Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And the other person only needs a web-enabled phone to see where I am.
But then again I bought this phone in Japan 2 years ago for less than $200. It only has: - GPS/Navi - TV/DVR - 2 MP camera. - Music player - QR Code reader. - English and Japanese translation dictionaries.
It's "Do! Do! Do!", a theme written by they boy band (Tokio) they got to front for them.
But yeah, the 360 is doomed in Japan. Sure MS was touting the Blue Dragon 360 package sellout, but they only made a thousand of them.
Last week they sold 22,380 PS2's in Japan to Xbox 360s 1,287. (source)
So while selling an extra thousand 360s is impressive for Microsoft, it's garbage for the market. Hell, most weeks there are more GBA new releases than Xbox in Japan.
So this is what furniture looks like when it's designed by blind people. Or at least people who can't see what they're doing.
As an art project it's interesting, but as a way to actually design anything its silly. What professional designer would use a tool that gave them no feedback? (Well I suppose there's the extruded dingus, but that takes a few hours.)
Seriously, I don't think the media companies are restricting people's usage any more than they used to, it's just that people want more from their media because the potential is greater.
Really?
When I had albums I used to be able to make tapes of them so I could listen to them on my (any brand portable tape player). This was legal, and easy to do. I could even make copies of my audio tapes with no prolbem. My cheap Sanyo receiver could dub audio tapes at 2x speed. And I could make my own mix-tapes off of stuff I recorded off the radio. All legal for personal use, simple to do.
But now I can't play my legally purchased DVD's from Japan in my American DVD player, I can't (legally) copy my DVD's. I can't copy my PlaysForSure files to my iPod (and listen to them) The new video download services lock the videos to my physical machine! I used to be able to record shows freely from TV to VHS. Now my TiVo will delete those same programs a week after I save them...
2) I have, but for the time being it isn't permanent. Getting citizenship in Japan is very difficult (I've met people who are the third generation born in Japan and who still don't have citizenship) To even get a proper visa to stay in the country more than 3 months I need to find a guarantor to be legally responsible for me as I lay down about $25K to create a corporation and hire myself. (As I own my own business and I want to keep it legal.)
Though I'm not sure I want citizenship, an American passport is incredibly valuable.
I'm with you on this. I haven't been able to make the jump to a smart phone I have to synch too much too often for what I do, but I do cary my laptop everywhere. It's around 2 1/2 pounds, light enough I don't notice it. I get about 6 hours of battery life out of it (more if I dim the screen) and when I'm in my office/home I dock it with a 23" display and a real keyboard.
Makes me a little sad to see people breaking their backs with these huge things, getting into fights over outlets in cafes...
No marketer would ever call my laptop a desktop replacement, but I've been doing active development on it (or one of similar size and specs) for the last several years, and have no complaints. (I don't go to lan parties, and I have a separate machine for gaming, but that's me.)
1) Sure, my biometric permissions are revocable, but not re-issuable. At least no security outfit in their right mind would reinstate your biometric print once it had been broken.
If simple biometrics become prevalent, then someone stealing my iris print (for example) would pretty much end my life. I wouldn't be able to have a bank account or any other kind of security. Either my accounts would be wide open to whoever had a copy, or no bank would issue an account to a security risk.
At least until I could grow a new eye. It's identity theft on a very personal level.
2) Sure, they're getting more advanced. They could hardly be more primitive. However there are two problems with making them more sophisticated: a) You can't make security so sophisticated it can't be broken. (duh.) b) The more complex a system is the more likely it is to fail. I'm not an expert in the field, but many of the things you propose would ilkley prevent me from accessing my account if I was ill or under the effect of any number of legal drugs. Which is of course unacceptable.
A system that sophisticated will cost a ton of money. Compare that to to the cost of a card reader and 12 button keypad found on most ATMs. The amount of ATM fraud based on stealing user ID's at the terminal is much smaller than cost of installing and maintaining biometric devices and will be for the foreseeable future.
Iris scanning presents a fantastic alternative to password-based authentication...
This is an all too common mistake about biometrics. Security should never rely solely on biometric identification. Unlike a password or a physical key, your biometric information can't be changed. Which is its strength, right? No one can change their fingerprint to match yours!
However, any system can be spoofed or cracked. And if someone figures out how to feed information into a scanner that looks (to it) exactly like my iris, well then I'm fucked. That person is me anywhere they do an iris scan.
It would be like someone stealing your passwords and you not being able to change them.
Useful? Yes. But as an additional level of security, not an alternative.
Thank you for your kind consideration and care about my soul.
You have shown me how wrong I am to think that someone should put an effort into something that they want. It was also wrong of me to assume that someone might want to learn something new and expand their skills. I am a flawed person for feeling that these things are a virtue. I will attempt to amend my ways.
Sure we all like free things, both beer and that other kinds that's s popular around here. But isn't this Slashdot? Don't we all have web servers lost in our couch cushions? I'm not even terribly skilled, but I could write an automated RSS feed in pretty short order in language I'd never seen before on some cheap, $5 a month hosting plan.
Pay for it. If you don't value what you have to say enough to sacrifice a little for it, no one else wants to hear it either.
And don't don't forget all of the extras, languages, etc that aren't part of online efforts.
As I've said before, I would -love- to buy movies online. But they have got to make it worth it for me. These crippled, compressed wastes of bandwidth are worth a lot less than a DVD I can use as I please. (Well, not legally, but still.)
Ugh. How is a $2K server appliance supposed to help the average person make a podcast?
How is this more "accessible to the people" than, say, any of the podcast by phone (or other hardware you already own) services out there?
This is a $2000 device that can record and MP3 and upload it. Ooooh. That's so much overkill for what it does I can hardly comprehend. If they had built that functionality into the USB key, and sold it for, say $80 USD, they might have some takers.
(And I'm not even getting into the "no one cares what you have to say" part of podcasts. We went through this same stupid thing with every form of media since speech was invented.)
A year ago I did an experiment. Without telling anyone that I work with, right in the middle of a project, I left the country for 5 weeks. I had my (work) cell phone forward to a Skype-in number and went to Tokyo, just to see if anyone could tell the different.
The answer: No, no one knew, suspected, or even really cared when they found out. Though they did wonder why I sounded so sleepy for those 3 pm conference calls.
Starting 4 months ago I went "homeless". I have a post office box in the states that forwards my mail to wherever I am, and a Skype-in number. Other than that, I can travel anywhere I can get a visa and that has some kind of internet access.
Not something I plan to do permanently, but right now it's very fulfilling.
Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?
Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is... Stupid, quite frankly.
Let's see, mod a troll, or respond... Never the smartest one in class:
Clearly you've never seen e-paper in action. No backlight, stupid, it's just dark print on a white sheet. Just like... paper, just as easy to read.
Glad to see Sony has finally released one of these in the States. Been out for years in Japan, though more expensive.
None of the reasons you list will be the downfall of the device. It'll be two things: Sony's crappy Connect service. Sony has never been able to make any software worth a damn. And two: The same reason ebooks have never gained popularity, namely they're too expensive for what you get, and there are not enough titles to make it worth buying a $300+ device.
A person is going to learn in college or they're going to fuck off. Just don't grade on a curve.
How many people are submitting their transcripts for jobs? And what kind of jobs are these?
The only time I've had to show any kind of school records was for a work visa in Singapore (As an American). As far as any other work, it's all been based on my personality and performance.
I thought this was typical, but I could be living in a fantasy land.
(Disclosure: I dropped out of college with one semester left because finishing wouldn't have helped me take advantage of a certain opportunity.)
Or release them in more mangled formats or infected with rootkits and the like.
When iTunes came out I like being able to buy single songs off an album, sample music I never would have heard before and get some immediate gratification. And the price was right. I bought a couple hundred tracks all told. In general I down download pirate tracks because I like to support the artists that I enjoy. (note: Don't tangent on the economics of the record business, I know them better than you do.)
Then I bought a Sonos, which streams audio to different rooms of my home. It plays a lot of different formats and is really a wonderful (if a little pricey) bit of hardware. Except, of course it can't play songs that I "bought" at iTMS.
Well "duh" you're saying. And yeah, you're right, but you know, it had all of those advantages...
So my options were to 1) No listen to those songs in other rooms of my house, or 2) burn, then re-rip all the music I got from Apple. Which I did, and the quality drop is dramatic. And took a few days. (And yes, 3) pirate them. But...)
So I've stopped buying from the iTMS. And I'm slowly replacing all the my "rented" music with CDs, which sucks because I'm buying it twice, but 1) I'm vaguely supporting the artists, and 2) It's the last time I'll have to buy it. And the Sonos plays Apple losselss compressed...
What's the hypothesis, and what was he trying to prove?
Since he doesn't mention this on his wiki, I'll draw a conclusion: He's an idiot that thought it would be fun to prank some people he thought were deviants.
I agree that people need a wake up call to get to not blindly trust anyone with an email address, but this is just preying on the weak. People looking for a hookup on the Internet? They should be rewarded for putting it out there not raked over the coals as perverts.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And the other person only needs a web-enabled phone to see where I am.
But then again I bought this phone in Japan 2 years ago for less than $200. It only has:
- GPS/Navi
- TV/DVR
- 2 MP camera.
- Music player
- QR Code reader.
- English and Japanese translation dictionaries.
Probably time to upgrade.
It's "Do! Do! Do!", a theme written by they boy band (Tokio) they got to front for them.
But yeah, the 360 is doomed in Japan. Sure MS was touting the Blue Dragon 360 package sellout, but they only made a thousand of them.
Last week they sold 22,380 PS2's in Japan to Xbox 360s 1,287. (source)
So while selling an extra thousand 360s is impressive for Microsoft, it's garbage for the market. Hell, most weeks there are more GBA new releases than Xbox in Japan.
So this is what furniture looks like when it's designed by blind people. Or at least people who can't see what they're doing.
As an art project it's interesting, but as a way to actually design anything its silly. What professional designer would use a tool that gave them no feedback? (Well I suppose there's the extruded dingus, but that takes a few hours.)
Apple computer has thousands of patents, a large fraction on things they never plan on brining to market. They're just covering their ass.
(Though if they make a full screen video iPod I'd rather touch the edge than wipe my greasy finger on the face.)
Whoops, wrong response. How about "OMGWTF? plz don't fk with my ipod, lozrs!"
Or "Typical moron Apple move. DRM sux."
Don't annoy someone who has more spare time than you do.
And this group has a lot of spare time and energy and has shown they'll fight for something they believe in.
But of course no one is required to have any social literacy to head a major corporation. Obviously.
Wouldn't they just use that information to their advantage? These are the same guys who raise taxes so they can vote themselves a pay raise each year.
Really?
When I had albums I used to be able to make tapes of them so I could listen to them on my (any brand portable tape player). This was legal, and easy to do. I could even make copies of my audio tapes with no prolbem. My cheap Sanyo receiver could dub audio tapes at 2x speed. And I could make my own mix-tapes off of stuff I recorded off the radio. All legal for personal use, simple to do.
But now I can't play my legally purchased DVD's from Japan in my American DVD player, I can't (legally) copy my DVD's. I can't copy my PlaysForSure files to my iPod (and listen to them) The new video download services lock the videos to my physical machine! I used to be able to record shows freely from TV to VHS. Now my TiVo will delete those same programs a week after I save them...
How is this not more restricted?
1) Japan
2) I have, but for the time being it isn't permanent. Getting citizenship in Japan is very difficult (I've met people who are the third generation born in Japan and who still don't have citizenship) To even get a proper visa to stay in the country more than 3 months I need to find a guarantor to be legally responsible for me as I lay down about $25K to create a corporation and hire myself. (As I own my own business and I want to keep it legal.)
Though I'm not sure I want citizenship, an American passport is incredibly valuable.
When did we get too lazy to swipe credit cards?
If you're too lazy to have any security, you won't have any.
I'm with you on this. I haven't been able to make the jump to a smart phone I have to synch too much too often for what I do, but I do cary my laptop everywhere. It's around 2 1/2 pounds, light enough I don't notice it. I get about 6 hours of battery life out of it (more if I dim the screen) and when I'm in my office/home I dock it with a 23" display and a real keyboard.
Makes me a little sad to see people breaking their backs with these huge things, getting into fights over outlets in cafes...
No marketer would ever call my laptop a desktop replacement, but I've been doing active development on it (or one of similar size and specs) for the last several years, and have no complaints. (I don't go to lan parties, and I have a separate machine for gaming, but that's me.)
1) Sure, my biometric permissions are revocable, but not re-issuable. At least no security outfit in their right mind would reinstate your biometric print once it had been broken.
If simple biometrics become prevalent, then someone stealing my iris print (for example) would pretty much end my life. I wouldn't be able to have a bank account or any other kind of security. Either my accounts would be wide open to whoever had a copy, or no bank would issue an account to a security risk.
At least until I could grow a new eye. It's identity theft on a very personal level.
2) Sure, they're getting more advanced. They could hardly be more primitive. However there are two problems with making them more sophisticated:
a) You can't make security so sophisticated it can't be broken. (duh.)
b) The more complex a system is the more likely it is to fail. I'm not an expert in the field, but many of the things you propose would ilkley prevent me from accessing my account if I was ill or under the effect of any number of legal drugs. Which is of course unacceptable.
A system that sophisticated will cost a ton of money. Compare that to to the cost of a card reader and 12 button keypad found on most ATMs. The amount of ATM fraud based on stealing user ID's at the terminal is much smaller than cost of installing and maintaining biometric devices and will be for the foreseeable future.
Speaking of "blow[ing] too hard too often"...
Maybe this is part of a contest to see how seriously someone can take themselves without exploding.
However, any system can be spoofed or cracked. And if someone figures out how to feed information into a scanner that looks (to it) exactly like my iris, well then I'm fucked. That person is me anywhere they do an iris scan.
It would be like someone stealing your passwords and you not being able to change them.
Useful? Yes. But as an additional level of security, not an alternative.
Thank you for your kind consideration and care about my soul.
You have shown me how wrong I am to think that someone should put an effort into something that they want. It was also wrong of me to assume that someone might want to learn something new and expand their skills. I am a flawed person for feeling that these things are a virtue. I will attempt to amend my ways.
I'll also try to use less sarcasm in the future.
Sure we all like free things, both beer and that other kinds that's s popular around here. But isn't this Slashdot? Don't we all have web servers lost in our couch cushions? I'm not even terribly skilled, but I could write an automated RSS feed in pretty short order in language I'd never seen before on some cheap, $5 a month hosting plan.
Pay for it. If you don't value what you have to say enough to sacrifice a little for it, no one else wants to hear it either.
No, you're not the only one.
And don't don't forget all of the extras, languages, etc that aren't part of online efforts.
As I've said before, I would -love- to buy movies online. But they have got to make it worth it for me. These crippled, compressed wastes of bandwidth are worth a lot less than a DVD I can use as I please. (Well, not legally, but still.)
Ugh. How is a $2K server appliance supposed to help the average person make a podcast?
How is this more "accessible to the people" than, say, any of the podcast by phone (or other hardware you already own) services out there?
This is a $2000 device that can record and MP3 and upload it. Ooooh. That's so much overkill for what it does I can hardly comprehend. If they had built that functionality into the USB key, and sold it for, say $80 USD, they might have some takers.
(And I'm not even getting into the "no one cares what you have to say" part of podcasts. We went through this same stupid thing with every form of media since speech was invented.)
I also don't have a proper office.
A year ago I did an experiment. Without telling anyone that I work with, right in the middle of a project, I left the country for 5 weeks. I had my (work) cell phone forward to a Skype-in number and went to Tokyo, just to see if anyone could tell the different.
The answer: No, no one knew, suspected, or even really cared when they found out. Though they did wonder why I sounded so sleepy for those 3 pm conference calls.
Starting 4 months ago I went "homeless". I have a post office box in the states that forwards my mail to wherever I am, and a Skype-in number. Other than that, I can travel anywhere I can get a visa and that has some kind of internet access.
Not something I plan to do permanently, but right now it's very fulfilling.
At least an implied challenge.
... Stupid, quite frankly.
Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?
Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is
Let's see, mod a troll, or respond... Never the smartest one in class:
Clearly you've never seen e-paper in action. No backlight, stupid, it's just dark print on a white sheet. Just like... paper, just as easy to read.
Glad to see Sony has finally released one of these in the States. Been out for years in Japan, though more expensive.
None of the reasons you list will be the downfall of the device. It'll be two things: Sony's crappy Connect service. Sony has never been able to make any software worth a damn. And two: The same reason ebooks have never gained popularity, namely they're too expensive for what you get, and there are not enough titles to make it worth buying a $300+ device.
Monopolies are not illegal in America.
However, there are antitrust laws that this certainly seems in the realm of. Not that they're enforced, but there are laws...
A person is going to learn in college or they're going to fuck off. Just don't grade on a curve.
How many people are submitting their transcripts for jobs? And what kind of jobs are these?
The only time I've had to show any kind of school records was for a work visa in Singapore (As an American). As far as any other work, it's all been based on my personality and performance.
I thought this was typical, but I could be living in a fantasy land.
(Disclosure: I dropped out of college with one semester left because finishing wouldn't have helped me take advantage of a certain opportunity.)
Or release them in more mangled formats or infected with rootkits and the like.
When iTunes came out I like being able to buy single songs off an album, sample music I never would have heard before and get some immediate gratification. And the price was right. I bought a couple hundred tracks all told. In general I down download pirate tracks because I like to support the artists that I enjoy. (note: Don't tangent on the economics of the record business, I know them better than you do.)
Then I bought a Sonos, which streams audio to different rooms of my home. It plays a lot of different formats and is really a wonderful (if a little pricey) bit of hardware. Except, of course it can't play songs that I "bought" at iTMS.
Well "duh" you're saying. And yeah, you're right, but you know, it had all of those advantages...
So my options were to 1) No listen to those songs in other rooms of my house, or 2) burn, then re-rip all the music I got from Apple. Which I did, and the quality drop is dramatic. And took a few days. (And yes, 3) pirate them. But...)
So I've stopped buying from the iTMS. And I'm slowly replacing all the my "rented" music with CDs, which sucks because I'm buying it twice, but 1) I'm vaguely supporting the artists, and 2) It's the last time I'll have to buy it. And the Sonos plays Apple losselss compressed...
"Results 1 - 30 of about 572,000 for Citizendium. (0.27 seconds)"
Hmm. What was the point of this again?
Oh right. Freedom is great, except when other people do things I don't like, then I hate it.
What's the hypothesis, and what was he trying to prove?
Since he doesn't mention this on his wiki, I'll draw a conclusion:
He's an idiot that thought it would be fun to prank some people he thought were deviants.
I agree that people need a wake up call to get to not blindly trust anyone with an email address, but this is just preying on the weak. People looking for a hookup on the Internet? They should be rewarded for putting it out there not raked over the coals as perverts.