* Posts by Knasher

8 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2008

£15 a month for legal P2P?

Knasher

Willing customers.

To be honest I probably much for a music download service as I'm not really a big customer of the music industry. That being said if this included both video and software I would gladly pay around €25 a month. Although for me that would probably signify a cut in the amount I spend in a month, and provided the service was good enough (high quality encodes, no drm, the ability to watch on whatever I wanted whenever I wanted - I would probably be willing to pay up to €40 a month)

I think the existance of sites like rapidshare and their ilk prove that, not only is it possible to compete with free (after all they are competing with torrents), but people are willing to pay something for what they consume. Obviously a legal equivilent would need to charge more than whatever rapidshare charge a month, but the largest cost with download services must be bandwidth and a p2p service would avoid that, so possibly they wouldn't have to charge all that much.

I think a far more interesting question to as is if it is possible for the creative industries to make money with a service like this. Honestly I suspect it is, but they really need to start looking at this to see if it is. After all, if the executives in the music industry can't figure out a way to make money off of music, then they really shouldn't be executives in the music industry to start with.

Google Street View logs WiFi networks, Mac addresses

Knasher

Could be better.

The only thing I see wrong with this is that it isn't all that effecient in terms of building a mac address database. After all it takes a lot of time to build up the streetview data and it goes out of date pretty quickly. A far more effiecent (and accurate as they can collect a far greater set of data) system would be to collect it from GPS equipped mobile phones, and if they were to do that I could understand why people might get angry about the loss of privacy (although it could be opt-in and still probably kick streetviews ass). Their lattitude system already tracks peoples location (if you opt into it) so there is no reason why they couldn't mine that.

As it is you really can't do all that much with the data that they collect. You can't equiate someones ip address to the wireless mac address of their router, so therefore you can't figure out their location. Seems to me this guy just wants to be seen to give out about streetview invasion of privacy, and therefore seem like he actually cares about peoples privacy.

Boffins use heartbeat to thwart wireless implant hack

Knasher

@KnownCoward

Actually it would make no difference for people with arrhythmia. Would work just as well if not better with these people.

Aussie cops reopen 7,000 DNA convictions

Knasher
Flame

Devils Advocate

Although I'm not a proponent of a DNA database, in the interest of fairness it should be stated that this is more of an argument for rather than against.

The problem arose from the cross contamination because one lab did all the testing. However if they were only loading the DNA into a computer then the only risk of cross contamination is from the techs own DNA. Which is surely something they would spot instantly.

Obviously over dependence on DNA evidence is a problem, one which would be compounded by a database. I'm just also against twisting everything into an argument against it.

UK gov publishes 'kids and videogames' action plan

Knasher

Obvious Solution

I really fail to see why this is an issue when there is such an easy solution. As far as I know, all of the current generation of consoles have some form parental protection. Now I haven't used it but I'd imagine in can (or if not should be able) to read ratings off game disks (and dvd's would be nice too) and simply refuse to play anything over this. Pass codes to allow the playing of more mature titles and maybe a white list for games that parents find unobjectionable .

Pass a law to say that all games and dvds have to have a rating in the disk before they are certified and sold. Games consoles (and blue ray players) can be updated to support this (assuming they don't already). And shiny pamphlets can be available with the console and in the shops explaining how to turn this stuff on. Kids can buy as many 18's games and movies as they want - won't do them any good.

Honestly I don't see any point in moaning about the fact that kids can buy computer games for 18 year olds when such a simple, obvious and permanent solution. The industry gets a rep of being socially responsible with the minimum amount of work involved. I know the kids will still get their parents not to enable this stuff and play 18's games, but there is only so much you can do for people. I really don't see why you would even consider any other approach, its not going to be as effective, cheap or obvious.

Komplett closes retail ops across Europe

Knasher

Still Alive

Komplett.ie is still alive (yes I rephrased specifically for the portal reference). Does anyone know if its going to stay that way, or if its just a temporary oversight? I was considering a purchase soon and I don't want to pay the overhead overclockers charges for shipping.

Japanese customs reunited with lost dope

Knasher

Good to know

Well at least now I know that if I ever wanted to bring cannabis through Tokyo airport, sniffer dogs can't find it when its enclosed in a small metal box.

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes

Knasher

Only the begining.

I don't think we should blame the BPI for this, in the end of the day they are a business and they have to protect their bottom line. The blame for this lies at the feet of the gov, for pandering to special interest groups and trying for force the ISP's to toe the line.

The annoying thing is this really is only the start, if (and probably when) this gets implemented it will only be the first nail in the coffin. Getting kicked from one ISP really isn't the end of the world, a far more effective measure are blacklists. How long before people are getting banned from the internet?

The question is, how a company can make money off kicking people off the internet? I believe that this is only the first step in setting up a system where the BPI sends threating letters to people who they believe may possibly have at some point listened to a mp3, forcing people to pay to keep quite about it. I wonder what the wording on the racatering laws are like?

Honestly its a sad state of affairs when people start getting more afraid of what draconian measures their own elected government will bring in next, as part of their nanny state policies than they ever were of the threat of terrorism. Hell even the years of IRA violence didn't provoke the sort of knee jerk reactions that we see today, the difference I guess is that America now believes that it must police its own people and we all know that were America leads, England will follow.

I worry because we also all know that where England leads Ireland will follow. At the moment all of this doesn't sound too bad, but honestly imagine the outcry if they were to introduce the whole thing at once, as they say if you give an inch.