The launch of HBO Nordic was a huge steaming pile of...warm material.
Everybody in the Internet was waiting for it, they promised HD quality and fast releases, just a day from US release with local subtitles, with archive of old series.
What we got was a mandatory yearly subscription, a service that works in HD just on Samsung smart TVs, and a vague promise that HD for other devices is "coming soon". Also, not every show is available because of some excuse on local rights. They had a really good chance to do this right (Netflix did, although people complain that their selection is small and their HD is not bluray-HD; still there is a HD client for Xbox/PS3/iOS/Silverlight browser) but they managed to totally screw it.
I don't need necessarily an unlimited solution. My photos and music (which I have also on CDs but it is a great frigging pain to re-rip them) are the ones I need. And yeah, separate hard drives do a fine job, but if the price is right I'd like to outsource it (and there is the plus side that if for some reason those both hard drives are fried I have an off-site backup). A huge bonus would be if I could have an off-site disaster recovery backup of my OS disk (Windows here...) but I guess that is something that is not done yet.
What is the best online backup service? It doesn't have to be the cheapest (but it helps) - I have used Crashplan and tested Livedrive - they both offer unlimited option and a hassle-free client which works at least quite good, but as Crashplan had a price-hike I'm looking for something else, or is there maybe even superior service I should look into (I'm thinking a scenario where my main OS hard drive just quits with no warning, are there simple online solutions to fully restore you from disaster - I understand this is quite a difficult problem but hey, I'm allowed to ask?)
"The only thing it's been connected to since 2004 has been my personal computer (laptop)." - so while impressive, for the last 9 years it has not seen production use.
He also says that he works in a big financial institution with big-ass central UPS system and that explains the lack of reboots due to power outages.
The point is that in in-person communication you can see if the person is busy, and interact in a human way - like, you see he has nothing in calendar but is working hard with headphones on - so come back later and leave silently. I would rather receive a question about how busy I am and when I can answer and a remark "the details are in email" than an angry email with font size +14 and color=red. The first approach avoids flamewars, the latter, well, it is up to the persons communicating to work out what kind of message it is.
I share an office with our after sales people - so there is *a lot* of telephone calls going on all the time, and curses on failures and cheers on success. But there are also the fellow techs there, if the on-duty support person has a question he doesn't know the answer immediately to he can just whip up a quick "is there anyone willing to take a challenge on x?". Sure, IM and company-wide IRC channels etc. can supplement that (we have both) but it is not the same thing.
The killer is here:
The people in our office are smart. The sales guys actually approach the techs with care, if they see that they are "in the flow" they leave and come back with their question later. Same with the opposite, if I receive a question from my customer which is better answered by their key account manager I do not burst immediately on to him, he might be drafting up a very complex proposal and I don't want to interrupt. But as I see he is free, it is a two second job to say hi, there is this thing, details are in your email and it would be nice to reply today. The same thing on IM - if it comes at inconvenient time it is ignored completely. Email - might be better, but still priority is not so well given. What I am trying to say office environment has definitely it's sides (and I work from home 1-2 days a week too). And if your problem is that people "are asking stupid questions" - well, maybe you should get off your high horse or seek employment in an environment where there are no stupid questions.
Exactly. Cell service prices in the US are expensive, but that is mitigated by the fact that you can get the handset for quite a good price by paying monthly fees.
And $400 is low price for the latest high-end models, HTC One, iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 are all at ~700€ mark in Europe unlocked depending on the tax rate where you buy them. For reasons that are quite sensible, people tend to opt to cut that into 24 separate payments, and cell phone companies love that. The problem is the additional cost of mandatory service, and that is what is wrong in the US.
I got it working by manually exporting my feed subscriptions from Google Takeout. The real bummer came when my pretty moderate use (33 feeds) does not fit in to their "64 feeds" policy which only allows "12 sites". As I said in another comment - I will gladly pay for a good service. But this kind of double-talk makes me wonder what else they are not saying directly and openly.
Burned by this too. They advertise 64 feeds, but it is actually "12 sites". Which is not told before you get a nag screen telling that you have to disable some of your feeds because the limit is "12 sites".
I will gladly pay for a good service, but please don't use deceptive terms like this, it just makes you jerks.
I can only comment from my point of view so these thoughts are not universal:
Reader, yes, if you make a good one, I will pay $5 a month. I would love to try Newsblur but it is impossible right now. They charge $1 / month for unlimited feeds. If that works (interface is ok, handles 1k+ unread items fine) they have my money.
iGoogle / generic web platform...umm...at least Google and Yahoo have tried this, was not a huge success. I know many did like a custom start page with API but the market is very small. Maybe you could find your niche, myself - if I needed one I would just hack one together which has the things I need.
Multi-email IMAP client: Heck no I'm giving you my passwords, sorry.
WTF? Netvibes signup now displays an excellent offer of "PREMIUM for ONE $499/month" - what the heck does it do, for $499 I expect a bit more than what Google reader does...
Which just returns an error message after giving them access to your feeds on Google. Yeah, they are probably being slashdotted right now and it will go away, but using a service which fails right at signup - umm....no thanks.
Does it handle having hundreds of unread articles well? I have a "gaming" folder which receives about 1000 new posts every week, and I scroll them through quickly on weekends, actually reading maybe 5-10 articles, the rest - headlines are enough. Reader handles this fine and doesn't crash the browser.
The features that I love in Google Reader are:
1) Keeps unread messages nicely, I can come back to site monthly or hourly, doesn't matter. Even some offline readers I tried in the past screw this up... 2) No crap, just the RSS 3) Free (although I pay actual money to Google in form of storage space, please let me pay to you also to keep reader alive, if just in maintenance mode)
Many people seem to use Reader also as their central hub for feeds, and use an app on Android/iPhone/WP to access it - for me only the web is important, but others seem to like the API and 3rd party readers too.
The European Parliament "accepts" all the time resolutions from all areas of life and are equally silly because some group with representation of special interest groups got to write the memo. Because this included the words "Internet" and "Porn" for an example Falkvinge got the attention of the whole geekdom and made every porn-loving geek to send email. Of course it is important to point out if a resolution is silly, bad, full of nonsense etc. But accepting the resolution has absolutely no effect on anything (well, maybe the writers will get a special badge and get to say that we told you we were right). As one MEP said - this would never, ever get into legislation, not on EU level, not on per-member state level (if it is not there already in some form, different states treat porn differently - surprise!) - regardless of how a general memo like this is treated.
Why do you have a need to think of gay people having sex? Yes, I know there are heterosexual males who think of sex every 30 seconds, but if you find something repulsive why do you have to think about it?
And disliking something is still a far fetch from using the law to ban something, and suggesting that if we do allow a civil right to group who you do not like (your reason being from the most harmless and comical side, others base this dislike on some book saying something, the worst just like to oppress $somegroupnotme) there will be a revolution.
I particularly do not like strong-tasting sushi, in some point of life the thought of eating raw fish took completely away my appetite. Did I try to ban sushi? No. I just didn't think of eating sushi and didn't go to sushi restaurants. I wasn't even very local about it, just when I was in a group deciding on where to eat I expressed my dislike politely. (After the years I have evolved and I can now eat sushi, even like some flavors.)
I said that is the worst case scenario, when the gearbox has to select a different gear for the shift it is prepared for (I bet you are also slower if you have to skip a gear and go 2 gears down for an example because you have to move the gear selector a longer route). In a normal situation a double-clutch gearbox works just as you do manually, (it has the next gear selected and it just needs clutch-action) it is just way faster at it and the because it has two clutches it doesn't risk a miss-timing (as you do, you really have to time your shifting good if you start pressing the clutch after you have moved gear to neutral, if you manage to time this every time in tenths of a seconds without missing the change so that you can't select the gear because the clutch is still engaged - congratulations - but I bet "most experienced drivers" can't do this successfully constantly).
I did not comment on if the changes are optimal or if the computer picks the gear human would like 100% of the time at the precise moment the human would like, but that's why all the double-clutch solutions I have seen also have paddles you can use to select the point when to change. Although the computer selects better both fuel-economy wise and has better acceleration on full throttle...
Also, I can shift faster than an automated manual, and I'd bet most other experienced manual drivers can too.
No you propably can't. Even the consumer-grade gearboxes now used in VAG cars have change-time measured in a few hundreds of milliseconds (worst case scenario when shifting to gear the transmission is not prepared for), the best case scenario being the Ferraris with gear change time measured in tens of milliseconds. So I call this bullshit, even if you are capable of superhuman speed gear changes, most experienced manual drivers are not. (I'm driving a manual, but that is because it is cheaper, if I had the money my car would have double-clutch automatic gearbox.)
I like your ideas, but the final question in the marketing meeting is: How many people will buy this? And while your ideas are great and all...there is not so much market for those. Because the consumer (or their employer) selects the one which is the latest fad or most cost-efficient. An example: Nokia has tried for years to be "the manufacturer" in quality (I know personally how they test they their stuff and compare it to competitors, and it is quite thorough) and in cameras. So far the results...not so great. So the things consumers really care are elsewhere. Geeks would love a "Click", but if you only have 2000 customers (who would still bitch and moan about the price) what's the point? The same with "Universal" - both consumers and corporate buyers prefer contracts. End of story. Marathon...umm...Motorola made this already? Pure, Google has this. Tower, Nokia has tried this, call quality is not a dealmaker. Vault, interesting concept, not doable right now without a hefty pricetag. Flick - Done by Nokia, did not fly that far. Simplicity: Many have tried, some have succeeded, most have not. Market is there, but it is a difficult one. Your todays grandma doesn't wan't to have "simplified" phone, just "easy". Tinker: Good luck with licensing. This is actually the one I would have, but I realize that I'm a geek, and the market isn't there. And I would probably choose the one which I know can be hacked and is cheaper.
Religious groups attacking Greenpeace because they receives money from lottery profits? Oh crap, that is hilarious, talk about the pot and kettle. Churches have never, ever taken money from gullible people, have they, oh, wait...
HTC has been sued. The suit was about patents and it was settled out of court in 2012. Nokia has sued Apple and that also was settled out of court, and I believe Apple won't bother again because currently Nokia is irrelevant and they have an agreement on much more fundamental pieces than design patents.
But it doesn't change the fact that rules should be the same for everybody - if you are required to pay sales tax on brick & mortar why should the online retailer avoid it? They are already more efficient so why should they get the tax break?
If you are for eliminating sales tax completely - fine. But I do not see that on the agenda...
A big difference between porn and cleaning toilets is the lasting efffects. I know of porn stars who later committed suicide, or who came to regret having ever done porn (even though it made them very rich).
Fair point. In my country the government recruits young (mostly men, but they accept occasional woman) people to work in the air force as pilots. They advertise the career as thrilling adventure. The reality is that many retire young with a broken back and cannot live without constant pain medication and/or work anywhere else. At the same time the insurance companies and the government refuses to accept this as work-induced trauma.
Yes, porn sometimes exploits (young) people. So does a million other things. Why we should start on porn?
Yes, for one, having sex can be a lot of fun, but cleaning toilets is about as fun as eating dogshit.
If you are *eating* the shit while cleaning toilets you are doing it wrong...
On a more serious note - I think the ratio of porn stars that are having genuinely fun is about the same as in every job. Sure, there are those few who love what they do, and would do it even for free. But the vast majority are those who do what they do because it pays their bills. Then they go home and maybe have "fun" sex. That is not a good reason to ban the thing, obviously.
For heavens sake - the point of these featurephone browsers (Opera Mini has been doing this since dawn of time) is that they use proxy to reduce data transferred and/or reformat the sites to better use lower resolution. Instead of a lot screenshots to prove that he is a very l33t h4x0r he could have just opened the friendly page showing how the browser works.
The only thing that rises eyebrows a little is that they indeed MITM https traffic by re-encrypting the traffic and using their own certificate (which is installed as trusted on the phone) on phoneproxy communication. But this is how SSL is supposed to work - if you want to be sure about both sides you will also need client-side certificates.
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The launch of HBO Nordic was a huge steaming pile of...warm material.
Everybody in the Internet was waiting for it, they promised HD quality and fast releases, just a day from US release with local subtitles, with archive of old series.
What we got was a mandatory yearly subscription, a service that works in HD just on Samsung smart TVs, and a vague promise that HD for other devices is "coming soon". Also, not every show is available because of some excuse on local rights. They had a really good chance to do this right (Netflix did, although people complain that their selection is small and their HD is not bluray-HD; still there is a HD client for Xbox/PS3/iOS/Silverlight browser) but they managed to totally screw it.
I don't need necessarily an unlimited solution. My photos and music (which I have also on CDs but it is a great frigging pain to re-rip them) are the ones I need. And yeah, separate hard drives do a fine job, but if the price is right I'd like to outsource it (and there is the plus side that if for some reason those both hard drives are fried I have an off-site backup). A huge bonus would be if I could have an off-site disaster recovery backup of my OS disk (Windows here...) but I guess that is something that is not done yet.
So...I'll shoot:
What is the best online backup service? It doesn't have to be the cheapest (but it helps) - I have used Crashplan and tested Livedrive - they both offer unlimited option and a hassle-free client which works at least quite good, but as Crashplan had a price-hike I'm looking for something else, or is there maybe even superior service I should look into (I'm thinking a scenario where my main OS hard drive just quits with no warning, are there simple online solutions to fully restore you from disaster - I understand this is quite a difficult problem but hey, I'm allowed to ask?)
The guy has replied to this in Ars forum:
"The only thing it's been connected to since 2004 has been my personal computer (laptop)." - so while impressive, for the last 9 years it has not seen production use.
He also says that he works in a big financial institution with big-ass central UPS system and that explains the lack of reboots due to power outages.
And you completely missed the point.
The point is that in in-person communication you can see if the person is busy, and interact in a human way - like, you see he has nothing in calendar but is working hard with headphones on - so come back later and leave silently. I would rather receive a question about how busy I am and when I can answer and a remark "the details are in email" than an angry email with font size +14 and color=red. The first approach avoids flamewars, the latter, well, it is up to the persons communicating to work out what kind of message it is.
It really depends.
I share an office with our after sales people - so there is *a lot* of telephone calls going on all the time, and curses on failures and cheers on success. But there are also the fellow techs there, if the on-duty support person has a question he doesn't know the answer immediately to he can just whip up a quick "is there anyone willing to take a challenge on x?". Sure, IM and company-wide IRC channels etc. can supplement that (we have both) but it is not the same thing.
The killer is here:
The people in our office are smart. The sales guys actually approach the techs with care, if they see that they are "in the flow" they leave and come back with their question later. Same with the opposite, if I receive a question from my customer which is better answered by their key account manager I do not burst immediately on to him, he might be drafting up a very complex proposal and I don't want to interrupt. But as I see he is free, it is a two second job to say hi, there is this thing, details are in your email and it would be nice to reply today. The same thing on IM - if it comes at inconvenient time it is ignored completely. Email - might be better, but still priority is not so well given. What I am trying to say office environment has definitely it's sides (and I work from home 1-2 days a week too). And if your problem is that people "are asking stupid questions" - well, maybe you should get off your high horse or seek employment in an environment where there are no stupid questions.
Exactly. Cell service prices in the US are expensive, but that is mitigated by the fact that you can get the handset for quite a good price by paying monthly fees.
And $400 is low price for the latest high-end models, HTC One, iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 are all at ~700€ mark in Europe unlocked depending on the tax rate where you buy them. For reasons that are quite sensible, people tend to opt to cut that into 24 separate payments, and cell phone companies love that. The problem is the additional cost of mandatory service, and that is what is wrong in the US.
I got it working by manually exporting my feed subscriptions from Google Takeout. The real bummer came when my pretty moderate use (33 feeds) does not fit in to their "64 feeds" policy which only allows "12 sites". As I said in another comment - I will gladly pay for a good service. But this kind of double-talk makes me wonder what else they are not saying directly and openly.
Burned by this too. They advertise 64 feeds, but it is actually "12 sites". Which is not told before you get a nag screen telling that you have to disable some of your feeds because the limit is "12 sites".
I will gladly pay for a good service, but please don't use deceptive terms like this, it just makes you jerks.
I can only comment from my point of view so these thoughts are not universal:
Reader, yes, if you make a good one, I will pay $5 a month. I would love to try Newsblur but it is impossible right now. They charge $1 / month for unlimited feeds. If that works (interface is ok, handles 1k+ unread items fine) they have my money.
iGoogle / generic web platform...umm...at least Google and Yahoo have tried this, was not a huge success. I know many did like a custom start page with API but the market is very small. Maybe you could find your niche, myself - if I needed one I would just hack one together which has the things I need.
Multi-email IMAP client: Heck no I'm giving you my passwords, sorry.
WTF? Netvibes signup now displays an excellent offer of "PREMIUM for ONE $499/month" - what the heck does it do, for $499 I expect a bit more than what Google reader does...
Which just returns an error message after giving them access to your feeds on Google. Yeah, they are probably being slashdotted right now and it will go away, but using a service which fails right at signup - umm....no thanks.
Does it handle having hundreds of unread articles well? I have a "gaming" folder which receives about 1000 new posts every week, and I scroll them through quickly on weekends, actually reading maybe 5-10 articles, the rest - headlines are enough. Reader handles this fine and doesn't crash the browser.
The features that I love in Google Reader are:
1) Keeps unread messages nicely, I can come back to site monthly or hourly, doesn't matter. Even some offline readers I tried in the past screw this up...
2) No crap, just the RSS
3) Free (although I pay actual money to Google in form of storage space, please let me pay to you also to keep reader alive, if just in maintenance mode)
Many people seem to use Reader also as their central hub for feeds, and use an app on Android/iPhone/WP to access it - for me only the web is important, but others seem to like the API and 3rd party readers too.
This was a tempest in a teacup.
The European Parliament "accepts" all the time resolutions from all areas of life and are equally silly because some group with representation of special interest groups got to write the memo. Because this included the words "Internet" and "Porn" for an example Falkvinge got the attention of the whole geekdom and made every porn-loving geek to send email. Of course it is important to point out if a resolution is silly, bad, full of nonsense etc. But accepting the resolution has absolutely no effect on anything (well, maybe the writers will get a special badge and get to say that we told you we were right). As one MEP said - this would never, ever get into legislation, not on EU level, not on per-member state level (if it is not there already in some form, different states treat porn differently - surprise!) - regardless of how a general memo like this is treated.
Why do you have a need to think of gay people having sex? Yes, I know there are heterosexual males who think of sex every 30 seconds, but if you find something repulsive why do you have to think about it?
And disliking something is still a far fetch from using the law to ban something, and suggesting that if we do allow a civil right to group who you do not like (your reason being from the most harmless and comical side, others base this dislike on some book saying something, the worst just like to oppress $somegroupnotme) there will be a revolution.
I particularly do not like strong-tasting sushi, in some point of life the thought of eating raw fish took completely away my appetite. Did I try to ban sushi? No. I just didn't think of eating sushi and didn't go to sushi restaurants. I wasn't even very local about it, just when I was in a group deciding on where to eat I expressed my dislike politely. (After the years I have evolved and I can now eat sushi, even like some flavors.)
I said that is the worst case scenario, when the gearbox has to select a different gear for the shift it is prepared for (I bet you are also slower if you have to skip a gear and go 2 gears down for an example because you have to move the gear selector a longer route). In a normal situation a double-clutch gearbox works just as you do manually, (it has the next gear selected and it just needs clutch-action) it is just way faster at it and the because it has two clutches it doesn't risk a miss-timing (as you do, you really have to time your shifting good if you start pressing the clutch after you have moved gear to neutral, if you manage to time this every time in tenths of a seconds without missing the change so that you can't select the gear because the clutch is still engaged - congratulations - but I bet "most experienced drivers" can't do this successfully constantly).
I did not comment on if the changes are optimal or if the computer picks the gear human would like 100% of the time at the precise moment the human would like, but that's why all the double-clutch solutions I have seen also have paddles you can use to select the point when to change. Although the computer selects better both fuel-economy wise and has better acceleration on full throttle...
Also, I can shift faster than an automated manual, and I'd bet most other experienced manual drivers can too.
No you propably can't. Even the consumer-grade gearboxes now used in VAG cars have change-time measured in a few hundreds of milliseconds (worst case scenario when shifting to gear the transmission is not prepared for), the best case scenario being the Ferraris with gear change time measured in tens of milliseconds. So I call this bullshit, even if you are capable of superhuman speed gear changes, most experienced manual drivers are not. (I'm driving a manual, but that is because it is cheaper, if I had the money my car would have double-clutch automatic gearbox.)
I like your ideas, but the final question in the marketing meeting is: How many people will buy this? And while your ideas are great and all...there is not so much market for those. Because the consumer (or their employer) selects the one which is the latest fad or most cost-efficient. An example: Nokia has tried for years to be "the manufacturer" in quality (I know personally how they test they their stuff and compare it to competitors, and it is quite thorough) and in cameras. So far the results...not so great. So the things consumers really care are elsewhere. Geeks would love a "Click", but if you only have 2000 customers (who would still bitch and moan about the price) what's the point? The same with "Universal" - both consumers and corporate buyers prefer contracts. End of story. Marathon...umm...Motorola made this already? Pure, Google has this. Tower, Nokia has tried this, call quality is not a dealmaker. Vault, interesting concept, not doable right now without a hefty pricetag. Flick - Done by Nokia, did not fly that far. Simplicity: Many have tried, some have succeeded, most have not. Market is there, but it is a difficult one. Your todays grandma doesn't wan't to have "simplified" phone, just "easy". Tinker: Good luck with licensing. This is actually the one I would have, but I realize that I'm a geek, and the market isn't there. And I would probably choose the one which I know can be hacked and is cheaper.
Religious groups attacking Greenpeace because they receives money from lottery profits? Oh crap, that is hilarious, talk about the pot and kettle. Churches have never, ever taken money from gullible people, have they, oh, wait...
HTC has been sued. The suit was about patents and it was settled out of court in 2012. Nokia has sued Apple and that also was settled out of court, and I believe Apple won't bother again because currently Nokia is irrelevant and they have an agreement on much more fundamental pieces than design patents.
All what you said is true.
But it doesn't change the fact that rules should be the same for everybody - if you are required to pay sales tax on brick & mortar why should the online retailer avoid it? They are already more efficient so why should they get the tax break?
If you are for eliminating sales tax completely - fine. But I do not see that on the agenda...
Wikipedia disagrees, but the alternative story is nearly as good (and is relevant to this discussion) :)
And their music is good, too!
A big difference between porn and cleaning toilets is the lasting efffects. I know of porn stars who later committed suicide, or who came to regret having ever done porn (even though it made them very rich).
Fair point. In my country the government recruits young (mostly men, but they accept occasional woman) people to work in the air force as pilots. They advertise the career as thrilling adventure. The reality is that many retire young with a broken back and cannot live without constant pain medication and/or work anywhere else. At the same time the insurance companies and the government refuses to accept this as work-induced trauma.
Yes, porn sometimes exploits (young) people. So does a million other things. Why we should start on porn?
Yes, for one, having sex can be a lot of fun, but cleaning toilets is about as fun as eating dogshit.
If you are *eating* the shit while cleaning toilets you are doing it wrong...
On a more serious note - I think the ratio of porn stars that are having genuinely fun is about the same as in every job. Sure, there are those few who love what they do, and would do it even for free. But the vast majority are those who do what they do because it pays their bills. Then they go home and maybe have "fun" sex. That is not a good reason to ban the thing, obviously.
For heavens sake - the point of these featurephone browsers (Opera Mini has been doing this since dawn of time) is that they use proxy to reduce data transferred and/or reformat the sites to better use lower resolution. Instead of a lot screenshots to prove that he is a very l33t h4x0r he could have just opened the friendly page showing how the browser works.
The only thing that rises eyebrows a little is that they indeed MITM https traffic by re-encrypting the traffic and using their own certificate (which is installed as trusted on the phone) on phoneproxy communication. But this is how SSL is supposed to work - if you want to be sure about both sides you will also need client-side certificates.