Rather than setting xsane as setuid, couldn't you add a line to your init script that sets the group of the scanner device to a 'scanner users' group
That would be the incorrect way of setting device permissions. Device permissions should be set in udev (it has been like this for several years now since the static/dev filesystem was more or less abolished).
OpenBSD emails root every night with the results of the daily insecurity check, if it finds anything. One of the things it looks for is new setuid-root binaries. If this had been OpenBSD, then it would have been caught within 24 hours of being installed. I'm surprised Linux distributions don't include something similar already.
My experience of "things that email root every night with security checks" is that generally they trigger on so many false alarms that they are useless. Take logwatch for example - by default it trips regularly for completely innocuous stuff on all but the simplest of systems, and is relatively untweakable.
From the screenshots it looks like they are sort of targetting different devices. OpenMoko is trying to tackle the cellphone/PDA devices, providing a UI that appears to be in a similar vein to Symbian - e.g. each app runs full screen (which is the only sensible way to deal with cellphone sized devices). On the other hand, this appears to look much more like a desktop system, with a fully fledged window manager offering multiple windows, etc. Which leads me to believe this is probably targetted at the larger-than-a-phone-but-smaller-than-a-traditional -tablet sized devices.
I get the feeling that I'm seriously being trolled now.
No, you're not - you just seem to be completely missing my points (intentionally or not).
Previously (in other conversations) you seemed to reserve your concern about the BBC's reliance on a single platform and you seemed to recognise the need for some sort of practical rights management, yet now your stance seems to have changed from one of concern solely about OS lock-in to one of encryption and rights management.
I don't believe I have ever endorsed DRM - maybe you would care to point at the posts you believe do endorse it. I have always believed that the BBC have a duty to use a open platform.
As I've said on more than one occasion, and you yourself have freely admitted, restriction by IP address alone is not a restriction at all.
You have clearly misunderstood what I have been saying. Restricting by IP address *is* a restriction in that you have to use a third party who is illegally rebroadcasting the content in order to receive it if you are outside of the UK. The BBC believe that this is good enough for their DVB broadcasts - I have yet to see an explanation as to why IP broadcasts need to be treated differently. You have stated that it it because the BBC fear legal action from the content producers because it is possible for 3rd parties to illegally rebroadcast the content, however you have not explained why the BBC is perfectly happy transmitting unprotected DVB streams which suffer exactly the same problem.
My point is that there seems to be a lack of joined up thinking in the BBC - one part of the BBC is actively pushing for open unencrypted broadcasts whilest another part seems to believe that DRM is a requirement. There really is no sane reason why DVB and IP broadcasts should be treated differently - they both suffer the same potential copyright infringement problems.
So, please, what practical solution do you have of stopping the content being proxied to the whole world?
Other than IP blocking, none. But that is not the point - the point is that the BBC seems to be happy with the risk of the DVB streams being proxied all over the world, why should IP be any different?
So, solution, please?
I must reiterate again - the BBC do not seem to consider it a big problem for DVB streams, even though these are as easy to proxy as IP streams. Therefore it seems no "solution" is required.
You have yet to explain why you believe transmitting content to UK residents over IP is significantly more of a risk than transmitting content to UK residents over any other medium.
Adding any sort of encryption to DVB broadcasts would be impossible: that genie is already out of the bottle and to put it back would be incredibly prohibitive both financially and logistically. Surely you recognise that?
Up until a few years ago, the BBC encrypted it's DVB-S broadcasts using VideoGuard. More recently, ITV dropped VideoGuard and went free-to-air. Channel 4 use VideoGuard on their Channel 4 and E4 channels (although they are expected to drop it and go free-to-air next year). Channel 5 and many other DVB-S channels are all encrypted and have stated they have no interest in going free-to-air (although this may change when the FreeSat platform is implemented next year).
So no - encrypting DVB broadcasts is not impossible, the genie is not already out of the bottle, plenty of channels do it already and a number of channels have decided that it is not in their customers' interests and so are dropping it.
Can you not appreciate why the BBC would want to restrict that content to licence payers only and why it might choose an approach that gives it as much certainty as possible that that content doesn't become openly available to everybody everywhere?
My understanding is that the BBC is not restricting this to licence payers - they are restricting it to UK residents.
I can understand why they would not want it to be globally accessible, but their IP broadcasting policy does not seem to be in line with their policy on other broadcasting methods, such as DVB. IP broadcasting and DVB broadcasting have fundamentally the same problems and yet they are handling them in completely different ways.
They have recognised that using an open platform for terrestrial and satellite broadcasts to the UK is a Good Thing, but believe that IP broadcasts to the UK need to have extra protection, even though the copyright problems are really no different between all of these platforms. This does not make sense.
Do you have a DRM-free solution that will avoid the BBC potentially being dragged into and pummelled in court by dozens if not hundreds of content creators? If so, I'd like to hear them.
Yes. As I already mentioned, restricting the content by IP address would give them similar protections to their existing DVB platforms. There is no good reason why content delivered over IP must be treated differently to content delivered by other methods - all of the broadcast platforms suffer similar drawbacks and using an open platform provides similar benefits in each case.
I'm sorry but clearly either there is some aspect of the operation of a proxy server, and the consequences that one would have on an IP-only based restriction method, that either I've failed to clearly spell out or that you don't understand.
You don't seem to understand that IP streams and DVB streams can *both* be accessed via a proxy server over the internet.
Perhaps you could ask one of your colleagues at Opendium for a clearer picture than the one that I've attempted to paint?
Can I ask what my business has to do with this conversation?
Perhaps they could also join the dots for you and explain how P2P, or more precisely, the fear of it, figures into the whole equation.
As I have mentioned, P2P is not the issue here - you seem to be under the impression that DVB and IP present different problems. They do not - both DVB and IP streams can be accessed through a proxy server and both can be published on P2P.
My question still stands: Why do the BBC feel that DVB (which can be accessed by people outside the UK both by proxy server or by P2P) can be sent unencrypted whilest IP streams (which can be accessed by people outside the UK both by proxy server or by P2P) must have DRM?
The BBC's DVB streams are broadcast to the UK only, not to the world, and hence there's no need for any form of encryption.
So I'm again left asking what the difference is between broadcasting to the UK only over DVB and broadcasting to the UK only over IP? I'm not talking about broadcasting to the whole world.
Whereas you and others might not see a great distinction between 1) making DRM-free content over IP to the UK only that is then accessed from anywhere else in the world by proxy servers; and 2) a recording made via DVB and then being posted on P2P networks by UK uploaders; there is indeed a difference.
Sorry? Can you please explain the difference between people on the internet being able to access IP broadcasts via a proxy and people on the internet being able to access DVB broadcasts via a proxy? I have not mentioned P2P - that is something that you have brought into the conversation and it doesn't seem relevent to this discussion.
Idealism is a great thing. But a healthy dose of pragmatism isn't exactly a bad thing either.
However, you seem to be completely missing the point of my posts:
I have not mentioned P2P - it is largely irrellevent to this discussion
I have not talked about the BBC providing worldwide access to it's content itself
I am simply asking - what is the difference between broadcasting to UK residents over DVB and broadcasting to UK residents over IP? In both cases, people outside the UK can access the content over the internet through third party proxy servers. Infact, IP is better in this regard since they have the ability to actually block known proxy servers whereas the DVB transport streams are broadcast to everyone.
So on the one hand the BBC is actively pushing for open and unencrypted DVB broadcasts to the UK, whereas they require distribution to the UK over IP to be DRM'd. This does not make sense - both distribution methods can have their destinations controlled to a similar extent so why does one need to be open and the other need to be DRM'd?
Because, as I've pointed out, the BBC doesn't have exclusive rights to do what it wants with this content over IP.
Nor does it have exclusive rights to transmit the content in any way, including DVB. Yet the BBC don't feel the need to impose DRM on their DVB streams.
Its digital (and analogue) terrestrial and satellite transmissions do spill over to some neighbouring countries but no more so than is avoidable.
So how is this different to providing an un-DRM'd stream to UK IP addresses?
If you have read my initial post on this subject and still don't appreciate why there is a difference between what the BBC can do over the airwaves and what it can do over IP space then you're missing the whole point.
I have read your posts - you have not done anything to explain why you believe transmitting over IP *to the UK* should be treated any differently to transmitting over DVB *to the UK*.
The BBC is responsible for its actions. Any action that would violate the rights of other broadcasters would be incredibly stupid
If the BBC has the right to stream this content over IP to UK residents then it would not be violating any rights by doing that without DRM.
Just because you could record a BBC broadcast to your PC via a DVB-T tuner and then make that recording available to the world via a P2P network and probably do it all without being caught in the act that doesn't mean that the BBC has the same luxury.
Who said anything about delivering the content to the world? I'm talking specifically about streaming un-DRM'd content over IP to people in the UK. You do not need DRM in order to restrict what countries you stream to - filtering by IP address works just fine (and is used elsewhere by the BBC already).
Sure, someone could proxy the stream and rebroadcast it to another country, but that is no less difficult than rebroadcasting the DVB stream over IP.
Talking of petitions pushing for more open source support where public funding is concerned, I am waiting to see if the government make any response to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Open-IT-projects/ when it ends later this month.
And I agree that if the player software could run on a free OS, then that would be the Internet equivalent of "Freeview"
Nope, Freeview is not DRM'd and uses open standards. You can grab any DVB-T tuner and receive Freeview on it (same with their DVB-S broadcasts). Why does the BBC feel the need to act differently with content delivered over IP?
The only way to reduce traffic is to increase the price as much as possible. This is the ONLY way that people will stop driving.
What about those of us who have to drive? Lets see: 1. I work about 25 miles away from home in a relatively rural area. Using public transport to get to work is going to take me over 2 hours and involve taking busses via about 3 different towns. I can't afford to buy a house near work because they are rather more expensive than where I currently live. 2. My hobbies include windsurfing - do you actually expect me to get on a bus with all my windsurfing kit? 3. People in rural areas basically have 1 bus a day, so _need_ a car. 4. The train services are running at capacity and therefore cannot carry any more passengers.
No, making it more expensive just means people will have to pay more money, it's not like people drive on jammed-up rush-hour roads for _fun_.
The UK has great public transport
Wrong. London has great public transport. Other cities have reasonable transport into the city (but if you want to go to somewhere not in the city you've got to go all the way into the city and catch a connecting bus). Every time I've tried taking a bus into the city centre here in Southampton it's either taken several times longer than driving or the bus has just plain not turned up.
Meanwhile, taking a train into london is so expensive that it's actually _cheaper_ to drive and pay parking. The solution to this is to improve the public transport, not to force everyone onto the already crippled public transport systems by preventing them from using their cars.
When you buy a house 30 miles from your work, think about it, factor in the huge cost which driving will eventually be.
What you're asking for is for people to move house every time they change jobs. That's just not possible - it costs an average of around 10,000ukp to move house. No, people buy a suitably located house and stay there whilest changing job - most people are not able to get a suitable job within a couple of miles of their house.
The N70 runs Symbian, and I've never had it crash completely.
Symbian UIQ crashes quite frequently on my P900 - never completely, but usually to a point where you can't accept calls or power the phone down (remove battery time)
Linux is a really horrible OS for mobile devices. It has a much bigger footprint than Symbian
Symbian is missing some stuff that is _required_ for stability - for example, memory protection. The hardware spec of these phones has now got to the point where I care much less about footprint than stability. Symbian is horribly unstable and I'm sick of it, I would expect Linux to be extremely stable.
Minor note: these phones have AGPS. It does the same thing, but works by using the cell towers rather than GPS satellites.
This is incorrect. AGPS is the same as GPS (and uses the same satellites) except it requires some external assistance. The assistance varies depending on the particular AGPS device - some of them require assistance from the cellphone provider's network (e.g. to provide processing of the signals, etc), but in this case it just requires that the phone has the almanac data available (which can just be downloaded over the wifi connection every so often).
So in summary: it uses the GPS satellites, doesn't require any assistance from your service provider and just requires you download the almanac periodically.
Shame the phone only supports GPRS, which is too painfully slow to use for anything (latency typically hits 2s RTT, which is just painful).
Indeed. I fully intend to get an OpenMoko device, but I'm likely to wait until a 3G version is available. A slightly bigger screen and a hard keypad would be nice too.
'running Linux' is not a good reason to get a phone
I think it's a very good reason: 1. All the development tools are Free and will work on my workstations (all of which run Linux) 2. I can run OpenMoko in qemu for development purposes 3. I can run many of my normal GUI applications on the phone since it uses Xorg 4. I can easilly hack up shell scripts, python scripts, run cron jobs, etc 5. Hopefully the Free software mindset will allow better Free software - I'm sick of everyone wanting to charge me 30-50ukp for every crappy little utility for my Symbian phone
that came free with my (cheapest possible) contract 18 months ago
I spend around 2ukp a month on my cellphone - I have no intention of going onto another contract with a monthly charge just to get a new phone (especially since all the phones provided by the operators at the moment are shit)
but it has no camera (WTF?).
Why on earth do I want a camera on my phone? Most of them take crappy blurry photos through their crappy tiny plastic lenses. I'll stick to using my old IXUS400 for quick snaps thanks.
Compared to the iPhone, a stylus is like never being allowed to use your hands, except to operate tongs.
Eh? It's not like any of the devices that support a stylus _force_ you to use it - I prod at the screen on my phone with my bare fingers when that's appropriate, but there are times when a stylus is *very* useful. Also, I find handwriting recognition much faster than an on-screen keyboard (which provides absolutely no tactile feedback). Having a choice is good - normal touchscreens give you that choice, the iPhone takes it away.
according to the official site, from were you will be able to order the FIC Neo 1973 from come 9th July
We're going to sell the Neo Base for $300. The Neo Advanced will be $450. From the same page:
We will sell this device through multiple channels. Direct from openmoko.com, the price will be $450 for the Neo Base and $600 for Neo Advanced. Confusing huh? Having read that page, it looks like the Advanced package is just the Base but with a few off-the-shelf extras chucked in (SD cards, etc).
so they started checking IEMI (phone ID) vs SIM and enforcing that you use a particular SIM with a particular phone on a particular contract.
That sort of behaviour would result in me cancelling my contract since I regularly swap my SIM between phones for legitimate reasons (for example: I take a Nokia 5130 when I'm out windsurfing incase I need to make an emergency call - given the number of times the 5130 has been dropped in the sea I'm not about to take my expensive every-day phone).
I'm planning to buy an OpenMoko phone in the future, but the Neo1973 is missing some important features - 3G (releasing a smartphone without 3G is crazy), a hard keypad (dialling with no tactile feedback isn't great) and the screen is rather small. So I'm holding out for a revision of the Neo in the hope that they add some of these features. Something a similar form-factor to the iPhone but with a keypad (maybe a flip-down thing like the SE P900/P910 or a slide out keypad) would be great.
As for the price tag, the $450 is for the "basic" version - the "advanced" one is going to be $600, although I've not actually been able to find a description of the differences between these versions (but whichever you get, it's still a much better price than the iPhone since it's not on a contract).
Sometimes even the same provider would offer locked and unlocked phones at the same time.
I was quite surprised to hear that the Carphone Warehouse sell unlocked phones these days because it's much cheaper for them to not have to stock the same phone branded and locked to each telco.
I am more interested in someone hacking the software
Keep an eye out for the Neo1973 later in the year, which will be running OpenMoko and thus be truly hackable (by design). Looks like a better piece of kit than the iPhone (although the screen is a bit small) - I will probably wait until they produce a second generation version with 3G (and hopefully a bigger screen and hard keypad for dialling).
I wouldn't go near the iPhone ATM - it just has too many things wrong with it: Unreplacable battery, can't run 3rd party software, stupidly expensive (around $2000 over 2 years), crap touch-screen (can't be used with a stylus - fat fingers only), doesn't do handwriting recognition, no 3G, no keypad, the list goes on...
I haven't yet worked out whether the iPhone will be a big success or a massive flop. What I do know though is that it will only be bought by people who buy based on hype rather than featureset. So the equation comes down to how many Apple fanboys are there with buckets of cash who will buy something purely because Apple tells them to.:)
For example, Xen is a bitch to setup with any sort of non-trivial networking environment (eg: multiple vlans, bonded interfaces, etc).
I'll agree with this, although it isn't the hypervisor's fault - it's the userland stuff that's at fault. For example, Xen doesn't appear to support IPv6 *at all* in routed mode, I had to hack up my own scripts to do it (and I'm seriously considering moving over to bridged mode in an effort to simplify and standardise my system). But I'm curious - do other virtualisation systems handle these sorts of things any better?
I've never understood why some people - OSS unix geeks in particular - consider the quality of software to be inversely related to how easy it is to use.
I certainly don't. However, experience has taught be that software with shiny GUIs is often inferior in other, more important areas. That's not to say that I think making things hard is a good thing, but maybe the programmers are fixing problems they consider to be more important. Afterall, Free software is usually written out of necessity (i.e. developers implement the features that _they_ want) rather than having some corporate agenda to make it "easy" for "normal people".
Also, in my experience software with GUIs is also often missing a decent commandline interface - GUIs are all very well but once you have learnt to use a commandline interface then it is (a) much faster to use and (b) usable over a low bandwidth network connection (I don't want to try tunnelling an X11 based configurator over GPRS just to tweak a setting on my server).
If I'd known before I started pursuing Xen what I know now, my advice to myself would be the same to my advice to most people looking into enterprise-level virtualisation - get VMWare ESX.
I've not had any significant problems with Xen (other than the above note about IPv6 support) so in my case VMWare would be a waste of money. I guess each person's needs are different, but for me the act of actually going and buying VMWare (and having to keep it up to date) would make it more effort than just using Xen which happens to be already there on recent distros and Just Works out of the box for most situations.
You might think it's expensive, but it's almost a certainty you'll spend more money on Xen in wasted manpower trying to get it up to half the functionality and relability.
I'm not sure where your reliability concerns come from - I've been running a number of Xen VMs across a number of real machines for quite some time and I've never had one break on me. Also, as mentioned, for what I'm using virtualisation for, I would be expending more man-hours administering VMware than I am administering Xen so I think your arguement is possibly only applicable in some very specific situations.
well, they couldve kept the blockquote tag and just added css to it. this is what blockquote was meant for. div is meaningless, and shouldnt be used in place of blockquote. Meh, typing "blockquote" or "quote" instead of "i" is effort - they should've just used the "q" tag...
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Rather than setting xsane as setuid, couldn't you add a line to your init script that sets the group of the scanner device to a 'scanner users' group
/dev filesystem was more or less abolished).
That would be the incorrect way of setting device permissions. Device permissions should be set in udev (it has been like this for several years now since the static
OpenBSD emails root every night with the results of the daily insecurity check, if it finds anything. One of the things it looks for is new setuid-root binaries. If this had been OpenBSD, then it would have been caught within 24 hours of being installed. I'm surprised Linux distributions don't include something similar already.
My experience of "things that email root every night with security checks" is that generally they trigger on so many false alarms that they are useless. Take logwatch for example - by default it trips regularly for completely innocuous stuff on all but the simplest of systems, and is relatively untweakable.
What about OpenMoko?
l -tablet sized devices.
From the screenshots it looks like they are sort of targetting different devices. OpenMoko is trying to tackle the cellphone/PDA devices, providing a UI that appears to be in a similar vein to Symbian - e.g. each app runs full screen (which is the only sensible way to deal with cellphone sized devices). On the other hand, this appears to look much more like a desktop system, with a fully fledged window manager offering multiple windows, etc. Which leads me to believe this is probably targetted at the larger-than-a-phone-but-smaller-than-a-traditiona
The enrichment process involves heating Uranium up until it becomes a gas - which requires a bit of fossil fuels
Why can't you use energy from fission instead of fossil fuels to do this?
I get the feeling that I'm seriously being trolled now.
No, you're not - you just seem to be completely missing my points (intentionally or not).
Previously (in other conversations) you seemed to reserve your concern about the BBC's reliance on a single platform and you seemed to recognise the need for some sort of practical rights management, yet now your stance seems to have changed from one of concern solely about OS lock-in to one of encryption and rights management.
I don't believe I have ever endorsed DRM - maybe you would care to point at the posts you believe do endorse it. I have always believed that the BBC have a duty to use a open platform.
As I've said on more than one occasion, and you yourself have freely admitted, restriction by IP address alone is not a restriction at all.
You have clearly misunderstood what I have been saying. Restricting by IP address *is* a restriction in that you have to use a third party who is illegally rebroadcasting the content in order to receive it if you are outside of the UK. The BBC believe that this is good enough for their DVB broadcasts - I have yet to see an explanation as to why IP broadcasts need to be treated differently.
You have stated that it it because the BBC fear legal action from the content producers because it is possible for 3rd parties to illegally rebroadcast the content, however you have not explained why the BBC is perfectly happy transmitting unprotected DVB streams which suffer exactly the same problem.
My point is that there seems to be a lack of joined up thinking in the BBC - one part of the BBC is actively pushing for open unencrypted broadcasts whilest another part seems to believe that DRM is a requirement. There really is no sane reason why DVB and IP broadcasts should be treated differently - they both suffer the same potential copyright infringement problems.
So, please, what practical solution do you have of stopping the content being proxied to the whole world?
Other than IP blocking, none. But that is not the point - the point is that the BBC seems to be happy with the risk of the DVB streams being proxied all over the world, why should IP be any different?
So, solution, please?
I must reiterate again - the BBC do not seem to consider it a big problem for DVB streams, even though these are as easy to proxy as IP streams. Therefore it seems no "solution" is required.
You have yet to explain why you believe transmitting content to UK residents over IP is significantly more of a risk than transmitting content to UK residents over any other medium.
Adding any sort of encryption to DVB broadcasts would be impossible: that genie is already out of the bottle and to put it back would be incredibly prohibitive both financially and logistically. Surely you recognise that?
Up until a few years ago, the BBC encrypted it's DVB-S broadcasts using VideoGuard. More recently, ITV dropped VideoGuard and went free-to-air. Channel 4 use VideoGuard on their Channel 4 and E4 channels (although they are expected to drop it and go free-to-air next year). Channel 5 and many other DVB-S channels are all encrypted and have stated they have no interest in going free-to-air (although this may change when the FreeSat platform is implemented next year).
So no - encrypting DVB broadcasts is not impossible, the genie is not already out of the bottle, plenty of channels do it already and a number of channels have decided that it is not in their customers' interests and so are dropping it.
Can you not appreciate why the BBC would want to restrict that content to licence payers only and why it might choose an approach that gives it as much certainty as possible that that content doesn't become openly available to everybody everywhere?
My understanding is that the BBC is not restricting this to licence payers - they are restricting it to UK residents.
I can understand why they would not want it to be globally accessible, but their IP broadcasting policy does not seem to be in line with their policy on other broadcasting methods, such as DVB. IP broadcasting and DVB broadcasting have fundamentally the same problems and yet they are handling them in completely different ways.
They have recognised that using an open platform for terrestrial and satellite broadcasts to the UK is a Good Thing, but believe that IP broadcasts to the UK need to have extra protection, even though the copyright problems are really no different between all of these platforms. This does not make sense.
Do you have a DRM-free solution that will avoid the BBC potentially being dragged into and pummelled in court by dozens if not hundreds of content creators? If so, I'd like to hear them.
Yes. As I already mentioned, restricting the content by IP address would give them similar protections to their existing DVB platforms. There is no good reason why content delivered over IP must be treated differently to content delivered by other methods - all of the broadcast platforms suffer similar drawbacks and using an open platform provides similar benefits in each case.
I'm sorry but clearly either there is some aspect of the operation of a proxy server, and the consequences that one would have on an IP-only based restriction method, that either I've failed to clearly spell out or that you don't understand.
You don't seem to understand that IP streams and DVB streams can *both* be accessed via a proxy server over the internet.
Perhaps you could ask one of your colleagues at Opendium for a clearer picture than the one that I've attempted to paint?
Can I ask what my business has to do with this conversation?
Perhaps they could also join the dots for you and explain how P2P, or more precisely, the fear of it, figures into the whole equation.
As I have mentioned, P2P is not the issue here - you seem to be under the impression that DVB and IP present different problems. They do not - both DVB and IP streams can be accessed through a proxy server and both can be published on P2P.
My question still stands: Why do the BBC feel that DVB (which can be accessed by people outside the UK both by proxy server or by P2P) can be sent unencrypted whilest IP streams (which can be accessed by people outside the UK both by proxy server or by P2P) must have DRM?
So I'm again left asking what the difference is between broadcasting to the UK only over DVB and broadcasting to the UK only over IP? I'm not talking about broadcasting to the whole world.
Whereas you and others might not see a great distinction between 1) making DRM-free content over IP to the UK only that is then accessed from anywhere else in the world by proxy servers; and 2) a recording made via DVB and then being posted on P2P networks by UK uploaders; there is indeed a difference.
Sorry? Can you please explain the difference between people on the internet being able to access IP broadcasts via a proxy and people on the internet being able to access DVB broadcasts via a proxy? I have not mentioned P2P - that is something that you have brought into the conversation and it doesn't seem relevent to this discussion.
Idealism is a great thing. But a healthy dose of pragmatism isn't exactly a bad thing either.
However, you seem to be completely missing the point of my posts:
So on the one hand the BBC is actively pushing for open and unencrypted DVB broadcasts to the UK, whereas they require distribution to the UK over IP to be DRM'd. This does not make sense - both distribution methods can have their destinations controlled to a similar extent so why does one need to be open and the other need to be DRM'd?
Because, as I've pointed out, the BBC doesn't have exclusive rights to do what it wants with this content over IP.
Nor does it have exclusive rights to transmit the content in any way, including DVB. Yet the BBC don't feel the need to impose DRM on their DVB streams.
Its digital (and analogue) terrestrial and satellite transmissions do spill over to some neighbouring countries but no more so than is avoidable.
So how is this different to providing an un-DRM'd stream to UK IP addresses?
If you have read my initial post on this subject and still don't appreciate why there is a difference between what the BBC can do over the airwaves and what it can do over IP space then you're missing the whole point.
I have read your posts - you have not done anything to explain why you believe transmitting over IP *to the UK* should be treated any differently to transmitting over DVB *to the UK*.
The BBC is responsible for its actions. Any action that would violate the rights of other broadcasters would be incredibly stupid
If the BBC has the right to stream this content over IP to UK residents then it would not be violating any rights by doing that without DRM.
Just because you could record a BBC broadcast to your PC via a DVB-T tuner and then make that recording available to the world via a P2P network and probably do it all without being caught in the act that doesn't mean that the BBC has the same luxury.
Who said anything about delivering the content to the world? I'm talking specifically about streaming un-DRM'd content over IP to people in the UK. You do not need DRM in order to restrict what countries you stream to - filtering by IP address works just fine (and is used elsewhere by the BBC already).
Sure, someone could proxy the stream and rebroadcast it to another country, but that is no less difficult than rebroadcasting the DVB stream over IP.
Talking of petitions pushing for more open source support where public funding is concerned, I am waiting to see if the government make any response to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Open-IT-projects/ when it ends later this month.
And I agree that if the player software could run on a free OS, then that would be the Internet equivalent of "Freeview"
Nope, Freeview is not DRM'd and uses open standards. You can grab any DVB-T tuner and receive Freeview on it (same with their DVB-S broadcasts). Why does the BBC feel the need to act differently with content delivered over IP?
The only way to reduce traffic is to increase the price as much as possible. This is the ONLY way that people will stop driving.
What about those of us who have to drive? Lets see:
1. I work about 25 miles away from home in a relatively rural area. Using public transport to get to work is going to take me over 2 hours and involve taking busses via about 3 different towns. I can't afford to buy a house near work because they are rather more expensive than where I currently live.
2. My hobbies include windsurfing - do you actually expect me to get on a bus with all my windsurfing kit?
3. People in rural areas basically have 1 bus a day, so _need_ a car.
4. The train services are running at capacity and therefore cannot carry any more passengers.
No, making it more expensive just means people will have to pay more money, it's not like people drive on jammed-up rush-hour roads for _fun_.
The UK has great public transport
Wrong. London has great public transport. Other cities have reasonable transport into the city (but if you want to go to somewhere not in the city you've got to go all the way into the city and catch a connecting bus). Every time I've tried taking a bus into the city centre here in Southampton it's either taken several times longer than driving or the bus has just plain not turned up.
Meanwhile, taking a train into london is so expensive that it's actually _cheaper_ to drive and pay parking. The solution to this is to improve the public transport, not to force everyone onto the already crippled public transport systems by preventing them from using their cars.
When you buy a house 30 miles from your work, think about it, factor in the huge cost which driving will eventually be.
What you're asking for is for people to move house every time they change jobs. That's just not possible - it costs an average of around 10,000ukp to move house. No, people buy a suitably located house and stay there whilest changing job - most people are not able to get a suitable job within a couple of miles of their house.
The N70 runs Symbian, and I've never had it crash completely.
Symbian UIQ crashes quite frequently on my P900 - never completely, but usually to a point where you can't accept calls or power the phone down (remove battery time)
Linux is a really horrible OS for mobile devices. It has a much bigger footprint than Symbian
Symbian is missing some stuff that is _required_ for stability - for example, memory protection. The hardware spec of these phones has now got to the point where I care much less about footprint than stability. Symbian is horribly unstable and I'm sick of it, I would expect Linux to be extremely stable.
Minor note: these phones have AGPS. It does the same thing, but works by using the cell towers rather than GPS satellites.
This is incorrect. AGPS is the same as GPS (and uses the same satellites) except it requires some external assistance. The assistance varies depending on the particular AGPS device - some of them require assistance from the cellphone provider's network (e.g. to provide processing of the signals, etc), but in this case it just requires that the phone has the almanac data available (which can just be downloaded over the wifi connection every so often).
So in summary: it uses the GPS satellites, doesn't require any assistance from your service provider and just requires you download the almanac periodically.
Shame the phone only supports GPRS, which is too painfully slow to use for anything (latency typically hits 2s RTT, which is just painful).
Indeed. I fully intend to get an OpenMoko device, but I'm likely to wait until a 3G version is available. A slightly bigger screen and a hard keypad would be nice too.
'running Linux' is not a good reason to get a phone
I think it's a very good reason:
1. All the development tools are Free and will work on my workstations (all of which run Linux)
2. I can run OpenMoko in qemu for development purposes
3. I can run many of my normal GUI applications on the phone since it uses Xorg
4. I can easilly hack up shell scripts, python scripts, run cron jobs, etc
5. Hopefully the Free software mindset will allow better Free software - I'm sick of everyone wanting to charge me 30-50ukp for every crappy little utility for my Symbian phone
that came free with my (cheapest possible) contract 18 months ago
I spend around 2ukp a month on my cellphone - I have no intention of going onto another contract with a monthly charge just to get a new phone (especially since all the phones provided by the operators at the moment are shit)
but it has no camera (WTF?).
Why on earth do I want a camera on my phone? Most of them take crappy blurry photos through their crappy tiny plastic lenses. I'll stick to using my old IXUS400 for quick snaps thanks.
Compared to the iPhone, a stylus is like never being allowed to use your hands, except to operate tongs.
Eh? It's not like any of the devices that support a stylus _force_ you to use it - I prod at the screen on my phone with my bare fingers when that's appropriate, but there are times when a stylus is *very* useful. Also, I find handwriting recognition much faster than an on-screen keyboard (which provides absolutely no tactile feedback). Having a choice is good - normal touchscreens give you that choice, the iPhone takes it away.
a better screen
:(
Depends what you mean by better - the Neo has a higher resolution screen and a better touchscreen, but it's not as big.
so they started checking IEMI (phone ID) vs SIM and enforcing that you use a particular SIM with a particular phone on a particular contract.
That sort of behaviour would result in me cancelling my contract since I regularly swap my SIM between phones for legitimate reasons (for example: I take a Nokia 5130 when I'm out windsurfing incase I need to make an emergency call - given the number of times the 5130 has been dropped in the sea I'm not about to take my expensive every-day phone).
Sounds like you want a FIC NEO1973.
I'm planning to buy an OpenMoko phone in the future, but the Neo1973 is missing some important features - 3G (releasing a smartphone without 3G is crazy), a hard keypad (dialling with no tactile feedback isn't great) and the screen is rather small. So I'm holding out for a revision of the Neo in the hope that they add some of these features. Something a similar form-factor to the iPhone but with a keypad (maybe a flip-down thing like the SE P900/P910 or a slide out keypad) would be great.
As for the price tag, the $450 is for the "basic" version - the "advanced" one is going to be $600, although I've not actually been able to find a description of the differences between these versions (but whichever you get, it's still a much better price than the iPhone since it's not on a contract).
Sometimes even the same provider would offer locked and unlocked phones at the same time.
I was quite surprised to hear that the Carphone Warehouse sell unlocked phones these days because it's much cheaper for them to not have to stock the same phone branded and locked to each telco.
I am more interested in someone hacking the software
:)
Keep an eye out for the Neo1973 later in the year, which will be running OpenMoko and thus be truly hackable (by design). Looks like a better piece of kit than the iPhone (although the screen is a bit small) - I will probably wait until they produce a second generation version with 3G (and hopefully a bigger screen and hard keypad for dialling).
I wouldn't go near the iPhone ATM - it just has too many things wrong with it: Unreplacable battery, can't run 3rd party software, stupidly expensive (around $2000 over 2 years), crap touch-screen (can't be used with a stylus - fat fingers only), doesn't do handwriting recognition, no 3G, no keypad, the list goes on...
I haven't yet worked out whether the iPhone will be a big success or a massive flop. What I do know though is that it will only be bought by people who buy based on hype rather than featureset. So the equation comes down to how many Apple fanboys are there with buckets of cash who will buy something purely because Apple tells them to.
Most Mac people I know are poor
:)
They probably weren't poor until they blew all their cash on Apple kit.
For example, Xen is a bitch to setup with any sort of non-trivial networking environment (eg: multiple vlans, bonded interfaces, etc).
I'll agree with this, although it isn't the hypervisor's fault - it's the userland stuff that's at fault. For example, Xen doesn't appear to support IPv6 *at all* in routed mode, I had to hack up my own scripts to do it (and I'm seriously considering moving over to bridged mode in an effort to simplify and standardise my system). But I'm curious - do other virtualisation systems handle these sorts of things any better?
I've never understood why some people - OSS unix geeks in particular - consider the quality of software to be inversely related to how easy it is to use.
I certainly don't. However, experience has taught be that software with shiny GUIs is often inferior in other, more important areas. That's not to say that I think making things hard is a good thing, but maybe the programmers are fixing problems they consider to be more important. Afterall, Free software is usually written out of necessity (i.e. developers implement the features that _they_ want) rather than having some corporate agenda to make it "easy" for "normal people".
Also, in my experience software with GUIs is also often missing a decent commandline interface - GUIs are all very well but once you have learnt to use a commandline interface then it is (a) much faster to use and (b) usable over a low bandwidth network connection (I don't want to try tunnelling an X11 based configurator over GPRS just to tweak a setting on my server).
If I'd known before I started pursuing Xen what I know now, my advice to myself would be the same to my advice to most people looking into enterprise-level virtualisation - get VMWare ESX.
I've not had any significant problems with Xen (other than the above note about IPv6 support) so in my case VMWare would be a waste of money. I guess each person's needs are different, but for me the act of actually going and buying VMWare (and having to keep it up to date) would make it more effort than just using Xen which happens to be already there on recent distros and Just Works out of the box for most situations.
You might think it's expensive, but it's almost a certainty you'll spend more money on Xen in wasted manpower trying to get it up to half the functionality and relability.
I'm not sure where your reliability concerns come from - I've been running a number of Xen VMs across a number of real machines for quite some time and I've never had one break on me. Also, as mentioned, for what I'm using virtualisation for, I would be expending more man-hours administering VMware than I am administering Xen so I think your arguement is possibly only applicable in some very specific situations.