It's clever but I'm not sure they deserve the kudos for it, I've seen dozens of people suggest this very approach to multiplayer as a useful way to utilise 3D over the past several years (since it reared its head again) - I even remember having a discussion on this very topic with a friend back in '06 (I remember the date as I can remember the project we were working on that spawned the discussion). This is just more evidence that if you're already a global mega-corporation it's much easier to put these ideas into production (and, more importantly, lock everyone else out with IP laws). What I'd like to see is some kind of free to register patent equivalent where regular people with a good idea but without the funds or drive to produce it can donate these more obvious technology applications on an open source basis, meaning any company can use them to create interesting new technology but no one company can own that technology.
Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.
This is key to understanding these figures. Is it based on sales? If that's the case, considering the cost of games these days, it's not surprising that the figures would skew heavily in favour of the age group that have jobs and kids (i.e. a lot of those sales are for under 18 year olds, but adding to the mid thirties demographic). Similarly, if we assume that a large number of under 18s are playing 18 rated games and lying about their age (and the industry are turning a blind eye because it's in their interests), that would also skew the figures, considering how many of the blockbuster titles are rated 18+.
At least he's still making the effort to pretend to care. Our politicians have pretty much given up even making promises. Now the approach is "Face it, it's going to be crap if you elect us but it will be more crap if you elect the other party".
So scale it. If you've filed less than 20 patents it could cost practically nothing, if you've filed hundreds the price goes up massively since, at that point, you've either made a fortune off your prior patents, or you're a patent troll, or you're just polluting the patent system. You'd need a way to prevent companies working out loopholes with patents in named people's names that revert to them, or umbrella companies, etc but it wouldn't be a bad start.
All the "this is old tech" people are missing the point. This is an entire system in a box. You buy the box, stick it on your door (presumably stick in some batteries) and that's it. No wiring, no other infrastructure required, it doesn't matter if you live in a 17th century listed building or a caravan, you can even take it with you when you move house. The innovation is not the technology, it's the convenience to the average person of installing what used to be at best a non-trivial setup.
Apparently the idea came about as a result of an invention competition at his school. He got the idea from his mum having to go collect missed packages. I expect someone to hack on of these things to respond to keytones (to release the hounds or whatever) in 3... 2... 1...
You can give other instructions, like ask him to pop the package somewhere out of sight if it doesn't need a signature, or tell him that your neighbour at number X has agreed to sign for it. I order coffee online every few weeks, sometimes they leave it by the front door in the porch, sometimes they take it back to the depot and drop me a card, even though the package is always the same size and weight and doesn't need a signature. Just being able to say "it's only coffee, just leave it by the door" would be a convenience for me that means I don't then have to wait 24 hours and drive to some out of town location to go collect it myself. It might not cover all situations, but even if it covers a subset it's better than nothing.
The difference is you can put the guts on the inside of the house and a simple button on the outside. If the thieves get to your SIM card then, they're already inside the house and you probably have bigger things to worry about.
He's also being a little bit disengenuous on the whole innovation front. Taking a clunky old system that nobody uses and making it ubiquitous through adding 3G SIM support so it can sell cheaply and easily into a modern market is innovative. It might not be world changing but the kid deserves at least some credit, considering anyone could have done this in the intervening 15 years but he was the first who did. Sometimes a simple change can be innovative.
Yeah, I think the whole "scares off burglars" line is garbage designed to market to the security conscious. For most homes it will be obvious you're not there, since you'd just answer the door if you were, or the telecom would be on the other side of the (usually frosted glass) door. They should stick to the primary reason to have this - convenience - and drop the whole crime deterrent thing.
Indeed - we (also UK) have a landline that we basically get free because it works out cheaper to have the package that it's tied to. We've not made a call on it in five+ years, we sometimes get a sales call or a wrong number but we don't bother answering it, just let it go through to answerphone. I've used my mobile exclusively since '98 (well, I did have a landline until 2000 but that was for the internet dialup only). The SIM option is definitely the best option for this market. UK houses are not ideal for running cable everywhere where it's not already convenient, WiFi adds unecessary cost and complexity for the average user and ethernet either takes you back to the cabling option or means you have to stick a wireless base station by the door. I do think there's a rush to stick SIMs in every bit of tech today, whether it makes sense or not, but here I think it's actually a good call.
Presumably cost. There's nothing to prevent it using WiFi, but if they make it SIM they can offset some of the cost to a third party (who in the UK will probably give you the SIM for free as they expect to make money back on the calls) and they're trying to hit a price point that's going to sell. Most homes in the UK aren't wired for ethernet, so unless you wanted to run cables all over the house you'd need a wireless air port or something by the door if you went that route, which would add a big chunk of cost and complexity for the average user. Same thing with phone cables, unless your phone is right by your door the SIM prevents running cables around the house. It's a nice solution for this particular market and target audience - just insert SIM, program in your number and away you go.
I read that they expect to sell this thing for around £40, I'm not sure if that includes the SIM but here in the UK you can get a free SIM and pay as you go calls are pretty cheap (lots of networks even do free calls to other numbers on the same network, so potentially you'd not have to pay for the calls at all). At that price point and in this country that makes a lot of sense, definitely needs a land line jack (and perhaps it already does this but they focus on the SIM part in the articles because it sounds more techy) if it goes overseas, and it's a nice-to-have even here in the UK so I guess it's only a matter of time. That or they couldn't hook it into a land line because some product already exists with a patent on doing so.
My GF works in a children's hospital and has to patch up kids who've been savaged by dogs and guess what, almost all of the owners say exactly the same thing (he's never hurt a soul before, he's usually so friendly, you're more in danger of being licked to death, etc). The truth is even well cared-for, domesticated dogs can demonstrate vicious behaviour out of the blue in the presence of certain triggers. As far as I'm concerned, if you have dogs and you want people to come onto your property to deliver stuff, you should be securing them, not expecting that person to just take a chance. Why should the delivery guy have to play russian roulette just to do his job? Even if we could assume most dogs are harmless, how is anyone meant to tell without risking being torn to shreds in the first place? You wouldn't set a bunch of rusty old bear traps on your property and say "don't worry, they probably don't even work anymore" when he objects.
I do expect questions to be asked in parliament. It's just depressing that those questions will be along the lines of "How big a brown envelope are you going to slip us to make this disappear?"
That's the thing, if you own the building, it's your responsibility to ensure you hire the right people to check that it meets the required safety standards. If you're relying on some guy from the street to test it for you, don't be surprised when he does so with the direct approach. There are many responsible ways Sony could have tested the safety of the data - leaving it to a bunch of unaccountable hackers is not one of them. Sure the hackers went overboard. That's what they do. That's why we have computer security and laws against hacking in the first place.
However, the degree to which the public tolerates their actions is influenced by their current aims. Remember, Sony ultimately won't care what Anonymous thinks, what they care about is what their average customer thinks. If Anonymous get the public on side, it could be very costly for Sony, meanwhile the company doesn't have to meet any of Anonymous' demands, it merely has to win back any lost confidence on the part of the customer. That's a hell of a lot different to your negotiating with terrorists example - Sony can effectively cut the "terrorists" out of the analogy by just not being dicks to the people trying to give them money hand over fist.
Unfortunately the story is just "Sony attacked by hackers", and then a bunch of experts commenting on why we need tougher laws against hackers. There's no commentary on what drove the hackers to act in the first place or how the hacks were even possible, no experts commenting that if we had better protection for consumers and more regulation of companies who hold onto critical user data that this might all be moot. Media is biased, sure this will be reported, but it will be reported in an entirely one-sided manner.
I don't agree with their approach but I can absolutely see where they are coming from. It's not like Sony made one simple transgression and are being unduly punished for it. They've been treating their customers - often very loyal customers for whom Sony have always been the go-to brand - like dirt for at least the best part of the last decade. Most customers buy into the product unaware of this record, but plenty of people continue to buy their products even when they are aware. This encourages arrogance on the part of the company in that they see these huge - for the sake of balance we'll call them errors in judgement - and they still see massive profits. Lack of responsibility is still rewarded time and again, and that's cyclical, the more they can get away with it the more they'll do it, either because it's cheaper or the payoff is bigger. For a long time some kind of backlash has been due - it would be nice if this was the public taking an interest in the activities of their gadget suppliers and making informed choices for a change, but I can totally understand a small minority losing patience and trying to force the issue with more direct action.
Good. Maybe people will finally start asking questions when they can't watch whatever they want online - they've certainly not cared enough to heed the multiple warnings people in the know have been shouting about for the last decade+. Instead every argument has been met with a "slippery slope" rebuff, well how far down the slope do we have to go before people realise that slippery slope might be a cliché, but sometimes it's true.
When you only have two parties to choose from and both want roughly the same goals, participating in the process seems a lot like theatre designed to make you think your voice is being heard while those in power divide up your rights between themselves.
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It's clever but I'm not sure they deserve the kudos for it, I've seen dozens of people suggest this very approach to multiplayer as a useful way to utilise 3D over the past several years (since it reared its head again) - I even remember having a discussion on this very topic with a friend back in '06 (I remember the date as I can remember the project we were working on that spawned the discussion). This is just more evidence that if you're already a global mega-corporation it's much easier to put these ideas into production (and, more importantly, lock everyone else out with IP laws). What I'd like to see is some kind of free to register patent equivalent where regular people with a good idea but without the funds or drive to produce it can donate these more obvious technology applications on an open source basis, meaning any company can use them to create interesting new technology but no one company can own that technology.
Says the AC who can't even manage to post to the correct story :)
Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.
This is key to understanding these figures. Is it based on sales? If that's the case, considering the cost of games these days, it's not surprising that the figures would skew heavily in favour of the age group that have jobs and kids (i.e. a lot of those sales are for under 18 year olds, but adding to the mid thirties demographic). Similarly, if we assume that a large number of under 18s are playing 18 rated games and lying about their age (and the industry are turning a blind eye because it's in their interests), that would also skew the figures, considering how many of the blockbuster titles are rated 18+.
At least he's still making the effort to pretend to care. Our politicians have pretty much given up even making promises. Now the approach is "Face it, it's going to be crap if you elect us but it will be more crap if you elect the other party".
So scale it. If you've filed less than 20 patents it could cost practically nothing, if you've filed hundreds the price goes up massively since, at that point, you've either made a fortune off your prior patents, or you're a patent troll, or you're just polluting the patent system. You'd need a way to prevent companies working out loopholes with patents in named people's names that revert to them, or umbrella companies, etc but it wouldn't be a bad start.
All the "this is old tech" people are missing the point. This is an entire system in a box. You buy the box, stick it on your door (presumably stick in some batteries) and that's it. No wiring, no other infrastructure required, it doesn't matter if you live in a 17th century listed building or a caravan, you can even take it with you when you move house. The innovation is not the technology, it's the convenience to the average person of installing what used to be at best a non-trivial setup.
Apparently the idea came about as a result of an invention competition at his school. He got the idea from his mum having to go collect missed packages. I expect someone to hack on of these things to respond to keytones (to release the hounds or whatever) in 3... 2... 1...
You can give other instructions, like ask him to pop the package somewhere out of sight if it doesn't need a signature, or tell him that your neighbour at number X has agreed to sign for it. I order coffee online every few weeks, sometimes they leave it by the front door in the porch, sometimes they take it back to the depot and drop me a card, even though the package is always the same size and weight and doesn't need a signature. Just being able to say "it's only coffee, just leave it by the door" would be a convenience for me that means I don't then have to wait 24 hours and drive to some out of town location to go collect it myself. It might not cover all situations, but even if it covers a subset it's better than nothing.
The difference is you can put the guts on the inside of the house and a simple button on the outside. If the thieves get to your SIM card then, they're already inside the house and you probably have bigger things to worry about.
Sounds a bit long-winded. If I want to know who has been to my house during the day I'll just subscribe to my front door's Twitter feed.
He's also being a little bit disengenuous on the whole innovation front. Taking a clunky old system that nobody uses and making it ubiquitous through adding 3G SIM support so it can sell cheaply and easily into a modern market is innovative. It might not be world changing but the kid deserves at least some credit, considering anyone could have done this in the intervening 15 years but he was the first who did. Sometimes a simple change can be innovative.
Yeah, I think the whole "scares off burglars" line is garbage designed to market to the security conscious. For most homes it will be obvious you're not there, since you'd just answer the door if you were, or the telecom would be on the other side of the (usually frosted glass) door. They should stick to the primary reason to have this - convenience - and drop the whole crime deterrent thing.
Indeed - we (also UK) have a landline that we basically get free because it works out cheaper to have the package that it's tied to. We've not made a call on it in five+ years, we sometimes get a sales call or a wrong number but we don't bother answering it, just let it go through to answerphone. I've used my mobile exclusively since '98 (well, I did have a landline until 2000 but that was for the internet dialup only). The SIM option is definitely the best option for this market. UK houses are not ideal for running cable everywhere where it's not already convenient, WiFi adds unecessary cost and complexity for the average user and ethernet either takes you back to the cabling option or means you have to stick a wireless base station by the door. I do think there's a rush to stick SIMs in every bit of tech today, whether it makes sense or not, but here I think it's actually a good call.
Presumably cost. There's nothing to prevent it using WiFi, but if they make it SIM they can offset some of the cost to a third party (who in the UK will probably give you the SIM for free as they expect to make money back on the calls) and they're trying to hit a price point that's going to sell. Most homes in the UK aren't wired for ethernet, so unless you wanted to run cables all over the house you'd need a wireless air port or something by the door if you went that route, which would add a big chunk of cost and complexity for the average user. Same thing with phone cables, unless your phone is right by your door the SIM prevents running cables around the house. It's a nice solution for this particular market and target audience - just insert SIM, program in your number and away you go.
I read that they expect to sell this thing for around £40, I'm not sure if that includes the SIM but here in the UK you can get a free SIM and pay as you go calls are pretty cheap (lots of networks even do free calls to other numbers on the same network, so potentially you'd not have to pay for the calls at all). At that price point and in this country that makes a lot of sense, definitely needs a land line jack (and perhaps it already does this but they focus on the SIM part in the articles because it sounds more techy) if it goes overseas, and it's a nice-to-have even here in the UK so I guess it's only a matter of time. That or they couldn't hook it into a land line because some product already exists with a patent on doing so.
My GF works in a children's hospital and has to patch up kids who've been savaged by dogs and guess what, almost all of the owners say exactly the same thing (he's never hurt a soul before, he's usually so friendly, you're more in danger of being licked to death, etc). The truth is even well cared-for, domesticated dogs can demonstrate vicious behaviour out of the blue in the presence of certain triggers. As far as I'm concerned, if you have dogs and you want people to come onto your property to deliver stuff, you should be securing them, not expecting that person to just take a chance. Why should the delivery guy have to play russian roulette just to do his job? Even if we could assume most dogs are harmless, how is anyone meant to tell without risking being torn to shreds in the first place? You wouldn't set a bunch of rusty old bear traps on your property and say "don't worry, they probably don't even work anymore" when he objects.
I do expect questions to be asked in parliament. It's just depressing that those questions will be along the lines of "How big a brown envelope are you going to slip us to make this disappear?"
That's the thing, if you own the building, it's your responsibility to ensure you hire the right people to check that it meets the required safety standards. If you're relying on some guy from the street to test it for you, don't be surprised when he does so with the direct approach. There are many responsible ways Sony could have tested the safety of the data - leaving it to a bunch of unaccountable hackers is not one of them. Sure the hackers went overboard. That's what they do. That's why we have computer security and laws against hacking in the first place.
However, the degree to which the public tolerates their actions is influenced by their current aims. Remember, Sony ultimately won't care what Anonymous thinks, what they care about is what their average customer thinks. If Anonymous get the public on side, it could be very costly for Sony, meanwhile the company doesn't have to meet any of Anonymous' demands, it merely has to win back any lost confidence on the part of the customer. That's a hell of a lot different to your negotiating with terrorists example - Sony can effectively cut the "terrorists" out of the analogy by just not being dicks to the people trying to give them money hand over fist.
Unfortunately the story is just "Sony attacked by hackers", and then a bunch of experts commenting on why we need tougher laws against hackers. There's no commentary on what drove the hackers to act in the first place or how the hacks were even possible, no experts commenting that if we had better protection for consumers and more regulation of companies who hold onto critical user data that this might all be moot. Media is biased, sure this will be reported, but it will be reported in an entirely one-sided manner.
I guess the hope would be that users would think twice about buying from the company that exposed their data in the first place.
I don't agree with their approach but I can absolutely see where they are coming from. It's not like Sony made one simple transgression and are being unduly punished for it. They've been treating their customers - often very loyal customers for whom Sony have always been the go-to brand - like dirt for at least the best part of the last decade. Most customers buy into the product unaware of this record, but plenty of people continue to buy their products even when they are aware. This encourages arrogance on the part of the company in that they see these huge - for the sake of balance we'll call them errors in judgement - and they still see massive profits. Lack of responsibility is still rewarded time and again, and that's cyclical, the more they can get away with it the more they'll do it, either because it's cheaper or the payoff is bigger. For a long time some kind of backlash has been due - it would be nice if this was the public taking an interest in the activities of their gadget suppliers and making informed choices for a change, but I can totally understand a small minority losing patience and trying to force the issue with more direct action.
Good. Maybe people will finally start asking questions when they can't watch whatever they want online - they've certainly not cared enough to heed the multiple warnings people in the know have been shouting about for the last decade+. Instead every argument has been met with a "slippery slope" rebuff, well how far down the slope do we have to go before people realise that slippery slope might be a cliché, but sometimes it's true.
When you only have two parties to choose from and both want roughly the same goals, participating in the process seems a lot like theatre designed to make you think your voice is being heard while those in power divide up your rights between themselves.