I don't see the big deal. They're just saying that if you want to download OpenOffice (a product they feel competes with their services) you'll have to pay for the privilege rather than offer it to you as an unmetered download. Not a particularly enlightened approach, but they are certainly within their rights to do this. You can still download open office from lots of other places. Download it, throw a copy on your USB thumbdrive and give it away to as many people as you like.:)
It won't be long before the actual subscriber numbers mirror this (if they aren't already). I have a number of friends that live in Beijing now (and I occasionally do too) and the VAST majority of them don't even have a land line. People are quite happy to rely on their mobile phone. Recent government stats in China show land line subscribers falling for the first time in the last few months while mobile numbers are still accelerating upwards. I'll likely do the same (punt the landline) at my US residence this year too. My only "hard link" to the world will be the cablemodem so I can enjoy relatively cheap broadband. If the mobile carriers ever figure out how to offer reliable high bandwidth data access, I'll lose the cablemodem too.
It will be nice to save a little money, but even nicer to be able to pick up and move around without dealing with number portability, billing hassles, changing equipment, etc.
I would pay the extra price for solid state disks on my computer tomorrow, but I can't help but be a bit nervous about the limits of flash memory in terms of the number of times a cell can be written to. On a well exercised machine, how do they pro-actively monitor this and/or avoid corrupting data when one of those cells can't reliably flip bits anymore? I'm not too stressed about it if I get a corrupt picture on my digital camera because of that, but I use my computer for real work.
I was going to buy an iPhone so I'd be able to eliminate one of the devices I tote around with me (an ipod). Unfortunately, I do a lot of traveling to China and not having the ability to pop in a local SIMcard was a deal breaker for me. Paying ATT's outrageous international roaming charges wasn't an option. So, if the unlocker becomes available, I'll purchase one of these phones. If not, I'll just wait for one of the Chinese knockoffs to appear at my local shopping mall in Beijing. I'm sure they're already available, but I haven't gotten around to looking for one yet.
Real managed to totally blow an overwhelming lead in streaming media as Realplayer was allowed to die on the vine. Add MTV to the mix. They were relevant to the music scene about 20 years ago. Now it's just reality TV plus advertising. And Verizon...a CDMA network with the highest prices in the country and a track record of disabling phone features that cut into their "buy it from us or not at all" corporate culture. Yeah, that ought to be a real powerhouse for peeing away a few hundred million of investment capital.
If the point of this article was to compare smartphones that offer similar functionality to the iPhone, the more obvious HTC product would have been the "Touch". It's got a fantastic interface, Windows Mobile 6 Professional, a user replaceable battery, multimedia features and light weight. And you're not stuck with ATT/Cingular as a service provider.
I recently talked to the "C level" folks at a large state-owned mobile carrier in a developing country. They've got somewhere north of 50,000 employees and are ACTIVELY excising M$ products from their desktop environment (it has never really been used as a server there since their infrastructure is unix-based). They cited the upgrade-itis of Microsoft and the constant march of new hardware to deal with the growing bloat. They figure they can get longer life cycles out of hardware and enjoy (at least for now) a substantial reduction in per seat software costs. And this is from a company that probably can (and does) license Microsoft products at substantially lower costs than most smaller enterprises.
I agree. Encouraging short-term "intellectual migrants" who you work to the bone (because you can) is a very self defeating policy. It would be much more valuable to a country to encourage those folks to either become citizens or (gasp) encourage its own citizens to get degrees in computer science. The latter would be relatively simple to accomplish with a scholarship/grant program.
I've actually spoken to the folks at Tesla and they are projecting their replacement battery packs (due for replacement at 5 years or 125k miles) at approximately US$10,000. That is in a car that is going to be delivered to consumers this summer and that does 0-60 in 4 seconds (obviously a lot more oomph than your average grocery getter). If they can build them for 10 grand and make a profit on such a small production run, GM *ought* to be able to use its economies of scale to lower that number. However, given how poorly GM has been run in recent years, perhaps that isn't in the cards.
If you stash one of these phones behind the dash with a constant 12V supply to the charger, you can track your unwitting spouse. Combine that with your internet connected smart phone and you've got a portable homing device system without having to bother Q.
Better make sure my wife doesn't find out about these things.:)
If I could buy a drop in flash memory replacement for my laptop's hard drive and the economics made sense (say US$500 for a 20gig device), I'd buy it tomorrow. 99% of the data that I use could easily be fit in that amount of space and if it didn't, I could keep relatively cheap removable flash cards around for data that I need once in a blue moon. The increase in battery life, decrease in heat, and decrease in noise would be well worth the additional expense for me.
One of the reasons that the pump and dump has become so popular for criminals is that the money trail has often gone cold by the time there is enough interest from law enforcement to chase the bad guys.
The SEC could mostly take pump and dump schemes for penny "pink sheet" stocks off the table by using rules to lengthen the settlement process for sales of those shares or to suspend entirely the trading of stocks in companies that are not fully reporting entities. With fully reporting companies that have legit transfer agents, it is a LOT easier for law enforcement to find out who these selling shareholders are in a timely manner.
Once these vermin begin to get caught, they'll move on to the next bit of low hanging fruit and the arms race will continue.
If the processor(s) weren't so busy running such piggy code, perhaps they could automagically throttle down without any coaxing from Redmond and without affecting those of us who need to have their systems running full-bore 24/7.
It's my understanding the North Korea does not maintain ANY Internet connectivity. So they should either be #1 on the list or not included at all (since they're not even in the game).
I run a small, but publicly traded company. Recently, I was contacted by a "PR firm" about "promoting the stock" of my company. Normally, I just hang up, but he mentioned a few "success stories" which seemed to correlate to some of the recent spam that had slipped through spamassassin. So I got his contact details and said since I was really busy "could he please email a summary of what we'd just talked about" (which he did).
I then called the enforcement division of the SEC and said I had the name and contact details for a company that was responsible for sending a number of unsolicited pump/dump email spams to me. I also told them that I had email from the spammer himself confirming that they'd done the deed. It wasn't some innocent bystander, but the people that actually SENT the mail. I was sent to a voicemail box and assured that I'd be called back. It's now about 2 weeks later and nobody ever called me.
And people wonder why there's so many of these vermin...uh, it's practically impossible to get caught!
"For me, I doubt I will touch this Vista thingie anytime soon."
I suspect a lot of people fall into this category. However, as soon as it launches, anyone buying a new PC is going to get it rammed down their throats whether they want it or not. If you turn off most/all of the eye candy, it's much like XP, but it comes with all that mess turned on by default.
The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.
Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said.
The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.
Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands.
The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection.
Moss-Pultz notes that the FIC-GTA001, or Neo1973, is merely the first model in a planned family of open Linux phones from FIC. He expects a follow-up model to offer both WiFi and Bluetooth. "By the time one ships, the next one is half done," he says.
Stallman is already irrelevant. I've been using Linux since it was a 30+ floppy disk distribution in the form of the original slackware. I don't plan to stop using Linux as a result of all the recent chest thumping from Richard. He was once a great programmer and has occsionally been a visionary, but I think this will be his swan song....Linux will live on as will many other wonderful products that live under the GNU umbrella. The fact that Richard wants people to move to a new license does not obligate ANYONE to do so.
In my opinion, the major "anti-virus" vendors are precisely the type of parasitical hanger-on that you DO NOT want on your computer in the first place. They use an unGodly amount of resources and greatly slow down the machine they're "protecting." They live merely because Microsoft has been unwilling/unable to write secure code. So now Microsoft is trying to fix that (rolling eyes) and these parasites are crying about unfair competition. Do you propose that the EU forces Microsoft to write less secure code in order to allow these companies to maintain their relevance? That seems rather foolish.
Let's use an analogy. Let's say I build an automobile and it's famous for having fuel injectors that clog up. People begin getting annoyed as the engine runs worse and worse until they get stuck on the side of the road. Along comes WidgetX. They invent a device that attaches to the engine end somehow "prevents" the problem. The downside is that the efficiency of the engine drops and you burn a LOT more gas, but your odds of getting stuck on the side of the road are greatly reduced. The next model year, the car company redesigns the engine so that the injectors no longer get clogged. WidgetX cries foul because now their product has become both unecessary and it has become obvious how wasteful of resources it was. So WidgetX demands the EU authorities to force the car company to go back to selling failure prone injectors instead of coming up with another innovation that actually helps consumers.
Call me crazy, but I don't see Microsoft as the "bad guy" here at all.....
Frankly, I think you're being intentionally obtuse. Whether your intention is to injure someone through criminal proceedings or by using the government's gun to bankrupt them, the end result is the same. The accused person is harmed.
The entity that is filing these frivolous lawsuits needs to prove that they are being injured AND they need to produce some evidence against the accused. Producing half-assed evidence (or, INCREDIBLY, no evidence at all in some cases) isn't good enough. The RIAA and their respective thugs are well funded so they don't even have the excuse of financial hardship (just laziness or unwillingness) to justify their lack of evidence.
So please spare me your equal rights plea for the man.
Well, this is a civil case, so as it happens no one is trying to prove anyone guilty of any crime. I guess they dodged a bullet there.
Call it what you will. One party is hauling another party off to court and the person being sued could stand to suffer substantial financial losses. So, you can play semantic games if that makes you feel more complete, but the end result is the same. A potentially innocent party is being imposed upon by "the man." "The man" has the resources to document the case, but does not do so. Hopefully, the judge will see through this charade and toss out the counts that lack relevant documentation. Having some gumshoe testify "uh, gee your honour, yes, I saw a printout of a screenshot that looked a lot like titles of songs" just doesn't cut the mustard.
Anyway, guys, quit the RIAA bashing. Complain they're doing sloppy investigating and it's not really an acceptable standard we should encourage, but don't act like they're a pack of liars when they're almost undeniably correct in their accusations and their only flaw is not doing as air-tight a job as they should have.
Spare me. When you're trying to prove someone is guilty of a CRIME, you need to go the extra mile and make sure it's air-tight. If you can't be bothered to do that, then you've got no business taking your case to court. We're not talking about some farmer assuing his neighbor of stealing horses here. This is a big fat well-funded group that has the resources and teams of lawyers/investigators to gather the evidence correctly.
Who's to say that the file called "Enter Sandman" wasn't really an audio clip from Aunt Milly's piano recital?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see the big deal. They're just saying that if you want to download OpenOffice (a product they feel competes with their services) you'll have to pay for the privilege rather than offer it to you as an unmetered download. Not a particularly enlightened approach, but they are certainly within their rights to do this. You can still download open office from lots of other places. Download it, throw a copy on your USB thumbdrive and give it away to as many people as you like. :)
Cheers,
It won't be long before the actual subscriber numbers mirror this (if they aren't already). I have a number of friends that live in Beijing now (and I occasionally do too) and the VAST majority of them don't even have a land line. People are quite happy to rely on their mobile phone. Recent government stats in China show land line subscribers falling for the first time in the last few months while mobile numbers are still accelerating upwards. I'll likely do the same (punt the landline) at my US residence this year too. My only "hard link" to the world will be the cablemodem so I can enjoy relatively cheap broadband. If the mobile carriers ever figure out how to offer reliable high bandwidth data access, I'll lose the cablemodem too.
It will be nice to save a little money, but even nicer to be able to pick up and move around without dealing with number portability, billing hassles, changing equipment, etc.
Cheers,
I would pay the extra price for solid state disks on my computer tomorrow, but I can't help but be a bit nervous about the limits of flash memory in terms of the number of times a cell can be written to. On a well exercised machine, how do they pro-actively monitor this and/or avoid corrupting data when one of those cells can't reliably flip bits anymore? I'm not too stressed about it if I get a corrupt picture on my digital camera because of that, but I use my computer for real work.
Best,
I was going to buy an iPhone so I'd be able to eliminate one of the devices I tote around with me (an ipod). Unfortunately, I do a lot of traveling to China and not having the ability to pop in a local SIMcard was a deal breaker for me. Paying ATT's outrageous international roaming charges wasn't an option. So, if the unlocker becomes available, I'll purchase one of these phones. If not, I'll just wait for one of the Chinese knockoffs to appear at my local shopping mall in Beijing. I'm sure they're already available, but I haven't gotten around to looking for one yet.
Cheers,
Let's see....
Real managed to totally blow an overwhelming lead in streaming media as Realplayer was allowed to die on the vine. Add MTV to the mix. They were relevant to the music scene about 20 years ago. Now it's just reality TV plus advertising. And Verizon...a CDMA network with the highest prices in the country and a track record of disabling phone features that cut into their "buy it from us or not at all" corporate culture. Yeah, that ought to be a real powerhouse for peeing away a few hundred million of investment capital.
*yawn*
If the point of this article was to compare smartphones that offer similar functionality to the iPhone, the more obvious HTC product would have been the "Touch". It's got a fantastic interface, Windows Mobile 6 Professional, a user replaceable battery, multimedia features and light weight. And you're not stuck with ATT/Cingular as a service provider.
m
http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.ht
Best,
I recently talked to the "C level" folks at a large state-owned mobile carrier in a developing country. They've got somewhere north of 50,000 employees and are ACTIVELY excising M$ products from their desktop environment (it has never really been used as a server there since their infrastructure is unix-based). They cited the upgrade-itis of Microsoft and the constant march of new hardware to deal with the growing bloat. They figure they can get longer life cycles out of hardware and enjoy (at least for now) a substantial reduction in per seat software costs. And this is from a company that probably can (and does) license Microsoft products at substantially lower costs than most smaller enterprises.
Best,
According to my spam folder, solar technology from China is the next best thing to sliced bread. Buy early. Buy often. :P
I agree. Encouraging short-term "intellectual migrants" who you work to the bone (because you can) is a very self defeating policy. It would be much more valuable to a country to encourage those folks to either become citizens or (gasp) encourage its own citizens to get degrees in computer science. The latter would be relatively simple to accomplish with a scholarship/grant program.
Cheers,
I've actually spoken to the folks at Tesla and they are projecting their replacement battery packs (due for replacement at 5 years or 125k miles) at approximately US$10,000. That is in a car that is going to be delivered to consumers this summer and that does 0-60 in 4 seconds (obviously a lot more oomph than your average grocery getter). If they can build them for 10 grand and make a profit on such a small production run, GM *ought* to be able to use its economies of scale to lower that number. However, given how poorly GM has been run in recent years, perhaps that isn't in the cards.
Cheers,
If you stash one of these phones behind the dash with a constant 12V supply to the charger, you can track your unwitting spouse. Combine that with your internet connected smart phone and you've got a portable homing device system without having to bother Q.
:)
Better make sure my wife doesn't find out about these things.
If I could buy a drop in flash memory replacement for my laptop's hard drive and the economics made sense (say US$500 for a 20gig device), I'd buy it tomorrow. 99% of the data that I use could easily be fit in that amount of space and if it didn't, I could keep relatively cheap removable flash cards around for data that I need once in a blue moon. The increase in battery life, decrease in heat, and decrease in noise would be well worth the additional expense for me.
One of the reasons that the pump and dump has become so popular for criminals is that the money trail has often gone cold by the time there is enough interest from law enforcement to chase the bad guys.
The SEC could mostly take pump and dump schemes for penny "pink sheet" stocks off the table by using rules to lengthen the settlement process for sales of those shares or to suspend entirely the trading of stocks in companies that are not fully reporting entities. With fully reporting companies that have legit transfer agents, it is a LOT easier for law enforcement to find out who these selling shareholders are in a timely manner.
Once these vermin begin to get caught, they'll move on to the next bit of low hanging fruit and the arms race will continue.
If the processor(s) weren't so busy running such piggy code, perhaps they could automagically throttle down without any coaxing from Redmond and without affecting those of us who need to have their systems running full-bore 24/7.
It's my understanding the North Korea does not maintain ANY Internet connectivity. So they should either be #1 on the list or not included at all (since they're not even in the game).
I run a small, but publicly traded company. Recently, I was contacted by a "PR firm" about "promoting the stock" of my company. Normally, I just hang up, but he mentioned a few "success stories" which seemed to correlate to some of the recent spam that had slipped through spamassassin. So I got his contact details and said since I was really busy "could he please email a summary of what we'd just talked about" (which he did).
I then called the enforcement division of the SEC and said I had the name and contact details for a company that was responsible for sending a number of unsolicited pump/dump email spams to me. I also told them that I had email from the spammer himself confirming that they'd done the deed. It wasn't some innocent bystander, but the people that actually SENT the mail. I was sent to a voicemail box and assured that I'd be called back. It's now about 2 weeks later and nobody ever called me.
And people wonder why there's so many of these vermin...uh, it's practically impossible to get caught!
"For me, I doubt I will touch this Vista thingie anytime soon."
I suspect a lot of people fall into this category. However, as soon as it launches, anyone buying a new PC is going to get it rammed down their throats whether they want it or not. If you turn off most/all of the eye candy, it's much like XP, but it comes with all that mess turned on by default.
Cheers,
glommed from the net...
Neo1973 Handset Hardware
The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.
Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said.
The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.
Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands.
The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection.
Moss-Pultz notes that the FIC-GTA001, or Neo1973, is merely the first model in a planned family of open Linux phones from FIC. He expects a follow-up model to offer both WiFi and Bluetooth. "By the time one ships, the next one is half done," he says.
Stallman is already irrelevant. I've been using Linux since it was a 30+ floppy disk distribution in the form of the original slackware. I don't plan to stop using Linux as a result of all the recent chest thumping from Richard. He was once a great programmer and has occsionally been a visionary, but I think this will be his swan song....Linux will live on as will many other wonderful products that live under the GNU umbrella. The fact that Richard wants people to move to a new license does not obligate ANYONE to do so.
In my opinion, the major "anti-virus" vendors are precisely the type of parasitical hanger-on that you DO NOT want on your computer in the first place. They use an unGodly amount of resources and greatly slow down the machine they're "protecting." They live merely because Microsoft has been unwilling/unable to write secure code. So now Microsoft is trying to fix that (rolling eyes) and these parasites are crying about unfair competition. Do you propose that the EU forces Microsoft to write less secure code in order to allow these companies to maintain their relevance? That seems rather foolish.
Let's use an analogy. Let's say I build an automobile and it's famous for having fuel injectors that clog up. People begin getting annoyed as the engine runs worse and worse until they get stuck on the side of the road. Along comes WidgetX. They invent a device that attaches to the engine end somehow "prevents" the problem. The downside is that the efficiency of the engine drops and you burn a LOT more gas, but your odds of getting stuck on the side of the road are greatly reduced. The next model year, the car company redesigns the engine so that the injectors no longer get clogged. WidgetX cries foul because now their product has become both unecessary and it has become obvious how wasteful of resources it was. So WidgetX demands the EU authorities to force the car company to go back to selling failure prone injectors instead of coming up with another innovation that actually helps consumers.
Call me crazy, but I don't see Microsoft as the "bad guy" here at all.....
the more star systems will slip through your fingers....
Frankly, I think you're being intentionally obtuse. Whether your intention is to injure someone through criminal proceedings or by using the government's gun to bankrupt them, the end result is the same. The accused person is harmed.
The entity that is filing these frivolous lawsuits needs to prove that they are being injured AND they need to produce some evidence against the accused. Producing half-assed evidence (or, INCREDIBLY, no evidence at all in some cases) isn't good enough. The RIAA and their respective thugs are well funded so they don't even have the excuse of financial hardship (just laziness or unwillingness) to justify their lack of evidence.
So please spare me your equal rights plea for the man.
Call it what you will. One party is hauling another party off to court and the person being sued could stand to suffer substantial financial losses. So, you can play semantic games if that makes you feel more complete, but the end result is the same. A potentially innocent party is being imposed upon by "the man." "The man" has the resources to document the case, but does not do so. Hopefully, the judge will see through this charade and toss out the counts that lack relevant documentation. Having some gumshoe testify "uh, gee your honour, yes, I saw a printout of a screenshot that looked a lot like titles of songs" just doesn't cut the mustard.
Spare me. When you're trying to prove someone is guilty of a CRIME, you need to go the extra mile and make sure it's air-tight. If you can't be bothered to do that, then you've got no business taking your case to court. We're not talking about some farmer assuing his neighbor of stealing horses here. This is a big fat well-funded group that has the resources and teams of lawyers/investigators to gather the evidence correctly.
Who's to say that the file called "Enter Sandman" wasn't really an audio clip from Aunt Milly's piano recital?
I'm sorry, but I find it difficult to take a position until we poll Tuttle, Oklahoma for the definitive opinion on the fate of GPL v3.