I think the carriers are shooting for the fees to be declared legally legimate so you can't sue using a state's consumer protection statue. The amount of the fees will of course be a part of this as well, and I'm sure the FCC will say that "whatever the current fees are" is around the right amount, which would make the carriers quite happy.
I don't think they will make any decision that fees should be abolished thanks to the arguement about handsets being subsidized by the contract, but they may just put a slighly lower limit on them.
Were they able to save that $10/month, how many more would be tempted to save money and, even unintentionally, end up saving a lot of damage to the environment?
The wireless carriers' highest duty is to increasing profits for their shareholders, so thinking about the Earth is not allowed. Saving the planet is not important enough compared to adding an extra 5 to the dividend./sarcasm
The free phones are just a mechanism to keep you signed up for long contracts.
If people are stupid enough to want a new phone or lose their existing one every two years they have no one to blame but themselves.
The carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment to keep you having to either pay an outlandish price for a phone with no contract or to sign up for a new contract to get it free or at a pretty small discount.
Some carriers will give you the unlock code for your phone after a period of time has passed, even if you haven't finished your contract period, since you still would have to pay the early termination fee if wanted to cancel.
The best thing to happen is to have the cellular carriers not sell you or give you your phone at all! You could then buy it in a bubble package at Walmart.
If you already have an account with a GSM carrier you can do this. I can go into Wal-Mart, buy one of their "pre-paid" T-Mobile phones off the shelf, take out the SIM in the back, and stick in the SIM from my current non-prepaid T-Mobile account. The new phone will work fine and have all my contacts from my SIM on it. I didn't have to get a contract extension or pay hundreds of dollars.
Actually, my last phone was a new, factory-unlocked Cingular branded phone. I paid less than a hundred bucks because its one of those models that's usually given away for free or very little money with a contract extension, so the market is flooded with them.
As usual the problem can be solved by letting market forces work, getting cellphone manufacturers duking it out to sell you your phone through regular retailers, and having cellphone carriers duking it out to sell you your service. And you can then use whatever phone you want.
One GOOD thing that has happened in the last year, the IPHONE came out.
Interesting, since that last sentence contradicts your previous one. The only good thing about the iPhone was the unlimited Internet access Apple strong-armed the carriers into offering. Other than that the iPhone has been keeping up the locked-to-a-carrier, you-gotta-get-a-contract status quo.
Isn't the real culprit, or at least the one anime fans should be up in arms about, is whomevers is ripping the most anime is ripping it to MKV?
MKV isn't the majority container format, yet -- and some fans are, which is why some fansub groups do releases in multiple formats. But just as there are people that are annoyed with MKV releases, there is also people that are annoyed at AVI releases at a time when any PC made in the last four years can play a standard def h264 stream smoothly. H264 gives them better quality for the filesize than the AVI, or the same quality in a smaller file, and h264 handles some situations better than AVI. I notice motion is smoother, especially panning of the entire scene. Some also like having soft subs so they can remove them easily.
As fansubbing is moving towards high def, h264 is becoming the standard now, so MKV is too.
The response most fansub groups would give is if you don't like their format choice you're welcome to find another group's releases to watch. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Why wrap mp4s in avi... When an mp4 wrapper would seem to make more sense?
People do that? Damn. The response you'd get on the doom9 forums is there's no reason to use AVI for anything except XviD and WMV.
Is it? I rather thought that Anime fansub groups preferred to hardsub than to softsub. Reason is this, so some other group doesn't steal their styles, or so their subs don't get ripped and then in turn get sold as a commercial product.
OCR Subrippers are surprisingly good nowadays.
So many people like VLC for it's "play anything" attitude that perhaps this is a case of the "industry" being held back by VLC lousy subtitle support. I personally think the popularity of hardsubbing and AVI files is still the result of their much lower hardware requirements for playback and higher portability to consumer electronics. There are lots of DVD players, TVs, PMPs, and else that can playback DivX/XviD AVI files, but practically none that can read MKVs (let alone handle SSA subs). MP4 is rising as there are some devices (like iPods and PSPs) and a few Chinese PMPs that support h264 video through it. But MKV is the superior container format in the end and where people would really like to be heading.
If there's one thing this porting will help, it's support for the MKV container in places besides PCs.
I wonder how much of the subtitling issues are VLC's fault, and how much it is bad or poorly coded or corrupt subtitle files. In my experience its not always screwed up... sometimes it works fine with some files, sometimes its a little wacky with others.
The issue is VLC. It does not read any of the text layout or styling information in SubStation Alpha format subtitles. And.SSA/.ASS is the most popular subtitle format in MKVs for anime fansubs because its so flexable. If you're looking at an encoding made from a ripped DVD, generally it will look like the real thing since subtitles from them are put into a simpler format generally which VLC can understand easier.
What you're seeing is pretty much a repeat of the Pidgin developer mindset: We (the developers) don't personally care much about (feature), so we aren't really going to do much about it.
The response to the forum threads asking for better subtitle support is "in the next release" (0.90), but that release is feature complete, or fairly close to it at this point, and the subtitles generally look the same as they do now. Most people would be happy simply to have the option of letting VSFilter handle subtitle display (like MPC+CCCP does) if the VLC devs don't want to work on supporting it in-app.
So when I travel, do I have to carry proof of purchase for all the stuff on my iPod? How exactly do they plan to enforce this?
I would normally say that they'll just assume anything that isn't in a DRM wrapper is stolen, but then with the blaring existance of Amazon and eMusic's MP3 stores I don't know what they'll do now.
Here's one, Bell - strip the DRM and present the video using an open standard. Content provider doesn't like it? Well, as a big distribution channel, you might just have a bit of leverage with them to, you know, SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS BETTER.
The content providers ARE their customers where this service is concerned, we the consuming audience are the product BEll Canada they are selling to the provider.;)
I'll believe it when I see it in a finished release. I seem to remember voice/video support being a SoC project for Pidgin a couple years ago, and that work seemingly went into the garbage can because it was never actually implemented in the project.
I agree it sucks though that you can't read the reciepts. I have mine tucked away in the empty boxes from what I buy and with no light at all they are blank... how you supposed to honor the warranty?
You think this is some sort of coincidence still, right?
The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol.
Of course, once this machine is actually available, I predict the price of that inedible sugar will suddenly rise to a level where using it to create ethanol yields a final price-per-gallon that is comparable to just buying E85 at your local gas station. After all, the sugar will suddenly have a much higher value in use as a fuel verses whatever they do with it now.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they make one more with the Verizon guy riding the Alltel guy like a pony shouting "WHO'S MY BIATCH NOW?"
So people put up a "UPS mailbox" too. Just like many have a special box for their newspapers to go into in rural areas.
I think the carriers are shooting for the fees to be declared legally legimate so you can't sue using a state's consumer protection statue. The amount of the fees will of course be a part of this as well, and I'm sure the FCC will say that "whatever the current fees are" is around the right amount, which would make the carriers quite happy.
I don't think they will make any decision that fees should be abolished thanks to the arguement about handsets being subsidized by the contract, but they may just put a slighly lower limit on them.
Maybe so customers wouldn't try to hook up three at the same time to their TVs?
The wireless carriers' highest duty is to increasing profits for their shareholders, so thinking about the Earth is not allowed. Saving the planet is not important enough compared to adding an extra 5 to the dividend.
How is the Postal Service a monopoly? People send printed letters through FedEx, DHL, and UPS all the time.
If people are stupid enough to want a new phone or lose their existing one every two years they have no one to blame but themselves.
Some carriers will give you the unlock code for your phone after a period of time has passed, even if you haven't finished your contract period, since you still would have to pay the early termination fee if wanted to cancel.
If you already have an account with a GSM carrier you can do this. I can go into Wal-Mart, buy one of their "pre-paid" T-Mobile phones off the shelf, take out the SIM in the back, and stick in the SIM from my current non-prepaid T-Mobile account. The new phone will work fine and have all my contacts from my SIM on it. I didn't have to get a contract extension or pay hundreds of dollars.
Actually, my last phone was a new, factory-unlocked Cingular branded phone. I paid less than a hundred bucks because its one of those models that's usually given away for free or very little money with a contract extension, so the market is flooded with them.
Interesting, since that last sentence contradicts your previous one. The only good thing about the iPhone was the unlimited Internet access Apple strong-armed the carriers into offering. Other than that the iPhone has been keeping up the locked-to-a-carrier, you-gotta-get-a-contract status quo.
Unfortunately, being assholes is not a crime.
Oh, wait. That cuts both ways in this case, huh?
MKV isn't the majority container format, yet -- and some fans are, which is why some fansub groups do releases in multiple formats. But just as there are people that are annoyed with MKV releases, there is also people that are annoyed at AVI releases at a time when any PC made in the last four years can play a standard def h264 stream smoothly. H264 gives them better quality for the filesize than the AVI, or the same quality in a smaller file, and h264 handles some situations better than AVI. I notice motion is smoother, especially panning of the entire scene. Some also like having soft subs so they can remove them easily.
As fansubbing is moving towards high def, h264 is becoming the standard now, so MKV is too.
The response most fansub groups would give is if you don't like their format choice you're welcome to find another group's releases to watch. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.People do that? Damn. The response you'd get on the doom9 forums is there's no reason to use AVI for anything except XviD and WMV.
Have you checked out Chroma?
OCR Subrippers are surprisingly good nowadays.
So many people like VLC for it's "play anything" attitude that perhaps this is a case of the "industry" being held back by VLC lousy subtitle support. I personally think the popularity of hardsubbing and AVI files is still the result of their much lower hardware requirements for playback and higher portability to consumer electronics. There are lots of DVD players, TVs, PMPs, and else that can playback DivX/XviD AVI files, but practically none that can read MKVs (let alone handle SSA subs). MP4 is rising as there are some devices (like iPods and PSPs) and a few Chinese PMPs that support h264 video through it. But MKV is the superior container format in the end and where people would really like to be heading.
If there's one thing this porting will help, it's support for the MKV container in places besides PCs.
The issue is VLC. It does not read any of the text layout or styling information in SubStation Alpha format subtitles. And
What you're seeing is pretty much a repeat of the Pidgin developer mindset: We (the developers) don't personally care much about (feature), so we aren't really going to do much about it.
The response to the forum threads asking for better subtitle support is "in the next release" (0.90), but that release is feature complete, or fairly close to it at this point, and the subtitles generally look the same as they do now. Most people would be happy simply to have the option of letting VSFilter handle subtitle display (like MPC+CCCP does) if the VLC devs don't want to work on supporting it in-app.
Information is ammunition.
I would normally say that they'll just assume anything that isn't in a DRM wrapper is stolen, but then with the blaring existance of Amazon and eMusic's MP3 stores I don't know what they'll do now.
Red Star is a well known brand of baking yeast.
The content providers ARE their customers where this service is concerned, we the consuming audience are the product BEll Canada they are selling to the provider.
No, it's still in editing. Please stand by while we continue to write it.
Yeah! it's a space-age station for Oncology! And the doctor shoots first.
I'll believe it when I see it in a finished release. I seem to remember voice/video support being a SoC project for Pidgin a couple years ago, and that work seemingly went into the garbage can because it was never actually implemented in the project.
They aren't buying your machine, they're drafting it.
Because the seniors realize they haven't got much time left to watch ads? [ducking]
BitComet has too since version 0.84 at least.
You think this is some sort of coincidence still, right?
No, but you are the only one who thinks the NSA should get to listen to whatever it wants.
Of course, once this machine is actually available, I predict the price of that inedible sugar will suddenly rise to a level where using it to create ethanol yields a final price-per-gallon that is comparable to just buying E85 at your local gas station. After all, the sugar will suddenly have a much higher value in use as a fuel verses whatever they do with it now.