Did you miss where very popular liberal democrats are also behind this sort of thing? Don't mix gay marriage bans with this.. these are totally unrelated issues. The only similarity is the general practice of legislators knowingly passing or trying to pass bills that they well know are unconstitutional. Usually its just trying to make themselves look good to their voters...
It always amazes me when people on a self-admitted geek news forum complain about high-tech gadgets having more features. Should you try curmudgeon.org instead? This reminds me of posts responding to news on smart phones... "what happened to phones that just make voice calls".
I don't use portable video players myself, but they seem quite popular these days so hard to call them useless. This particular products seems off the mark (read: lame and overpriced) though... the video ipods already play videos, the down side seeming to be the screen size. Seems better to make a more simple attachment that is just a bigger screen w/ bigger battery but still uses the ipod to do the playback.
How stupid is this? How about word the law to say if you include 'innocent' words AND offer pornography, you MUST also include at least one pornographic keyword also (eg. Barbie + XXX). That makes it REALLY f'ing easy to hide all those "misleading" pages (read: legitimate fetish pages) through some kind of child-protective filtering software/hardware. Of course I'm willing to be that my rule is already followed voluntarily... yet another example of Congress making jobs for lawyers when technology already has the solution.
I'm sure it will be so worth the wait too. How exciting to get new lightning fast hardware to run a new OS at essentially the same speed as your old hardware and old OS. I'm in the same boat as this thread's origin: p4 2.4G with 1G of ram. My only desire to upgrade comes when I look at Fry's adds.
No no no.. they only want you to not fast forward through commercials. So when you skip back to the beginning of lost, you don't have to watch the whole 30 minutes you already saw, you only need to watch the 10 minutes of commercials within that 30 minutes of programming. See? It's really not that inconvenient.
But seriously.. if they just make the commercials interesting we'll watch them anyway. Put the ad's into the show, put the actors into the ads, or produce lots of unique and interesting commercials.
I was working in S60 when Symbian 9 was in the development stream. I had the exact same concerns you just expressed: how is the little guy going to write apps for this? As a day-dreaming software developer I've always wanted a shot at that "killer app", so it was kind of depressing. But it is a depressing marketplace where Operators run the show and define what users can and can't do with their computing device. For operators, Symbian 9 seems like a dream - lock out whole sets of APIs to apps signed by only THEM. You want to write a browser that runs on phones in OUR network? What do WE get out of it?
BTW, there is a HUGE boost to security with that model.
In the end it doesn't matter so much to me. Symbian is dead in the U.S. and not likely resurrected. I'm more interested in Nokia's Linux/Wifi + VoIP style products.
Opera already has an S60 based browser. It even shipped in some of Nokia's earlier S60 phones. It was very nice, better than the stock S60 browser, but also a lot slower and bigger. You could basically run it if you wanted to exit everything else. But this was some three years ago.
I think as your repliers have pointed out that you can probably buy it here (USA). The question is whether any operator will subsidize it (answer: no) and therefore it will fail miserably like every other handset that doesn't cave to the operators will to maximize their DRM/lock-in of every single bit of content they can get their hands on.
I had the same thought, but you beat me to the punch. My dad paid $4500 for our original IBM PC. By the adjusted dollars, that'd mean computers should cost $7000! Wow!! That $5000 system seems like a bargain.
I can't imagine every going back to D&D after rolemaster.. which I still play and love.
And what's with all the new systems? It seems people just can't get enough of redoing the same old thing... table top games are about the creative energy between GM and players... not about spending money on new books. Besides which, I have a hard enough time finding the time to play, let alone throw away all my current knowledge of game mechanics to learn new ones.
If you could actually feel the handbag before buying it, surely you'd just never leave the house and live entirely in your perfect virtual world. So you'd never actually even need a handbag.
Although you might want to buy a nice virtual handbag for your avatar so you look snazzy.
All in all, I'm still waiting for some kinda of direct brain interface rather than trying to cludge together inputs for these primitive eye, ear, hand, and nose interfaces.
Goon1: We're going to start losing money from gas tax with all these damn hybrids... and don't get me started on electrics.
Goon2: Right you are. Let's start taxing based on mileage instead.
Goon3: Well that just sucks. You could drive half your miles in Arizona and get taxed in CA for that.
Goon1: Good point. Any solution to that?
Goon2: Well, I own stock in this company that has a lot of IPR in GPS equipment...
Goon3: How can I get in on that?
Goon1: Hold it! Let's *all* call our brokers before we go any further. We'll meet back next week. Week passes...
Goon1: Ok. I propose we force everyone to install GPS modules into their cars.
Goon3: I second!
Goon4: Really? Isn't that just adding a horrendous one time tax to all car buyers? Increasing the number of goons needed to police the system...
Goon5: Hey! I'm one of those goons.
Goon4: Oh yeah. Sorry 5.. I know you'd never make it in the private sector. I guess I'll vote for it.
Goon3: Anyone worried about the people getting pissed?
All Goons: Laughter...
Well this topic has gotten insanely large... a good testment to the good/. folks taking interest in what is clearly an annoying new trend.
Seems to me you used to hear things like 'For every one complaint heard, there are a thousand others unheard'. So it seems almost like the FCC is still living in the backwards days before email where it actually took time to complain and therefore deterred all but 0.1% of the people outraged.
I hope eventually they get the idea (well I hope they are disbanded outright, but that's just me dreaming) that the new equation is more like 'for every thousand complaints heard, theres one wacko fundamentalist christian with a computer'.
I have this moxi pvr (also Tivo on another tv) and unlike tivo, moxi really *has* sold my ff button. I tried to ff through a PPV Fight (PPV!!! meaning I PAID to VIEW) and it gave me an error pop-up saying that wasn't allowed. So yes, Moxi is supporting some kind of goofy program-based command disabling. Now THAT's annoying...
This Tivo change doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.
Seems like you could just hack an xbox to get better performance for cheaper. And already as NIC card and optical drive. Someone just needs to start selling hacked xbox to third world countries.
The best part is the M$ subsidizes their cost, so it really would be charity.:)
Have you missed the whole e-911 thing? Most CDMA phones in the US have GPS capabilities already. Of course they take a long time and suck batteries dry to do independent positioning, so they use network assisted which is much faster (use lat/long of base station and some big computers to make the whole thing fly).
It's not a technology problem, its a business problem. Takes a long time for people to agree on how to bill for it.:)
Can I sign a waiver to get the fatty fries back at McDonalds?
Waivers are just slightly more confining boxes for lawyers to play in. When people die all bets are off. We're only safe if they run the entire operation out of the Caymans or something.;)
No surprises here. Mobile operators in the US have learned that you can't close the barn doors once the cows are out, so they're only opening peep holes.
And don't expect that to change. The LAST thing they want is to become typical ISPs where any third parties can deploy end-to-end solutions and they only get $ on the bits.
Just cancel Verizon and move to GSM. Sure, you can't get those EV-DO data rates, but then again 802.11 is going to be everywhere anyway.
It seems the government has decided to fight unemployment by creating more jobs for lawyers... pathetic. Since when is a game console anything more than a computer with a funky input device?
I thought patents were to protect things you invented, not things you stole.
How close to mark is needed in marketing anyway?
"credit card sized" and 1.4cm thick?? I think my credit card is maybe 2 or 3mm thick... why not just say its "nearly the size of a tic-tac"?
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Can't that just make him crazy and me 5:Insightful?
Did you miss where very popular liberal democrats are also behind this sort of thing? Don't mix gay marriage bans with this.. these are totally unrelated issues. The only similarity is the general practice of legislators knowingly passing or trying to pass bills that they well know are unconstitutional. Usually its just trying to make themselves look good to their voters...
It always amazes me when people on a self-admitted geek news forum complain about high-tech gadgets having more features. Should you try curmudgeon.org instead? This reminds me of posts responding to news on smart phones... "what happened to phones that just make voice calls".
I don't use portable video players myself, but they seem quite popular these days so hard to call them useless. This particular products seems off the mark (read: lame and overpriced) though... the video ipods already play videos, the down side seeming to be the screen size. Seems better to make a more simple attachment that is just a bigger screen w/ bigger battery but still uses the ipod to do the playback.
I can't wait for the first UN Resolution denouncing bit torrent!
How stupid is this? How about word the law to say if you include 'innocent' words AND offer pornography, you MUST also include at least one pornographic keyword also (eg. Barbie + XXX). That makes it REALLY f'ing easy to hide all those "misleading" pages (read: legitimate fetish pages) through some kind of child-protective filtering software/hardware. Of course I'm willing to be that my rule is already followed voluntarily... yet another example of Congress making jobs for lawyers when technology already has the solution.
I'm sure it will be so worth the wait too. How exciting to get new lightning fast hardware to run a new OS at essentially the same speed as your old hardware and old OS. I'm in the same boat as this thread's origin: p4 2.4G with 1G of ram. My only desire to upgrade comes when I look at Fry's adds.
No no no.. they only want you to not fast forward through commercials. So when you skip back to the beginning of lost, you don't have to watch the whole 30 minutes you already saw, you only need to watch the 10 minutes of commercials within that 30 minutes of programming. See? It's really not that inconvenient.
But seriously.. if they just make the commercials interesting we'll watch them anyway. Put the ad's into the show, put the actors into the ads, or produce lots of unique and interesting commercials.
I was working in S60 when Symbian 9 was in the development stream. I had the exact same concerns you just expressed: how is the little guy going to write apps for this? As a day-dreaming software developer I've always wanted a shot at that "killer app", so it was kind of depressing. But it is a depressing marketplace where Operators run the show and define what users can and can't do with their computing device. For operators, Symbian 9 seems like a dream - lock out whole sets of APIs to apps signed by only THEM. You want to write a browser that runs on phones in OUR network? What do WE get out of it?
BTW, there is a HUGE boost to security with that model.
In the end it doesn't matter so much to me. Symbian is dead in the U.S. and not likely resurrected. I'm more interested in Nokia's Linux/Wifi + VoIP style products.
Opera already has an S60 based browser. It even shipped in some of Nokia's earlier S60 phones. It was very nice, better than the stock S60 browser, but also a lot slower and bigger. You could basically run it if you wanted to exit everything else. But this was some three years ago.
I think as your repliers have pointed out that you can probably buy it here (USA). The question is whether any operator will subsidize it (answer: no) and therefore it will fail miserably like every other handset that doesn't cave to the operators will to maximize their DRM/lock-in of every single bit of content they can get their hands on.
I had the same thought, but you beat me to the punch. My dad paid $4500 for our original IBM PC. By the adjusted dollars, that'd mean computers should cost $7000! Wow!! That $5000 system seems like a bargain.
I can't imagine every going back to D&D after rolemaster.. which I still play and love.
And what's with all the new systems? It seems people just can't get enough of redoing the same old thing... table top games are about the creative energy between GM and players... not about spending money on new books. Besides which, I have a hard enough time finding the time to play, let alone throw away all my current knowledge of game mechanics to learn new ones.
Well yeah.. that's why they used those "air quotes".
If you could actually feel the handbag before buying it, surely you'd just never leave the house and live entirely in your perfect virtual world. So you'd never actually even need a handbag.
Although you might want to buy a nice virtual handbag for your avatar so you look snazzy.
All in all, I'm still waiting for some kinda of direct brain interface rather than trying to cludge together inputs for these primitive eye, ear, hand, and nose interfaces.
Goon1: We're going to start losing money from gas tax with all these damn hybrids... and don't get me started on electrics.
Goon2: Right you are. Let's start taxing based on mileage instead.
Goon3: Well that just sucks. You could drive half your miles in Arizona and get taxed in CA for that.
Goon1: Good point. Any solution to that?
Goon2: Well, I own stock in this company that has a lot of IPR in GPS equipment...
Goon3: How can I get in on that?
Goon1: Hold it! Let's *all* call our brokers before we go any further. We'll meet back next week.
Week passes...
Goon1: Ok. I propose we force everyone to install GPS modules into their cars.
Goon3: I second!
Goon4: Really? Isn't that just adding a horrendous one time tax to all car buyers? Increasing the number of goons needed to police the system...
Goon5: Hey! I'm one of those goons.
Goon4: Oh yeah. Sorry 5.. I know you'd never make it in the private sector. I guess I'll vote for it.
Goon3: Anyone worried about the people getting pissed?
All Goons: Laughter...
Seems to me you used to hear things like 'For every one complaint heard, there are a thousand others unheard'. So it seems almost like the FCC is still living in the backwards days before email where it actually took time to complain and therefore deterred all but 0.1% of the people outraged.
I hope eventually they get the idea (well I hope they are disbanded outright, but that's just me dreaming) that the new equation is more like 'for every thousand complaints heard, theres one wacko fundamentalist christian with a computer'.
I have this moxi pvr (also Tivo on another tv) and unlike tivo, moxi really *has* sold my ff button. I tried to ff through a PPV Fight (PPV!!! meaning I PAID to VIEW) and it gave me an error pop-up saying that wasn't allowed. So yes, Moxi is supporting some kind of goofy program-based command disabling. Now THAT's annoying...
This Tivo change doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.
Seems like you could just hack an xbox to get better performance for cheaper. And already as NIC card and optical drive. Someone just needs to start selling hacked xbox to third world countries. The best part is the M$ subsidizes their cost, so it really would be charity. :)
Have you missed the whole e-911 thing? Most CDMA phones in the US have GPS capabilities already. Of course they take a long time and suck batteries dry to do independent positioning, so they use network assisted which is much faster (use lat/long of base station and some big computers to make the whole thing fly).
:)
It's not a technology problem, its a business problem. Takes a long time for people to agree on how to bill for it.
Who's with me? I sincerely hope nobody..
I am! Sorry to dash your hopes.
Ahh.. good old techno-snobbery. I have a technical background and I still enjoy Wired.
Can I sign a waiver to get the fatty fries back at McDonalds? Waivers are just slightly more confining boxes for lawyers to play in. When people die all bets are off. We're only safe if they run the entire operation out of the Caymans or something. ;)
No surprises here. Mobile operators in the US have learned that you can't close the barn doors once the cows are out, so they're only opening peep holes. And don't expect that to change. The LAST thing they want is to become typical ISPs where any third parties can deploy end-to-end solutions and they only get $ on the bits. Just cancel Verizon and move to GSM. Sure, you can't get those EV-DO data rates, but then again 802.11 is going to be everywhere anyway.
It seems the government has decided to fight unemployment by creating more jobs for lawyers... pathetic. Since when is a game console anything more than a computer with a funky input device? I thought patents were to protect things you invented, not things you stole.
How close to mark is needed in marketing anyway? "credit card sized" and 1.4cm thick?? I think my credit card is maybe 2 or 3mm thick... why not just say its "nearly the size of a tic-tac"?