Gold is only valuable because it's rare. Practical uses require very little and nobody would value gold anymore if they knew that somebody had a mountain of it available.
Actually there would be a *lot* of practical uses for gold, if it weren't so darn expensive. For starters, gold-plating would probably be great for rustproofing and corrosion resistance. If it were cheaper, it could be used in places like insides of water heaters, greatly prolonging their lifetime. Gold plating would also be exellent replacment for paint and lacquer for many metal surfaces. Also it's an excellent electric conductor, and I think it would be superior to copper in almost every electric application. Gold might also help to make better slide bearings, possibly even replacing ball bearings in some applications. If price of gold were comparable to copper, it might also make excellent water piping for places where copper pipes are used today. And places that have gold plating today, it could be made thicker and thus more wear-resistant. And in medical field, a lot of places that now use plastics or even nastier stuff (like tooth fillings) could use gold.
And then there are all the uses that we haven't even thought about because gold is so expensive, but which would become feasible with cheaper gold.
Prove (in the scientific sense of "prove") that, and you'll become famous (possibly rich, too).
Except that Stephen Hawking (both famous and rich, I believe, though sadly unable to really enjoy it) beat you to it.
Considering that we don't have a theory that can describe a quantum singularity, and we've never seen one, I kind of doubt what you say;-)
It may be "proven" that Hawking radiation exists in classical-scale (mass or size) black holes, but it says nothing about quantum-scale black holes. It's not know what happens to black holes at the final stages of evaporation, it's not known if they explode in a burst of radiation or if something else happens.
Capitalism was supposed to be about individuals using their resources according to rational self interest. If companies were say run but their actual owners or even CEOs who planned to be around longer than 18mo it would be perfectly clear that not alienating the government, their customers, their workers and re-investing in product development and tooling for the future is the best path.
That's the theory. It's almost as far removed from real life, as eg. communism is.
What you describe may be the best path for the people in power. For current owners, CEO etc, there often is an exit date (it may be unknown, but they know they'll exit at some point). So it's logical to optimize capital value for that date, ignoring whatever may come after that. Also, the others in similar position have the same opportunity to profit and exit, so it becomes a choice between taking the consequences while those others take the profit, or playing the dirty game and getting a share of the profits.
Note, that the same applies to for example theft vs. buying from a store. The crucial difference is the total likelihood of getting caught, and the consequences of getting caught. There's no difference in people doing it, there's only difference in consequences for others (stealing from a shop vs. destroying future of a business for immediate personal gain).
Of course sometimes owners, board and/or management are illogical and un-capitalistic, and really strive for what is best for the business in the long run, instead of what's best for them personally in immediate future. But any economic system relying on people to try to do their best, instead of trying to profit personally, is doomed to fail. There needs to be personal accountability, and pure capitalism lacks that.
Prove (in the scientific sense of "prove") that, and you'll become famous (possibly rich, too).
Because your proof would most likely have to involve unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity, or alternatively pretty novel physical experiment, results of which might be used by others to do the theoretical unification... In either case, fame and riches await!
Dunno about being a sexist pig; shallow, perhaps. If people don't appreciate "geek chic", more fool them.
It's not about intellectual appreciation, it's about what gets the "little guy" exited... And since that's pretty much outside conscious control, it's a bit unfair to call it "foolish".
Instead of spurring new ideas and having them spread around and serve the public good the skewed IP landscape has moved us in the opposite direction towards protectionism.
Well, in this case the question is, would those ideas have been developed as early as they were, if the developing company didn't know they could patent it? Just think how much resources companies spend on research that doesn't give any usable results.
It's quite possible that nobody would have those patented technologies RIM is using, if it weren't for the ability to patent them.
Ie. the ideas already got spurred and spread around thanks to patents, but RIM just doesn't want to chip in and actually pay for the technologies it's using.
In true capitalism, business compete based on their ability to create and deliver products and services, not their ability to lobby for state-enforced monopolies.
No, capitalism is about capital. The capital tries to increase itself on businesses growing maximally in the short term, and then moving to other businesses when the long term problems catch up. There's no long term growth for a single company in pure capitalism, unless that company achieves monopoly status. At it's core, capitalism is about getting maximal grown of your own capital, while staying legally safe, while still screwing others over at every opportunity. I mean, just think about all the Enron-like cases. Most of the people who profited from those got to keep their profits.
I mean, what is the mechanism of personal responsibility in capitalism? Apart from provably (very hard if there's intentional coverup from the start) conspiring to break the law (which there wouldn't be that much of anyway, in pure capitalism), it's just the capital that is "punished", and if you're an insider, you know to move your capital away from the company that is about to be punished, so it's capital of other people that gets punished for your wrongdoings.
Just checked and they do not offer it for the E75, one of their pricier, GPS enabled phones.
Man, do I feel like an idiot for buying one now.
A wild guess: it'll need a firmware upgrade, and it's not ready yet for E75. For my phone it was clearly stated that a new enough firmware was needed, and I had to upgrade that. Good thing I got access to a WinXP, 'cos OTA firmware upgrade refused to work and the Windows update utility doesn't work on Windows 7 (I was rather dumbfounded by that... Somebody ought to lose their job over that kind of screwup!)
I don't think the screen matters that much. Most people who drive with a GPS probably relies a lot more on the voice instructions than on what the screen displays.
1. "Oooo... Shiny!"
2. In big intersections and complex junctions, it's much better to see what the intersection looks like, than to hear audio instructions and follow them "blindly".
3. When looking for a parking spot in a city, it's much better to see the streets around you, than to just drive around your target while the audio tells you to take the next possible U-turn...
4. "Look at the size of that thing... It's bigger than mine!"
If I know I'm even possibly going to be taking pictures I'd rather slip my Canon Ixus 70 into my pocket.
I think you got this the wrong way around. If you don't slip your Camera into your pocket, you know you won't possibly be taking pictures;-)
Besides, that's an absurd mindset right there. You can't possibly know beforehand when you'll want or need to take pictures. I know without thinking that I may be taking pictures, not just possibly but probably. It's much better to be thinking "I wish I had a real camera with me" than thinking "I wish I had any kind of camera with me".
and now Nokia have the 5800 which works just as well as any Iphone, at half the price
Seriously, no. 5800 (and cheaper derivatives) works half as well for half the price of iPhone. On average, I mean, obviously both have their strong and weak points.
5800 may be a better phone in things like sound quality, reception, battery life, use in extreme conditions etc. (haven't used iPhone as a phone really, so can't say), but the general user experience (like UI responsiveness or lag, and the unavoidable heavy feeling of resistive touch screen compared to feathery feeling of capacitive display) iPhone is so far ahead it hurts.
So on average, 5800 vs. iPhone 3G, you really get what you pay for (and 5800 is definitely worth it's price too).
And that, folks, is why so many open-source projects never get finished, or improved.
Indeed, but it is also why practically all successful open source projects are successful: because the core people are passionate about their pet project and care about it.
I mean, to take your rational thinking to the extreme, there should be just one open source OS, one open source office suite, one open source browser, one open source desktop... That would be sensible, everybody working toward common single goal!
Except that never got humanity far anywhere. Humans need competition, antagonism, personal passion, or they will only produce mediocre results at best.
With the current (as always exponential) rate of telescope development, we will get to a Google-maps-like resolution or even better.
Well... No. There's the small practical issue of number of actual rphotons arriving from the planet to the telescope. No amount of technology is going to change that (well, except using space travel technology to get closer...).
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement for a long time yet, and ultimately, with enough photons collected, for many enough revolutions of the target planet, a very detailed map could be made (which would automatically be map of the entire surface). But not in our lifetime.
As for TFA and using proportional fonts for programming, all I can say is that the author can't be doing a lot of unified diffs, or working with languages where the amount of indentation is significant (fortran, anyone?). Hell, even doing a cut/paste becomes more difficult when some of the letters are much narrower. And with most prop fonts, good luck seeing the difference between variables like ill, lil and il1, or B80, 8BO and B8Ø, for that matter.
Indentation is only at the beginning of the line. So variable-width fonts are really no problem with either indentation or diffs.
However, for best results with variable width fonts, tabs for indentation is really the way to go. Well, they're that for all fonts, anyway. I mean, who got this amazingly stupid idea, that a certain variable (between programmers, styles, files and even contexts within single file, etc) number of spaces means one step of indentation? It even sounds crazy when you read that aloud.
Now I admit there are some annoying real world issues which make many lazy coders to seek excuses to keep using spaces, including but not limited to: legacy code uses them, can't change due to version control, 'less' doesn't display tab-indented code nicely, with tabs I can't force other coders to use same indentation as I use, I like to spend time aligning commas in different lines using spaces, I lost the manual of my tractor feed line printer so can't set tab stops and I'm too lazy to code a filter to run before printing...
Oh I sure hope not. Sounds like hell to me, and I'm an aetheist!
Perhaps maybe just purgatory. But it could work. Carry your uberdevice in your pocket (lead foil lined), use it with it's native human interface devices when wandering around. Pop it in some sort of dock at work with a decent keyboard, mouse and screen. Remember to pick it up before you go home.
At least Maemo can do this today for real. The "docking station" will just have to be a PC running VNC and phone needs to connect to it with WLAN or USB. There are also other possibilities (like running phone apps on PC X server instead of the phone X server), but VNC is the most universal and easy one I think. Is there a VNC server for Android yet, or even for iPhone?
Or then you could use cloud apps, they do work at least technically (at least Maemo5 stock browser, and I assume also mobile-Firefox release candidate, can run for example Google Docs and Google Wave), though user interfaces would need some serious optimization for touchscreens and crappy keyboards... But I bet at least some of the cloud apps available are bound to be pretty good on phone browsers.
Or then you could use network disk shares to store documents, and edit them in-place, whether using a phone/tablet or a PC.
But the point is, what you describe is possible today. This future started already last year:-).
For pity sake, a smartphone is not going to do everything a laptop or desktop will do as well, no matter how you design it. I'm all for using a smartphone, but not as a panacea. Just as I don't use a hammer when I want to saw something.
There are plenty of problems and solutions (some of which you have outlined) when it comes to phones, but that's not going to make them some piece of magic that does everything well. I don't want to do everything on a tiny screen with a tiny keyboard. Also note that some manufacturers and service providers have refused to offer the solutions you have outlined.
A smartphone doesn't have to do everything well, only well enough, and (with docking station connecting to the TV and wireless keyboard, and ADSL-WLAN if 3G isn't speedy enough in the area) it can satisfy all computing needs of average computer user. Niche markets, like high-end gaming, serious media editing etc will of course require a real PC for a long while, but people did already do high-end gaming and serious media editing in the time when high-end PC had less power than a smartphone today (let alone in two years, because the performance race for smartphones is clearly starting, as indicated for example by the TFA). So why couldn't a smartphone of today do gaming and media editing at the level of those old PCs, quite sufficient for a random user who just wants for example cut pieces out of a video they captured with the very same smartphone?
Now I'm certainly not calling for blood, and normally I'm not one to flame bait....but if the question is... "Why are so many people using it if the service isn't 'good enough'?"
The answer could certainly be... "Because they are a monopoly."
Of course the other answer could be... "Because no one else has anything better."
How about "because they aren't buying it for the service, but for the results".
Explain to me how using a rat or a cat to test something that will save 1,000 human lives is barbaric and uncivilized.
Same way as using a newborn completely orphan baby to test something (the same way it'd be tested on a rat or a cat) that will save 1,000 lives is barbaric and uncivilized. An adult cat or rat, and especially an ape is certainly more aware and more intelligent than a newborn baby. And let's add that the baby is disabled/handicapped in some clear way.
How do you justify drawing a line that classifies newborn disabled orphan baby testing as barbaric, but says that healthy adult ape testing is just fine?
(Note: I'm not absolutely against animal testing, and I certainly like to sink my teeth into a juicy steak even though I think both are barbaric, yet I'd be almost (meaning stuff like survival of human species not directly depending on it) absolutely against doing same tests on human babies no matter if it's barbaric or not.)
How can you "steal" something that is broadcast over an entire hemisphere? You and I are subjected to satellite signals of all kinds without our desire or consent. How is merely making use of that radiation we are bombarded with considered 'theft?'
No, I'm not a tinfoil hat-wearing paraniod. I am just trying to look at it pragmatically.
It's not use of the radiation that is considered "theft", it's use of the information encoded into that radiation...
(Use of radiation will be considered stealing if the satellite is collecting solar energy and beaming it down as microwaves, but that's future, and at that point tinfoil hat might actually be good idea while you're setting up your radiation-stealer antenna;-).
So, basically MS wants ME to contribute to distribute THEIR content I already paid for and then actually download MORE then I can actually use?
A: Hidden charges, shipping charges laws. A product should have a clear price. But say I download such a product on a paid connection. Then I pay not just for the license but also for the download AND upload. And if my license is not for the full product, I download stuff I don't need. So, how much does a $7 movie cost? Really?
Downloading media on internet connection where you pay by the bytes transferred? Are you nuts? Anyway, you could be saying same concerns about cars. The car seems to have a clear price, but then once you get a car, you have to pay for insurance, gas, service, washing... How can selling cars with that kind of hidden charges be legal? Also note, with P2P, the other users are lending their bandwidth to you, just like you're lending yours to them, so it sort of cancels itself. It reduces the cost of delivery, thus allowing lower prices (even in monopoly lower costs will usually result in lower prices due to increasing demand still increasing profits), a clear benefit to the customer.
B: What does this change, DRM exists and has been broken. What is the point of adding even more complexity?
The general point could be getting up-to-date content (series, movies, live sports events...) to be legally delivered over the internet to desktop PCs. The extra bonus for Microsoft could be allowing receiving this only with Windows PCs, possibly getting a license fee for Mac version of the player, and giving Linux one more handicap on the desktop.
Note about hacking the DRM P2P stream: to watch eg. a live sports event, the pirate needs the key specific to that event. They can only get it from somebody who's paying for the stream, and then they need to distribute it to everybody wanting to watch it, in addition to duplicating the stream. Certainly possible, but a lot of hassle, and more uncertain (does the pirated key and the pirated stream work or do you miss the event?). If pricing is right and technology works (think ISP proxies etc), just paying for it starts to sound pretty tempting. And once you pay for some of it, and if pricing is still right, why not pay also for the other stuff, if it's hassle-free.
Also, think of this being implemented in a TV set or a set-top-box, no PC required.
There are a lot of possibilites not really available otherwise.
C: What happens to people on ISP's who restrict uploads?
ISPs change policies, either because it's good for them or because Microsoft marketing sells them a cost-saving proxy software to run inside their own network, or customers switch ISPs.
I always have to laugh when people complain about patents on technologies they hate. Hello? They PATENTED it. That means nobody else is allowed to do it. And Microsoft of course, will fail at it themselves. Thus the effect of the patent is to PREVENT these sorts of DRM mechanisms from proliferating. Use your brains people.
"Microsoft of course, will fail at it"? Once it's patented, it's possible to control the software that implements it. Once the software is under control, MAFIAA can release media playable only by that controlled software, which will only play it if it's paid for. Microsoft has managed to release yet another operating system (Windows 7) that will have the overwhelming majority of desktop PCs. Why would they fail to release an exlusive MAFIAA-approved pay-to-view P2P video delivery system for it, if they just get MAFIAA to play along?
Of course anything is hackable, and this isn't at all intersting to "pirates", and probably not to Linux users either. But it could be basis for true click-to-view video-on-demand for the average Windows user. For people who pay for the entertainment they consume, this could be very convenient.
Let me see how many brands we really have HTC Nokia Samsung Sony/Ericsson LG Motorola Apple
The rest is mostly small manufacturers or OEMs which buy from HTC or Samsung (like Dell for instance)
I would not call that that many, sorry. It is also very hard to join that club on a worldwide scale because there is a load of patents involved as Apple now has to feel.
I would call that many for the purposes of free-market competition. It's not really less than major players in the laptop market for example. It's far more than in the PC processor market, or PC display chipset market (or even global graphics adapter card market).
It's actually surprisingly many, considering how technologically challenging device a "smartphone" is. Just like throwing together a Desktop PC is trivial, but building a good laptop is an order of magnitude more difficult (heat problems, battery life, mechanical durability, weight and size, EMC...). Building a top-of-the-line smartphone is yet an order of magnitude bigger challenge in all these respects.
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Gold is only valuable because it's rare. Practical uses require very little and nobody would value gold anymore if they knew that somebody had a mountain of it available.
Actually there would be a *lot* of practical uses for gold, if it weren't so darn expensive. For starters, gold-plating would probably be great for rustproofing and corrosion resistance. If it were cheaper, it could be used in places like insides of water heaters, greatly prolonging their lifetime. Gold plating would also be exellent replacment for paint and lacquer for many metal surfaces. Also it's an excellent electric conductor, and I think it would be superior to copper in almost every electric application. Gold might also help to make better slide bearings, possibly even replacing ball bearings in some applications. If price of gold were comparable to copper, it might also make excellent water piping for places where copper pipes are used today. And places that have gold plating today, it could be made thicker and thus more wear-resistant. And in medical field, a lot of places that now use plastics or even nastier stuff (like tooth fillings) could use gold.
And then there are all the uses that we haven't even thought about because gold is so expensive, but which would become feasible with cheaper gold.
Except that Stephen Hawking (both famous and rich, I believe, though sadly unable to really enjoy it) beat you to it.
Considering that we don't have a theory that can describe a quantum singularity, and we've never seen one, I kind of doubt what you say ;-)
It may be "proven" that Hawking radiation exists in classical-scale (mass or size) black holes, but it says nothing about quantum-scale black holes. It's not know what happens to black holes at the final stages of evaporation, it's not known if they explode in a burst of radiation or if something else happens.
Capitalism was supposed to be about individuals using their resources according to rational self interest. If companies were say run but their actual owners or even CEOs who planned to be around longer than 18mo it would be perfectly clear that not alienating the government, their customers, their workers and re-investing in product development and tooling for the future is the best path.
That's the theory. It's almost as far removed from real life, as eg. communism is.
What you describe may be the best path for the people in power. For current owners, CEO etc, there often is an exit date (it may be unknown, but they know they'll exit at some point). So it's logical to optimize capital value for that date, ignoring whatever may come after that. Also, the others in similar position have the same opportunity to profit and exit, so it becomes a choice between taking the consequences while those others take the profit, or playing the dirty game and getting a share of the profits.
Note, that the same applies to for example theft vs. buying from a store. The crucial difference is the total likelihood of getting caught, and the consequences of getting caught. There's no difference in people doing it, there's only difference in consequences for others (stealing from a shop vs. destroying future of a business for immediate personal gain).
Of course sometimes owners, board and/or management are illogical and un-capitalistic, and really strive for what is best for the business in the long run, instead of what's best for them personally in immediate future. But any economic system relying on people to try to do their best, instead of trying to profit personally, is doomed to fail. There needs to be personal accountability, and pure capitalism lacks that.
Quantum black holes are unstable.
Prove (in the scientific sense of "prove") that, and you'll become famous (possibly rich, too).
Because your proof would most likely have to involve unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity, or alternatively pretty novel physical experiment, results of which might be used by others to do the theoretical unification... In either case, fame and riches await!
She punched in some commands, she didn't do science.
So, pretty much what grad students do, then?
Dunno about being a sexist pig; shallow, perhaps. If people don't appreciate "geek chic", more fool them.
It's not about intellectual appreciation, it's about what gets the "little guy" exited... And since that's pretty much outside conscious control, it's a bit unfair to call it "foolish".
Instead of spurring new ideas and having them spread around and serve the public good the skewed IP landscape has moved us in the opposite direction towards protectionism.
Well, in this case the question is, would those ideas have been developed as early as they were, if the developing company didn't know they could patent it? Just think how much resources companies spend on research that doesn't give any usable results.
It's quite possible that nobody would have those patented technologies RIM is using, if it weren't for the ability to patent them.
Ie. the ideas already got spurred and spread around thanks to patents, but RIM just doesn't want to chip in and actually pay for the technologies it's using.
In true capitalism, business compete based on their ability to create and deliver products and services, not their ability to lobby for state-enforced monopolies.
No, capitalism is about capital. The capital tries to increase itself on businesses growing maximally in the short term, and then moving to other businesses when the long term problems catch up. There's no long term growth for a single company in pure capitalism, unless that company achieves monopoly status. At it's core, capitalism is about getting maximal grown of your own capital, while staying legally safe, while still screwing others over at every opportunity. I mean, just think about all the Enron-like cases. Most of the people who profited from those got to keep their profits.
I mean, what is the mechanism of personal responsibility in capitalism? Apart from provably (very hard if there's intentional coverup from the start) conspiring to break the law (which there wouldn't be that much of anyway, in pure capitalism), it's just the capital that is "punished", and if you're an insider, you know to move your capital away from the company that is about to be punished, so it's capital of other people that gets punished for your wrongdoings.
Just checked and they do not offer it for the E75, one of their pricier, GPS enabled phones.
Man, do I feel like an idiot for buying one now.
A wild guess: it'll need a firmware upgrade, and it's not ready yet for E75. For my phone it was clearly stated that a new enough firmware was needed, and I had to upgrade that. Good thing I got access to a WinXP, 'cos OTA firmware upgrade refused to work and the Windows update utility doesn't work on Windows 7 (I was rather dumbfounded by that... Somebody ought to lose their job over that kind of screwup!)
I don't think the screen matters that much. Most people who drive with a GPS probably relies a lot more on the voice instructions than on what the screen displays.
1. "Oooo... Shiny!"
2. In big intersections and complex junctions, it's much better to see what the intersection looks like, than to hear audio instructions and follow them "blindly".
3. When looking for a parking spot in a city, it's much better to see the streets around you, than to just drive around your target while the audio tells you to take the next possible U-turn...
4. "Look at the size of that thing... It's bigger than mine!"
If I know I'm even possibly going to be taking pictures I'd rather slip my Canon Ixus 70 into my pocket.
I think you got this the wrong way around. If you don't slip your Camera into your pocket, you know you won't possibly be taking pictures ;-)
Besides, that's an absurd mindset right there. You can't possibly know beforehand when you'll want or need to take pictures. I know without thinking that I may be taking pictures, not just possibly but probably. It's much better to be thinking "I wish I had a real camera with me" than thinking "I wish I had any kind of camera with me".
and now Nokia have the 5800 which works just as well as any Iphone, at half the price
Seriously, no. 5800 (and cheaper derivatives) works half as well for half the price of iPhone. On average, I mean, obviously both have their strong and weak points.
5800 may be a better phone in things like sound quality, reception, battery life, use in extreme conditions etc. (haven't used iPhone as a phone really, so can't say), but the general user experience (like UI responsiveness or lag, and the unavoidable heavy feeling of resistive touch screen compared to feathery feeling of capacitive display) iPhone is so far ahead it hurts.
So on average, 5800 vs. iPhone 3G, you really get what you pay for (and 5800 is definitely worth it's price too).
And that, folks, is why so many open-source projects never get finished, or improved.
Indeed, but it is also why practically all successful open source projects are successful: because the core people are passionate about their pet project and care about it.
I mean, to take your rational thinking to the extreme, there should be just one open source OS, one open source office suite, one open source browser, one open source desktop... That would be sensible, everybody working toward common single goal!
Except that never got humanity far anywhere. Humans need competition, antagonism, personal passion, or they will only produce mediocre results at best.
With the current (as always exponential) rate of telescope development, we will get to a Google-maps-like resolution or even better.
Well... No. There's the small practical issue of number of actual rphotons arriving from the planet to the telescope. No amount of technology is going to change that (well, except using space travel technology to get closer...).
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement for a long time yet, and ultimately, with enough photons collected, for many enough revolutions of the target planet, a very detailed map could be made (which would automatically be map of the entire surface). But not in our lifetime.
As for TFA and using proportional fonts for programming, all I can say is that the author can't be doing a lot of unified diffs, or working with languages where the amount of indentation is significant (fortran, anyone?). Hell, even doing a cut/paste becomes more difficult when some of the letters are much narrower.
And with most prop fonts, good luck seeing the difference between variables like ill, lil and il1, or B80, 8BO and B8Ø, for that matter.
Indentation is only at the beginning of the line. So variable-width fonts are really no problem with either indentation or diffs.
However, for best results with variable width fonts, tabs for indentation is really the way to go. Well, they're that for all fonts, anyway. I mean, who got this amazingly stupid idea, that a certain variable (between programmers, styles, files and even contexts within single file, etc) number of spaces means one step of indentation? It even sounds crazy when you read that aloud.
Now I admit there are some annoying real world issues which make many lazy coders to seek excuses to keep using spaces, including but not limited to: legacy code uses them, can't change due to version control, 'less' doesn't display tab-indented code nicely, with tabs I can't force other coders to use same indentation as I use, I like to spend time aligning commas in different lines using spaces, I lost the manual of my tractor feed line printer so can't set tab stops and I'm too lazy to code a filter to run before printing...
Perhaps maybe just purgatory. But it could work. Carry your uberdevice in your pocket (lead foil lined), use it with it's native human interface devices when wandering around. Pop it in some sort of dock at work with a decent keyboard, mouse and screen. Remember to pick it up before you go home.
At least Maemo can do this today for real. The "docking station" will just have to be a PC running VNC and phone needs to connect to it with WLAN or USB. There are also other possibilities (like running phone apps on PC X server instead of the phone X server), but VNC is the most universal and easy one I think. Is there a VNC server for Android yet, or even for iPhone?
Or then you could use cloud apps, they do work at least technically (at least Maemo5 stock browser, and I assume also mobile-Firefox release candidate, can run for example Google Docs and Google Wave), though user interfaces would need some serious optimization for touchscreens and crappy keyboards... But I bet at least some of the cloud apps available are bound to be pretty good on phone browsers.
Or then you could use network disk shares to store documents, and edit them in-place, whether using a phone/tablet or a PC.
But the point is, what you describe is possible today. This future started already last year :-).
You won't have to. He'll gladly settle out of court and give you nothing for your trouble.
And hopefully without using lawyers, because they will not settle for nothing.
For pity sake, a smartphone is not going to do everything a laptop or desktop will do as well, no matter how you design it. I'm all for using a smartphone, but not as a panacea. Just as I don't use a hammer when I want to saw something.
There are plenty of problems and solutions (some of which you have outlined) when it comes to phones, but that's not going to make them some piece of magic that does everything well. I don't want to do everything on a tiny screen with a tiny keyboard. Also note that some manufacturers and service providers have refused to offer the solutions you have outlined.
A smartphone doesn't have to do everything well, only well enough, and (with docking station connecting to the TV and wireless keyboard, and ADSL-WLAN if 3G isn't speedy enough in the area) it can satisfy all computing needs of average computer user. Niche markets, like high-end gaming, serious media editing etc will of course require a real PC for a long while, but people did already do high-end gaming and serious media editing in the time when high-end PC had less power than a smartphone today (let alone in two years, because the performance race for smartphones is clearly starting, as indicated for example by the TFA). So why couldn't a smartphone of today do gaming and media editing at the level of those old PCs, quite sufficient for a random user who just wants for example cut pieces out of a video they captured with the very same smartphone?
Now I'm certainly not calling for blood, and normally I'm not one to flame bait....but if the question is...
"Why are so many people using it if the service isn't 'good enough'?"
The answer could certainly be...
"Because they are a monopoly."
Of course the other answer could be...
"Because no one else has anything better."
How about "because they aren't buying it for the service, but for the results".
Too bad OpenGL royally sucks ass on ATI cards.
Well, that's only (very roughly) half of gaming computer video adapters. So even if what you say is true, who cares? ;-)
Explain to me how using a rat or a cat to test something that will save 1,000 human lives is barbaric and uncivilized.
Same way as using a newborn completely orphan baby to test something (the same way it'd be tested on a rat or a cat) that will save 1,000 lives is barbaric and uncivilized. An adult cat or rat, and especially an ape is certainly more aware and more intelligent than a newborn baby. And let's add that the baby is disabled/handicapped in some clear way.
How do you justify drawing a line that classifies newborn disabled orphan baby testing as barbaric, but says that healthy adult ape testing is just fine?
(Note: I'm not absolutely against animal testing, and I certainly like to sink my teeth into a juicy steak even though I think both are barbaric, yet I'd be almost (meaning stuff like survival of human species not directly depending on it) absolutely against doing same tests on human babies no matter if it's barbaric or not.)
How can you "steal" something that is broadcast over an entire hemisphere? You and I are subjected to satellite signals of all kinds without our desire or consent. How is merely making use of that radiation we are bombarded with considered 'theft?'
No, I'm not a tinfoil hat-wearing paraniod. I am just trying to look at it pragmatically.
It's not use of the radiation that is considered "theft", it's use of the information encoded into that radiation...
(Use of radiation will be considered stealing if the satellite is collecting solar energy and beaming it down as microwaves, but that's future, and at that point tinfoil hat might actually be good idea while you're setting up your radiation-stealer antenna ;-).
So, basically MS wants ME to contribute to distribute THEIR content I already paid for and then actually download MORE then I can actually use?
A: Hidden charges, shipping charges laws. A product should have a clear price. But say I download such a product on a paid connection. Then I pay not just for the license but also for the download AND upload. And if my license is not for the full product, I download stuff I don't need. So, how much does a $7 movie cost? Really?
Downloading media on internet connection where you pay by the bytes transferred? Are you nuts? Anyway, you could be saying same concerns about cars. The car seems to have a clear price, but then once you get a car, you have to pay for insurance, gas, service, washing... How can selling cars with that kind of hidden charges be legal? Also note, with P2P, the other users are lending their bandwidth to you, just like you're lending yours to them, so it sort of cancels itself. It reduces the cost of delivery, thus allowing lower prices (even in monopoly lower costs will usually result in lower prices due to increasing demand still increasing profits), a clear benefit to the customer.
B: What does this change, DRM exists and has been broken. What is the point of adding even more complexity?
The general point could be getting up-to-date content (series, movies, live sports events...) to be legally delivered over the internet to desktop PCs. The extra bonus for Microsoft could be allowing receiving this only with Windows PCs, possibly getting a license fee for Mac version of the player, and giving Linux one more handicap on the desktop.
Note about hacking the DRM P2P stream: to watch eg. a live sports event, the pirate needs the key specific to that event. They can only get it from somebody who's paying for the stream, and then they need to distribute it to everybody wanting to watch it, in addition to duplicating the stream. Certainly possible, but a lot of hassle, and more uncertain (does the pirated key and the pirated stream work or do you miss the event?). If pricing is right and technology works (think ISP proxies etc), just paying for it starts to sound pretty tempting. And once you pay for some of it, and if pricing is still right, why not pay also for the other stuff, if it's hassle-free.
Also, think of this being implemented in a TV set or a set-top-box, no PC required.
There are a lot of possibilites not really available otherwise.
C: What happens to people on ISP's who restrict uploads?
ISPs change policies, either because it's good for them or because Microsoft marketing sells them a cost-saving proxy software to run inside their own network, or customers switch ISPs.
I always have to laugh when people complain about patents on technologies they hate. Hello? They PATENTED it. That means nobody else is allowed to do it. And Microsoft of course, will fail at it themselves. Thus the effect of the patent is to PREVENT these sorts of DRM mechanisms from proliferating. Use your brains people.
"Microsoft of course, will fail at it"? Once it's patented, it's possible to control the software that implements it. Once the software is under control, MAFIAA can release media playable only by that controlled software, which will only play it if it's paid for. Microsoft has managed to release yet another operating system (Windows 7) that will have the overwhelming majority of desktop PCs. Why would they fail to release an exlusive MAFIAA-approved pay-to-view P2P video delivery system for it, if they just get MAFIAA to play along?
Of course anything is hackable, and this isn't at all intersting to "pirates", and probably not to Linux users either. But it could be basis for true click-to-view video-on-demand for the average Windows user. For people who pay for the entertainment they consume, this could be very convenient.
Let me see how many brands we really have
HTC
Nokia
Samsung
Sony/Ericsson
LG
Motorola
Apple
The rest is mostly small manufacturers or OEMs which buy from HTC or Samsung (like Dell for instance)
I would not call that that many, sorry. It is also very hard to join that club on a worldwide scale because there is a load of patents involved as Apple now has to feel.
I would call that many for the purposes of free-market competition. It's not really less than major players in the laptop market for example. It's far more than in the PC processor market, or PC display chipset market (or even global graphics adapter card market).
It's actually surprisingly many, considering how technologically challenging device a "smartphone" is. Just like throwing together a Desktop PC is trivial, but building a good laptop is an order of magnitude more difficult (heat problems, battery life, mechanical durability, weight and size, EMC...). Building a top-of-the-line smartphone is yet an order of magnitude bigger challenge in all these respects.