He said the industry could adopt the model of sites such as Rapidshare, which offers paying subscribers the opportunity to get faster downloads. "If we can get £1 a month from every person on this island [Great Britain] for music... this is getting very close to the current level of revenue for recorded music," Jenner claimed.
I've been saying for years that the music industry (and movie industry) should change their business model on the Internet to sell services rather than copies. Say, "For a low monthly fee, you can have free access to our super-fast servers that have all the newest releases and a huge back catalog (every piece of music ever recorded)." Divide up the profits from that service to pay royalties.
At least speaking for myself, I'm quite sure the music industry could make more money off of me during my lifetime by offering a $X/month service of providing all-you-can-eat drm-free music downloads than... well, any other business model I can think of. Give me a bundled deal including all movies and TV shows, and I'd pay a decent monthly fee.
You probably don't even need DRM. I know, you're thinking that people will just download the whole catalog in a month and then cancel their subscription, but that's really more trouble than it's worth. You have to go through all the trouble of downloading, storing, and backing up all that data. And then your computer crashes or a file gets corrupt, and you have to do it all over again. You quit again, but then a new song comes out that you want, so you'll have to resubscribe.
Most people will may for a service that makes their lives more convenient. Make a service that makes it easy to find and enjoy the media you want. Add a good recommendation engine on top of it. Price it competitively with cableTV+Rhapsody. Watch the money roll in.
In fairness, I don't think they're being inconsistent. The band has decided that, when they sell their music, they only want to sell whole albums. That doesn't tell you what they want to do about the people who aren't buying their albums.
...the phantom "lost sales" aren't the real reason the RIAA is against file sharing. It's because the RIAA labels have radio, and the indies have P2P.
I think it's important to understand that the whole thing is largely about controlling distribution channels. Once upon a time, record companies made money by manufacturing and selling actual records. The big companies secured their business by controlling the distribution channels for music. They made deals with record stores about which albums would be shelved and which albums would be prominently featured in their stores. They made deals with radio stations about which songs would be played. That's how they made their money, and that's how they kept competition at bay.
Now, they aren't in the business of manufacturing records anymore. CDs are pretty much done. All they have left is the distribution. If they had been smart and technologically savvy, they would have taken control of online distribution quickly and maintained control of the distribution channels. But they weren't smart and technologically savvy. They still aren't.
The people working for these companies flatter themselves that their business is about being cool and making music. The reality is that they've been soulless marketing companies for years, and now they're turning into providers of technical services. Large portions of these companies should be run by IT people, and they should be providing high-quality Internet distribution services.
It's not just a matter of "how we were brought up". A lot of times these views get lodged into our sense of identity, and that's why they're so hard to get rid of.
Very religious people, for example, tend to see their religion as a vital part of who they are. They rely on the authority of the religion to tell them that they're good people, and that they're living their lives "the right way". I don't mean to pick on religious people-- atheists do the same thing, but they just have a different set of beliefs based on different authority.
People also form feelings of intimacy and community by agreeing with people "like us" and setting themselves in opposition to "other people, not like us." People sit around with their friends, talking about things that they all believe, all hate, or all like. They don't usually spend a whole lot of time talking about their differences. That'd be alienating. So instead you get reenforcement of ideas that the rest of your group believes. Because of this, changing your mind about those shared beliefs risks alienating yourself from your group.
It's not as though there are much better options. For most practical purposes, Android is locked too. I have a Droid Incredible, but I can't just go around installing whatever I want. If I want to install a non-Verizon-approved image, I have to hack the thing.
Windows? Good luck with that. I'd rather go back to using a non-smartphone. Hell, I'd rather go back to using a landline.
Re:More corporate BS
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You're mostly spot on. "information wants to be free" has always been idiotic without concise definitions of "information" and "free".
You mean "precise"? Either way, by using the word "wants" (given that information doesn't literally "want" anything) they saying it letting you know that it's a generalization. Like "nature abhors a vacuum." That doesn't mean that there are no vacuums, but it's just describing a trend.
So does "information wants to be free" mean? As I see it, what's being pointed out is that (a) unlike physical objects, information is easy to replicate and share; and (b) people like to share information. It's hard to keep secrets because people like to gossip and people love a scandal. It's hard to keep an idea from spreading because, if it's compelling, people will spread it. And it only has to get out once. If the information is leaked at all, it's so easy to replicate and spread that it will get out.
And now that a song or movie are even easier to replicate than ideas, the same thing now applies to copyrighted materials. All you need is to have one unprotected copy leaked, and it will tend to get spread around. It can be very difficult to stop once it starts spreading.
I've done that, and I have to say that I think people misjudge the bias on Slashdot. I've posted positive/negative comments about Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Linux, and I'll tell you that the response can be fairly random. You can get modded up for posting positive things about Windows and you can get modded down for posting positive things about Linux.
Beyond that, the trends aren't what most people assume. In my experience, interesting and insightful comments about any of these companies/products can get you modded up, but annoying snide cliched complaints will probably get you modded down.
If there is a bias, I think it's most heavily anti-Apple, but in a specific way: irrational and ignorant complaints against Apple are more likely to get modded up than irrational and ignorant complaints against anything else (at least within the sphere of computing. Irrational complaints about religion are probably most likely to get modded up (no, I'm not religious)). I think the reason (if I had to guess) is that there are still a fair amount of Windows/Linux/Android users who are so anti-Apple that they won't give the products a fair shake and never really use them or learn what the situation is. On the other hand, most Apple users have used other operating systems.
As a result, complaints against the one-button mouse get modded insightful and complaints against WGA/WAT get modded overrated (I guess because people think you're just piling on).
That's my interpretation, but I guess you could accuse me of being biased.
It'd be nice if they ported their fancy web interface over to OSX server. The webmail and other web interfaces are kind of weak points in Apple's server offerings.
No, it's not as "cool" as being an iPhone dev, but at least Ballmer doesn't tell me I can't compile my code without forking him $100/yr...and he doesn't take 30% percent of whatever I might make selling my code.
Microsoft is making an app store for Windows Phone 7. You think they won't take a cut? Even the Android Market takes a cut.
One emailed me to tell me their email wasn't working. Yes I know we have all read it in a comic but it's true.
I believe you. I actually had one of those. Someone emailed me, saying, "My email is not working." I replied saying something like, "Seems to be working. Is it only when you send email to specific people?"
I got an email back saying something like, "Nope. Still not working. I cannot send or receive email at all, with anyone. I think the mail server is down."
Sometimes you just hope your being trolled, since the alternative is too sad.
so hoping that they'll read a scientific journal article is way over the top isn't it?
Yes, it probably is way over the top. Lots of scientific journals and academic writings aren't written for general consumption, and often enough they're just poorly written. Academia even encourages awful writing, considering jargon and citations to be a preferable substitute for clarity.
No, I won't get upset that they don't care. I will however get quite irate when they continue to argue against what has already been quite conclusively proven.
How do you expect them to know or care what has been conclusively proven?
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that people have to be willing to put in effort if they want to understand. Still, this quote bothers me:
"X is affected by Y." People don't accept that anymore. Explain why. Explain how.
Why should people just accept that without an explanation? Some dude shows up and says, "Your mom causes global warming." And people go, "Huh? Can you explain that please?" and that's bad, apparently. We should just accept it. Someone did a study, after all. He has evidence of some kind, but you're not supposed to ask to see it, since you're tiny head can't comprehend it.
Or else someone releases the announcement, "I did a scientific study that showed that bliberdigies are caused by booberdiboos." The high school dropouts say, "Um... I don't know what that means. I'm too stupid. Can you explain? If you can't explain that to me in a way that I can understand, then I don't care." And can you blame them?
If you want to say, "It's not the scientists' job to explain it to the high school dropouts," then that's fair. But then, you can't really complain when the high school dropouts don't believe you or simply don't care.
Let's face it, all corporations are deceitful sacks of s**t. That's the norm for business these days.
I don't see why we should let them off the hook, though. They certainly won't change if we excuse all their actions with "well what do you expect? They're a corporation after all!"
Also, Apple has been (at times) pretty straight-forward about support lasting three years. I think Jobs even said something during the announcement of iOS4 that these products have an expected lifetime of 3 years.
It's not all that strange within the computing industry. Warranties on new computers are usually 3 years or less. IT departments usually plan for upgrade cycles every 3-5 years. Many computer components are designed to have a lifetime of at least 3-5 years.
...science reporters, as a class, aren't particularly proficient...schools aren't particularly effective...
Yeah, and there's a pattern here. I think we generally aren't good at our jobs and we don't value people who are good at their jobs. We look up to reality TV drama queens. We've lived with the propaganda that "people are only motivated by money" for so long that we actually believe it. We've gotten to the point where reporters and teachers are part of the underclass, looked down on by businessmen and technologists. The teachers and reporters themselves are uneducated and ignorant.
Sorry. All that's completely off-topic and depressing to boot.
That's more of a problem with journalists, actually.
That's what I'm saying. It's not so much of a problem with the science, but a problem with the science reporting. Most people don't really know the difference, though.
Well what are we saying? "This is science fact! You are never allowed to question this again, and don't you dare ask me for an explanation!"
Or is the problem that they're high school dropouts? They aren't initiates in your secret order of scientists, so they don't get to know the secrets? I guess that's fair, or next thing you know some patent clerk is going to think he has a chance at being the next Einstein!
Look, the whole point of science is that you get to keep questioning it forever, and it's supposed to be entirely transparent. You're supposed to explain how. In detail. That's why it works.
What has changed is that religions out of synch with reality and corporations that don't want to spend the money it takes to deal with reality have been running huge propaganda campaigns to cast doubt on many of the major findings of science, if not on the potential of science itself.
I think that's part of it, but I also think there's a strange irony here. In the early 20th century, science was producing effect that, to most people, were like magic-- things like electricity, telephones, radios, television, human flight, etc. When people's minds tried to extrapolate where science would be taking us, their imaginations ran wild. They expected flying cars and interstellar travel. In the fiction, you got an explosion of science fiction and super-hero stories where the possibilities of science were unbound.
Over time, as we learned more, it became evident that the science fiction futures weren't coming, at least not anytime soon. We grew accustomed to the technological marvels of the past, and began to think of science as engineering, something which provided incremental improvement in our lives.
Now, decades later, we're actually living in scifi future. The role our computers and cell phones play in our lives was unthinkable a few short decades ago. We're creating nano-materials and have mapped the human genome. We've created the first life form with completely synthetic DNA. And people are BORED! We've gotten so accustomed to the incremental improvements that we don't recognize how far they've taken us.
Nowadays, it seems healthy skepticism has turned unhealthy. Science isn't as respected... in fact, there's a lot of mistrust from the public.
I think the problem is science reporting. Every couple of years, we hear about how "scientists have discovered that coffee is bad for you!" A couple years later, we hear "scientists have discovered that coffee is good for you!" It just alternates every couple of years. Every couple of years, we hear about some wonderful new Theory of Everything that is about to change physics, and then it never materializes. We hear about "teleportation" and something-or-other traveling faster than light, only to hear later that it's BS and we won't be seeing Star Trek technology anytime soon.
Give people a couple decades of that, and of course they're going to be mistrustful.
A scientist can devote her whole career to puzzling out some fact of the world, only to be second guessed by high-school dropouts. "X is affected by Y." People don't accept that anymore. Explain why. Explain how. Spell it out for me in great detail, this X and Y business.
That seems somewhat reasonable. Or what, scientists are just supposed to be revered as priests of hidden knowledge?
College is a mix of vocational training (particularly important for some professions) and personal growth in the "learn to be a good citizen" sense.
Well it's supposed to be that. By that, I specifically mean that people suppose that college does that. For some people, though, college is a 4 year-long sleep-away camp with sex, booze, and drugs.
The phone's initial cost is more but you don't have to sign a contract and you can buy cheaper data plans so the cost over two years is much less.
Doesn't matter. I can't get it on Verizon, and that's a deal breaker.
I am continually amazed at the financial illiteracy of people who can't do the math...
I'm amazed at how condescending you are.
If you don't understand the difference between the open source Android OS and the closed source iPhone OS...
I understand the difference. The differences are just abstract and philosophical, and don't have any practical bearing. In both cases, the practical truth is that I'm stuck with the functionality that my phone carrier will happen to allow; if I want to install additional features, then I need to hack it.
Slashdot Mirror
He said the industry could adopt the model of sites such as Rapidshare, which offers paying subscribers the opportunity to get faster downloads. "If we can get £1 a month from every person on this island [Great Britain] for music... this is getting very close to the current level of revenue for recorded music," Jenner claimed.
I've been saying for years that the music industry (and movie industry) should change their business model on the Internet to sell services rather than copies. Say, "For a low monthly fee, you can have free access to our super-fast servers that have all the newest releases and a huge back catalog (every piece of music ever recorded)." Divide up the profits from that service to pay royalties.
At least speaking for myself, I'm quite sure the music industry could make more money off of me during my lifetime by offering a $X/month service of providing all-you-can-eat drm-free music downloads than... well, any other business model I can think of. Give me a bundled deal including all movies and TV shows, and I'd pay a decent monthly fee.
You probably don't even need DRM. I know, you're thinking that people will just download the whole catalog in a month and then cancel their subscription, but that's really more trouble than it's worth. You have to go through all the trouble of downloading, storing, and backing up all that data. And then your computer crashes or a file gets corrupt, and you have to do it all over again. You quit again, but then a new song comes out that you want, so you'll have to resubscribe.
Most people will may for a service that makes their lives more convenient. Make a service that makes it easy to find and enjoy the media you want. Add a good recommendation engine on top of it. Price it competitively with cableTV+Rhapsody. Watch the money roll in.
In fairness, I don't think they're being inconsistent. The band has decided that, when they sell their music, they only want to sell whole albums. That doesn't tell you what they want to do about the people who aren't buying their albums.
...the phantom "lost sales" aren't the real reason the RIAA is against file sharing. It's because the RIAA labels have radio, and the indies have P2P.
I think it's important to understand that the whole thing is largely about controlling distribution channels. Once upon a time, record companies made money by manufacturing and selling actual records. The big companies secured their business by controlling the distribution channels for music. They made deals with record stores about which albums would be shelved and which albums would be prominently featured in their stores. They made deals with radio stations about which songs would be played. That's how they made their money, and that's how they kept competition at bay.
Now, they aren't in the business of manufacturing records anymore. CDs are pretty much done. All they have left is the distribution. If they had been smart and technologically savvy, they would have taken control of online distribution quickly and maintained control of the distribution channels. But they weren't smart and technologically savvy. They still aren't.
The people working for these companies flatter themselves that their business is about being cool and making music. The reality is that they've been soulless marketing companies for years, and now they're turning into providers of technical services. Large portions of these companies should be run by IT people, and they should be providing high-quality Internet distribution services.
It's not just a matter of "how we were brought up". A lot of times these views get lodged into our sense of identity, and that's why they're so hard to get rid of.
Very religious people, for example, tend to see their religion as a vital part of who they are. They rely on the authority of the religion to tell them that they're good people, and that they're living their lives "the right way". I don't mean to pick on religious people-- atheists do the same thing, but they just have a different set of beliefs based on different authority.
People also form feelings of intimacy and community by agreeing with people "like us" and setting themselves in opposition to "other people, not like us." People sit around with their friends, talking about things that they all believe, all hate, or all like. They don't usually spend a whole lot of time talking about their differences. That'd be alienating. So instead you get reenforcement of ideas that the rest of your group believes. Because of this, changing your mind about those shared beliefs risks alienating yourself from your group.
not to mention a LOCKED OS
It's not as though there are much better options. For most practical purposes, Android is locked too. I have a Droid Incredible, but I can't just go around installing whatever I want. If I want to install a non-Verizon-approved image, I have to hack the thing.
Windows? Good luck with that. I'd rather go back to using a non-smartphone. Hell, I'd rather go back to using a landline.
You're mostly spot on. "information wants to be free" has always been idiotic without concise definitions of "information" and "free".
You mean "precise"? Either way, by using the word "wants" (given that information doesn't literally "want" anything) they saying it letting you know that it's a generalization. Like "nature abhors a vacuum." That doesn't mean that there are no vacuums, but it's just describing a trend.
So does "information wants to be free" mean? As I see it, what's being pointed out is that (a) unlike physical objects, information is easy to replicate and share; and (b) people like to share information. It's hard to keep secrets because people like to gossip and people love a scandal. It's hard to keep an idea from spreading because, if it's compelling, people will spread it. And it only has to get out once. If the information is leaked at all, it's so easy to replicate and spread that it will get out.
And now that a song or movie are even easier to replicate than ideas, the same thing now applies to copyrighted materials. All you need is to have one unprotected copy leaked, and it will tend to get spread around. It can be very difficult to stop once it starts spreading.
I've done that, and I have to say that I think people misjudge the bias on Slashdot. I've posted positive/negative comments about Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Linux, and I'll tell you that the response can be fairly random. You can get modded up for posting positive things about Windows and you can get modded down for posting positive things about Linux.
Beyond that, the trends aren't what most people assume. In my experience, interesting and insightful comments about any of these companies/products can get you modded up, but annoying snide cliched complaints will probably get you modded down.
If there is a bias, I think it's most heavily anti-Apple, but in a specific way: irrational and ignorant complaints against Apple are more likely to get modded up than irrational and ignorant complaints against anything else (at least within the sphere of computing. Irrational complaints about religion are probably most likely to get modded up (no, I'm not religious)). I think the reason (if I had to guess) is that there are still a fair amount of Windows/Linux/Android users who are so anti-Apple that they won't give the products a fair shake and never really use them or learn what the situation is. On the other hand, most Apple users have used other operating systems.
As a result, complaints against the one-button mouse get modded insightful and complaints against WGA/WAT get modded overrated (I guess because people think you're just piling on).
That's my interpretation, but I guess you could accuse me of being biased.
Where might they take it next?
It'd be nice if they ported their fancy web interface over to OSX server. The webmail and other web interfaces are kind of weak points in Apple's server offerings.
No, it's not as "cool" as being an iPhone dev, but at least Ballmer doesn't tell me I can't compile my code without forking him $100/yr...and he doesn't take 30% percent of whatever I might make selling my code.
Microsoft is making an app store for Windows Phone 7. You think they won't take a cut? Even the Android Market takes a cut.
One emailed me to tell me their email wasn't working. Yes I know we have all read it in a comic but it's true.
I believe you. I actually had one of those. Someone emailed me, saying, "My email is not working." I replied saying something like, "Seems to be working. Is it only when you send email to specific people?"
I got an email back saying something like, "Nope. Still not working. I cannot send or receive email at all, with anyone. I think the mail server is down."
Sometimes you just hope your being trolled, since the alternative is too sad.
That might work all the way up until you expect to be able to tell them what to do, how to live their lives, etc.
so hoping that they'll read a scientific journal article is way over the top isn't it?
Yes, it probably is way over the top. Lots of scientific journals and academic writings aren't written for general consumption, and often enough they're just poorly written. Academia even encourages awful writing, considering jargon and citations to be a preferable substitute for clarity.
No, I won't get upset that they don't care. I will however get quite irate when they continue to argue against what has already been quite conclusively proven.
How do you expect them to know or care what has been conclusively proven?
"X is affected by Y." People don't accept that anymore. Explain why. Explain how.
Why should people just accept that without an explanation? Some dude shows up and says, "Your mom causes global warming." And people go, "Huh? Can you explain that please?" and that's bad, apparently. We should just accept it. Someone did a study, after all. He has evidence of some kind, but you're not supposed to ask to see it, since you're tiny head can't comprehend it.
Or else someone releases the announcement, "I did a scientific study that showed that bliberdigies are caused by booberdiboos." The high school dropouts say, "Um... I don't know what that means. I'm too stupid. Can you explain? If you can't explain that to me in a way that I can understand, then I don't care." And can you blame them?
If you want to say, "It's not the scientists' job to explain it to the high school dropouts," then that's fair. But then, you can't really complain when the high school dropouts don't believe you or simply don't care.
This is a problem in our growth driven society.
Excellent post.
Let's face it, all corporations are deceitful sacks of s**t. That's the norm for business these days.
I don't see why we should let them off the hook, though. They certainly won't change if we excuse all their actions with "well what do you expect? They're a corporation after all!"
Also, Apple has been (at times) pretty straight-forward about support lasting three years. I think Jobs even said something during the announcement of iOS4 that these products have an expected lifetime of 3 years.
It's not all that strange within the computing industry. Warranties on new computers are usually 3 years or less. IT departments usually plan for upgrade cycles every 3-5 years. Many computer components are designed to have a lifetime of at least 3-5 years.
...science reporters, as a class, aren't particularly proficient...schools aren't particularly effective...
Yeah, and there's a pattern here. I think we generally aren't good at our jobs and we don't value people who are good at their jobs. We look up to reality TV drama queens. We've lived with the propaganda that "people are only motivated by money" for so long that we actually believe it. We've gotten to the point where reporters and teachers are part of the underclass, looked down on by businessmen and technologists. The teachers and reporters themselves are uneducated and ignorant.
Sorry. All that's completely off-topic and depressing to boot.
That's more of a problem with journalists, actually.
That's what I'm saying. It's not so much of a problem with the science, but a problem with the science reporting. Most people don't really know the difference, though.
Well what are we saying? "This is science fact! You are never allowed to question this again, and don't you dare ask me for an explanation!"
Or is the problem that they're high school dropouts? They aren't initiates in your secret order of scientists, so they don't get to know the secrets? I guess that's fair, or next thing you know some patent clerk is going to think he has a chance at being the next Einstein!
Look, the whole point of science is that you get to keep questioning it forever, and it's supposed to be entirely transparent. You're supposed to explain how. In detail. That's why it works.
What has changed is that religions out of synch with reality and corporations that don't want to spend the money it takes to deal with reality have been running huge propaganda campaigns to cast doubt on many of the major findings of science, if not on the potential of science itself.
I think that's part of it, but I also think there's a strange irony here. In the early 20th century, science was producing effect that, to most people, were like magic-- things like electricity, telephones, radios, television, human flight, etc. When people's minds tried to extrapolate where science would be taking us, their imaginations ran wild. They expected flying cars and interstellar travel. In the fiction, you got an explosion of science fiction and super-hero stories where the possibilities of science were unbound.
Over time, as we learned more, it became evident that the science fiction futures weren't coming, at least not anytime soon. We grew accustomed to the technological marvels of the past, and began to think of science as engineering, something which provided incremental improvement in our lives.
Now, decades later, we're actually living in scifi future. The role our computers and cell phones play in our lives was unthinkable a few short decades ago. We're creating nano-materials and have mapped the human genome. We've created the first life form with completely synthetic DNA. And people are BORED! We've gotten so accustomed to the incremental improvements that we don't recognize how far they've taken us.
Nowadays, it seems healthy skepticism has turned unhealthy. Science isn't as respected... in fact, there's a lot of mistrust from the public.
I think the problem is science reporting. Every couple of years, we hear about how "scientists have discovered that coffee is bad for you!" A couple years later, we hear "scientists have discovered that coffee is good for you!" It just alternates every couple of years. Every couple of years, we hear about some wonderful new Theory of Everything that is about to change physics, and then it never materializes. We hear about "teleportation" and something-or-other traveling faster than light, only to hear later that it's BS and we won't be seeing Star Trek technology anytime soon.
Give people a couple decades of that, and of course they're going to be mistrustful.
A scientist can devote her whole career to puzzling out some fact of the world, only to be second guessed by high-school dropouts. "X is affected by Y." People don't accept that anymore. Explain why. Explain how. Spell it out for me in great detail, this X and Y business.
That seems somewhat reasonable. Or what, scientists are just supposed to be revered as priests of hidden knowledge?
Where do you imagine they'll be selling it then? AFAIK, nobody is carrying the phone now. The only carrier that might carry it is T-Mobile.
I'd say that non-college-educated people are generally dim-witted drains on society
Do you know many non-college-educated people? Or are you just repeating what someone told you?
Finally, I believe that living in a dorm in college is also a good preparation for life...
Because living in the dorm while your parents foot the bill is like living on your own?
College is a mix of vocational training (particularly important for some professions) and personal growth in the "learn to be a good citizen" sense.
Well it's supposed to be that. By that, I specifically mean that people suppose that college does that. For some people, though, college is a 4 year-long sleep-away camp with sex, booze, and drugs.
You can still buy a Nexus One. It's a reference design and unlikely to be discontinued
Google is dropping the Nexus One.
The phone's initial cost is more but you don't have to sign a contract and you can buy cheaper data plans so the cost over two years is much less.
Doesn't matter. I can't get it on Verizon, and that's a deal breaker.
I am continually amazed at the financial illiteracy of people who can't do the math...
I'm amazed at how condescending you are.
If you don't understand the difference between the open source Android OS and the closed source iPhone OS...
I understand the difference. The differences are just abstract and philosophical, and don't have any practical bearing. In both cases, the practical truth is that I'm stuck with the functionality that my phone carrier will happen to allow; if I want to install additional features, then I need to hack it.