I'm speaking from experience as a technophile who did not want to get a smartphone for the longest time for the exact reason you mention as I stated in my post. I'm by no means saying that I think everyone should rush to the store and get one, but I was trying to speak to the detractors who are saying they are a waste of money or unhealthy. The fact is you can't point to any one thing that makes them worth a dollar extra per day (in comparison to a $90 a month base bill for the lowest level of service I can get, that isn't that much anyway.) but the overall experience of having data available when you need it is. Arguing that a smartphone is a waste of money now is like arguing that a cellphone was a waste of money in the late 90s. They are ubiquitous now and just about everyone acknowledges the value having communication when you need it brings.
Let me correct myself. Could not have done it nearly as easily or in as timely of a manner and my options would have been more limited to pre-planed activities and offered less spontaneity and useful information on site. In a foreign city where I don't speak the language, having a device capable of translation and providing information in my language related to where I am is incredibly valuable and helpful. It was an overstatement to say I couldn't have done it without it, but the point is that it made a world of difference. (Also, being able to use Skype for calling back state side was a huge financial savings in and of itself since international data rates are far better than voice.) I think my point was clear even if you would like to nitpick my wording.
As other people have mentioned it isn't about being connected all the time, it is about having connectivity when you need it and really until you have a smartphone you don't realize how useful they "can" be. Note that many people who do have smart phones don't really use them well, but for me, not having to maintain my contacts list, having access to internet searches when I need a particular piece of information, being able to check for prices on items when I'm at the store, having navigation available when I need to get someplace new, being able to remote in to one of the computers I administrate without having to stop what I am doing to get to a computer, being able to listen to my music without having to sync up, having my calendar automatically sync'd with my wife's and having access to e-mails that sometimes are time oriented and give me opportunities I might otherwise miss are significant and worth a buck a day.
The value isn't so much in any one thing as it is in the full spectrum of things it makes available if you use it right. I find that I spend less time at my computer now and more time out and about since I get information in a more condensed format and don't need to spend lots of time catching up on things. I held out on getting a smart phone for a long time for many of the same reasons described on here, but after I got one, I ended up buying one for my wife shortly after. I know my trip to Paris it was incredibly helpful (couldn't have done it without it) and having it day to day is still a very large advantage as long as you don't overuse it for stupid things like being on facebook or texting 24/7.
Am I the only one that finds it horribly ironic that this showed up on my RSS feed immediately after a/. post about Sony going after the people that found the root keys for their PS3?
Sony goes on law suit rampage over PS3 root key leak.
Sony sued for violating LG patents in PS3.
Classy.
Except it only applies to new contracts and is disclosed, so yes, you are in fact getting exactly what you pay for. If they were changing my existing contract I would agree with you completely.
This approach ends up negatively impacting far more users. How do you determine if a session is open on stateless traffic? If I do a quick e-mail update do you keep my bandwidth (that I'm not using at all) available for some period of time? You would end up with most users not using near their entire pipe and this would result in huge amounts of wasted bandwidth that could have been used to improve the experience of not just the heavy users, but also the moderate and potentially even some of the low bandwidth users. It's a good thought in principal but it doesn't really work well unless you can predict the random access needs of everyone. A better approach might be throttling that automatically kicks in only if bandwidth utilization gets high on a tower, which may be what they mean by peak times. The posting was not clear if peak times and locations refer to set times or if it is simply done on the fly based on usage data.
Ugh, they are going to further compress images so you won't be able to zoom in on images without lost detail (atleast if delivered on port 80). I guess this is easy enough to get around using an SSL tunnel, but still a pain to deal with. All recognizable video will be H264 encoded. That could actually be nice if they do it properly. If your device can't handle H264 then it is delivered under the original codec so it does appear to be device aware optimization. Bit rate settings seem to be percentage of original based so higher quality sources will still result in higher quality output (seems like a bad decision for their encoding hardware since it will have to deal with larger files). VBR encoding will be used. They are using VQM for the qualitative measurements and are adjusting the compressing for a.4 to.6 VQM scale change.
Another weird possible issue is that they are using source independent caching of video based on (presumably a hash) of the first few frames of video. Potentially you could end up with the wrong version of a file if the same start is used with changes further in on certain file formats. That could be fun...
Eek, also trying to prevent device side buffering (by limiting data delivery until shortly before the device needs that part of the video) so any unforeseen network latency will result in issues for client devices if they don't have their tolerances set high enough. This makes sense since it prevents caching video that someone may not finish viewing and won't have a negative effect if tweaked conservatively enough, but has the potential to introduce issues for users if it isn't.
It is important to note that this only applies to new contracts and only throttles at peak times. The part about also throttling the next billing cycle seems shady, but otherwise I don't see an issue here as long as they aren't altering existing contracts like we've seen other carriers do.
The scarier part from the article is that they appear to be trying to do on the fly transcoding of content as it crosses the network resulting in what will likely be a quality drop for people who are good at noticing such things though it could potentially help in the case of higher bandwidth streams being reduced server side to a bandwidth the system can support. Will largely depend on their implementation I guess. www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization has more info apparently.
Radio in my area is crap and I get great, up to date traffic sent right to my maps. Some areas have good radio stations, but some areas don't have stations that cover the types of music people like. Even satellite radio does not offer the kinds of options available with streaming radio and it is a big part of what the phones are advertised as being able to do. I understand it being a legitimate complaint if some idiot is torrenting over their phone or downloading files that are not for consumption on the phone, but if you are using the phone for legitimate advertised functionality, it should be provided.
You don't have to have written codecs, you just need to have the ability to notice artifacts and listen outside the range covered by the psychoacoustic effects used by every sub-128kbps codec I am currently aware of. (The AAC you mentioned in a previous post included.) That said, I will agree that most users will likely not notice the difference, particularly if listening on standard grade headphones. And Pandora now offers two stream qualities, a high (128) and a low (I believe 64 but I don't use it as I am also a professional level audio engineer and use studio quality in-ears so the artifacts are painfully noticeable.)
You couldn't run netflix on Verizon's network before this anyway. Atleast not anywhere I had attempted it. As long as they have enough bandwidth for my Skype and Pandora I'm happy.
That is incorrect. These types of encoding are based on determinations of a baseline and then altering the baseline in a way that will not affect the determination of the baseline or the signal itself. The method in which they are altering the background noise will distort that baseline rendering any information stored within completely unreadable if it is done effectivly. While it is true that if the method used is not well thought out it may be possible to come up with an alternate method of establishing a baseline, this would be a very complicated task and would still be easy to corrupt.
Additionally, it is worth noting that there is a very similar technique called stenography which encodes messages in to images and has been used in conjunction with P2P systems and internet forums to distribute messages. Again, simple alterations to the image will destroy the data, the problem is in detecting it. Stenography and this technique provide nothing other than an effective means of concealing data. Once detected, it is very easy to destroy or even read provided that you can establish what parameters were for the baseline. (Granted the messages are normally passed through encryption before being encoded.)
The most common thing I've seen in cases like this are cable locks. Sure they don't seem very secure, but they are a solid deterent since security is more about making it easier to go after someone else than making it impossible to steal. If someone really wants your stuff, you are screwed. But if your stuff is bolted to the floor, its probably easier to make off with the next guy's desktop instead. As for hard drives, your drive might not have it, but I know my external hard drive has a Belkin cable connection. This might not secure your keyboard or mouse, but those can easily go in a drawer and simply being out of view is probably sufficient security even if it doesn't lock for such low value items. If you want flexibile motion and decent security, cables really seem to be the way to go.
This makes a lot of sense for trying to make slower cable more appealing to those who want to browse the web primarily. Web sites transfer a bunch and then wait for a while before sending anything else. With a system like this web surfing would be very fast, but doing any kind of downloads or uploads would be much slower. It is a good way to try to charge people more for torrent and high bandwidth usage traffic while offering their ideal market(web traffic) a cheaper option.
Addtionally, I don't know if this is only for finished files or not, but PDF has its document rights stuff where you can use a password to prevent certain actions. That might work.
No they do not. This would be roughly equivilant to me taking a picture of the New York City skyline, trying to sell the picture and then having every major architecture firm in Manhattan sue me for abusing their copyright. The entire notion of a manufacturer suing you for selling a picture of something YOU own is preposterous. If you made another car that looked just like it they would have a case, but taking a picture of your particular car is just that, a picture of the car you own, not Ford. Unfortunatly, CafePress would be the one to be sued if Ford wanted to and since it isn't worth the legal fees, CafePres has no choice but to drop the project.
It may still not be as efficient as gasoline by wait, but last time I checked, I can't recharge my gasoline. If you know a way to do this, I would be most apreciative.
Actually I would take that ever further. It is not actually the creation of any artificial life, simply the extensive parasitic modification of a living organizm. The fact is that they are simply trying to replace the genetic material of an organizm with other genetic material, which should govern the way the organizm behaves, however it still requires the host organizm to process the DNA which isn't a process they are artifically creating. They are more re-writing the code of an existing organizm, not creating artificial life forms.
If you read the actual document, you will find that the poster's editing makes it sound far worse than it is. The point the RIAA is trying to make is that if someone has MP3 files in their Kazaa shared folder, they have an intent to share them. If they do not have the right to share those files then the copies would be unauthorized as they are being made available to the public, which goes well beyond fair use. This has nothing to do with the RIAA trying to prevent fair use or ripping CDs to your computer as the original poster would like you to believe.
Battery life will also be an issue. While the iPhone can certainly display information, it isn't really practical for long term reading purposes. With the Kindle, you can go a much longer time reading and it is much easier on your eyes as it uses an e-Ink display. Having used older LCD based e-books and newer e-Ink based e-books, I can safely say that there is no comparison between the two technologies. While it is nice to have color on an LCD, the e-Ink displays will win every time for visibility and length of use. Additionally, there is no monthly fee to use the Kindle, I just wish it wasn't white, I'd be sold if they had a black version.
Hopefully RPI will release more info on their website soon. I was kind of surprised they didn't have a post about it on their homepage. (They almost always have in the 4 years I was there and the year since I graduated.)
While it is true that the one research company may have had flaws in their study and/or other motivating factors. It can't be overlooked that the main source used in the article is a company that needs P2P to be the main part of Internet traffic to have their business work. So, what they say would also be highly suspect. The last source referenced that was more in line with the original work is probably the most accurate as they don't seem to have any bias.
They won't make it cheaper. Why should they reduce the cost that people will buy it for. Instead they'll probably try to charge extra for the added feature.
This would also still have the issue of being able to alter the URL that is displayed in some browsers such as older versions of IE. I don't see this as a big improvement to security, certainly not worth spending $50,000 for the domain, as it would be prohibitivly expensive for smaller banks. A better idea would be to require validation for the domain and to require secure DNS to be in place on all the servers, but there would still be unsecure servers that cache the results, so poisoning would still be an issue. In short, this is a useless idea.
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I'm speaking from experience as a technophile who did not want to get a smartphone for the longest time for the exact reason you mention as I stated in my post. I'm by no means saying that I think everyone should rush to the store and get one, but I was trying to speak to the detractors who are saying they are a waste of money or unhealthy. The fact is you can't point to any one thing that makes them worth a dollar extra per day (in comparison to a $90 a month base bill for the lowest level of service I can get, that isn't that much anyway.) but the overall experience of having data available when you need it is. Arguing that a smartphone is a waste of money now is like arguing that a cellphone was a waste of money in the late 90s. They are ubiquitous now and just about everyone acknowledges the value having communication when you need it brings.
Let me correct myself. Could not have done it nearly as easily or in as timely of a manner and my options would have been more limited to pre-planed activities and offered less spontaneity and useful information on site. In a foreign city where I don't speak the language, having a device capable of translation and providing information in my language related to where I am is incredibly valuable and helpful. It was an overstatement to say I couldn't have done it without it, but the point is that it made a world of difference. (Also, being able to use Skype for calling back state side was a huge financial savings in and of itself since international data rates are far better than voice.) I think my point was clear even if you would like to nitpick my wording.
As other people have mentioned it isn't about being connected all the time, it is about having connectivity when you need it and really until you have a smartphone you don't realize how useful they "can" be. Note that many people who do have smart phones don't really use them well, but for me, not having to maintain my contacts list, having access to internet searches when I need a particular piece of information, being able to check for prices on items when I'm at the store, having navigation available when I need to get someplace new, being able to remote in to one of the computers I administrate without having to stop what I am doing to get to a computer, being able to listen to my music without having to sync up, having my calendar automatically sync'd with my wife's and having access to e-mails that sometimes are time oriented and give me opportunities I might otherwise miss are significant and worth a buck a day. The value isn't so much in any one thing as it is in the full spectrum of things it makes available if you use it right. I find that I spend less time at my computer now and more time out and about since I get information in a more condensed format and don't need to spend lots of time catching up on things. I held out on getting a smart phone for a long time for many of the same reasons described on here, but after I got one, I ended up buying one for my wife shortly after. I know my trip to Paris it was incredibly helpful (couldn't have done it without it) and having it day to day is still a very large advantage as long as you don't overuse it for stupid things like being on facebook or texting 24/7.
Like the 3 foot wide pothole on my way home from work every day on a single lane road that hasn't been fixed for 2 weeks.
Am I the only one that finds it horribly ironic that this showed up on my RSS feed immediately after a /. post about Sony going after the people that found the root keys for their PS3?
Sony goes on law suit rampage over PS3 root key leak.
Sony sued for violating LG patents in PS3.
Classy.
Except it only applies to new contracts and is disclosed, so yes, you are in fact getting exactly what you pay for. If they were changing my existing contract I would agree with you completely.
This approach ends up negatively impacting far more users. How do you determine if a session is open on stateless traffic? If I do a quick e-mail update do you keep my bandwidth (that I'm not using at all) available for some period of time? You would end up with most users not using near their entire pipe and this would result in huge amounts of wasted bandwidth that could have been used to improve the experience of not just the heavy users, but also the moderate and potentially even some of the low bandwidth users. It's a good thought in principal but it doesn't really work well unless you can predict the random access needs of everyone. A better approach might be throttling that automatically kicks in only if bandwidth utilization gets high on a tower, which may be what they mean by peak times. The posting was not clear if peak times and locations refer to set times or if it is simply done on the fly based on usage data.
Ugh, they are going to further compress images so you won't be able to zoom in on images without lost detail (atleast if delivered on port 80). I guess this is easy enough to get around using an SSL tunnel, but still a pain to deal with. All recognizable video will be H264 encoded. That could actually be nice if they do it properly. If your device can't handle H264 then it is delivered under the original codec so it does appear to be device aware optimization. Bit rate settings seem to be percentage of original based so higher quality sources will still result in higher quality output (seems like a bad decision for their encoding hardware since it will have to deal with larger files). VBR encoding will be used. They are using VQM for the qualitative measurements and are adjusting the compressing for a .4 to .6 VQM scale change.
Another weird possible issue is that they are using source independent caching of video based on (presumably a hash) of the first few frames of video. Potentially you could end up with the wrong version of a file if the same start is used with changes further in on certain file formats. That could be fun...
Eek, also trying to prevent device side buffering (by limiting data delivery until shortly before the device needs that part of the video) so any unforeseen network latency will result in issues for client devices if they don't have their tolerances set high enough. This makes sense since it prevents caching video that someone may not finish viewing and won't have a negative effect if tweaked conservatively enough, but has the potential to introduce issues for users if it isn't.
It is important to note that this only applies to new contracts and only throttles at peak times. The part about also throttling the next billing cycle seems shady, but otherwise I don't see an issue here as long as they aren't altering existing contracts like we've seen other carriers do. The scarier part from the article is that they appear to be trying to do on the fly transcoding of content as it crosses the network resulting in what will likely be a quality drop for people who are good at noticing such things though it could potentially help in the case of higher bandwidth streams being reduced server side to a bandwidth the system can support. Will largely depend on their implementation I guess. www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization has more info apparently.
Radio in my area is crap and I get great, up to date traffic sent right to my maps. Some areas have good radio stations, but some areas don't have stations that cover the types of music people like. Even satellite radio does not offer the kinds of options available with streaming radio and it is a big part of what the phones are advertised as being able to do. I understand it being a legitimate complaint if some idiot is torrenting over their phone or downloading files that are not for consumption on the phone, but if you are using the phone for legitimate advertised functionality, it should be provided.
You don't have to have written codecs, you just need to have the ability to notice artifacts and listen outside the range covered by the psychoacoustic effects used by every sub-128kbps codec I am currently aware of. (The AAC you mentioned in a previous post included.) That said, I will agree that most users will likely not notice the difference, particularly if listening on standard grade headphones. And Pandora now offers two stream qualities, a high (128) and a low (I believe 64 but I don't use it as I am also a professional level audio engineer and use studio quality in-ears so the artifacts are painfully noticeable.)
You couldn't run netflix on Verizon's network before this anyway. Atleast not anywhere I had attempted it. As long as they have enough bandwidth for my Skype and Pandora I'm happy.
That is incorrect. These types of encoding are based on determinations of a baseline and then altering the baseline in a way that will not affect the determination of the baseline or the signal itself. The method in which they are altering the background noise will distort that baseline rendering any information stored within completely unreadable if it is done effectivly. While it is true that if the method used is not well thought out it may be possible to come up with an alternate method of establishing a baseline, this would be a very complicated task and would still be easy to corrupt. Additionally, it is worth noting that there is a very similar technique called stenography which encodes messages in to images and has been used in conjunction with P2P systems and internet forums to distribute messages. Again, simple alterations to the image will destroy the data, the problem is in detecting it. Stenography and this technique provide nothing other than an effective means of concealing data. Once detected, it is very easy to destroy or even read provided that you can establish what parameters were for the baseline. (Granted the messages are normally passed through encryption before being encoded.)
The most common thing I've seen in cases like this are cable locks. Sure they don't seem very secure, but they are a solid deterent since security is more about making it easier to go after someone else than making it impossible to steal. If someone really wants your stuff, you are screwed. But if your stuff is bolted to the floor, its probably easier to make off with the next guy's desktop instead. As for hard drives, your drive might not have it, but I know my external hard drive has a Belkin cable connection. This might not secure your keyboard or mouse, but those can easily go in a drawer and simply being out of view is probably sufficient security even if it doesn't lock for such low value items. If you want flexibile motion and decent security, cables really seem to be the way to go.
This makes a lot of sense for trying to make slower cable more appealing to those who want to browse the web primarily. Web sites transfer a bunch and then wait for a while before sending anything else. With a system like this web surfing would be very fast, but doing any kind of downloads or uploads would be much slower. It is a good way to try to charge people more for torrent and high bandwidth usage traffic while offering their ideal market(web traffic) a cheaper option.
Addtionally, I don't know if this is only for finished files or not, but PDF has its document rights stuff where you can use a password to prevent certain actions. That might work.
No they do not. This would be roughly equivilant to me taking a picture of the New York City skyline, trying to sell the picture and then having every major architecture firm in Manhattan sue me for abusing their copyright. The entire notion of a manufacturer suing you for selling a picture of something YOU own is preposterous. If you made another car that looked just like it they would have a case, but taking a picture of your particular car is just that, a picture of the car you own, not Ford. Unfortunatly, CafePress would be the one to be sued if Ford wanted to and since it isn't worth the legal fees, CafePres has no choice but to drop the project.
It may still not be as efficient as gasoline by wait, but last time I checked, I can't recharge my gasoline. If you know a way to do this, I would be most apreciative.
Actually I would take that ever further. It is not actually the creation of any artificial life, simply the extensive parasitic modification of a living organizm. The fact is that they are simply trying to replace the genetic material of an organizm with other genetic material, which should govern the way the organizm behaves, however it still requires the host organizm to process the DNA which isn't a process they are artifically creating. They are more re-writing the code of an existing organizm, not creating artificial life forms.
If you read the actual document, you will find that the poster's editing makes it sound far worse than it is. The point the RIAA is trying to make is that if someone has MP3 files in their Kazaa shared folder, they have an intent to share them. If they do not have the right to share those files then the copies would be unauthorized as they are being made available to the public, which goes well beyond fair use. This has nothing to do with the RIAA trying to prevent fair use or ripping CDs to your computer as the original poster would like you to believe.
Battery life will also be an issue. While the iPhone can certainly display information, it isn't really practical for long term reading purposes. With the Kindle, you can go a much longer time reading and it is much easier on your eyes as it uses an e-Ink display. Having used older LCD based e-books and newer e-Ink based e-books, I can safely say that there is no comparison between the two technologies. While it is nice to have color on an LCD, the e-Ink displays will win every time for visibility and length of use. Additionally, there is no monthly fee to use the Kindle, I just wish it wasn't white, I'd be sold if they had a black version.
Hopefully RPI will release more info on their website soon. I was kind of surprised they didn't have a post about it on their homepage. (They almost always have in the 4 years I was there and the year since I graduated.)
While it is true that the one research company may have had flaws in their study and/or other motivating factors. It can't be overlooked that the main source used in the article is a company that needs P2P to be the main part of Internet traffic to have their business work. So, what they say would also be highly suspect. The last source referenced that was more in line with the original work is probably the most accurate as they don't seem to have any bias.
They won't make it cheaper. Why should they reduce the cost that people will buy it for. Instead they'll probably try to charge extra for the added feature.
This would also still have the issue of being able to alter the URL that is displayed in some browsers such as older versions of IE. I don't see this as a big improvement to security, certainly not worth spending $50,000 for the domain, as it would be prohibitivly expensive for smaller banks. A better idea would be to require validation for the domain and to require secure DNS to be in place on all the servers, but there would still be unsecure servers that cache the results, so poisoning would still be an issue. In short, this is a useless idea.