying a monthly fee, you are seeing ads and presumably generating revenue stream for the company serving you the songs.
The tradeoff is that you have more restrictions on how you can use the music you download.
DRM itself, technologically is severely flawed. The utility of it is not flawed at all, it is in fact, a very good idea in the benefit of the copyright owners. Unfortunately, no matter how good that idea is, nobody has managed to execute it in a way that actually works. The consumers have to deal with questions of compatibility worse than almost any media technology they have ever encountered. The rights of the people are violated by preventing fair use. The copyright holders don't actually get the protection they think they have because the technology is flawed by design. We invent ridiculous laws that are primarily used entirely outside of their original intent (DMCA).
On the topic of fair use and DMCA. I haven't seen anyone musing about the reversal of rights here. If we were to take an optimists view of the DMCA, it would exist to help protect the rights of the copyright owners. But, what of the rights of all people, the largest group? We should have a law that requires any technology to allow for fair use of copyrighted materials without unnecessary hinderance. This law would be supported by original intent for precedent from fair use provisions in the copyright law.
This law would make all DRM in its current form illegal. It would all have to be updated to allow excerpts to be made for whatever use we the people dream up. Furthermore, anti-competition laws should support requiring all DRM schemes, if any should continue to exist, be made usable publicly without license or secret by all potential recipients.
Furthermore, and this is very important: It should be illegal to insinuate any form of ownership over any encumbered artifact, song, document, or otherwise. This is an outright lie. Nobody owns a DRM encumbered song. A term like "purchase song" is a lie. And while I realize I will get arguments about how all copyrighted material is licensed and never owned, I don't really care. The laws are meant to support the people in a fair way. People have come to understand after decades of purchasing music, that they OWN their copy. Let's not forget that personal ownership of property is one of the basic tenets in the foundation of The United States of America. If we are unable to own a copy of a song, then at the very least, we should be clearly instructed and educated on the package in which we receive it, virtual or physical, that we're merely licensed to use the item.
An entire industry is trying to wrest an understanding built through ignorance and convention on the part of both sides of the purchase. It's too late to "go backsies" on this now. So I suggest that all media where the copyright owner wishes to revoke the concept of ownership from the purchaser be treated as the exception, not the rule. This media should require a very obvious and contrasted warning about this ownership in a consumer friendly form. It should not be hidden in legal threats, it should be simple truth:
LICENSE - By paying for this media, the purchaser is not granted ownership of the contents. The purchaser is granted license to consume the contents in a restricted way."
Or something, hopefully even more daunting. Basically, de facto understanding is being exploited by the media companies to benefit their marketing attempts and this should not be allowed. By continuing to insinuate ownership, they are having their cake and eating it too.
"solid market" ... "HD Penetration" ... ok... are you trying to subconsciously advertise a porn distribution service here!? Because I'd like to know where I should sign...
I completely agree with the parent and wish to add another example: Muse.
I have all of this band's albums, non-DRM, CD distribution. The quality is piss-poor. It's like they recorded it in their garage. But I have seen these guys in concert twice personally, and listened to live recordings. They are phenomenal in concert. While I enjoy listening to the albums, they will never beat the concert experience.
I'm happy to plop down as much as $150 for two tickets to any Muse show that comes through town. I'll never pay $150 for the same time period worth of recorded entertainment, no matter how it's distributed.
Pubtrans is pretty much garbage in most areas. Of course, if you can overcome your huge sense of self worth, you'll find that busses and trains are not nearly as bad as you think, even with the homeless.
But, have you considered, even for a moment, that if regular people, penny pinchers if you will, saw such an undesirable situation in driving, and their money being spent regardless (taxes) that they might push for higher quality public transportation, benefiting everyone?
I realize, as a realistic and cynical person, that it's more likely for people to just spend more to sit alone in their SUV, but at some point there will be a threshold crossed, where tolled roads become so expensive that a person is extremely foolish to avoid solving the problem. Those foolish people can continue to be so, and reduce the overall burden of costs of maintenance for everyone or they can figure out a solution whether it be car pools or public transportation.
I believe you have underestimated the greed factor here.
AT&T operating as an ISP for a recently rolled out fiber project in my area started offering a lower priced plan for more limited speeds and total bandwidth usage per month. The target use is the dial-up user who doesn't see a need for super high speeds and ever expanding promises, but would like a reliable always on connection that could at least support VoIP and such things.
They aren't the ONLY ISP for this fiber rollout, so they do have direct competition in this market. That could explain their willingness to try such a plan.
Just in case you needed an example...
Seven.
.. eight! Yes eight!
:)
Or was that rhetorical...?? Then
Seriously though, as a universal console owner, I'd peg it at about five 5 star titles, and maybe 10-12 4 star and the rest is a sudden drop like most consoles. It's really the same graph, just... more jagged due to fewer total games. But you know, it has been a year. There are quite a few games on the shelf to look at.
Count the same stats you care about (for whatever reason) for the 360 right now, and then compare to the PS3 in one year.
Also let's not forget how subjective such things are. I enjoy all of the consoles one way or another but for me, the 360 is where I have the most trouble finding games I enjoy. I literally own two games for the console, and have rented a number of others. I own 5 for the PS3 (where my metric comes from) as well as anumber of PS2 and PS1 games. Oh I do own one original Xbox game so I guess you can add that one in.
18 Wii games + 20 VC games...
29 DS games...
8 PSP games
And to answer your question, yes I do live in console gaming heaven right now hehe
Ugh. Where have you all been? This is a subnotebook. This is not meant to be your only computer. This is meant to slip into your folio for your bike ride to the cafe. This is meant for travelers who are not trying to render video on the airplane. There are uses for this computer. It is not intended to replace your desktop. Isn't that obvious?
Now, besides the high likelihood that the thing has a built in mic like all other macs, you have bluetooth. That's B L U E T O O T H. It's this fantastic new technology that lets you wirelessly connect a headset to a device, along with a variety of other features nobody ever uses.
If you're wondering how to hook this up to your monitors you're DOING IT WRONG. The *only* reason it has a dvi port is for connecting to a projector! And if you're really savvy you've got yourself a bluetooth enabled projector that lets you export your screen. Hell, I have had 2 different cell phones that worked with such projectors... really, the slashdot crowd is sadly uninformed about new tech.
Now for those who have seen and/or held the device. I wonder, does it have a fan? I'd be enamored if not. Even so, it's a pretty slick superlight machine, and I'd love to be sliding into my folio for the ride to work at... wherever I feel like working
Oh, and before I go, I cannot post on MWSF day without pointing out where we are in the The Apple Product Cycle: The haters offer their assessment. The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like, "Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?" become matters of life and death.
Actually, that's exactly what Sony's BRAVIA system does. Get a Bravia tv, a/v receiver, and blu-ray player, then they all communicate. It's limited functionally for now, but the pathway is there, and the example is in homes as we discuss this.
Besides the technological capability of doing this all in IR. I don't know why you'd want to propagate something with such limits (line of sight) when a standards based RF solution exists. A remote need not be anything more than a HID device. There is already a standard profile for this that many mobile phones implement. Bluetooth was invented for this kind of thing anyway.