Exactly. In those days you could get away with lying to the feds, especially when any evidence or lack thereof was locked up in an official coverup of secret projects.
The fbi was probably investigating loose lips and the subject was spinning and yarn.
Lets see, two hundred and fifty million friends and followers all running for cover the first time some 133t hakzor compromises the DHS accounts. Quick, better make Facebook/Twitter federally protected entities, so we can gitmo anyone posting or tweeting anything that might be mistaken for the US government.
Facebook and Twitter couldn't possibly pay the advertising bill that would bring in this many new users. Now Ma and Pa Polyester HAVE to belly up to the meat market, no more ignoring Facebook/Twitter.
True, but by the same token it takes almost no time to get out of older technology.
I remember recently Alaska Airlines decided to dump all MD-83 aircraft a year after one lost elevator control and dove into the Pacific. It took precious little time to dump those planes partly because they already had a mixed fleet of 737s and MD-8x airframes.
To the extent any airline stays with a given supplier, migrating to newer models is made easy by manufacturers retaining some interoperability of ground support requirements, and some cabin equipment. Engines and avionics often get upgraded before the airframe is retired.
So some of these features can be be in place sooner than you might think. The Boeing Dreamliner already uses a great deal of new materials. It remains to be seen if that is going to be a problem for carriers introducing it to their fleet.
This is just the next version of "space age materials".
Oh, it might be more than that. The "Virtual Reality Windows" sounds a lot like Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses which have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
No more screaming and crying when things go horribly wrong.
This is simply a supply/demand curve where one side has managed to control the price point via monopolistic means enforced by government. (If they had to pay for their own enforcement apparatus they would quickly lower prices).
As it stands, there is no reason to believe they are selling anywhere near the "butter zone" (what ever the hell that is). There is no evidence they have ever tested lowering prices in selective markets, or lowering price even in developed markets. Not on any meaningful scale. Apple/Amazon proved that 99 cents per song works. But that market was mostly US/EU. World wide, its estimated that 50 cents per song or even 30 cents could make just as much total revenue.
The only people getting raped harder than the consumers are the Artists. Estimates are that the artist makes 9 cents of that 99 cents.
Motorola's "enhancements" to Android make the Atrix nearly unusable. My wife moved from the iPhone to the Atrix, and it is only because Android does allow customization that I was able to download enough skins and fixes to make the phone usable.
AT&T wants to push their useless buggy navigation to the Atrix, despite the fact that Google's navigation works just fine.
So skins are what makes Android usable or unusable? Is that what you are saying?
And Atrix is unusable because you can't get your favorite skin on it? Wow. There are sure a lot of Atrix phones sitting un-used then because the vast majority of users never hack their phones.
And Google Maps and Navigation appear on the Atrix, and you can even set them ad default and never worry about AT&T navigation ever again. Where's the problem here?
The real problem is that Google designed Android WRONG, and those phone makers and carriers who want to add features and customization can't do so cleanly without rebuilding Android to hang in their desired changes.
What if every point release of Windows or Linux kernel had to wait for every package, every desktop (KDE, Gnome, XFCE) to be updated before you could slip it in? What if Dell or Acer or HP couldn't ship any laptops just because they couldn't get their bloatware to run until they hacked the next minor release of windows?
When Google figures this out, and repackages Android so that you can slip in OS updates without destroying carrier specific layers then the fragmentation will stop.
they're trying to maximize profit globally, but are instead leaving money on the table
You phrase that as if it leaving money on the table were an accidental consequence. Its not. It is a deliberate choice.
Because media giants can not effectively control traffic of LEGALLY purchased media, they choose not to sell it at all in poor countries, or sell media at ridiculously high prices, in order not to fuel international markets, undercutting US/EU prices. If you could safely order LEGAL CDs from third world countries for pennies on the dollar, why would you buy at Downtown USA prices?
They are claiming that a strategy which maximizes profit globally creates underserved markets which turn to illegal channels to recieve content they cannot purchase legally. In short - either sell it to people at a reasonable price or they'll pirate it from someone who can.
In which case piracy is a bed the rights holders made, and now they should just sleep in it and stop using governments as their attack dogs.
Look, It might be reasonable for a Music CD to cost $12 to $17 bucks in the US, but even in developed countries like Argentina or Brazil that is a lot of money. It would seem to me that no real studies have been done to prove that profitability requires high prices. The people who set the prices on music and video do not live in Chile or Uganda, and worry only that lower prices there would lead to smuggling into higher priced markets.
Just pick up your cell phone and turn on the camera and view the screen. Have someone trigger a TV remote control however briefly across the room or two blocks away. You will see it without the need to take a pic
Just how hard would it be to detect anything using a laser scanner to map its surroundings?
While potentially useful against unaware civilians, use in a combat situations or as a tool for covert operations would probably be easily thwarted by existing technology, using a standard digital camera (even a cell phone) to check for IR lasers (the most common non-eye visible lasers). There is nothing particularly covert about lasers.
Oddly enough, most routers run some form of linux these days. Sounds like a computer to me. Seems odd that just because it stores only a small amount of data it doesn't qualify as a computer.
But aren't the Dutch one of the same countries that came down hard on google for just accidentally intercepting data, and not even trying to crack a router?
It's everywhere. Unfortunately, it seems that the overwhelming majority of those who are taught it are almost universally unable to see where it can and should be applied.
Perhaps there is some truth to that, but the history of the last 20 years of CS education has suggested that far too much time is spent teaching maths that have virtually no applicability to life beyond degree.
There are computer fields where math education is critical, such as high end graphics, image manipulation, audio codecs, etc. But for the bulk of software engineers, programmers, network techs, sys-admins, and developers higher maths and calculus is totally unnecessary, simply NEVER used in real life applications.
The whole field of computer science has been taken over by the higher maths crowd, starting with the assumptions that since its computers it must be complex and therefore it must need math. I challenged a professor as to why CS was a sub department of the Math department at my university (back in the day before CS broke out as its own school), and the rationale was that iteration (use of subscripts), dealing with arrays, counters, even summing simple numbers were all "math". And with that sweeping (and wrong) assertion the math department captured Computer Science for the next 15 years, doing irreparable harm in my view.
In the real world, I could never hire these people because they couldn't get anything done. The few I did hire had to be "promoted" to the "turkey farm" doing studies and proposals to get them out of the way. Admittedly my field of systems development were more geared toward financial and tracking applications and commercial software development. But over my meager 30 years in the industry I've never seen any math more complex than that necessary for linear regression analysis, chi squares, and a few present value calculations.
Most, the overwhelmingly vast majority of computer related work is simply not rocket science.
Yes, on Wifi (or even 3g) this will work just fine for high quality voice. I've got a retired iPhone sitting on my desk that I use for precisely this purpose.
There are any number if SIP providers out there that will give you a phone number for Plain Old Telephone users to call (INBOUND) you with and sell you minutes at ridiculously low rates for you to call OUTBOUND. Any calls to any other SIP numbers are free.
This is doable now with off apps from both the Android Market and the iPhone iTunes. Most of these allow calling either on WIFI or 3G (subject to some carrier prohibitions). Gingerbread phone have sip clients built in, and don't really need any additional software. Not everyone wants to set up Asterisk. Thankfully, this stuff is starting to be built right into the cell phones we use daily. Sip phones that connect to your house router are also very inexpensive. Even E-911 works.
Free sip services are available from at least 30 providers, and you can even get free phone numbers (yes, multiple world-callable direct inward dial numbers) for inbound calls.
The only thing you end up having to pay for is when you decide to call a regular phone number, like your friend next door. Going rates for that are less than 2 cents per minute in the US, slightly more to the rest of the world, and free if your friends also have SIP capable phones.
The problem is that it is all sort of fiddly to set up. Its kind of like the internet was in 1994, almost, but not quite, ready for prime time,
But once set up, it works very well. Just avoid Skype, and avoid fixed per-month charges. Pay by the minute. For overseas calls, the hardest part will be getting the other end to use SIP, especially when its Mom and Dad back home in a small town.
There might be an ISP that will provide all of that for you in one neat package, but I'm not sure going with an ISP's solution is the best idea. You want a company that specializes in SIP/VOIP rather than one who has their hands full just trying to keep their DSN service running. There is no reason to turn this over to the same bunch of people that managed to bundle what use to be $10 dollar Cable TV, $16 dollar phone service and $25 dollar internet and charge you $90/month super saver bundle prices.
First-to-file doesn't due anything to stop patent trolls, but since the whole point of patents is to encourage the inventor to publish, rather than hold the invention as a trade secret, First-to-file makes perfect sense.
You misread the GP.
I don't think he/she meant to imply first to file would stop patent trolls, rather it would encourage and empower them.
I think it will have the opposite effect you suggest, bringing MORE secrecy rather than less. You dare not let anyone see even an early demonstrator or model, or even talk about something you have in the works for fear they could run out and file a patent EVEN WITHOUT inventing anything. If you don't have to prove you invented it first, you can shut down your competitors with mere paperwork, while you labor in the back room to actual make something.
This is a totally separate issue from publishing prior art just to prevent a patent from being issued. Its not clear what effect this legislation has on the issue of putting something in the public domain by simply publishing art without producing anything. The GP was asking for specific language that might affect this preemptive publication.
Froyo on tablets has some limitations accessing the market, but most of the gingerbread and honeycomb tabs can access the market. There are several tablet centered apps in the market already.
Well, that's true, of course, I spoke too broadly. This thread was about SMS (phones) and that was what I was addressing.
Some Android Tablets, Nooks, and assorted android devices actually have no need of a google account unless you want to purchase from the Android market. Of course these things don't send SMS messages either, so they sort of slipped off of my radar.
GV has other reasons for being. Google could flip a switch and turn every android phone into a Voip phone overnight. Then all you would need is a data plan and no minutes. The carriers would scream, but even they will come around after LTE is widely deployed.
Android doesn't work without a Google account. IPhone doesn't work without a Apple Account. Windows 7 phone requires a Windows Live ID (I think, not absolutely positive about this).
Group chat has been added to Google Talk (android client) for some time now. (As well as the gmail interface to Gtalk, and the Windows version of GTalk).
And because its just Jabber (XMPP) Google Talk is inter-operable with almost any other Jabber based messaging service.
But you kind of miss the point of the whole story here, and that is to avoid SMS due to ridiculous pricing. So having something that ONLY requires the recipient to have SMS is EXACTLY what this thread is all about avoiding.
Paying a carrier for a text message VS selling my soul to Facebook is a choice I can avoid making with Google Talk, for the price of a gmail address.
But again, Google Voice can only send SMS to somebody who has an SMS plan or to another Google Voice account. Google Voice stopped allowing international SMS messages a while back.
Using Google TALK, instead of Google Voice lets you SMS for free worldwide with anyone who has an iPhone or Android or even just a regular gmail account. (You can also speak world wide on google talk, but only pc-to-pc.)
Google talk has totally replaced SMS for me on my Android phone.
Even my Iphone friends use one of the many Google Talk clients, like IMO. Nobody in their right mind would use SMS internationally, and unless you paid for the unlimited SMS plan you would be nuts to pay for SMS on a per-message basis.
Google talk is Google's implementation of Jabber, (XMPP) and interoperability with standard Jabber Servers/Clients has improved of late to the point where you can send and receive to just about any standard jabber gateway, and any jabber client.
The Android version of GTalk comes on every Android phone, and is essential for the Android market to work. But it leaves a tad to be desired, as Google has only implemented about half of jabber capabilities on the smartphone platform.
But there are a dozen or so XMPP/Jabber clients in the android market to choose from, some of which handle file transfer and voice calling as well.
SMS is a dead man walking. The carriers priced it out of existence.
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Exactly. In those days you could get away with lying to the feds, especially when any evidence or lack thereof was locked up in an official coverup of secret projects.
The fbi was probably investigating loose lips and the subject was spinning and yarn.
Lets see, two hundred and fifty million friends and followers all running for cover the first time some 133t hakzor compromises the DHS accounts. Quick, better make Facebook/Twitter federally protected entities, so we can gitmo anyone posting or tweeting anything that might be mistaken for the US government.
Facebook and Twitter couldn't possibly pay the advertising bill that would bring in this many new users. Now Ma and Pa Polyester HAVE to belly up to the meat market, no more ignoring Facebook/Twitter.
True, but by the same token it takes almost no time to get out of older technology.
I remember recently Alaska Airlines decided to dump all MD-83 aircraft a year after one lost elevator control and dove into the Pacific.
It took precious little time to dump those planes partly because they already had a mixed fleet of 737s and MD-8x airframes.
To the extent any airline stays with a given supplier, migrating to newer models is made easy by manufacturers retaining some
interoperability of ground support requirements, and some cabin equipment. Engines and avionics often get upgraded before
the airframe is retired.
So some of these features can be be in place sooner than you might think. The Boeing Dreamliner already uses a great deal
of new materials. It remains to be seen if that is going to be a problem for carriers introducing it to their fleet.
This is just the next version of "space age materials".
Oh, it might be more than that.
The "Virtual Reality Windows" sounds a lot like Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses which have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
No more screaming and crying when things go horribly wrong.
Douglas Adams should get royalties.
I don't believe this is the case. It might be for iPhones, but not for android.
Android frequently send out small updates to various phones to fix minor issues.
My degree is in Economics sonny. You, on the other hand seem to have no clue.
This has nothing to do with taxation.
This is simply a supply/demand curve where one side has managed to control the price point via monopolistic means enforced by government. (If they had to pay for their own enforcement apparatus they would quickly lower prices).
As it stands, there is no reason to believe they are selling anywhere near the "butter zone" (what ever the hell that is). There is no evidence they have ever tested lowering prices in selective markets, or lowering price even in developed markets. Not on any meaningful scale. Apple/Amazon proved that 99 cents per song works. But that market was mostly US/EU. World wide, its estimated that 50 cents per song or even 30 cents could make just as much total revenue.
The only people getting raped harder than the consumers are the Artists. Estimates are that the artist makes 9 cents of that 99 cents.
Motorola's "enhancements" to Android make the Atrix nearly unusable. My wife moved from the iPhone to the Atrix, and it is only because Android does allow customization that I was able to download enough skins and fixes to make the phone usable.
AT&T wants to push their useless buggy navigation to the Atrix, despite the fact that Google's navigation works just fine.
So skins are what makes Android usable or unusable? Is that what you are saying?
And Atrix is unusable because you can't get your favorite skin on it? Wow. There are sure a lot of Atrix phones sitting un-used then because the vast majority of users never hack their phones.
And Google Maps and Navigation appear on the Atrix, and you can even set them ad default and never worry about AT&T navigation ever again. Where's the problem here?
The real problem is that Google designed Android WRONG, and those phone makers and carriers who want to add features and customization can't do so cleanly without rebuilding Android to hang in their desired changes.
What if every point release of Windows or Linux kernel had to wait for every package, every desktop (KDE, Gnome, XFCE) to be updated before you could slip it in? What if Dell or Acer or HP couldn't ship any laptops just because they couldn't get their bloatware to run until they hacked the next minor release of windows?
When Google figures this out, and repackages Android so that you can slip in OS updates without destroying carrier specific layers then the fragmentation will stop.
In the mean time, its pretty much a tempest in a tea pot, since somewhere approaching 90 percent of all Android installs are in two versions of Android, 2.1 and 2.2. See http://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/articleimage/684/2011/04/android-versions-4-2.jpg
Fragmentation is largely a figment of the past rapid development cycles.
they're trying to maximize profit globally, but are instead leaving money on the table
You phrase that as if it leaving money on the table were an accidental consequence. Its not. It is a deliberate choice.
Because media giants can not effectively control traffic of LEGALLY purchased media, they choose not to sell it at all in poor countries, or sell media at ridiculously high prices, in order not to fuel international markets, undercutting US/EU prices. If you could safely order LEGAL CDs from third world countries for pennies on the dollar, why would you buy at Downtown USA prices?
They are claiming that a strategy which maximizes profit globally creates underserved markets which turn to illegal channels to recieve content they cannot purchase legally. In short - either sell it to people at a reasonable price or they'll pirate it from someone who can.
In which case piracy is a bed the rights holders made, and now they should just sleep in it and stop using governments as their attack dogs.
Look, It might be reasonable for a Music CD to cost $12 to $17 bucks in the US, but even in developed countries like Argentina or Brazil that is a lot of money. It would seem to me that no real studies have been done to prove that profitability requires high prices. The people who set the prices on music and video do not live in Chile or Uganda, and worry only that lower prices there would lead to smuggling into higher priced markets.
I'm not talking about taking a picture.
Just pick up your cell phone and turn on the camera and view the screen. Have someone trigger a TV remote control however briefly across the room or two blocks away. You will see it without the need to take a pic
Just how hard would it be to detect anything using a laser scanner to map its surroundings?
While potentially useful against unaware civilians, use in a combat situations or as a tool for covert operations would probably be easily thwarted by existing technology, using a standard digital camera (even a cell phone) to check for IR lasers (the most common non-eye visible lasers). There is nothing particularly covert about lasers.
Oddly enough, most routers run some form of linux these days. Sounds like a computer to me.
Seems odd that just because it stores only a small amount of data it doesn't qualify as a computer.
But aren't the Dutch one of the same countries that came down hard on google for just accidentally intercepting data, and not even trying to crack a router?
It's everywhere. Unfortunately, it seems that the overwhelming majority of those who are taught it are almost universally unable to see where it can and should be applied.
Perhaps there is some truth to that, but the history of the last 20 years of CS education has suggested that far too much time is spent teaching maths that have virtually no applicability to life beyond degree.
There are computer fields where math education is critical, such as high end graphics, image manipulation, audio codecs, etc. But for the bulk of software engineers, programmers, network techs, sys-admins, and developers higher maths and calculus is totally unnecessary, simply NEVER used in real life applications.
The whole field of computer science has been taken over by the higher maths crowd, starting with the assumptions that since its computers it must be complex and therefore it must need math. I challenged a professor as to why CS was a sub department of the Math department at my university (back in the day before CS broke out as its own school), and the rationale was that iteration (use of subscripts), dealing with arrays, counters, even summing simple numbers were all "math". And with that sweeping (and wrong) assertion the math department captured Computer Science for the next 15 years, doing irreparable harm in my view.
In the real world, I could never hire these people because they couldn't get anything done. The few I did hire had to be "promoted" to the "turkey farm" doing studies and proposals to get them out of the way. Admittedly my field of systems development were more geared toward financial and tracking applications and commercial software development. But over my meager 30 years in the industry I've never seen any math more complex than that necessary for linear regression analysis, chi squares, and a few present value calculations.
Most, the overwhelmingly vast majority of computer related work is simply not rocket science.
Yes, on Wifi (or even 3g) this will work just fine for high quality voice. I've got a retired iPhone sitting on my desk that I use for precisely this purpose.
There are any number if SIP providers out there that will give you a phone number for Plain Old Telephone users to call (INBOUND) you with and sell you minutes at ridiculously low rates for you to call OUTBOUND. Any calls to any other SIP numbers are free.
This is doable now with off apps from both the Android Market and the iPhone iTunes. Most of these allow calling either on WIFI or 3G (subject to some carrier prohibitions). Gingerbread phone have sip clients built in, and don't really need any additional software. Not everyone wants to set up Asterisk. Thankfully, this stuff is starting to be built right into the cell phones we use daily. Sip phones that connect to your house router are also very inexpensive. Even E-911 works.
Free sip services are available from at least 30 providers, and you can even get free phone numbers (yes, multiple world-callable direct inward dial numbers) for inbound calls.
The only thing you end up having to pay for is when you decide to call a regular phone number, like your friend next door. Going rates for that are less than 2 cents per minute in the US, slightly more to the rest of the world, and free if your friends also have SIP capable phones.
The problem is that it is all sort of fiddly to set up. Its kind of like the internet was in 1994, almost, but not quite, ready for prime time,
But once set up, it works very well. Just avoid Skype, and avoid fixed per-month charges. Pay by the minute. For overseas calls, the hardest part will be getting the other end to use SIP, especially when its Mom and Dad back home in a small town.
There might be an ISP that will provide all of that for you in one neat package, but I'm not sure going with an ISP's solution is the best idea. You want a company that specializes in SIP/VOIP rather than one who has their hands full just trying to keep their DSN service running. There is no reason to turn this over to the same bunch of people that managed to bundle what use to be $10 dollar Cable TV, $16 dollar phone service and $25 dollar internet and charge you $90/month super saver bundle prices.
First-to-file doesn't due anything to stop patent trolls, but since the whole point of patents is to encourage the inventor to publish, rather than hold the invention as a trade secret, First-to-file makes perfect sense.
You misread the GP.
I don't think he/she meant to imply first to file would stop patent trolls, rather it would encourage and empower them.
I think it will have the opposite effect you suggest, bringing MORE secrecy rather than less. You dare not let anyone see even an early demonstrator or model, or even talk about something you have in the works for fear they could run out and file a patent EVEN WITHOUT inventing anything. If you don't have to prove you invented it first, you can shut down your competitors with mere paperwork, while you labor in the back room to actual make something.
This is a totally separate issue from publishing prior art just to prevent a patent from being issued. Its not clear what effect this legislation has on the issue of putting something in the public domain by simply publishing art without producing anything. The GP was asking for specific language that might affect this preemptive publication.
That rule, he be a changing.
Froyo on tablets has some limitations accessing the market, but most of the gingerbread and honeycomb tabs can access the market. There are several tablet centered apps in the market already.
Well, that's true, of course, I spoke too broadly. This thread was about SMS (phones) and that was what I was addressing.
Some Android Tablets, Nooks, and assorted android devices actually have no need of a google account unless you want to purchase from the Android market. Of course these things don't send SMS messages either, so they sort of slipped off of my radar.
NO, its exactly why Google TALK exists.
GV has other reasons for being. Google could flip a switch and turn every android phone into a Voip phone overnight. Then all you would need is a data plan and no minutes. The carriers would scream, but even they will come around after LTE is widely deployed.
Hard way to get lower rates if you ask me.
Just use Google talk for free world wide and to hell with facebook.
Android doesn't work without a Google account.
IPhone doesn't work without a Apple Account.
Windows 7 phone requires a Windows Live ID (I think, not absolutely positive about this).
Group chat has been added to Google Talk (android client) for some time now.
(As well as the gmail interface to Gtalk, and the Windows version of GTalk).
And because its just Jabber (XMPP) Google Talk is inter-operable with almost any other Jabber based messaging service.
But you kind of miss the point of the whole story here, and that is to avoid SMS due to ridiculous pricing. So having something that ONLY requires the recipient to have SMS is EXACTLY what this thread is all about avoiding.
Paying a carrier for a text message VS selling my soul to Facebook is a choice I can avoid making with Google Talk, for the price of a gmail address.
But again, Google Voice can only send SMS to somebody who has an SMS plan or to another Google Voice account.
Google Voice stopped allowing international SMS messages a while back.
Using Google TALK, instead of Google Voice lets you SMS for free worldwide with anyone who has an iPhone or Android or even just a regular gmail account. (You can also speak world wide on google talk, but only pc-to-pc.)
For android you can start here for a list: https://market.android.com/search?q=jabber&c=apps
For iPhone you will find many of the same companies providing apps. Some don't support file transfer (pictures) and some do.
Google Voice (phone answering system) does support SMS. But you only need Google Talk (free) for unlimited world wide text.
Plus One.
Google talk has totally replaced SMS for me on my Android phone.
Even my Iphone friends use one of the many Google Talk clients, like IMO. Nobody in their right mind would use SMS internationally, and unless you paid for the unlimited SMS plan you would be nuts to pay for SMS on a per-message basis.
Google talk is Google's implementation of Jabber, (XMPP) and interoperability with standard Jabber Servers/Clients has improved of late to the point where you can send and receive to just about any standard jabber gateway, and any jabber client.
The Android version of GTalk comes on every Android phone, and is essential for the Android market to work. But it leaves a tad to be desired, as Google has only implemented about half of jabber capabilities on the smartphone platform.
But there are a dozen or so XMPP/Jabber clients in the android market to choose from, some of which handle file transfer and voice calling as well.
SMS is a dead man walking. The carriers priced it out of existence.