A 600 dpi printer is actually a 600 dpi vertical and 600 dpi horizontal So it is (8.5 * 600) * ( 11 * 600) = 33 660 000.
So that's 30 Mb.
However to be able to store 250.000 Mb, it still need to be able to encode (and decode) something like 8000 variations on a single dot. A bit optimist I suppose.
I was recently watching Babilon 5 and thought that from time to time the image quality was crap. A quick look in wikipedia told me that the production team lost the original 3d model and was stuck reusing the NTSC version in some scene for the DVD release. (see Mastering problems in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5)
Off course they didn't loose the master but we are talking about a *succesfull* serie made only 10 years ago. Just imagine what could happen to a not so successful serie after 50 years. My bet is that often the only trace left will be the DRMed file.
Don't grossly underestimate the probability of things going wrong.
Photoshop Element (at least version 5.0) will store all tags as IPTC Keywords - i.e. available in Picassa and every program able to read EXIF and IPTC entry ( such as caption,... )
However it does not do that in realtime with tags as it does with caption. You need to periodically launch the command "write tags and info to photo" that will process all your photo in batch. This can be surprising when you work with more than one program simultanously. Also this is important because when you are renaming some tags, Elements will *ADD* (i.e. not overwrite) them into the keywords of the photo. On import however, Photoelement will propose you to import the various IPTC keywords it found as Tag.
Good stuff with Photoshop Element is that it integrates well with the editor and everytime you update a photo it keep the original and create a versionset stack and version history inside the organiser. ( By default it keeps the original and name the subsequent version "_Edited-X" so this information could be exported using a script )
Also if you take care about color calibration, PhotoElement is color managed.
Finally Photoshop Element is a good organiser. Its interface is not as efficient (especially zoming, slidshows,...) as Adobe Lightroom but it provides more "home user" friendly features ( VersionSet, Tag hierarchy,... ) Lightroom is free while in beta but sadly it is not going to be a cheap product since it is aimed at professional.
That's a little sad to say that. But that's the life of the early adopter. You pay more for your stuff and when the technology become mainstream the equipment you purchased could very well be obsolete. Sometimes it pays off ( early adopter of PSP firmware 1.0 ), sometimes it does not ( HDTV without HDCP )
See yourself as pioneer. You boldly go where no other consumer sheep (like me) has gone before:-) While we were all watching crappy NTSC or PAL and only dreaming of DVD quality, you enjoyed exclusive HD content.
There is a reason why tinfoil hat are a fashion for slashdot reader. On slashdot the rule is "if it made the news, it must be propaganda to cover something bad. We are all gonna die"
Oh wait, I'm sure TFA knew somebody would say that. That means they propably knew that somebody like you make us believe that there is actually no news, even if it made the news.
Ah Ah!
Well done, but we are too clever ! We know that the poor woman has been arested for illegaly downloading the books
TFA says "Police said among the items on the hard drive found in her possession"
Another Information Freedom Figther arrested ! Will Google save her ?
"the charges against the woman were connected"
That means IP logging on Bittorent.
I'm disgusted at all the money the UK government spend arresting book readers under cover of terrorism law or child protection act. Democracy is indeed dead in the UK!
Even large companies, more or less must trust developers. Especially in a windows shop where tons of development environment REQUIRES you to be an admin. It is very painfull to develop something in VisualStudio 6 without being a admin on the machine.
If you are working for control freaks, your are screwed either way. In small companies everybody, from the CEO to the Cleaning Lady knows at what time you come to work, what you do and how you do. No need for camera or fancy logging, there is no place to hide. If a sysadmin is evil, you are out of luck in the small company. In a large one there is always another admin.
Large or Small companies can have stupid policies. Large or Small companies can provide you with shit hardware: in the small companies because they (say they) don't have money, in the large one because of THE policy.
Unfortunatly stupid drone are available and in quantity everywhere. The stupid boss nephew CTO syndrom exists in big companies as in small.
For the record, I have worked 6 years in Windows shops(VC6,.Net,Java dev): Small dev company(~40 emp), Big non-dev company(~17000 emp), Medium Dev Company(~2000 emp). I also spend a lot of time on site with various client in large bank and other financial companies.
I have ALWAYS been Admin on the Windows machine I was using. ALWAYS used an up-to-date machine with a lot of personal software. Currently I have a TFT 19" on a P4 with 1 Gb RAM ( soon moving to Core Duo with 2 Gb RAM )
I have NEVER seen a company where the kind of retriction the parent talk about exists for DEV people. The biggest restriction I had, was in the small company: I didn't have internet access. ( But that was also a long time ago ) Even large bank in the City gave no problem to Dev people ( well off course, you don't work in the city without wearing a suite ).
Off course pay attention to what the parent says, shit can happen. And especially if you plan to move out of development ( Sales, Trader, operator,... ) But don't assume big = evil and small = sweet. Assume any can be evil.
"What kind of person says "I really want Windows Vista for Christmas"??"
Thousands of computer shop owners...
Being able to display areo on your demo machine and have the salesman proudly talking about the very top most latest new release of Windows during the most important sale period of the year...
"So again, who the hell cares?"
Considering the burden of shopping during Christmas and the insane prices on almost everything related, I say, why do people still care about Christmas at all? Wait January for real deal on Christmas crackers:-)
"How exactly do you (and others like you) define "lose"?"
From a pure US point of view, the objective of the war was to go in Irak, destroy weapons of mass destruction and strike a massive blow to the ennemy in the war of terror. The only result of the campain so far, is a destabilised region, reinforcement of extremism, hate buildup against the US. Weak democracy, despair, extremism, hate is where the "ennemy" finds its resource. The beacon of freedom is currently a despair zone where Iraki and US people are dying everyday... it is going to take years, maybe decade before counting Irak as a stability stronghold.
In the meanwhile, on some other place on the axe of evil, another nation lead by a tyranic dictator successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
Off course we cannot say US is losing or winning, but for $300 billion, you could hope a beter return on investment.
"Terrorists, if successful, can destabilize the whole society."
The point of the article really...
If our fears were in relation to the actual risk we face ( eg: take your car, or take a plane ), Terrorist would never be able to succeed.
Terrorist try to scare the shit of the people with a very local action and a very limited number of death. In the big scheme of things, the annual death caused by terrorism worldwide is much lower than the number of people murdered in 1 US city. If Terrorist were to succeed in a rational society and actually destabilise it (their goal), they would need to do thousands of death per year per country just to be noticed amoungs other cause of death. And that's no more terrorism, that's conventional war.
The fact that terrorists could destabilise a whole society with a few actions is actually an argument in favor of the Author.
Browse the internet to go on www.ibm.com. Search for drivers ? Old fashioned !!
The future is:
Connect to the new 3D virtua-net. Go to the nearest NetTube station next to your ISP building. Take the first Alphabetical Northbound metro on the COM line. Stop at station "I". Walk outside and take the NetBus to IBM Netplex. Ask politely the receptionist for the support area (Otherwise you will get kicked out by the security officer). Walk to the right departement (Hold SHIFT key to run), take the box with updated driver and bring it home. ( Check the driver is in your inventory before leaving )
"Java SE 6 is the Best Solution for Vista" [...] "J2SE 1.5 Will Also Work Many of the Vista fixes have already been, or will soon be, back-ported to J2SE 1.5. However, don't look for everything to work exactly the same; our primary focus was to make Java SE 6 the main release vehicle for Vista." [...] "J2SE 1.4.2 Will Basically Work..."
That means that if you want to have your Java application working smoothly on Vista, you beter have something that support Java1.6. You can still use 1.5 or even 1.4 but it seems clear that should be a temporary solution.
That said, I also think the GP is FUD. In real development world, supporting a brand new OS always come with a certain amount of work ( even when it is just checking that the application is still running )
You only need 2 little holes of 5 mm and you have all the lights needed for your eyes. Considering the likely imperfection of the invisibility suit, it is likely that when you can spot the holes, you are already close enough to detect the wearer.
"Luckily, I don't think Microsoft is releasing a more secure OS."
Security is a *problem*, not a feature that's nice to keep around. What you are asking is a bit like "I sure hope they will never cure cancer because today it makes confortable living for a lot of doctor, scientist, psychologist, charity, widow association,..."
I hope Vista is more secure and that all the money and work that goes into security software goes into something else a bit more productive. By "more productive" I mean something that is directly related to the reason why you have a computer in the first place. Nobody buys a computer to run security software.
Making computers more accessible and easier to use means that other markets will be available. Internet connections are much faster and requires a lot less support than in the past. That's why more people can connect and why Google is making billions.
Look stupid saying it like that, but Color management seems important enough for professional to pay for Photoshop (500$-ish) instead of the much cheaper Photoshop Element (50$-ish)
Graphic professional are color matching paranoid. A problem between a color of a design and the output from the output company cost lots of money and finding what is wrong in the flow requires the same sort of approach as finding a bug in an application.
What is also missing is maybe that Adobe build its tools closely with their professional customers while Gimp looks like developed by developer for enthousiast/developer. I just imagine that the situation would be the same if some graphic professional created a uber-powerful new programming language for other graphic pro, with a completely different syntax that also just happen to miss only one essential feature for pro developers (can't think of one good example but let's take 'no debugger' or 'no string manipulation function'): whatever the intrinsic merit of the product, it would have more difficulties to take off in dev circles.
"There are 1 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't."
No no
There are indeed 10 types of people in the world:
0 - the geeks with 9 fingers who also counts 5 cans in a six-pack.
1 - the not-geek with 10 fingers
10 - the geeks with 10 fingers
You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.
In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office. Even more funny, as MaxOS export everything in PDF, the new Vista has the same capacity, but instead of using PDF, they push their own format( proprietary, off course ). Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...
Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target ? Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.
"The environment is pretty screwed, at least for the next century. Humans are not."
I wonder who suffer the most from screwing the environment. Probably humans ( environment will be alright even if a giant meteorite strikes us and annihilates 90% of life forms like the last time ) . Note that I say suffer as in tons of deads ( shortage of water, pollution,... ), not extinction. But yes, killing the economy is also bad, and probably means tons of deads aswell.
Anyway, I get the feeling that this conversation turns more like: if we continue our trend the TFA says we will loose the left leg, and you replied bullshit, that the right leg that we will lose... Strangely I'm not feeling beter:-)
Back in the time of the walkman, there was no technology and nothing ready in the foreseable future that predicted the doom of the cassette player.
Just one thought about the iPod, where is internet and connectivity? I guess that in several years, a music player that does not allow you to get a tune from your friend player or just immediatly after having seen a commercial in the tube will seem pretty lame ( what you have to connect that to your computer ? How quaint )
The vast majority of people is using Microsoft software, and they don't have a real choice. Microsoft as a monopol, is more or less "forcing" people to use their product ( if you do not agree with this, you are more or less saying that people choose Microsoft product because they are beter and therefore deserves to keep their monopol )
People using Microsoft are not Microsoft zealot or believer, they are not the ennemy of Free Software. Microsoft is making money from MVP... fine, just another argument against Microsoft.
"Security measures and practices that Indian companies have are the best in the world."
And what about the rest of world like US, Japan, Europe ?
Well, I guess the "best in the world" just follow "cutting edge", "breakthrough", "leading", "enterprise", "professional" in the list of expressions Marketing department sucked the meaning.
Mind you, I'm not bashing India, that happens everywhere: in Europe Spain, France and Belgium all declared at various time that they have the best healthcare system in the world...
Microsoft is one of the last company in the world to want desktop to end. They have a monopoly and control almost anything in Desktop world. They make tons of cash in desktop world.
When everything goes online, they will have to fight against google, and in online world, Google is the 500pounds gorilla, no Microsoft.
1. A mobile phone can be used to call 112, and international FREE emergency number (you don't need a SIM to call it). There will be several person that will sue the phone companies if they kill your phone while you need it.
2. If your phone starts screaming in your car, that can lead to a crash... again phone companies will be sued.
In your case if you had been victim of a car crash (or sinking in water) and were unable to extract the car, the security company would have been sued into oblivion.
Intimidation, personal or by a company, is a very good way to get into deep trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
A 600 dpi printer is actually a 600 dpi vertical and 600 dpi horizontal
So it is (8.5 * 600) * ( 11 * 600) = 33 660 000.
So that's 30 Mb.
However to be able to store 250.000 Mb, it still need to be able to encode (and decode) something like 8000 variations on a single dot. A bit optimist I suppose.
I was recently watching Babilon 5 and thought that from time to time the image quality was crap.
A quick look in wikipedia told me that the production team lost the original 3d model and was stuck reusing the NTSC version in some scene for the DVD release. (see Mastering problems in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5)
Off course they didn't loose the master but we are talking about a *succesfull* serie made only 10 years ago. Just imagine what could happen to a not so successful serie after 50 years. My bet is that often the only trace left will be the DRMed file.
Don't grossly underestimate the probability of things going wrong.
Photoshop Element (at least version 5.0) will store all tags as IPTC Keywords - i.e. available in Picassa and every program able to read EXIF and IPTC entry ( such as caption, ... )
...) as Adobe Lightroom but it provides more "home user" friendly features ( VersionSet, Tag hierarchy, ... )
However it does not do that in realtime with tags as it does with caption. You need to periodically launch the command "write tags and info to photo" that will process all your photo in batch. This can be surprising when you work with more than one program simultanously. Also this is important because when you are renaming some tags, Elements will *ADD* (i.e. not overwrite) them into the keywords of the photo.
On import however, Photoelement will propose you to import the various IPTC keywords it found as Tag.
Good stuff with Photoshop Element is that it integrates well with the editor and everytime you update a photo it keep the original and create a versionset stack and version history inside the organiser. ( By default it keeps the original and name the subsequent version "_Edited-X" so this information could be exported using a script )
Also if you take care about color calibration, PhotoElement is color managed.
Finally Photoshop Element is a good organiser. Its interface is not as efficient (especially zoming, slidshows,
Lightroom is free while in beta but sadly it is not going to be a cheap product since it is aimed at professional.
That's a little sad to say that. But that's the life of the early adopter. You pay more for your stuff and when the technology become mainstream the equipment you purchased could very well be obsolete. Sometimes it pays off ( early adopter of PSP firmware 1.0 ), sometimes it does not ( HDTV without HDCP )
:-)
See yourself as pioneer. You boldly go where no other consumer sheep (like me) has gone before
While we were all watching crappy NTSC or PAL and only dreaming of DVD quality, you enjoyed exclusive HD content.
I meant: I'm in London, my friend came from Belgium.
Here in London, a friend from a country still untouched by the "3 pieces Colonel's Meal ",
asked me what the K was for in "K-something Fish and Chips"
There is a reason why tinfoil hat are a fashion for slashdot reader.
On slashdot the rule is "if it made the news, it must be propaganda to cover something bad. We are all gonna die"
Oh wait, I'm sure TFA knew somebody would say that. That means they propably knew that somebody like you make us believe that there is actually no news, even if it made the news.
Ah Ah!
Well done, but we are too clever ! We know that the poor woman has been arested for illegaly downloading the books
TFA says "Police said among the items on the hard drive found in her possession"
Another Information Freedom Figther arrested ! Will Google save her ?
"the charges against the woman were connected"
That means IP logging on Bittorent.
I'm disgusted at all the money the UK government spend arresting book readers under cover of terrorism law or child protection act. Democracy is indeed dead in the UK!
Freedom: Be attentive, but don't stress too much.
... ) But don't assume big = evil and small = sweet. Assume any can be evil.
Even large companies, more or less must trust developers. Especially in a windows shop where tons of development environment REQUIRES you to be an admin. It is very painfull to develop something in VisualStudio 6 without being a admin on the machine.
If you are working for control freaks, your are screwed either way. In small companies everybody, from the CEO to the Cleaning Lady knows at what time you come to work, what you do and how you do. No need for camera or fancy logging, there is no place to hide. If a sysadmin is evil, you are out of luck in the small company. In a large one there is always another admin.
Large or Small companies can have stupid policies. Large or Small companies can provide you with shit hardware: in the small companies because they (say they) don't have money, in the large one because of THE policy.
Unfortunatly stupid drone are available and in quantity everywhere. The stupid boss nephew CTO syndrom exists in big companies as in small.
For the record, I have worked 6 years in Windows shops(VC6,.Net,Java dev): Small dev company(~40 emp), Big non-dev company(~17000 emp), Medium Dev Company(~2000 emp). I also spend a lot of time on site with various client in large bank and other financial companies.
I have ALWAYS been Admin on the Windows machine I was using. ALWAYS used an up-to-date machine with a lot of personal software. Currently I have a TFT 19" on a P4 with 1 Gb RAM ( soon moving to Core Duo with 2 Gb RAM )
I have NEVER seen a company where the kind of retriction the parent talk about exists for DEV people. The biggest restriction I had, was in the small company: I didn't have internet access. ( But that was also a long time ago ) Even large bank in the City gave no problem to Dev people ( well off course, you don't work in the city without wearing a suite ).
Off course pay attention to what the parent says, shit can happen. And especially if you plan to move out of development ( Sales, Trader, operator,
"What kind of person says "I really want Windows Vista for Christmas"??"
...
...
:-)
Thousands of computer shop owners
Being able to display areo on your demo machine and have the salesman proudly talking about the very top most latest new release of Windows during the most important sale period of the year
"So again, who the hell cares?"
Considering the burden of shopping during Christmas and the insane prices on almost everything related, I say, why do people still care about Christmas at all? Wait January for real deal on Christmas crackers
"How exactly do you (and others like you) define "lose"?"
... it is going to take years, maybe decade before counting Irak as a stability stronghold.
From a pure US point of view, the objective of the war was to go in Irak, destroy weapons of mass destruction and strike a massive blow to the ennemy in the war of terror.
The only result of the campain so far, is a destabilised region, reinforcement of extremism, hate buildup against the US. Weak democracy, despair, extremism, hate is where the "ennemy" finds its resource.
The beacon of freedom is currently a despair zone where Iraki and US people are dying everyday
In the meanwhile, on some other place on the axe of evil, another nation lead by a tyranic dictator successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
Off course we cannot say US is losing or winning, but for $300 billion, you could hope a beter return on investment.
Welcome to the world.
...
History is written by the winner
"Terrorists, if successful, can destabilize the whole society."
...
The point of the article really
If our fears were in relation to the actual risk we face ( eg: take your car, or take a plane ), Terrorist would never be able to succeed.
Terrorist try to scare the shit of the people with a very local action and a very limited number of death. In the big scheme of things, the annual death caused by terrorism worldwide is much lower than the number of people murdered in 1 US city. If Terrorist were to succeed in a rational society and actually destabilise it (their goal), they would need to do thousands of death per year per country just to be noticed amoungs other cause of death. And that's no more terrorism, that's conventional war.
The fact that terrorists could destabilise a whole society with a few actions is actually an argument in favor of the Author.
Browse the internet to go on www.ibm.com. Search for drivers ? Old fashioned !!
... memories of ShadowRun with a sadistic GM
The future is:
Connect to the new 3D virtua-net. Go to the nearest NetTube station next to your ISP building. Take the first Alphabetical Northbound metro on the COM line. Stop at station "I". Walk outside and take the NetBus to IBM Netplex. Ask politely the receptionist for the support area (Otherwise you will get kicked out by the security officer). Walk to the right departement (Hold SHIFT key to run), take the box with updated driver and bring it home. ( Check the driver is in your inventory before leaving )
Ah
From the article:
"Java SE 6 is the Best Solution for Vista"
[...]
"J2SE 1.5 Will Also Work
Many of the Vista fixes have already been, or will soon be, back-ported to J2SE 1.5. However, don't look for everything to work exactly the same; our primary focus was to make Java SE 6 the main release vehicle for Vista."
[...]
"J2SE 1.4.2 Will Basically Work..."
That means that if you want to have your Java application working smoothly on Vista, you beter have something that support Java1.6. You can still use 1.5 or even 1.4 but it seems clear that should be a temporary solution.
That said, I also think the GP is FUD. In real development world, supporting a brand new OS always come with a certain amount of work ( even when it is just checking that the application is still running )
You only need 2 little holes of 5 mm and you have all the lights needed for your eyes. Considering the likely imperfection of the invisibility suit, it is likely that when you can spot the holes, you are already close enough to detect the wearer.
"Luckily, I don't think Microsoft is releasing a more secure OS."
..."
Security is a *problem*, not a feature that's nice to keep around. What you are asking is a bit like "I sure hope they will never cure cancer because today it makes confortable living for a lot of doctor, scientist, psychologist, charity, widow association,
I hope Vista is more secure and that all the money and work that goes into security software goes into something else a bit more productive. By "more productive" I mean something that is directly related to the reason why you have a computer in the first place. Nobody buys a computer to run security software.
Making computers more accessible and easier to use means that other markets will be available. Internet connections are much faster and requires a lot less support than in the past. That's why more people can connect and why Google is making billions.
Look stupid saying it like that, but Color management seems important enough for professional to pay for Photoshop (500$-ish) instead of the much cheaper Photoshop Element (50$-ish)
Graphic professional are color matching paranoid. A problem between a color of a design and the output from the output company cost lots of money and finding what is wrong in the flow requires the same sort of approach as finding a bug in an application.
What is also missing is maybe that Adobe build its tools closely with their professional customers while Gimp looks like developed by developer for enthousiast/developer. I just imagine that the situation would be the same if some graphic professional created a uber-powerful new programming language for other graphic pro, with a completely different syntax that also just happen to miss only one essential feature for pro developers (can't think of one good example but let's take 'no debugger' or 'no string manipulation function'): whatever the intrinsic merit of the product, it would have more difficulties to take off in dev circles.
"There are 1 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't."
No no
There are indeed 10 types of people in the world:
0 - the geeks with 9 fingers who also counts 5 cans in a six-pack.
1 - the not-geek with 10 fingers
10 - the geeks with 10 fingers
You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats ... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.
In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office.
Even more funny, as MaxOS export everything in PDF, the new Vista has the same capacity, but instead of using PDF, they push their own format( proprietary, off course ). Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...
Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target ? Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.
"The environment is pretty screwed, at least for the next century. Humans are not."
... ), not extinction. But yes, killing the economy is also bad, and probably means tons of deads aswell.
... Strangely I'm not feeling beter :-)
I wonder who suffer the most from screwing the environment. Probably humans ( environment will be alright even if a giant meteorite strikes us and annihilates 90% of life forms like the last time ) . Note that I say suffer as in tons of deads ( shortage of water, pollution,
Anyway, I get the feeling that this conversation turns more like: if we continue our trend the TFA says we will loose the left leg, and you replied bullshit, that the right leg that we will lose
Back in the time of the walkman, there was no technology and nothing ready in the foreseable future that predicted the doom of the cassette player.
Just one thought about the iPod, where is internet and connectivity? I guess that in several years, a music player that does not allow you to get a tune from your friend player or just immediatly after having seen a commercial in the tube will seem pretty lame ( what you have to connect that to your computer ? How quaint )
Helping people is helping people.
... fine, just another argument against Microsoft.
The vast majority of people is using Microsoft software, and they don't have a real choice. Microsoft as a monopol, is more or less "forcing" people to use their product ( if you do not agree with this, you are more or less saying that people choose Microsoft product because they are beter and therefore deserves to keep their monopol )
People using Microsoft are not Microsoft zealot or believer, they are not the ennemy of Free Software. Microsoft is making money from MVP
"Security measures and practices that Indian companies have are the best in the world."
...
And what about the rest of world like US, Japan, Europe ?
Well, I guess the "best in the world" just follow "cutting edge", "breakthrough", "leading", "enterprise", "professional" in the list of expressions Marketing department sucked the meaning.
Mind you, I'm not bashing India, that happens everywhere: in Europe Spain, France and Belgium all declared at various time that they have the best healthcare system in the world
Microsoft is one of the last company in the world to want desktop to end. They have a monopoly and control almost anything in Desktop world. They make tons of cash in desktop world.
When everything goes online, they will have to fight against google, and in online world, Google is the 500pounds gorilla, no Microsoft.
1. A mobile phone can be used to call 112, and international FREE emergency number (you don't need a SIM to call it). There will be several person that will sue the phone companies if they kill your phone while you need it.
2. If your phone starts screaming in your car, that can lead to a crash
In your case if you had been victim of a car crash (or sinking in water) and were unable to extract the car, the security company would have been sued into oblivion.
Intimidation, personal or by a company, is a very good way to get into deep trouble.