40 billion dollars - that's money they made off you, me, whicever of us is an AT&T customer, profit above and beyond their costs. Translation - they raped us, their customers, for 40bil dollars! No wonder our cell phone costs are highest in the western world, our service is the worse, our phone selection is the most abysmal, etc.. Yay for free markets - they work ever so well (dripping sarcasm!)
They cost as much or sometimes more than the printed copy, are badly edited/proofread and the software for reading them has issues with formatting, they are DRM'ed, and the rules for lending and/or reselling them (when that is even possible) are restrictive and draconian.. Fact is, e-books are an outrageous scam, by any measure. Far more so than the music and movie industry, the book industry figured out how to fleece its customers more, so much more. That said, they do save paper. I own a kindle, but I am still trying to figure out how much money I want to give amazon. I am petitioning my favorite authors to directly publish, hopefully cheaper..
western society has discovered that prohibition always works well (sarcasm.) I'm sure technology will rise to the occasion. In a biological sense this is just a change in the environment, the life form (society) will simply adapt to it.
4th amendment protects you against unreasonable search. Seems like it would apply at the airport. TSA claims that you are contractually obligated to put up with search when you enter the secure area and that your air travel ticket states this and as such is a contract. But, you aren't able to sign away your constitutional rights implying, at least, that this component of the air travel contract is illegal. How does this all square up?
Yawn, this is so not surprising. TSA's entire security theater policy can be summed as 'close the barn door after the cows got out.' A well funded, basically useless, organization, whose role is to annoy travelers.. On a recent trip I forgot to take my toiletries bag out of my carryon luggage on the way out and wasn't challenged. On the way back I took it out and lost my shampoo bottle since it was 4oz (limit is 3) though it had barely a dab of shampoo left in it. Sheesh. Venting is such fun, sigh.
Little known provision of Obamacare is empowering 4yo's to determine when an individual is no longer worth the medical insurance cost to keep them alive and take matters into their own hands. The administration will neither confirm nor deny these allegations..
I hear that said, but I hear politicians say these kinds of things all the time - PROVE to me that someone(s) got hurt/killed due to this release and I may feel otherwise, but for now, I believe they are being targeted for "pissing off" the powers that be.
Chickens are by definition born of an egg. EVERY chicken ever lived did. So, the egg came first. What gave birth to that egg was not 100% chicken.. So Say I.
I woud LOVE it if at&t and, in fact, all phone companies, just charged me a fixed cost per text message, per minute call, per 1M data. A rate that was competitive. This works just fine for the water works, the electric company, the postal service, the toll system on the highway, to name a few. I would be OK if they tiered a bit - first 500 minutes talk at $0.05/minute down to $0.03/min till 2000 minutes, etc.. Same with texting, same with data - essentially switching on bulk mode as you "earn it." Right now, through "fear" and published horror stories about giant bills, they manage to talk most people into "flat unlimited rate" - show me the person who uses exactly 200M of data, or exactly 900 minutes of talk time. Rollover is sorta nice, but the rules around it are petty and serve to lessen the usefulness (expired minutes, resetting when you change plans, etc..) If everyone paid exactly for what they used - you and everyone of us would win. Flat unlimited rate is a great idea, except that it doesn't really save anyone money - unless the resource is unlimited - which bandwidth cannot claim to be - in fact, mathematically and economically speaking, it can't.
I am of the opinion that the way to fight this insane "sue your customers" attitude is to simply avoid their movies. A list of these is available at https://thefilmcatalogue.com/catalog/CompanyDetail.php?id=279 - I perused the list and, honestly, saw no movies I've wanted to see on it, or seen. Won't be too hard for me.
Executive summery, fourth paragraph: "We have over forty issued U.S. patents, plus foreign equivalents to some fourteen of our U.S. patents and applications, for a total of over one hundred and seventy individual patents worldwide." This company is clearly a patent troll, NOT a technology company. Shame shame shame.
This reads like an article in "The Onion" - sheesh. Really, is following the letter of the law and completely ignoring the fact that we are people the point here? After all, how can you teach people common sense when you don't possess it yourself?
So, apparently there is a levy on blank media in place in various countries, to the tune of 3% (according to wikipedia) in the US. Assuming this is true, and specifically in the US, is it constitutional to charge someone a tax to cover the costs of piracy and then also be able to take them to court for being pirates?! Isn't that double jeopardy? I haven't seen this defense used in any of the cases I've followed and, in fact, it may be based on incorrect understanding of the law (not a lawyer here.)
Oh, these common ones are still available. and wikipedia has a list that is 10x longer of possibilities.. Don't think they will run out soon. lion cougar bobcat ocelot serval puma lynx
There is an Open Source product named Openlaszlo. It is a RIA development platform that can output both Flash 10 and DHTML 4 applications from the same source that are to all intents and purposes identical in function and look. Check them out at http://www.openlaszlo.org/
Openlaszlo does all this, of course, and much like Flex, OpenLaszlo can output a Web2.0 app as a flash file requiring a flash plugin to run BUT it can ALSO output a dhtml file (which will run in all modern browsers) requiring NO plugin. There is a commitment to output Java ME as well, in the near future. You really have to see OpenLaszlo apps in dhtml to understand how powerful dhtml can be - Google apps are boring and dull in comparison (though astonishingly functional, to be sure..) The fact that the same source will be able to compile into any of these (and more, there is even a proof-of-concept SVG output generator..) is not only unique but opens up choices that none of the other players in this field can.
Here is what I do.. a) call 1-800-936-5700 - pick option 0. b) tell them you recently retired a computer, threw it physically out, and saved the activation code from the sticker on it. c) tell them you want a NEW activation code since the one you have won't work in a new system - they will ask for it. c) tell them the part number of the install disk you have - either OEM or retail, it's on the CD. d) DON'T let them tell you they won't give you a code, they will, just keep insisting. Don't let them transfer you to someone else, or recommend using a different 800 number, they are just trying to get rid of you. e) if they ask for an OEM name, tell em the one you have, or invent one (ideally one that exists). It doesn't matter, really. The question is, why is it so hard to get this to happen. I've done it three times, recently, and each and every time it took over an hour on the phone to make it happen, in all cases it happened. Sheesh - gotta love MS (!NOT!) - Yossie
All I can say is that NOTHING on TV is good enough to make me watch it against my will. Any channel that implements this policy will pretty much immediately be off my favorites list and never be watched by me. I rather doubt we will see this implemented any time soon..
Skidoo - starting Carol Channing (gogo dancing naked with Frankie Avalon!), Groucho Marx (last starting role, ever, as "GOD" - head of the Mob), Jackie Gleason (at one point shown tripping on LSD!), Mind you, I am talking about the more sane parts of the movie:-) Check out http://us.imdb.com/Title?0063612 for more details and see it if you can find it! - Yossie
My favorite authors, in no particular order, of recent years:
Greg Egan - well, OK, he is my FAVORITE, by far, of the lot. Permutation City is incredible, Diaspora is fantastic too. Of the lot, Distress is the least well done (only relatively so).
Wil McCarthy - only read one of his, The Collapsium, but already bought two more - expect them to be equally fun.
David Brin
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are both great - incredible alians
Paul J. McAuley - the Confluence trillogy is wonderfully fun to read
Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships, Ring, etc.. All good
I have a cabin in the woods - totally off the grid (no power, no phone, etc..) Phone is a cell phone with a Yagi directional antenna pointing at the nearest tower, 30 miles away. Power is a box of batteries, an inverter, a generator, and soon wind and solar.
Internet (and television) is a Dish Network/Starband combination satellite system. This system gives me full Dish Network television (pretty decent) and Starband 2-way Internet (a 1 Watt transmitter now resides in my back yard!).
Advertised speeds on the Starband are 512Mbit downlink and 128K uplink. This is with a Windows PC running their proprietary accelerator software (AS_AGENT) which accelerates web access and general data access. They only support other OSs if you connect the service to a Windows box running some sort of NAT proxy for the rest of your systems (a network). The service is rather like DSL (in as much as it is always on as long as you leave the power on:-) Latency according to traceroute is around 700 msec.
I don't like Windows, I also don't have the luxury of running a windows box as a "router" due to power constraints and space (it's a tiny cabin, really!) So, assuming things would work OK I connected the modem directly to my Mac OS X box (cube - great for a cabin, no fan and very low power draw - especially with a LCD screen:-)
It works, pretty well, actually. I max out at download speeds of ~25Kbyte/second. I haven't tested upload speeds but they are rather slower in my experience. The biggest bummer is the delay loading web pages and mail due to the latency.
The solution would seem to be a AS_AGENT-like affair. I have been researching using a squid web proxy to create a similar effect to what Starband Windows software does. More as that happens.
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40 billion dollars - that's money they made off you, me, whicever of us is an AT&T customer, profit above and beyond their costs. Translation - they raped us, their customers, for 40bil dollars! No wonder our cell phone costs are highest in the western world, our service is the worse, our phone selection is the most abysmal, etc..
Yay for free markets - they work ever so well (dripping sarcasm!)
They cost as much or sometimes more than the printed copy, are badly edited/proofread and the software for reading them has issues with formatting, they are DRM'ed, and the rules for lending and/or reselling them (when that is even possible) are restrictive and draconian..
Fact is, e-books are an outrageous scam, by any measure. Far more so than the music and movie industry, the book industry figured out how to fleece its customers more, so much more.
That said, they do save paper. I own a kindle, but I am still trying to figure out how much money I want to give amazon. I am petitioning my favorite authors to directly publish, hopefully cheaper..
western society has discovered that prohibition always works well (sarcasm.) I'm sure technology will rise to the occasion. In a biological sense this is just a change in the environment, the life form (society) will simply adapt to it.
4th amendment protects you against unreasonable search. Seems like it would apply at the airport. TSA claims that you are contractually obligated to put up with search when you enter the secure area and that your air travel ticket states this and as such is a contract. But, you aren't able to sign away your constitutional rights implying, at least, that this component of the air travel contract is illegal. How does this all square up?
Yawn, this is so not surprising. TSA's entire security theater policy can be summed as 'close the barn door after the cows got out.' A well funded, basically useless, organization, whose role is to annoy travelers.. On a recent trip I forgot to take my toiletries bag out of my carryon luggage on the way out and wasn't challenged. On the way back I took it out and lost my shampoo bottle since it was 4oz (limit is 3) though it had barely a dab of shampoo left in it. Sheesh. Venting is such fun, sigh.
Little known provision of Obamacare is empowering 4yo's to determine when an individual is no longer worth the medical insurance cost to keep them alive and take matters into their own hands. The administration will neither confirm nor deny these allegations..
I hear that said, but I hear politicians say these kinds of things all the time - PROVE to me that someone(s) got hurt/killed due to this release and I may feel otherwise, but for now, I believe they are being targeted for "pissing off" the powers that be.
Chickens are by definition born of an egg. EVERY chicken ever lived did. So, the egg came first. What gave birth to that egg was not 100% chicken.. So Say I.
I woud LOVE it if at&t and, in fact, all phone companies, just charged me a fixed cost per text message, per minute call, per 1M data. A rate that was competitive. This works just fine for the water works, the electric company, the postal service, the toll system on the highway, to name a few.
I would be OK if they tiered a bit - first 500 minutes talk at $0.05/minute down to $0.03/min till 2000 minutes, etc.. Same with texting, same with data - essentially switching on bulk mode as you "earn it."
Right now, through "fear" and published horror stories about giant bills, they manage to talk most people into "flat unlimited rate" - show me the person who uses exactly 200M of data, or exactly 900 minutes of talk time. Rollover is sorta nice, but the rules around it are petty and serve to lessen the usefulness (expired minutes, resetting when you change plans, etc..)
If everyone paid exactly for what they used - you and everyone of us would win. Flat unlimited rate is a great idea, except that it doesn't really save anyone money - unless the resource is unlimited - which bandwidth cannot claim to be - in fact, mathematically and economically speaking, it can't.
I am of the opinion that the way to fight this insane "sue your customers" attitude is to simply avoid their movies. A list of these is available at https://thefilmcatalogue.com/catalog/CompanyDetail.php?id=279 - I perused the list and, honestly, saw no movies I've wanted to see on it, or seen. Won't be too hard for me.
Executive summery, fourth paragraph:
"We have over forty issued U.S. patents, plus foreign equivalents to some fourteen of our U.S. patents and applications, for a total of over one hundred and seventy individual patents worldwide."
This company is clearly a patent troll, NOT a technology company. Shame shame shame.
This reads like an article in "The Onion" - sheesh. Really, is following the letter of the law and completely ignoring the fact that we are people the point here? After all, how can you teach people common sense when you don't possess it yourself?
So, apparently there is a levy on blank media in place in various countries, to the tune of 3% (according to wikipedia) in the US. Assuming this is true, and specifically in the US, is it constitutional to charge someone a tax to cover the costs of piracy and then also be able to take them to court for being pirates?! Isn't that double jeopardy? I haven't seen this defense used in any of the cases I've followed and, in fact, it may be based on incorrect understanding of the law (not a lawyer here.)
Oh, these common ones are still available. and wikipedia has a list that is 10x longer of possibilities.. Don't think they will run out soon.
lion
cougar
bobcat
ocelot
serval
puma
lynx
There is an Open Source product named Openlaszlo. It is a RIA development platform that can output both Flash 10 and DHTML 4 applications from the same source that are to all intents and purposes identical in function and look. Check them out at http://www.openlaszlo.org/
I suggest mandatory beheadings at birth - that way no one will EVER break the law. It would be easier, too - LOL.
Openlaszlo does all this, of course, and much like Flex, OpenLaszlo can output a Web2.0 app as a flash file requiring a flash plugin to run BUT it can ALSO output a dhtml file (which will run in all modern browsers) requiring NO plugin. There is a commitment to output Java ME as well, in the near future. You really have to see OpenLaszlo apps in dhtml to understand how powerful dhtml can be - Google apps are boring and dull in comparison (though astonishingly functional, to be sure..) The fact that the same source will be able to compile into any of these (and more, there is even a proof-of-concept SVG output generator..) is not only unique but opens up choices that none of the other players in this field can.
Here is what I do..
a) call 1-800-936-5700 - pick option 0.
b) tell them you recently retired a computer, threw it physically out, and saved the activation code from the sticker on it.
c) tell them you want a NEW activation code since the one you have won't work in a new system - they will ask for it.
c) tell them the part number of the install disk you have - either OEM or retail, it's on the CD.
d) DON'T let them tell you they won't give you a code, they will, just keep insisting. Don't let them transfer you to someone else, or recommend using a different 800 number, they are just trying to get rid of you.
e) if they ask for an OEM name, tell em the one you have, or invent one (ideally one that exists). It doesn't matter, really.
The question is, why is it so hard to get this to happen. I've done it three times, recently, and each and every time it took over an hour on the phone to make it happen, in all cases it happened.
Sheesh - gotta love MS (!NOT!) - Yossie
All I can say is that NOTHING on TV is good enough to make me watch it against my will. Any channel that implements this policy will pretty much immediately be off my favorites list and never be watched by me. I rather doubt we will see this implemented any time soon..
Skidoo - starting Carol Channing (gogo dancing naked with Frankie Avalon!), Groucho Marx (last starting role, ever, as "GOD" - head of the Mob), Jackie Gleason (at one point shown tripping on LSD!), Mind you, I am talking about the more sane parts of the movie :-) Check out http://us.imdb.com/Title?0063612 for more details and see it if you can find it! - Yossie
My favorite authors, in no particular order, of recent years:
Greg Egan - well, OK, he is my FAVORITE, by far, of the lot. Permutation City is incredible, Diaspora is fantastic too. Of the lot, Distress is the least well done (only relatively so).
Wil McCarthy - only read one of his, The Collapsium, but already bought two more - expect them to be equally fun.
David Brin
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are both great - incredible alians
Paul J. McAuley - the Confluence trillogy is wonderfully fun to read
Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships, Ring, etc.. All good
Enjoy - Yossie
I have a cabin in the woods - totally off the grid (no power, no phone, etc..) Phone is a cell phone with a Yagi directional antenna pointing at the nearest tower, 30 miles away. Power is a box of batteries, an inverter, a generator, and soon wind and solar.
:-) Latency according to traceroute is around 700 msec.
:-)
Internet (and television) is a Dish Network/Starband combination satellite system. This system gives me full Dish Network television (pretty decent) and Starband 2-way Internet (a 1 Watt transmitter now resides in my back yard!).
Advertised speeds on the Starband are 512Mbit downlink and 128K uplink. This is with a Windows PC running their proprietary accelerator software (AS_AGENT) which accelerates web access and general data access. They only support other OSs if you connect the service to a Windows box running some sort of NAT proxy for the rest of your systems (a network). The service is rather like DSL (in as much as it is always on as long as you leave the power on
I don't like Windows, I also don't have the luxury of running a windows box as a "router" due to power constraints and space (it's a tiny cabin, really!) So, assuming things would work OK I connected the modem directly to my Mac OS X box (cube - great for a cabin, no fan and very low power draw - especially with a LCD screen
It works, pretty well, actually. I max out at download speeds of ~25Kbyte/second. I haven't tested upload speeds but they are rather slower in my experience. The biggest bummer is the delay loading web pages and mail due to the latency.
The solution would seem to be a AS_AGENT-like affair. I have been researching using a squid web proxy to create a similar effect to what Starband Windows software does. More as that happens.