[i]Then WHY, even without this issue at all would you come here and trust the same government to not accidentally slip you into the category "kiddie rapist" or "drug transporter" and jail you for life on THOSE charges?[/i] I would expect to get a trial, where I was assumed innocent until proven guilty, the whole habeas corpus thing we're talking about here.
[i]TECHNICALLY true of all governments at all times. All governments reserve to themselves enough power to carry-out their will against anyone within their borders.[/i] But not without laws that give a legal way to fight such actions and have them overturned or compensated. The USA now has specifically made the mentioned law enabling to do whatever it wants without recourse or compensation, while in most countries it would be against the law to do so. I see it as a legal loophole created specifically to allow previously unlawful treatment of captured opponents.
[i]Lighten-up and enjoy your visits![/i] I still do, but your current government scares me a lot. Some other countries are a lot scarier though.
Two semi off-topic anecdotes: * A friend of mine did end up on a no-fly blacklist, and was refused to board a plane when leaving the USA. It took 24 hours to solve, he is a US citizen doing his PhD here, and never found out if he is still on any of those lists, or how he got on to it in the first place. * Another friend was once detained 24 hours on drunk driving charges, because instead of testing for alcohol with a breathalyser, the police tested his walking and language skills. After supposedly "sobering up" his skills did not improve and he was finally allowed to explain that he has a motoric illness preventing him from walking straight and Dutch is his native tongue and his English is very poor.
[i]Even more true in societies that claim to be the most fair:[/i] There is a big difference between a claim and reality. While it is no news that the difference is big in countries like China and Zimbabwe, from my perspective the claims of the USA are less and less based on reality, even though it is nowhere near the likes of China.
[i]I personally am no longer willing to visit any country that does not trust me with a firearm; places like that do not respect me and might just choose to make up a crime and jail me for life (sarcasm intended, but with a smile)[/i] Just for the record, maximum penalty in the Netherlands is 20 years. both death penalty and life sentences were abandoned shortly after 1945.
Secondly, about firearms (which is taking this off-topic), the Netherlands only has a homicide ratio per capita that is about 1/10th of the USA, and only about 20% of our homicides involve firearms. I actually feel saver in a country where only the police and a few of the most hard-core criminals are carrying arms. Having an armed populace is only an advantage when there is a chance the government might decide to place itself above the law, which might be why it's a good idea in the USA.
I like the comparison in the article with T-mobile, 3X and Vodaphone. As it shows that not only are the numbers higher as in the USA, which could be explained by difference in pay structures (pay for incoming calls etc.), but they are clearly having an inferior offering to the competition, even if you would get the phone for free.
I was considering buying an iPhone, when they would introduce them in the Netherlands, but with these prices it looks a lot less likely. The T-mobils web-n-walk offering looks a lot better at the moment.
To be successful in Europe, I would think an iPhone deal should have: - UMTS - free phone - free internet (with a fair use policy) - free voicemail - 500 minutes, 250 SMS
Total for about 45-50 euro/month, I think this would be about 45-50 pounds/month, as it seems that for telecom prices when comparing UK-Netherlands, 1 pound == 1 euro in what gets offered. (T-Mobile Flext 30 + Web 'n' Walk is about 39 euro/month vs. 32,50 pound/month)
If they could have made a deal with one of the big boys, that are present in most of the EU, then having some kind of roaming service across most of the EU would be a big seller.
I don't think the iPhone will sell overhere, unless you get it free with a 24 month plan, and it has UMTS.
I think that the trouble Apple has had in finding a european partner, is probably also because of the lack of UMTS. Most telecom companies would love a killer application that makes their UMTS offerings popular. They have all invested heavily in it. Apple offering an EDGE phone will have resulted in luke-warm responses at most. I think they've had a lot of "no thanks" and "only if you have an UMTS model" responses.
In case you are suggesting that those detained in Gitmo are PoWs, then please read the Third Geneva Convention on how to treat those. Some quotes:
(Article 5): "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act..." is a prisoner of war "...such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." (Article 25): "Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favorable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area."
I know that the current USA government argues that they are not PoWs but "unlawful combatants". They would then fall under the Fourth Geneva Convention that handles civilians. It would still give them the right to a trial.
The scary part of the MCA, as I now understand it is this:
"No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." 28 U.S.C. 2241(e)(1) (Section 7)
It means that the US can detain someone indefinately, as long as they decide not to determine what the status of their captive actually is. Even you or me. Being a US-citizen does not realy help, until they have decided your status.
It's very Orwellian in both being a nice kind of newspeak, and allowing "all animals are equal, but some are more equal then others".
It scares me, everytime I visit the USA, when I consider that because of some mistaken identity or mix-up, I could be detained, and held without any recourse. (I am Dutch)
I think that the place where Apple design realy shines is in portable stuff. Both their iPod and laptop lines seem to be good examples. I have seen a lot of people switch to Apple laptops the last two years.
I was never too thrilled about their iMac, it seems that in the desktop arena, Apple design does not give so much of an edge, and their only advantage (and disadvantage) is their OS.
I am writing this on one of those Aldi Medion laptops (now a year old). They do sell electronic hardware too, but something different every week. about 3x year they have a Medion laptop for sale, in between they have a desktop.
These are usually very good value for money. The drawback is that you have no choice, as they only sell one model. They can be so cheap because of their buying power, there are about 8.000 Aldi stores in Europe, and each gets 15 computers to sell as a minimum, AFAIK. The next week it will be an LCD TV, or car stereo system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi
The nice thing about the machines they sell is that it's usually a very complete package, so the laptop will include a laptop case, bluetooth remote, wireless mouse, integrated webcam, integrated card reader, some games installed (I got MS flightsimulator). Also their after sales warranty of three years is appartenly very good (I never had one break down, this is currently my second)
You have some valid points, but as I like dongles because: - They do not need any key/passphrase - Do not need to phone home - Are not easily copyable/sharable - Are flexible in allowing the software to be installed on multiple machines
So I will at least give my perspective on your points, so the reader might be informed more. (the purpose of this ask/.) I used to work somewhere where we used dongles to protect our software. Most application were only sold maybe 100-400 times, so we did have a reasonable overview of our customers.
Oh snap, I just lost the dongle.
Oh snap, I stepped on the dongle.
Oh snap, I left the dongle at home. I used to supply software for outdoor maintenance workers (utilities: water/electricity/sewage) and all kinds of industrial automation and monitoring. Most people would just keep the dongle on the computer on which the software ran, sometimes even glued to it, or with a wire. I think in the four years I worked there, we had one out of several thousand users who actually lost the dongle. We did provide a few new dongles also to some that had it glued to their laptop, and then dropped the laptop 80m in an electricity plant, and some accidents like that.
Oh snap, my new UMPC doesn't have a serial port. They usually went on the Parallel port, but nowadays usually come as USB. If you have a PC without any ports, then yes you would have a problem, I can see your point. In that case the machine might not have ethernet or keyboard or a CD/DVDROM drive either, so some of the other protection methods could also be a headace.
Oh snap, the dongle is mysteriously incompatible with some specialized hardware that I HAVE to use. I've never seen that problem. Only thing I have seen is needing to use multiple dongles, when running more than one application that required one, which did give trouble detecting the right one.
Oh snap, now I have to keep track of 4598 dongles. I think that by the time you have 4598, you're probably big enough that you can.
If a product requires a dongle, either on a client or server, unless my back is up against the wall from users and there's no other product to meet the need, it always gets rejected. I was going to suggest a dongle, but I see you and some other posters vehemently against it. Could you explain to me why? It eliminates the need for all other systems, and you could be floating on a raft in the middle of the Pacific and the software would still work. It allows for ghosting the software to any machine, no need to run any online activation, store a key, remember passwords, run an activation server, or any of the other hassle.
To me it looks like the easiest reasonably secure copy protection, if your users can be trusted to not steal the physical dongle.
If I'm correct, it is because the VLBA still uses tapes, and most of it's telescopes aren't connected at all. A major part of this effort has been getting the Gbit/s quality links to the telescopes, that are often in a desert in the middle of nowhere, as you want to avoid radio-interference from human sources, so you prefer places that have no human inhabitants within 200-300 km of your location.
No, just before they used tapes (VLBA), or harddisk packs (EVN), so instantantious is in comparison with shipping the data with UPS and having to wait a week for it to arrive.
The big difference with how the VLBA operates and how the EVN (european VLBI network) operates, is that this was done in real time, so called e-VLBI. No tapes, no harddisk packs, but live lightpaths across the globe.
I agree, it's not possible, given code examples like the one above.
What I do think is important, is having all strings that the user sees in separate files, and run the spellchecker on those. It has the added benefit that translating your application in another language is now a lot easier.
There is a suspected but yet unproven relation between cosmic rays and lightning. The theory is that when a cosmic particle strikes the atmophere, it ionises a path though the atmophere. This then provides a conduit for lightning. This is currently a hot research topic in particle physics and meteorology.
I am in no way a Blizzard fanboy as you seem to think. I do play WoW, but have been playing DnD for ten years before it, and MUD's even before that.
My fear is that someone at WotC/Hasbro headquarters saw the revenue numbers Blizzard is posting and it thinking they can copy it by going to this online subscription model. To some extent they tried an failed with DnDOnline.
I like DnD for it's pile of rules, for the player interaction for the real books and dice and paper character sheets. But most of all I like it because of the role-playing. I get 90% of my xp from it, most times we don't even kill a monster.
The last thing I want is for my precious DnD to become more like WoW.
The more I read about 4th edition, the more it sounds like WotC looked at WoW and is trying to emulate it. I don't think it should be the direction to move in, as Blizzard will always be way ahead of them, and DnD should not try to compete with any computer game in general, but focus on it's own strengths.
I once tried debating evolution with someone that had a very strict religious view. The debate was very short His first answer was: "Any evidence of the existance of evolution has been put there by God to tempt the faithfull"
I've seen it running powerplants, and everyone afraid of modifying anything, because the original coders were no longer there, and nobody realy understood what it did.
Convincing Management that this is a risk is however beyond mortal men for some reason.
I think communities like this are the future. I consider it part of the evolution of the early gamers getting into their 30's and 40's, having kids and jobs, but still wanting to game
I am a member of a somewhat similar community, where the games played change over the years, but the community stays the same. We're not as old or as big as The Syndicate described here, but the story sounds very similar. We are celebrating our 5th anniversary this month with just over 300 members. The whole thing started as a starWars:Galaxies guild, but has since then supported over 30 different games, from online-DnD to ScorchedEarth3D to Battlefield1942 to World of Warcraft, playing in both European and American competitions.
I am therefore a proud member of The Conclave international online gaming community and can easily forsee us still being around in 10 more years.
I do quests almost exclusively. Some of them do require you to kill X mobs of a certain type, but that's about as "grindy" as it gets. I like a lot of the quest story lines. A lot are also about killing a certain iconic figure "boss", finding an item, bringing some message or item from A to B, answering a certain question, etc. I usually do quests when they are green, and I think I get about 75-80% of my xp from quest rewards alone. I can have 2-3 blue bubles at the start of a level, and still have a blue xp bar when I level to the next.
I call something grinding if you you do it for the xp/item/money you get from killing the mobile. I get most of my money from herbalism, and most of my xp and items from quest rewards.
In radio astronomy we have the saying "Don't underestimate the bandwith of a truck of data tapes barreling down the highway". Having half a Petabyte of more storage in the back of your car, you can achieve rather high bandwidths.
Not until you hit high levels, I think. I'm currently lvl 48 and I have done virtually no grinding. I usually play for 1-2 hours on a day, and except for maybe some instances, I have not done the same thing on consequtive days. Literally every day there is something different for me to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that was the Cheney maneuver. At least that's what Charlie Savage is writing about in his book "Takeover".
http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/15/0316118044/index.html
I haven't fully read it yet, but an interview with him on the radio persuaded me to buy it.
I first thought they meant this story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(Tintin)
Must have been a popular topic to write about in 1950.
No he did not.
[i]Then WHY, even without this issue at all would you come here and trust the same government to not accidentally slip you into the category "kiddie rapist" or "drug transporter" and jail you for life on THOSE charges?[/i]
I would expect to get a trial, where I was assumed innocent until proven guilty, the whole habeas corpus thing we're talking about here.
[i]TECHNICALLY true of all governments at all times. All governments reserve to themselves enough power to carry-out their will against anyone within their borders.[/i]
But not without laws that give a legal way to fight such actions and have them overturned or compensated. The USA now has specifically made the mentioned law enabling to do whatever it wants without recourse or compensation, while in most countries it would be against the law to do so. I see it as a legal loophole created specifically to allow previously unlawful treatment of captured opponents.
[i]Lighten-up and enjoy your visits![/i] I still do, but your current government scares me a lot. Some other countries are a lot scarier though.
Two semi off-topic anecdotes:
* A friend of mine did end up on a no-fly blacklist, and was refused to board a plane when leaving the USA. It took 24 hours to solve, he is a US citizen doing his PhD here, and never found out if he is still on any of those lists, or how he got on to it in the first place.
* Another friend was once detained 24 hours on drunk driving charges, because instead of testing for alcohol with a breathalyser, the police tested his walking and language skills. After supposedly "sobering up" his skills did not improve and he was finally allowed to explain that he has a motoric illness preventing him from walking straight and Dutch is his native tongue and his English is very poor.
[i]Even more true in societies that claim to be the most fair:[/i]
There is a big difference between a claim and reality. While it is no news that the difference is big in countries like China and Zimbabwe, from my perspective the claims of the USA are less and less based on reality, even though it is nowhere near the likes of China.
[i]I personally am no longer willing to visit any country that does not trust me with a firearm; places like that do not respect me and might just choose to make up a crime and jail me for life (sarcasm intended, but with a smile)[/i]
Just for the record, maximum penalty in the Netherlands is 20 years. both death penalty and life sentences were abandoned shortly after 1945.
Secondly, about firearms (which is taking this off-topic), the Netherlands only has a homicide ratio per capita that is about 1/10th of the USA, and only about 20% of our homicides involve firearms. I actually feel saver in a country where only the police and a few of the most hard-core criminals are carrying arms. Having an armed populace is only an advantage when there is a chance the government might decide to place itself above the law, which might be why it's a good idea in the USA.
I like the comparison in the article with T-mobile, 3X and Vodaphone. As it shows that not only are the numbers higher as in the USA, which could be explained by difference in pay structures (pay for incoming calls etc.), but they are clearly having an inferior offering to the competition, even if you would get the phone for free.
I was considering buying an iPhone, when they would introduce them in the Netherlands, but with these prices it looks a lot less likely. The T-mobils web-n-walk offering looks a lot better at the moment.
To be successful in Europe, I would think an iPhone deal should have:
- UMTS
- free phone
- free internet (with a fair use policy)
- free voicemail
- 500 minutes, 250 SMS
Total for about 45-50 euro/month, I think this would be about 45-50 pounds/month, as it seems that for telecom prices when comparing UK-Netherlands, 1 pound == 1 euro in what gets offered. (T-Mobile Flext 30 + Web 'n' Walk is about 39 euro/month vs. 32,50 pound/month)
If they could have made a deal with one of the big boys, that are present in most of the EU, then having some kind of roaming service across most of the EU would be a big seller.
I don't think the iPhone will sell overhere, unless you get it free with a 24 month plan, and it has UMTS.
I think that the trouble Apple has had in finding a european partner, is probably also because of the lack of UMTS. Most telecom companies would love a killer application that makes their UMTS offerings popular. They have all invested heavily in it. Apple offering an EDGE phone will have resulted in luke-warm responses at most. I think they've had a lot of "no thanks" and "only if you have an UMTS model" responses.
In case you are suggesting that those detained in Gitmo are PoWs, then please read the Third Geneva Convention on how to treat those. Some quotes:
(Article 5): "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act..." is a prisoner of war "...such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
(Article 25): "Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favorable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area."
I know that the current USA government argues that they are not PoWs but "unlawful combatants". They would then fall under the Fourth Geneva Convention that handles civilians. It would still give them the right to a trial.
The scary part of the MCA, as I now understand it is this:
"No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." 28 U.S.C. 2241(e)(1) (Section 7)
It means that the US can detain someone indefinately, as long as they decide not to determine what the status of their captive actually is. Even you or me. Being a US-citizen does not realy help, until they have decided your status.
It's very Orwellian in both being a nice kind of newspeak, and allowing "all animals are equal, but some are more equal then others".
It scares me, everytime I visit the USA, when I consider that because of some mistaken identity or mix-up, I could be detained, and held without any recourse. (I am Dutch)
I think that the place where Apple design realy shines is in portable stuff. Both their iPod and laptop lines seem to be good examples. I have seen a lot of people switch to Apple laptops the last two years.
I was never too thrilled about their iMac, it seems that in the desktop arena, Apple design does not give so much of an edge, and their only advantage (and disadvantage) is their OS.
I am writing this on one of those Aldi Medion laptops (now a year old). They do sell electronic hardware too, but something different every week. about 3x year they have a Medion laptop for sale, in between they have a desktop.
These are usually very good value for money. The drawback is that you have no choice, as they only sell one model.
They can be so cheap because of their buying power, there are about 8.000 Aldi stores in Europe, and each gets 15 computers to sell as a minimum, AFAIK. The next week it will be an LCD TV, or car stereo system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi
The nice thing about the machines they sell is that it's usually a very complete package, so the laptop will include a laptop case, bluetooth remote, wireless mouse, integrated webcam, integrated card reader, some games installed (I got MS flightsimulator). Also their after sales warranty of three years is appartenly very good (I never had one break down, this is currently my second)
You have some valid points, but as I like dongles because:
/.)
- They do not need any key/passphrase
- Do not need to phone home
- Are not easily copyable/sharable
- Are flexible in allowing the software to be installed on multiple machines
So I will at least give my perspective on your points, so the reader might be informed more. (the purpose of this ask
I used to work somewhere where we used dongles to protect our software. Most application were only sold maybe 100-400 times, so we did have a reasonable overview of our customers.
Oh snap, I just lost the dongle.
Oh snap, I stepped on the dongle.
Oh snap, I left the dongle at home.
I used to supply software for outdoor maintenance workers (utilities: water/electricity/sewage) and all kinds of industrial automation and monitoring. Most people would just keep the dongle on the computer on which the software ran, sometimes even glued to it, or with a wire. I think in the four years I worked there, we had one out of several thousand users who actually lost the dongle.
We did provide a few new dongles also to some that had it glued to their laptop, and then dropped the laptop 80m in an electricity plant, and some accidents like that.
Oh snap, my new UMPC doesn't have a serial port.
They usually went on the Parallel port, but nowadays usually come as USB. If you have a PC without any ports, then yes you would have a problem, I can see your point. In that case the machine might not have ethernet or keyboard or a CD/DVDROM drive either, so some of the other protection methods could also be a headace.
Oh snap, the dongle is mysteriously incompatible with some specialized hardware that I HAVE to use.
I've never seen that problem. Only thing I have seen is needing to use multiple dongles, when running more than one application that required one, which did give trouble detecting the right one.
Oh snap, now I have to keep track of 4598 dongles.
I think that by the time you have 4598, you're probably big enough that you can.
If a product requires a dongle, either on a client or server, unless my back is up against the wall from users and there's no other product to meet the need, it always gets rejected.
I was going to suggest a dongle, but I see you and some other posters vehemently against it. Could you explain to me why?
It eliminates the need for all other systems, and you could be floating on a raft in the middle of the Pacific and the software would still work.
It allows for ghosting the software to any machine, no need to run any online activation, store a key, remember passwords, run an activation server, or any of the other hassle.
To me it looks like the easiest reasonably secure copy protection, if your users can be trusted to not steal the physical dongle.
If I'm correct, it is because the VLBA still uses tapes, and most of it's telescopes aren't connected at all.
A major part of this effort has been getting the Gbit/s quality links to the telescopes, that are often in a desert in the middle of nowhere, as you want to avoid radio-interference from human sources, so you prefer places that have no human inhabitants within 200-300 km of your location.
No, just before they used tapes (VLBA), or harddisk packs (EVN), so instantantious is in comparison with shipping the data with UPS and having to wait a week for it to arrive.
7 0906 [astron.nl] for some images.
See http://www.jive.nl/ [www.jive.nl] for all the details and http://www.astron.nl/dailyimage/main.php?date=200
The big difference with how the VLBA operates and how the EVN (european VLBI network) operates, is that this was done in real time, so called e-VLBI. No tapes, no harddisk packs, but live lightpaths across the globe.
7 0906 for some images.
See http://www.jive.nl/ for all the details and http://www.astron.nl/dailyimage/main.php?date=200
I agree, it's not possible, given code examples like the one above.
What I do think is important, is having all strings that the user sees in separate files, and run the spellchecker on those. It has the added benefit that translating your application in another language is now a lot easier.
There is a suspected but yet unproven relation between cosmic rays and lightning. The theory is that when a cosmic particle strikes the atmophere, it ionises a path though the atmophere. This then provides a conduit for lightning.
F ARWorkshop_Apr07_HeinoFalcke.pdf
This is currently a hot research topic in particle physics and meteorology.
A professor in Nijmegen and a collegue of mine are studying this phenomena (Heino Falcke and Lars Bähren)
http://www.physorg.com/news4162.html
http://www.lofar.org/workshop/23Apr07_Monday02/LO
I am in no way a Blizzard fanboy as you seem to think. I do play WoW, but have been playing DnD for ten years before it, and MUD's even before that.
My fear is that someone at WotC/Hasbro headquarters saw the revenue numbers Blizzard is posting and it thinking they can copy it by going to this online subscription model. To some extent they tried an failed with DnDOnline.
I like DnD for it's pile of rules, for the player interaction for the real books and dice and paper character sheets. But most of all I like it because of the role-playing. I get 90% of my xp from it, most times we don't even kill a monster.
The last thing I want is for my precious DnD to become more like WoW.
The more I read about 4th edition, the more it sounds like WotC looked at WoW and is trying to emulate it. I don't think it should be the direction to move in, as Blizzard will always be way ahead of them, and DnD should not try to compete with any computer game in general, but focus on it's own strengths.
I once tried debating evolution with someone that had a very strict religious view. The debate was very short His first answer was:
"Any evidence of the existance of evolution has been put there by God to tempt the faithfull"
I had no more arguments after that.
I've seen it running powerplants, and everyone afraid of modifying anything, because the original coders were no longer there, and nobody realy understood what it did.
Convincing Management that this is a risk is however beyond mortal men for some reason.
Well for one thing, I know this whole history has scared me away from ever considering to contribute to the Linux Kernel.
I think communities like this are the future. I consider it part of the evolution of the early gamers getting into their 30's and 40's, having kids and jobs, but still wanting to game
I am a member of a somewhat similar community, where the games played change over the years, but the community stays the same. We're not as old or as big as The Syndicate described here, but the story sounds very similar. We are celebrating our 5th anniversary this month with just over 300 members.
The whole thing started as a starWars:Galaxies guild, but has since then supported over 30 different games, from online-DnD to ScorchedEarth3D to Battlefield1942 to World of Warcraft, playing in both European and American competitions.
I am therefore a proud member of The Conclave international online gaming community and can easily forsee us still being around in 10 more years.
See www.conclave.cc for more details.
The :) smiley has somehow taken over from the :-) smiley, even forums like phpBB translate the :) into an icon, while they interpret :-) as text.
:-) too, but then I've been using it since about 1993 now.
I still prefer the
I do quests almost exclusively. Some of them do require you to kill X mobs of a certain type, but that's about as "grindy" as it gets. I like a lot of the quest story lines. A lot are also about killing a certain iconic figure "boss", finding an item, bringing some message or item from A to B, answering a certain question, etc.
I usually do quests when they are green, and I think I get about 75-80% of my xp from quest rewards alone. I can have 2-3 blue bubles at the start of a level, and still have a blue xp bar when I level to the next.
I call something grinding if you you do it for the xp/item/money you get from killing the mobile. I get most of my money from herbalism, and most of my xp and items from quest rewards.
In radio astronomy we have the saying "Don't underestimate the bandwith of a truck of data tapes barreling down the highway". Having half a Petabyte of more storage in the back of your car, you can achieve rather high bandwidths.
Not until you hit high levels, I think. I'm currently lvl 48 and I have done virtually no grinding. I usually play for 1-2 hours on a day, and except for maybe some instances, I have not done the same thing on consequtive days. Literally every day there is something different for me to do.