Posts by Tony Paulazzo

Google may exit China after 'highly targeted' attack

King Arthur

Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Arthur: Be quiet!

Dennis: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Arthur: [grabs Dennis] Shut up! Will you shut up?!

Dennis: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Arthur: [shakes Dennis] Shut up!

Dennis: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!

Arthur: Bloody Peasant!

Things are getting out of hand

Roll on the singularity

http://singularity.com/

>But I am guessing this is just the first chess move in a game where the world's populace will undergo yet another important step towards its inevitable, well-planned, well-monitored Orwellian cloud -computing, amoeba-like passive future.<

Well said sir - or ms.

As for Google vs China: Well China has Tibet and Tianeman Sq - one more strike and out guys whereas Google just make obscene amounts of money (the capitalists wet dream), and, as far as we know, don't torture people who disagree with their viewpoint, so they're still winning on points...

And considering their internet footprint, their data aggregation, cloud and quantum computing, they may be the instigation of singularity.

Is it art or is it pr0n? Australia decides it's ALL filth

#4736213

>When the only people who are free to think and act are the ones willing to break the law?<

The law is a fecking ass, feel free. I don't know about Australia, but here in the UK the prisons are full to bursting, real crims are walking about with tags on their legs and the justice system is creaking with binge drinking alcoholics and mentals who used to be in bedlam until they all got closed down. As one great philospher said, 'fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.'

'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' Hassan i Sabbah.

IMHO of course.

Google suggests Islam is nothing

Islam is

Islam is another way of praising God

Islam is insane

>islam is always the faith everyone's scared to offend< 'MKEI'

Islam is as stupid as every other religion out there except for the Tao

(wow, just found this from Google after searching the above quote:

>Islam means Peace .. and there is no-where written in Quraan to kill non-muslims , in fact it is written in Quraan " If you kill one person , it means you have killed whole humanity ".<)

So, in the end, Islam is just another facet showing off the diversity (fractally schizophrenic nature) of WoMan kind - or, as Spock so eloquently put it, 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations.'

Cache that up your jacksi Google.

Santa Fe man demands half a mill for being near iPhone

Medical science

>Given his ridiculous claims are not backed up by any kind of medical science<

The arrogance.

Things not yet proven but billions accept as 'fact'

1. The universe was created by a big bang

2. Mankind evolved from apes

3. God

Any proof that this stuff is actually bad, cancer producing etc would destroy modern civilisation.

Disclaimer: I have wireless broadband, large flat screen TV, desktop, laptop, mobile phone, landline phone, 5.1 sound system, wireless keyboard n mouse and I feel fine, though the only electrical thing in my bedroom is the laptop - I 'feel' I sleep better, I do not own a tinfoil hat.

I also don't instantly subscribe to whatever the current 'experts' are saying.

IMHO.

Spain seeks fast track for pirate site shutdowns

Dear governments of the world

What a shame you're this good at protecting the entertainment industries bottom dollar yet fail so miserably at your supposed core profession, ie, maintain your countries economic viability, keep the roads open and be the servant of the people.

Please stop this fracking planet and get me the hell off of it!

Swedish cops liberate jealous wife from treehouse

if

you're checking your significant others text ms' the end is nigh (weather you find anything or not*).

* Yes I know I misused 'whether' - it's called freedom of choice.

Times calls time on NewsNow links

...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

>whether or not linking without consent is OK and end this stupid squabbling.<

I thought the basic design construct of the internet was linking so that atomic bombs wouldn't destroy the ability to send messages to another part of the country (some old random memory resurfacing), working much like the brain, that if damaged would reroute ms' along different synapses.

Linking was the raison d'etre of the original 'net (fishing net). Making money off the internet was a happy surprise the porn industry discovered (a unique global market), it wasn't designed for that, but once mainstream saw it, they wanted a piece of the action.

Hey, mainstream. If you don't want linking then get the hell off my internet.

Thank you. (hey, we need an icon for free thought)

Dell chalks up tablet PC

Tablets & 3DTV

Do these companies actually talk to real people any more?

Tablets appear to be under performing over priced gimmicks to part money from fools. I'm sorry, but I want the tablet from Star Trek: tng - a full featured computer light enough to hold in one hand, with OLED screen, a days worth of battery, SSD and 'proper' voice recognition - what do we get? a web surfing, crap ereader that plays hidef film on a 9in screen and offers 5 (yea right) hours battery life if you dim the screen to 20% and turn off wireless.

The same for 3DTV, it's great in the cinema, 2 hours of glass wearing, visual and aural splendour. It seems to be a great way of curbing casual piracy, feeling like you had an experience and enjoy a few hours out - and getting bums on seats; but Loose Women, in glass wearing stereoscopy, really?

T-Mobile prescribes hub tablet for UK families

wow

1080p video on a 15in screen, sign me up! Oh wait, it's not 3D...

U2 frontman bitchslapped by TalkTalk

Pointless point

>But try to look at it from the artists point of view. Would you like to write code all day every day "for a living" and then never get paid for it? How would you like everything you produce, write, or dream up to be available free to everyone on the internet<

I agree, I'd love it if I got paid every time someone used the program I coded.

Not particularly @ Sarah Bree

>I'm not Bono's biggest fan, but in any case I am forced to concur with you all since you have each manifestly achieved more in your lives and done more for the greater good and suchlike than he has<

Trying to understand this statement and failing miserably. Do you mean because he's filthy rich? if so, no argument, but if you mean:

1. He single-handedly destroyed famine in the third world...

2. He gave most of his riches to help those in the third world...

3. He dutifully paid what taxes were due from him so that government aid to those suffering...

4. His music was, is and ever shall be awesome...

5. He compared copyright infringement to the horrors of child pornography and Chinese dissidents being disappeared by their government, probably to be tortured...

Then I must respectfully disagree, the most starving child has a moral conscience, the poorest worker pays his share of taxes and 10 000 lemmings aren't necessarily correct.

There is one way to change the ills of the world, delete greed from the human psyche, learn to share, respect the world and our place in it, and then, maybe, the spectre of human suffering, starvation, abuses, wars over resources etc. will end (and I'm not even a famous pop star).

It's official: Blogging is a dangerous business

needs repeating

>It is perfectly understandable though, given that they are a dying parasitic breed fighting desperately for their ivory towered feather nests and nest eggs and future relevance in the field of good governance and public service rather than having to pretend that it is not really all about private personal gain.<

God help me, I understood and agreed with amfm1.

I'm just hoping The Singularity arrives before the Real Internet dies.

Ghost of Gates' tablet haunts Microsoft's future

Thirst slater

What I want from a slate:

2 GB ram, Win7 (not starter edition), SSD HD (120 GB min).

Plays all standard def video formats (Archos 9 can't play Flash Youtube without dropping frames but can play HiDef on a 9 inch screen - pointless), allows Office to run whilst surfing the net without disk thrashing and has responsive multi finger and pen recognition. Ebooks in portrait mode of course and a battery life of 8 hours - all for under £500 sterling.

The two stumbling blocks are they all seem to come with 1 GB as standard and battery life is little better than laptops.

France floats Google music-and-movie tax

# 2746354

So, let me get this straight they're going to disconnect the pirates (after fining them for copyright infringement) and tax advertising revenue to cover the losses of pirates who are no longer leeching off the creative elite (or cock su... er coke snorters as I like to call them).

US mum calls 911 over Grand Theft Auto

Please

stop the world, I seriously want to get off.

Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM

1984 vs 2009

>Seems that there are now only issues of whether it is justifiable to download something you already have a copy of<

I got ripped off. I owned the entire Bowie collection of LPs up to scary monsters, replaced a few when they got damaged, then re-bought most of them on CD, when the publisher should have sent me replacements as I'd already paid for the right to listen to them. Same with Bladerunner; video, dvd, directors cut, final cut, etc.

Or is it a one way street?

>I would give three options for buying a book. 1) Buy the physical book only 2) Buy the ebook only for the SAME PRICE as the physical book, inclusive of discounts 3) Buy the physical book and get the ebook for an extra couple of dollars.<

IMHO: 2 options - physical version which would include the electronic version at full price, ebook at half price (no binding or manufacturing / shipping costs, saving trees etc).

>Of course, true freetards will never be happy with any system which prevents them getting something for nothing.<

And since this holy grail of protection still doesn't exist it kind'a makes drm a pointless exercise in extra cost and potential customer hostility, it's basically saying to their customers, we don't trust you. It certainly isn't stopping the 'freetards'.

Angels can't fly: Official

God says...

>To all of those who don't believe in God or the power of prayer, then I say this to you. You will die, this is a certainty you cannot avoid,<

As will all those who do.

As to the article, what is this guys stance on Vorlons?

If we assume Earth is the gross material plane, then Heaven would be pure spiritual plane - along with its inhabitants, not bound by the laws of the physical universe, ergo his 'findings' are wrong. If he'd said, 'humans with working butterfly wings couldn't fly.' I'd have no problems with that. In conclusion - twat.

China moves closer to a smut-free internet

Oh well...

It was good while it lasted. See you on the dark side of the moon.

Harvard smarties name Steve Jobs 'world's best CEO'

The morality of purity

>The beauty part of the HBR list is its purity... Just cold, hard cash, measured by shareholder returns.<

Cold being the operative word, and I'd probably replace purity with corruption - er, y'know, IMHO.

Plod to retain personal data from DNA innocents

It's all moot now

faked DNA can now be <fairly> easily created and planted at crime scenes, so DNA evidence alone will soon not be enough to secure conviction.

Unpatched PDF flaw harnessed to launch targeted attacks

@ Gobot - Sumatra pdf

Thanks for the pointer, checking it out.

Crypto snafu grounds 3D Avatar screenings in Germany

The 'cure' for piracy

is easy, Imax returns spectacle to cinema going, something too long lost, if you want families to pay thirty quid, you need to offer them something they can't get anywhere else - and I'm not talking about sticky floors, overpriced popcorn and interminable adverts - screens and sound systems not much better than what they get at home.

Avatar in 70 foot high 3D even more so, saw it today at the Imax, fracking awesome - Cameron is back! 2.5 hours of 3D goodness and no headache, easy going storyline, but then, all his films are, with a message not rammed down your throat like 'Day after tomorrow' or 'day Earth stood still', and litmus test, my 9 year old niece loved it too! kept her glasses on throughout and didn't need the toilet once. Total win.

Been to the cinema 5 times this year, Star Trek - Imax x2, Watchmen - Imax x2, Avatar - Imax (once only, but all tickets sold out now till after Xmas - bummer). Hmm, beginning to see a pattern, quick, someone tell Hollywood to get a fracking clue.

Thumbs up for Avatar.

Stargazers spy super-Earth waterworld

Theories as facts

>Stating this all is fact is totally laughable. I enjoy learning about real science findings, but presently, it is all they can do to even determine that maybe there is a planet around a star other than our own by its wobble.<

My favourite 2 are humans descended from monkeys, despite still having a missing link between the two, and the big bang theory (not the comedy which I love) but the lovely scientist creation myth which has as much scientific evidence as the biblical myth.

Now, I'm not saying we didn't evolve from monkeys, or that there wasn't nothing, which then exploded (thanks Terry Pratchet), but please stop espousing these things as facts. They are theories which are currently in vogue much like the earlier 'facts' that the planet was flat, that the universe revolved around us and that God looked much like us, but with a white flowing beard.

Scientists still can't match up quantum physics with relativity, the two theories are mutually exclusive. The singularity in a black hole makes the cleverest scientist break down and cry like a little girl.

Mozilla shoots out fifth Firefox 3.6 beta

Eh?

>slightly fewer vulnerabilities and stability issues than 3.5.<

What stability issues? Win7 has crashed more times than FF3.5 for me. Mind you, I tend to only have 7 or so required plugins and never more than 10 tabs open at the same time, of which I close those I'm finished with. I also close and restart FF as and when I need it, and whilst I think the memory footprint is excessive, it doesn't seem much worse than the other browsers out there (I've tried Opera, Chrome, IE 6, 7, 8 - but always return to Firefox, for purely personal preferences, I wouldn't say any one browser is better than another, and IE8 is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors).

As for vulnerabilities, isn't that part and parcel of being windows based? Java and Flash basically open the back door to your system, use NoScript (only available for FF) or a decent firewall, I've heard no reports of Ubuntu FF being easily hacked, but I'm not sure I didn't misunderstood your original point (double negatives FTW).

My one complaint about FF is the UI is too small (touch screen lappy here y'all) by default, but even that can be changed by the user by simply editing text files.

In conclusion, I like, very much, Firefox 3.5, looking forward to .6 and V4 looks to be heading in a good direction, UI wise.

Film review site hacked to spew malicious PDFs

...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Hey, Bitdefender ftw, and, surprisingly, Microsoft, being 2 that found it. However, like the others, Foxit user here (also slowly going off it). As for users running outdated versions, blame Adobe, unlike other software which checks online when the program starts for updates then tells you, it doesn't seem to - maybe it would if the utility in startup was allowed to run in the background, but it was always the first thing I disabled.

After 20 odd years Microsoft have finally sussed that what their customers want is fast secure systems, let's hope it doesn't take Adobe that long.

Google fined for book copyright

Get a grip...

From Google books:

>Many of the books you can preview on Google Books are still in copyright, and are displayed with the permission of publishers and authors. You can browse these "limited preview" titles just as you would in a bookstore, but you won't be able to see more pages than the copyright holder has made available.<

From Me (copyright 2009).

Hey, and guess what book is 'still' in copyright? H.G.Wells 'The war of the worlds', I mean, his families dinner table must be huge by now (aka struggling author attempting to feed his family - a noble quest for sure, but if in a 100 years they've not learned to feed themselves with their own skills and abilities...).

And the French? c'mon, really? I would prefer to have every iota of my personal life splashed out over the interwebs, be tortured by MI5 and buried in sand to be eaten by army ants than agree with the French. Oh and that's not racism, just pragmatism.

@ Gannon J Dick: Trublood, imho, the best tv for years, vs the UKs 'X factor'.

Surveying anonymity and the public good

# 2746354

>And I notice that the more broken a society is, the less empathy with their fellow man, and the more likely they are to approve invasive intrusive privacy violations.... just as long as in their minds, it's EVERYONE ELSE that is the subject.<

Needed repeating. I did thumbs up but always click back, so not sure it it shows.

>Whenever I fill out such forms, I lie thru' my teeth (where possible)<

Heh, same here.

As for human rights, is there such a thing, or do they change on the whim of the current administration? Are the Chinese population afforded the same human rights as USA citizens? If human civilisation were based on justness and empathy would we even need a bill of human rights?

The Great Aussie Firewall is dead: Long live the firewall

This has happened before

What was the first sin? disobedience (search for knowledge)

The second, lust for power (control)

The third, murder (destruction of a human being)

What games are our children allowed to play? (even in that great southern land where Fallout 3 was allowed past the censor when they changed the ingame drug Morphine to a pretend name), murder, death dealing and warfare.

What is forbidden to children and controlled for adults? human sexuality in its myriad and beautiful forms.

The best form of psychological warfare and control? divide and conquer, repression thru guilt, surveillance with threat.

freedom defined is freedom denied. - 'some one'

China - The great firewall

Great Britain - 3 strikes and IWF

France - 3 strikes

Australia - IWF Enhanced

USA - $30 Billion government handout to the MAFIAA to combat 'piracy' (wonder how many starving children that would've fed?)

The world may be getting smaller, but human stupidity is growing in leaps and bounds.

Smiley because; 'it's always darkest before dawn' - 'some one else'

'Steve Jobs' dupes blogosphere with AT&T protest hoax

# 2746354

>People, people, people... Fake Steve is a satirist. Operation Chokehold is a joke.<

I'm sure that's what the men folk told their women when they were demanding the vote.

Google demos image rec 'quantum computer'

3 points

more free porn better tailored to taste

wouldn't the qubit be in both a 1 and 0 state until someone looked at it?

google would use this with the desire to do good, but the power of the ring is... sorry, wrong article

when this quantum pc achieves sentience via the power of the web will it destroy all mac type products and their owners? only allowing linux to survive cause it finds it amusing

wouldn't the heisenberg uncertainty principle mean it's wrong 50% of the time?

I'm really bad at math

Hackers declare war on international forensics tool

Cache Pt 2

And can someone tell me, even tho I use Firefox for all my surfing needs (I'm assuming IE is used for updates), whenever I clean my cache files, the IE temp folder is strangely full of stuff again 477 files again this morning, 24 MBs, nothing dodgy as far as I can tell, and a clean system (I hope). Firefox wouldn't use this as cache, would it?

James Cameron poised to make Fantastic Voyage

Tip of the Iceberg 2

Hey, if they're all gonna be in 3D that's froody cool, but ghost in shell / akira just need to be converted, not remade, they're perfect as is, unlike the recent klaatu starring what's his name, which was simply awful - and that kid, grr...

Also, anyone other than Megan Fox, like someone who can act, no problem with J Alba, eye candy with the ability to actually emote.

One question, how can Hollywood be making so many movies when the pirate industry is sucking the life out of them?

A picture speaks a thousand words.

Mozilla man sends Firefoxers to Microsoft Bing

Privacy online

You have none, The only reason I use Firefox is because of no script. I use Google because I get relevant search results. I use Win 7 for touch screen surfing, 3D rendering, Photoshop and games. I use Ubuntu for online banking and shopping.

When or if I ever become a sexual deviant style terrorist murderer I will do it old style, cash, unregistered phones, face to face, obfuscation, misdirection, and outright lies, rather like the politicians.

Darling promises IT cuts, years of pain

There is one way...

Eat the rich, tell the rest of the world to FOAD, go back to an agrarian lifestyle but with wind and sun power for heat and lighting - destroy all televisions and use barter rather than money. Elect me as the king for I would be a wise and just king and...

Or make greed illegal.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely!

Hubble probes deepest universe

# 2746354

Ancient interstellar history, a few tears, awe, Python (big lol), but, how far back will we be able to see, just before or after the (theoretical) big bang? What would that look like? And why can we only look back into the past but travel solely into the future, never the other way round?

Cool picture; desk-topped.

Brown launches 'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' net code for children

The world according to me

>Zip it, Block it, Flag it<

Turn on, tune in, drop out...

Children reporting adults, very 1984. As for making children as safe in the virtual space as they are in the real[tm] world, I hadn't realised they'd perfected the perfect safe environment for children (PSEC), free from bullying, predators, peer pressure, school yard fights, car accidents, bad parents and liars - well done Gordon Brown!

CrunchPad gets JooJoo eyeballed

RegPad

Seriously, I want one, with the vulture logo and everything. And even tho it's gonna be underpowered with a crappy touchscreen make sure you announce a release date then say nothing when that date comes and goes. Also, even tho you're UK based, please ensure the yanks pay half of what we have to (it makes us feel special; getting rogered from behind whilst trying to convince ourselves we love it). Oh, and if you could demonstrate the unit with a TV reciever (i before the e except after c - darn) then not include that in any finished product that would be the icing on the cake.

I can't wait, in fact I'm off to make a blog about it right now...

Crunchpad, what's that then? sounds like a cereal.

Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy

Openess

has to be a reciprocal event. If Google and the government want to know everything about me, then I should know everything about them. The problem (for me) isn't about my privacy, it's about their closely guarded secrets.

Relationships are built on trust, an open and frank exchange of knowledge. Raw climate data, expenses, click ads, SEOs, national security, secrecy, torturing suspects, fostering a culture of fear and suspicion, etc.

What they (and we all know who 'they' are), want, is a one sided, them calling the shots, position of dominance.

That's why we (should) fight for our privacy. I'll be nakedly open with you when I trust you.

And Google, how many Chinese dissidents have you given up to their government when asked, and for what purported crimes?

'Doctor Dark Energy': The Ultimate LHC eccentric?

We're domed!

>What is better: to nuke the LHC and CERNs headquarters, or to let the CERN to explode the Earth<

I'm going with explode the Earth - it'll look cool and piss off those illuminati types (you can't enslave a planetary population if the planet's not there).

>There is some chance... that it will open up a dimensional portal... a disappointingly tiny and short-lived one.<

Yes, but what if the universe it opens onto is one running a different time frame than us? it could conceivably be tearing their universe apart for years, and they'd have to enlarge it and send across shock troops to close it from our side, whilst ensuring we never do it again via genocide.

Webmasters fume as Google profiles signed-out searchers

# 2746354

>"GOOGLE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. THEY VIEW YOUR BUSINESS AS AN ENEMY and ONLY have their OWN interest at heart," says one SEO.<

LMFAO. Exchange the word 'Google' for any company and that statement still works. I think there's a word for that, but can't be bothered googling it.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely (or the staring into the abyss thing).

Gumtree comes over all queer in blocking 'offensive language'

I am not a Title, I am a free comment!

>Self-identification is unlikely to invoke the full force of the law<

So would that be like, just half the force of the law, a quarter?

Gay black guy here who fixes computers for a living, therefore I'm a PC repair queer nigger (it's not on my business cards though) and damn proud of it - privacy pirate to boot! Laws were introduced to govern behaviour, language was created to easier communicate with each other - the two should never meet...

>it is difficult to escape the conclusion that increasingly, we are living in a world in which language is being policed irrespective of meaning and context<

You mean like George Orwells '1984'? That is doubleplusungood and like, so gay (pejorative - such a cool word).

FAKE EDIT: Well, actually I'm half caste, but we haven't got enough degoratory names to go around - half breed I guess, but the world will be a saner place when we finally take over (unless, like the new Time Machine film, white Jeremy Iron Morlocks eat our tasty tanned flesh).

EVEN FAKER EDIT: Read William S. Burroughs before they make it illegal. Quote: “How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.” which, I guess, also make me queer - in the head.

Asus' tablet Eee takes on multi-touch

er

>apparently resulting in the world's first convertible tablet netbook featuring a multi-touch screen that supports Windows 7 many-finger gestures.<

What about the HP TX2?

Millions of mobiles blocked by Indian authorities

watch V

or 'they live' by John Carpenter. The aliens have been here for years destabilising the world. We are so fsck'd. It's either that or ruthless greed has turned mankind into a monstrous aberration.

Or, as Terry Pratchet wrote, 'At first there was nothing, then it exploded.'

We are all made of star stuff.

Windows 7 soars while Mac OS X trips online

Linux blip

>The few, the proud, the penguins.<

+1 here for discovering the joys of Ubuntu, and hey, there are themes that give you mac / win style look and feel if that's what you need.

EU waits for wise men to deliver digi-books plan

#345823

>Mitterand said, via the miracle of Google Translate,< stuff...

Did make me laugh, especially as the EU haven't got a translate page, or a search engine, or, really, any meaningful, presence on the interwebs. But they don't want a 'for profit company' (is there any other kind?), scanning the worlds book's and placing them online for the great unwashed masses to read, they'd rather setup a commission to see how best to do it themselves (ie, 4 to 5 years to decide it's too big a job, farm it out to some 'for profit company' who will then charge the masses to view any of it).

Google may be the devil (I don't think so), but Google Earth (free), Google search (free), Google News (free) (Google Pack (inc anti spyware & assorted crap - free), Google Mail (free), Google Books (copyright free versions - free), Google crippled Usenet (free).

Microsoft, paying Murdoch for news on Bing, MS Earth (free), MS Live... sorry, think I threw up a little... (actually used Bing on clients pc when I can't be bothered typing in the google address and it does work a lot better than they're previous effort).

Crap, forgotten my point, but rest assured I had one.

EU to approve more banking data for US spooks

#6738277

>In a tacit admission that European intelligence agencies are incapable of keeping an eye out for suspicious transactions, today the European Council of Ministers planned to comply with US demands.<

Despite the fact that the single biggest terrorist atrocity happened there, even with their vast intelligence gathering / spying on everyone networks, they failed to keep their own cities safe (or, you know, inside job).

/heavy sarcasm: Oh, we're all so much safer now, thanks EA - er EU - er FU...

To the American Intelligence agency, you're really not!

Apple tops Google as UK 'Thought Leader'

...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

>It has always, at presently does and in future probably always will represent the best interests of a few over the majority, cash over questions, money over people. But will anyone ever learn?<

Sorry, are we talking tories or labour?

Present Labour policies: tax on phone, cash to banks, yes to copyright mafia or any corporation, yes to politician privacy, no to citizen privacy, ever growing databases, generating a culture of fear, allowing torture of suspects, outright lying to the populace, etc etc etc...

Tories will be the same, except that maybe pensioners won't get extra help in the winter and more dole bludgers will get on the sick.

E-book readers to stay pricey next year

#4736213

>there's little motivation for vendors to slash prices, he said. The upshot: prices will remain around the £200-250 mark for some tome to come<

The upshot: you'll never achieve mass market. Let's face it, it's a one trick pony and whilst it does that very well, the only people who are paying that are voracious readers who tend, in general, to be of good intelligence and won't like restrictions on what they can read.

Hit the magic £49.99 mark, be able to read .lit .pub .txt .htm .doc .pdf .cbr etc and ensure a decent eprice (ie, lower than the paperbook version) and people are far more likely to 'chance' it. I know I would. At the moment I'm 'stuck' using a 12.1in. TX2 tablet/laptop (multitouch) that reads any format I throw at it (plus, you know, functions as a capable pc), and yes, I've happily read a few books on it plus my graphic novel collection whilst listening to my music and sometimes firing up Word to jot down notes.

Reason for me wanting an ebook reader, lightness of weight (tx2 weighs nearly 2kg), battery life (with wireless off and decent screen brightness I get about maybe 4 to 5 hours) and screen (not experienced just heard about) - three things that don't add up to £200.

eBooks: What to read on which reader

#284752

I can understand (not like, will not support), the DRM model - more lovely cash for the company and death to the pirate scum, but surely it is in the companies best interest to have the largest collection for their customers, so cooperation rather than competition amongst the publishers would surely be best. If I bought a Kindle, knew of the existence of an ebook I wanted to read but couldn't buy it from Amazon, well, my next ebook purchase is not going to include Amazon: Result, lost future customer and bad word of mouth spreading across the interweb about the entire company, not just one product line.