Posts by chr0m4t1c

Loch Ness Stig blurred into oblivion

Yeah

The standard of journalism has gone right downhill recently.

Mountain View promises Google Analytics opt-out

Google Analytics

is that the same one I have blocked in my router and AdBlock and NoScript?

Do I need to opt out too?

Tiger Woods' alleged mistress publishes X-rated texts

What's the fuss

I your name is "Tiger" and you're not doing a lot of shagging there really is something wrong with the world.

Energizer battery rechargers still haunted by trojan backdoor

The mind could do with thinking a little

Usually these things do AAA and AA batteries.

Uses I have found (for the hard of imagination):

- Useful to have on my desk to charge batteries in wireless mouse/keyboard without having to work out where the normal mains charger has wandered to now.

- Useful to carry with me when travelling as most of my other portable devices can be run or charged from USB. Buy one combo mains plug that does worldwide socket conversion and gives me 2 USB charging ports and I barely need to carry any other plugs.

- Sods Law means your AA/AAA device will run out of power when the shops are shut. If you only have a laptop, you might find a useful trade-off in draining the laptop power to charge batteries for something else.

- Again travelling; on mass transport that provides power there are often very few outlets so you have one less choice to make as to what you want to plug in. Would you charge your batteries and flatten your laptop battery or run your laptop and buy more batteries?

Do you understand why rechargeable batteries are generally better for the environment and your pocket?

Apple details iPad's 'breakthrough' mobile contract

Yeah...

"Is there competition? Is someone else doing a tablet that you can't upgrade, has no keyboard for when your touchscreen breaks, can't take external USB devices without an adapter, doesn't have an SD card slot (again, without an adapter), restricts you to purchasing software from a single retail outlet, and which doesn't support multi-tasking?"

That'll be Archos you're thinking of, with the possible exception of the Archos 9 - it can multi-task. That said, the reviews have found it to be so dire just single-tasking that it sounds a bit pointless.

Can't upgrade it? No. There are a handfull of "tablet" machines on the market already, larger ones are based on existing laptop technology and the new smaller ones starting to appear are based around touch screen. I don't expect any of them to be easily upgradable, if they even can be.

Yes, if your touch screen breaks you're stuck, but then if your laptop/netbook keyboard breaks you're in the same boat (yes; you can plug in an external keyboard, but guess what? You can do that with the iPad too, or use a Bluetooth one).

Can't take external USB devices without an adaper? Erm, so what? My laptop can take a few but I hardly ever plug anything in. What vital piece of equipment do you think you'll need? I can see why you might want to use an external mouse/keyboard on a netbook, but you can use a wireless keyboard and with the touchscreen the mouse is likely to be pointless anyway.

Doesn't have an SD card slot. Again, so what? My current phone uses micro-SD (or mini, can't remember) so would need an adapter and my camera uses Compact Flash. Point is, even with a machine /with/ an SD card slot I still have to carry adapters and a card reader.

Yes, you can only get software from one place, but so far Apple have done a reasonable job. The app store compares rather well with offerings from Nokia, Google and MS (especially as they haven't bothered).

Multi-tasking. Not at the moment, but if the rumours are true it'll be along a little later in the year.

Steve Jobs Flash rant put to the test

No, you lost me

"Let's face it. It is not really about streaming videos but having an interactive content delivery system that competes with their locked in environment. As ususall, Steve Job's is diverting attention on an irrelevant direction."

Bit of a left turn at the lights, there. I can't see path of your logic. Explain to me how not having flash, but replacing it with more open equivalents (HTML5, JavaScript, etc) makes people locked in?

As far as I can see the only content that you are locked into is the apps. Music, movies and books can all be bought from someone else and loaded on these devices. Usually the problem lies in conversion, which in turn relies on whether or not the provider makes that possible, but that's hardly Apple's fault - you would be in the same boat with a device from Archos for example.

"Think of education. If they can pitch iPad to educational institutions and flash is used for delivery, there would be nothing to lock these institutes down. They could move to a better platform anytime without any loss."

Why the fcuk would an educational establishment base it's content around Flash? All they would be doing is getting locked into someone else. What happens when Adobe decide to not make a runtime for the "better platform"? Ask anyone running 64-bit Windows if you want to know how quickly Adobe support new platforms.

There are a great many ways of creating cross-platform rich content, flash is only one of them but if you want to avoid lock-in and make your stuff future proof then you probably want to give it a wide berth.

Yes, Apple want people to go to iTunes to buy all of their content, but it's not the only option. My iPod has plenty of albums on it that I purchased from Amazon, books I got from project Gutenberg and videos I converted from my own DVDs. In fact the only content on it that came from iTunes is stuff I won in a Coke promotion.

Hardly locked in!

Apparently you don't understand either

"when choosing any product for any function you choose the best their is at that time. Why would you pick an inferior product just because its new and may or may not get better?"

Because "best" is often subjective and people don't have unlimited budgets. Why would you drive a Fiat when a Ferrari is "better"?

And if you have a Fiat would you also buy a Renault or a Ford just because they were slightly better at a given task, or would you continue to use the Fiat?

The problem with "the market" is that if one player gets too big with a product that's incompatible with all the others then people start buying it simply because it is the biggest and all of the other players get pushed out - look at where MS was in the 90s or IBM in the 70s/80s.

Mozilla gives passive-aggressive missive to pre-Firefox 3.6 hold-outs

I have one machine on the "old" version

Because when I install 3.6 I can't install any plugins - they all cause the browser to crash on startup.

It's not a widespread issue judging from the forums and it does only seem to be an issue on one of about 6/7 machines I've upgraded so far. Unfortunately, even following all of the various fixes to get what should be a completely clean install this machine still has a problem.

So... no FF 3.6 until they issue a fix (or at least admit that there is a problem).

UK pol touts canine chip implants

Hahahahahaha - good one!

"I don't agree with the law, but mandatory insurance dose not meen that you have to buy it from one person. Competiton will keep the prices down."

You do know that the reason why thy ask you about other quotes is to make sure they're all charging about the same amount for the same thing, don't you? It's like a cartel, but using the punters as messengers instead of talking directly to each other.

Insurance is a guessing game - they guess how much the payouts are going to cost them over the year and try to make sure the premiums cover that and leave them some profit. If they get it wrong then they have a simple solution - charge more next year (as long as they don't go bankrupt).

Problem is, if you are lucky enough to be the one firm that didn't make any losses last year when everyone else did you have two choices: 1) Leave your premiums where they are, possibly get a big influx of new customers and a load of risk that might completely sink you next year OR 2) Match your premiums to your competitors and order another yacht.

Which one do you think they go for?

N.B. This is only applicable to mandatory insurance, not optional insurance.

It's official: Adobe Reader is world's most-exploited app

@With you there

At wild guess I'd say it's because life's too short.

Have you really inspected (and *understood*) all of the source code of everything you have ever run?

How about checked the circuit diagrams on all of the electronic gear you own?

Have you inspected and understood the firmware of the engine management of you car?

What about any other forms of transport you use?

How about films, music and TV? Do you make sure you know how they were made before watching them?

Don't forget, people buy bread "baked on site" from shops all over the place every day and almost none of those loaves have any ingredient or nutritional information on them.

Now *I* can't see how you can function in society if you need to inspect every piece of complex technology you deal with. Or are you just happy with stuff that works or tastes nice like everyone else?

Steve Jobs says 'No' to iPhone-to-iPad tether

Not quite

"I guess the tethering is going to be a no-no as they'd have real difficulty ensuring that the 3G end of the deal was actually an iPhone"

They don't really need to do that at all. I run Joikuspot on my N97, which allows me to turn the phone into a wi-fi hotspot in about 30 seconds. Were I to purchase an iPad,then I could presumably use the N97 as a hotspot to access the 'net.

Software like Joikuspot is not allowed in the app store, so an iPhone user could not do this. I think what they were asking was "Will there be a legitimate way of doing this when the iPad launches?".

Essentially the "unlimited" data plan that comes with the iPhone is not really meant to be used anywhere other than the phone itself. The networks will be expecting something like 500Mb to 1Gb of data a month from most users and the price reflects that.

The risk is that all sorts of "unauthorised" devices start using that connection once it's available, straining the already creaking infrastructure. Too much of that and you can wave goodbye to that unlimited plan with the iPhone, or pay a lot more for it - either way no-one really wins.

Go find a price for an unlimited data 3G modem, take off about 20% and add that to the iPhone monthly bill to see how much it /should/ be costing.

Ubisoft undone by anti-DRM DDoS storm

Steady on

"What I am advocating is that games companies stop treating their paying customers like criminals"

Calm down, before long you'll be asking the music and film industry to do that too.

Madness, I tell you, madness!

Anti-binge drinking ads add to binge drinking

Maybe if Nanny didn't come across as such an idiot...

The generally accepted levels for a "binge" in the UK are the ones used by the ONS to define heavy drinking,i.e. 8 units or more in a day for men and 6 units or more in a day for women.

Or to put it another way, if you take the Mrs out for a meal and split a bottle of wine between you then another drink will mean she is on a binge.

Or pop down to the pub with your mates, have a couple of pints and a double whatever to finish means you've been on a binge.

Really, if they want us to take them seriously then they need to be more serious with the definitions.

Speed doesn't kill, if it did no-one would be able to fly off on holiday.

More doubt tossed onto iPad numbers

Expecting Apple to change their usual business model?

It's pretty unusual for Apple to drop the price of their kit or introduce a new revision within 12 months of launch, any stability improvements will most likely be via firmware, which (US legislation notwithstanding) will be free in the first year.

So by all means wait, but it'll probably be longer than 6 months.

I think you may be confusing them with HTC, who would have already announced the v2 and stopped work on the yet-to-go-on-sale v1 in my experience.

Mine the one with the Touch Cruise in the pocket.

Brits blame Apple, Nokia, RIM et al for smartphone woes

Branding and money

Vodafone and Orange at least still do the branding thing on handsets. At least *that's* what they say. What they mean is that they put a load of chargeable services somewhere where you can set them off accidentally (e.g. in the days before reasonable data plans, Orange used to put the web browser next to the SMS on their toolbar).

One thing you can say, though, they /never/ make the phone more usable and they almost always decimate the performance.

I've had this argument with the sales/support people numerous times:

If it's /my/ handset that I am buying off you, then I want it unbranded and unlocked.

If it's *your* handset that I'm renting off you, then I want proper hardware maintenance and replacement just like I would with anything else I rent.

Not that any of them understand, though.

Apple iPad on sale 26 March, says staffer

I'm sure you could guess.

I expect it's one or more of the following:

- Apple are EVIL because they're Apple

- they lock people in to everything

- *I* don't want one of their products, but they insist on still selling them and other people (who are clearly idiot fanbois) buy them

- Another manufacturer is rushing a similar product to market with a slightly lower price and slightly higher spec. Everyone should buy that instead, because it's better (or might be) at a couple of things that *I* do.

- Another manufacturer already has a product that can perform the same functions on paper. I haven't bought one myself, but I'm sure it's much better. Why would anyone other than an idiot fanboi buy the Apple one?

Did I get them all? Not sure if we'll find out.

It's odd, there are a great deal of products and services that I don't use, but I've never looked at one and said "I really wish that had never come to the UK", with the possible exception of Windows ME.

Intel: Just 3,000 employees run Windows 7

Sounds about right to me

80,000 people on a four-year cycle means about 20,000 machines a year being replaced. Or about 5,000 a quarter.

Given that this is a new OS, you'd have to be fairly brave to install it on every new machine straight away, so this figure looks to be around 40-50% of the new machines installed since W7 launched. What's the big deal?

As a side note, I know of a software company who have the very sensible policy of deploying all new machines to their developers and rolling the old developer machines through the company. That means that even someone like the receptionist gets a "new" machine every couple of years, but it's actually been in the company 3-4 years before it get there and (more importantly) the best kit in the company is where it does the most good.

Certainly more sensible than one place where I worked where we could only get new kit if we could figure out why the boss would also need it.

How FBI, police busted massive botnet

Never mind that

"Might be time for my meds"

Might be time to change your phone number,

You're gonna get so many spam texts and marketing calls your head will spin.

Apple turns the flamethrower on Android

In that case

"All I want is a phone that works; a phone that doesn't drop calls if I turn sideways and something that does NOT have a camera!"

I'd say you probably want a Blue Chip VX-1. About £20 SIM free and unlocked. For that money you could buy a couple to have backup in case of problems.

Probably want to re-think the "Kill all the lawyers" option, you might want someone to represent you in court when you're up on that serial killer rap.

I'd also say that you might have a problem with the normal rules of capitalism deciding outcomes. If capitalism had been allowed to run it's own course then Apple would have died a death in the 1990s, we'd be stuck with Vista (if MS had even bothered releasing it), most website on the 'net would only work with IE6 and I expect the Blackberry would have been pretty much stillborn.

Much of the market we have today is as a result of MS franticly propping up businesses that it had almost destroyed or not doing it's usual "embrace and extinguish" on anything that was genuinely useful and innovative (read: dangerous to MS market share) that appeared.

Really, if the DoJ had not stepped in I don't think I want to know where we would have been now.

I do agree that the current patent system in the US does appear to be very badly broken, though.

Oops! Mobile masters of universe forget mobiles make phone calls

Pah! Amatures!

MS /never/ had good support in Windows Mobile (WinCE, whatever).

Who would have guessed they were so advanced?

Time to dig in the loft for my first WM phone, it's bleeding edge now.

I know, they could re-re-re-re-re-re-re-brand it Windows Mini or WiMi for short. Is that more catchy?

Skype first to scrap Windows Mobile

Didn't miss a memo

Missed the bit of the article that said /Skype/ said that and also the bit where they suggested Symbian as an option.

Presumably because that's the only two mobile platforms they support now. It's not rocket science.

@CrashMurdock

Maybe you'd like to lay off the Kool-Aid too, it's impairing your ability to comprehend.

Apple uncovers child workers in its plants

Perhaps

But what if those hired were 15 years and 10 months old when they started?

And what about the other people who work in the factory and have done nothing wrong?

You could be asking Apple to completely destroy an area economically simply because of some minor rule bending.

I hope you would want the same treatment for wherever you work, i.e. have the whole place close because someone in HR broke a local employment law.

Yes, those involved should be disciplined, but to punish hundreds or even thousands (local traders, etc) of people for the actions of two or three is somewhat excessive.

Bringing P2P in from the cold

Terrible example

"I have artist clients who are mystified that Megaupload and Rapidshare are selling their stuff - like in a classic counterfeiter model. These sites take their recordings, sell downloads, keep the money, and don't even think about paying you."

That's because these site sell storage space and bandwidth, Rapidshare certainly has a policy of not allowing you to use them for copyright material and I do know that they will suspend access to anything they're informed about very quickly (often within half an hour), then delete it after 7 days if the uploader cannot prove rights.

I think they even suspend accounts for repeated infringements.

What next? Is Shell responsible for bank robberies because they sell fuel that's used in getaway vehicles?

Oh, and if you want my sympathy you can put away the kiddie pr0n and snuff video bogeymen - save them for the Daily Fail.

Fact is consumers are crying out for a new model that delivers much better value and convenience for them, but all we've seen so far is a lot of rhetoric and apparent price fixing that got a lot of the providers into trouble in the 90's and no-one willing to try any of the ideas that are out there.

'cmon guys, try /something/ FFS.

Experts rubbish iPhone for health use

In other news

Bicycles not suitable for crossing lakes, strawberry jam no use in scanning for security threats at airports.

Many other devices not ideally suited for purposes that they were not designed for.

I can see the point of trying this sort of thing in specialised areas like medicine to see if lower cost kit can be deployed instead of more expensive purpose-built stuff, but why on earth would you be surprised when it does and why on earth would you then issue a press release?

Are they going to issue a follow up saying netbooks aren't suitable to run their back-office IT services on either?

I know, how about:

"NHS mobile equipment specialists unsuitable to provide specialist NHS mobile equipment"?

Looks closer to the mark to me. Or did the definition of "specialist" change when I wasn't looking?

Nokia No.2 is so sorry for N97 debacle

Eh?

"Both keyboards are too small but at least the N900 had full stop and comme, the N97 didn't even have them. Think I am joking?"

Yes, I do. My N97 has a full stop and a comma on the key between the "L" and the return.

I can see how you would miss it, though, because it looks like a miss-printed semi-colon.

I agree with you that after the N95 it's a major disappointment for a phone that's around two years newer, it feels more like something from the same generation.

Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end

Paltry?

If you look here: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Then you will see that traffic management is not applied to 50Mb connections at all, and only applied to 20Mb connections after 7Gb, I can't see the 100Mb one getting hit with traffic management at all either.

If you're hitting that regularly then you're probably spending a fortune on storage too, you might be better off with a commercial connection. Or pay the extra £8/month to get the unfettered 50Mb connection.

OK, you *can* hit that 7Gb limit in about an hour, but that would represent ~7 hours of high-def video from say the iPlayer, or a couple of Linux distributions.

Are there really 14 Linux distros each week? And do you need to download all of them during peak periods?

Personally, I think this is a better approach than some of the ADSL providers who simply stop your connection altogether when you reach their cap and leave you disconnected until the next billing cycle.

iPad and smartphone rootkits demo'd by boffins

That horse has already bolted.

>.However, I should think some intrepid security firm like *hmmmmm* Symantec or such will offer

>protection against this, at a price of course.

Symantec already offer it:

http://www.symantec.com/business/mobile-security-for-symbian

Came free for 3 months with my original N95. In return for protecting me against the one piece of malware in the wild it slowed the phone to about a tenth of it's normal speed and drained the battery in about half a day.

In addition, you had to perform a factory reset of the phone to remove it.

Not surprisingly on balance I decided to live with the risk, fortunately you could delete the installer so I also managed to steer clear of the risk of accidentally re-installing it. Never again.

Microsoft finally debuts Euro-choose-a-browser screen

Yes

Because MS were found to be operating a monopoly.

Despite the disproportionate amount of press coverage they get here, Apple have a very small market share and when this all kicked off (a good few years ago now) MS had something like 85-90% of the browser "market".

This gave two problems primarily:

1) Companies like Opera who produce paid for software were being pushed out of business.

2) Websites were starting to be written as "IE only", meaning we were gradually shifting towards an MS-only web.

Thanks largely to Mozilla/FireFox, Opera and to a certain extent Safari, the market has started to even out a bit more, but if it hadn't you would probably find you were unable to use a lot of websites with Safari and also not be able to get IE for anything other than Windows; meaning you could either be a Mac owner or a Web user, but not both.

BBC clambers onto iPhone bandwagon

That's how bug businesses work

Big company that needs kit, talks to other big companies who supply kit and say things like:

"We want to buy 40,000 desktop PCs and ancillary equipment like printers over the next three years, what sort of deal will you offer us to use you as sole supplier for that period?"

Big supplier says something like:

"We'll give you 25% discount off list price for everything you buy off us in that period."

And a deal is struck.

It's unlikely that they're dependent on HP, more likely that HP cut them the best deal at the time, they're just as likely to end up with Dell or Fujitsu or whoever next time.

Apple squashes wobbly jub app

Is that the real reason

Or is this a response to the Max Hardcore case reported in this very tome last week?

Researcher spies new Adobe code execution bug

No-one used to

But, Adobe went on record a few weeks ago saying they didn't ship software with any bugs.

What did they /think/ would happen if they made a claim like that? Remember MS launching Vista as their "Most secure OS yet"? IIRC, several major flaws were discovered and exploited about half a day after the first release candidate went out to the public.

If you want to live in ignorance, then feel free to not read the articles and just get your spoon-fed updates from Adobe as and when (and now cross your fingers that it *is* an update from Adobe that you get).

The fact is that this particular flaw is a problem in a piece of software that isn't even useful, it just adds a layer of complexity to what should be a straightforward download and now it adds a security hole to go with it.

Adobe could fix this with a quick re-write of their web page, probably in less than half a day, but I can almost guarantee that they will persist with the download manager.

Silicon Valley plane crash kills 3 Tesla employees

Funny,

I was wondering how many of those 28,000 homes had electric vehicles and couldn't get to work the next day.

I guess that's what happens when you spend half of your job thinking about contingency planning.

Pass my coat while you're there, would you? It's the one with the copy of "I don't care if climate change is real or not, fossil fuels are still a finite resource" in the pocket. Ta.

Windows Phone 7 will not translate to Win Mobile after all

Yes, but

is this better or worse than the "closed shop" Apple model whereby all the apps are in one place and all the developers can be told of the upcoming OS change and given a chance to test/rebuild their apps for the new OS.

Of course the end users have all the fun taken out of their experience too, they can download all the updates as soon as they become available by connecting to one site.

I'm sure they all miss that treasure hunt experience; you know, the one where the developer has changed both their own software house name and the name of the app three or four times since you bought it, just to make it extra easy to find the latest version.

Nope, I can't see advantage of the Apple approach at all.

No idea why Google and Nokia are trying to replicate it at all.

Honest.

'I'm an IT worker not an assassin'

Have the innocent had their identiies returned?

Must be a bit of a pain having to walk around without an identity.

Is it me or does "Identity Theft" sound more like something made up by government and business to shift the blame and responsibility onto Joe Public?

I'm sure all of this someone-pretending-to-be-someone-else was just called "fraud" a few years ago.

Apple to stick padlocks on books for iPad

In what way does this make Apple special?

As far as I can see this also applies to a number of eBook readers, most notably the Kindle. Pretty much all of the DRM systems in use today are proprietary.

I know the Adobe system is in use by a lot of publishers, but it's still proprietary and if it bombs you'll still be in the same position a few years later when you can't access your content following some kind of upgrade.

Your only choice at the moment is which system you want to get locked into, it's all a bit VHS/Betamax or Bluray/HD-DVD. Pick the wrong one and you're shafted.

Yes, hate the DRM,but at least direct your anger towards the publishers as they are the ones making the decision to apply it.

Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already

I think the problem is...

That MS don't know that it's a phone platform.

They've been touting WM as a portable application platform since it launched (remember all the fuss they made about Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word and the rest?).

Now WM7 is being launched as a multimedia communications platform with little focus on the apps or the phone functionality.

Perhaps if the various "Pocket X" applications on the earlier versions had sucked a bit less (e.g. you couldn't even view HTML emails until something like late v5 or early v6, I forget which), then the platform might have had a chance at taking some of the market that Blackberry have.

I think WM7 is finally a step in the right direction for them, but we won't really know until there are a few devices on the market.

Hmmm

If these things are going to start shining out of people's a*ses, maybe Sun should get into the market.

Archos 9

Sounds a bit sub-optimal to me

Buying one of these and then buying a Win 7 Home or Pro license to run on it.

If you don't like the OS then why don't you just buy one of the many, many alternative devices?

In fact, for the ~£600 you would spend on the device plus replacement OS you could buy two of most of them.

Archos fanboi are we?

:-)

Researchers rip iPad apart to reveal Apple's profits

Not all apps are restricted.

"Now I wonder how the people that wrote the apps feel about apple giving away their liecense? Sure you paid for a licesen for one device, but you didn't pay to use it on as many as you like. Thats called Piracy? Or maybe iPad owners will throw away their iPod or iPhone?"

Well, no, that's no the way iTunes licensing works. Unless specifically restricted anything you buy through iTunes is licensed against the account and the account can be registered for use on up to five machines at any one time (*not* five devices). Each of those computers can sync a number of devices (I don't know if there is a limit, but I haven't encountered one) and transfer any compatable stuff to the device.

So, you can own an iPod, iPhone and iPad and sync all of them with one machine (or each with seperate machines using the same account) and use all movies, TV programmes, applications, etc. with whichever devices support them.

So, *no*, this would not be piracy.

"Oh, and lets not forget, as every one seem to be doing.... that any one with a PC also has a library of apps and media they can use on a windows slate..... pirated or not..."

But that *would* be piracy (well, breach of licensing terms anyway) unless the license for the software specifically allows the use on more than one machine, which most commercial PC software does not allow by default in my experience. Granted, in practice most manufacturers don't make any serious attempt to restrict you from doing that and probably wouldn't persue you anyway, but if you're going to suggest that one system has an advantage over another you probably want to make sure which way around they are first.

That said, you appear to have missed my point anyway, here it is in a plainer form:

Apple make money from every sale though the iTunes store (apps, movies, music, etc.). People who buy the iPad will almost certainly already have an iPod and/or an iPhone, so may well not purchase as much content for the iPad as they will already own it, thus reducing the after-sale revenue stream.

It's a bit like the VHS->DVD->Bluray thing. When people moved from VHS to DVD they bought DVD copies of stuff they already owned on VHS, but it's unlikely they will buy Bluray copies of anything they already own on DVD. If the hardware manufacturers were getting a cut of every disc sold you can bet your life that either they wouldn't be compatable or the hardware would be more expensive (probably both, in fact).

Is all the other stuff free then?

I'm thinking of product development, factory tooling, packaging, marketing, etc, etc.

Really, I can see how this kind of stuff might be relevant on a mature product, but for one that isn't even on sale yet?

Maybe these guys could just buy all the bits and make their own.

Might want to start by reading a "Dummy's" book about business basics first, though.

They haven't shown Apple's profit margin at all, they've just shown that Apple won't be likely to be selling each unit as a loss leader for other services (like Kindle might have been) and they have a large scope for price reductions to stimulate the market or allow carriers to offer discounts with data contracts if necessary.

Don't forget that anyone buying one of these who previously owned an iPhone or one of the various iPod models may well have a library of media and applications that can just be used to fill the thing up without spending any additional cash - how often do you encounter that?

US judges leave definition of obscenity to Amish, Kansas

Think of the children!

The problem is not the people who complain it's the ones that carry on watching because they enjoy themselves.

As a society, we can't possibly allow that to happen, because, erm, I forget why, might be something to do with special books and invisible friends.

Of course what should also be happening is that every US citizen who drives should be arrested if they travel to Japan or Australia or New Zealand or the UK or indeed anywhere else that drives on the left as they have been breaking the local laws of these countries by driving on the right when at home. Or something. You get the idea.

There's a worrying trend from western countries and states to try and export their laws to events in other places around the globe and it's getting worse.

Google's Nexus One sales still sluggish

Really?

"I suspect that when this phone finally hits the high street, Droid, and possibly even iPhone, sales will pale in comparison."

I suspect that you may be deluding yourself a bit, if there was that much of a demand then they would have sold more than they have already.

Fact is, the Android market is already quite fragmented with choices over styling and features to consider, wheras in the iPhone market the choice is basically down to how much memory do you want (or how much can you afford); it's highly unlikely that any one Android phone will seriously dent the market now unless it's stupdily good value for money (e.g. 64Gb memory for £10).

Most consumers don't give two hoots about the OS running on their phone, they don't buy "the phone that runs the iPhone OS", they just buy the "iPhone". Pretty much how MS gained dominance in the desktop market, generally people just want a "PC" or a "Laptop", it just happens to be pre-loaded with Windows by default and that lets them get access to YouTube and their email.

Witness the total lack of a desktop revolution spearheaded by Linux based netbooks. It really doesn't matter what any of us in the techical arena would like to see happen, consumers will generally go for "shiny" or "cool" or "cheap" above actual merit. Just look at the popularity of X-Factor.

Unfortunately, that's the real world. You remember that, have a quick look left and right - there it is.

Amazon deletes a 6th of its catalogue in book price barney

True, but

"I'm an author and self-publisher. I write for a very specific niche market. If I were to put my books into digital media, I'd never make a dime on them again and would have to find some other way to keep eating regularly."

So what you're saying is that your niche market buyers don't really value your work and would just take it without payment if they had a choice? What a lovely view of human nature you have.

(Not that I'm saying you're wrong necessarily.)

"I like the dead tree model very much thank you. Copying my books takes more than a keystroke, and it doesn't happen much."

Yes, but that works on your end too. Do you take a risk on printing (say) 1000 copies of a book and hoping you sell them? What difference to your business model would removing that risk make? If you had no reproduction costs, how many books would you need to sell to break even? If you're not asking these questions, then you're not making a very good job of running your business.

"My "monopoly" is called a "copyright"..."

Is anyone asking you to release your books copyright free? I don't see anyone asking you to give away your books (sorry, your INFORMATION). So far all I can see is you making an assumption that you'll be lucky to sell one copy of one of your works if you release it in electronic format, then be impoverished because everyone will just get a copy of that. Have you even tried one of your older works to see what actually happens? What about the evils of copy protection? How about taking legal action against the feckless customer that gives it away and breaches your copyright? I presume that if someone broke into your storage and stole the physical books you would try and take some kind of action - did you take any action against the person(s) who copied your physical book that time? If not, why not? There's not much point in asserting that you will lose copyright control if you're already ignoring infringements.

Have you also considered that any piracy might actually bring your works to a wider audience and end up improving your sales? Bootleg tapes can really help upcoming bands break into a wider audience, for example.

Sounds like you could do with exploring some opportunities to me. Scott Adams wrote a book several years ago that initially was only distributed as an eBook, when he got to a certain level of sales it was released as a dead tree version and now the eBook version is given away free because people often go on to buy the sequel (*and* they are still able to sell copies of the dead tree version alongside the eBook).

"Arguing otherwise is like saying that a $100 bill should sell..."

Erm, terrible example there, the $100 bill is a token that represents an amount of gold held elsewhere, same as you can write a cheque (sorry check) for $10 or $1000. I get the thust of your argument, though. However, I just looked for a recently published book for myself; RRP £14.99, dead tree version £8.99, eBook version £13.99. What?!? Previous book by the same author, now available in paperback, RRP £7.99, dead tree £5.49, eBook £14.49. Double what?!? (Same website, BTW).

So... If the INFORMATION in the book is what is being sold, why does it cost me more to get it in a different format?

By your yardstick, it should cost the same to buy a movie on DVD and Bluray because you get the same movie, which is clearly not the case as production costs are different for the two media. DVD costs less to reproduce and has less overstocking risk because of the greater market penetration - this is reflected in the price.

E-media (books, music, movies, etc) have the advantage of much smaller reproduction costs than their physical counterparts and no risk of production overruns (you just make a copy of the master for each sale on demand), but so far none of those savings are being passed on to the consumer, in fact the assumption appears to be that anyone who buys a copy is also going to sell on at least one copy, so they need to be charged for two just to be on the safe side.

Really, the media industries shouldn't be that much different from any other manufacturing industry, business models need to change.

Problem is...

Taking a book at random (in this case "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson), on Amazon the paperback is $7.99 and the Kindle version is $8.81 (including Whispernet delivery - even if you don't use that).

I'd guess that A, F, G and H will be about the same for both versions, I'd hope that the cost of B was nil or at least negligable to produce the Kindle version of an already typeset book (originally published 2004), your main variables are C and E. C goes away completely for the Kindle version and E is now picked up by the customer.

So, follow the money, who is taking the extra cash?

As a customer, I'd prefer the savings were passed to me, but I have no doubt that the author, their agent, the publisher and the reseller would also like them too.

What's needed is a balance, which we clearly don't have yet, especially as consumers will have no way of offsetting their costs by reselling books on the second-hand market (in this case the second-hand value appears to be around $2 at the moment). OK, most people will probably not sell the book on, but a few will, which futher de-values the electronic version for them.

So yes, you don't want the electronic version significantly cheaper, but you certainly don't want it the same price or significantly more expensive, which is the case at the moment.

TBH, eBooks aren't alone in this. Movies and music are in the same place, I can buy most CDs or DVDs for quite a bit less than the digital versions and then make my own digial version from the physical one - I can't do that the other way around in a lot of cases.

I suspect that as usual it's the people at either end of the chain that are being ripped off while the ones in the middle claim poverty and hardship.

I know an author and a couple of musicians who live on very low incomes and do full-time jobs in addition to trying get a break.

Anyone know of someone in *any* of the middle companies who have this problem?

Brits take iTablet moniker for 12in iPad rival

Is it me?

That picture looks very badly Photoshopped, so is this actually still vapourware?

Methinks someone has seen a bandwagon rolling by.

Nokia's free Ovi Maps scores a download every second

So...

The app has been downloaded most on the phones they've launched it on?

I have to say that the new app is quite nice, but it does have some odd quirks, like once you've put in a destination you can only add waypoints from well known places or favourites - you can't add a postcode or point on the map for example.

Would have been nice if the latest firmware fixed the lock-swtich problem on the N97 too...

Apple bans geo loco ads on iPhone, iPad*

Wrong end of stick?

I read these patents as being for local wireless services push stuff out to devices in the immediate vicinity (probably over wi-fi or Bluetooth), so I don't see a policy clash.

For example, a music store would have a system that sent out the name of the currently playing track via Bluetooth; it would only be able to reach devices in range, so would be location specific

Only problem is, this sort of thing already happens.

While travelling on the Tube a few months ago I had an attempted connection from "Dr Parnassus" every time I used a particular station. I didn't think about it at the time, but this was almost certainly an attempt to advertise the film "The Imaginarium Of ...".

I guess the problem these type of adverts have at the moment is most devices ask if they can accept the connection, which gives the user a chance to ignore the advert completely, or be so annoyed that they never buy the product.

This looks like an attempt to create a framework to accept this stuff automatically. Or create a security hole as we might phrase it here on El Reg.

E-book readers are a satisfied lot

Not far wrong there

I guess it's down to the individual, but I pretty much never read anything in direct sunlight because I find the reflection from the paper hurts my eyes after a while.

Consequently anything I take to read on holiday usually stays in the room when sunbathing is the main plan and only comes out in more suitable surroundings (airport lounge, hotel room, bar, etc.), so I find myself completely unperturbed by screens that are difficult to use in direct sunlight.

I bought my wife an eBook reader for going away last year and she actually found it problematic in dimmer places because the background is not white and it has no backlight.

That said, she still loves it, her only real issue is the complete non-availability of some of her favourite authors' work or works only becoming available months after the dead tree version - she hates to wait, so has not yet purchased anything digital; the reader is full of free classics and books that came free with the reader.

Men at Work swiped Down Under riff

Erm...

Any chance of a link for the campfire song? I've never heard it myself, so I can't decide if they ripped it off or not.

Any idea why the copyright holders waited ~30 years to bring the case? Other than the usual cynical money-making, of course.

Appeal Court: TV menu decision was irrational, but not unfair

How did I miss this?

JML have a shopping channel?!?

That's your killer-app right there, I'm going to rush out and buy some Freesat gear this very weekend.

In fact, I might not wait that long, I think my local Comet is open until 8 tonight.

Anyone want to share my taxi to Real Street? I understand that the Real Orchestra is performing the Get Real Symphony at the Reality Theatre tonight.

Sheesh.