Posts by sisk

Storage players pitch DRM tech for downloads

Death to DRM

Here's why:

1) New DRM scheme hits the market.

2) Within a month or two, new DRM scheme is cracked and no longer poses a problem to copyright infringers.

3) Paying customers continue to have headaches caused by the DRM for years. Their new videos won't play on their old devices, they risk loosing their video collection because the DRM prevents them from making easy backups, and thousands, if not milliions, will buy a new device only to get it home and find out it doesn't support the DRM in thier videos.

4) New DRM scheme hits the market because someone finally realized that the last one they reseased was cracked years ago.

5) Lather, rinse, repeat. Paying customers have to pay more to cover the cost of the DRM, those copying media before continue to do so with no problems, and companies waste time fighting a war they can never win.

Conclusion: DRM is a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Fat margins squeeze Apple against Android

Where is this 'reasonably priced' Apple tablet? Surely you can't mean the iPad. $450 for a 10in with 16gb, no SD card spot, and wifi only is the cheapest iPad 2 you can get. Compare that to $300-$400 for the same specs in most Android tablet (with a couple of premium priced exceptions like the Galaxy Tab). Add to that that every single one of those Android tablets have SD card slots. The iPad is premium priced, just like every other Apple product on the market.

Which is fine. More power to them. Just don't go calling a premium price 'reasonable'.

Proview's Apple iPad rights war goes global, reaches ESSEX

In what way does Apple's iPad not compete with an all-in-one internet machine? Proview's IPAD would have been killed off by direct competition from Apple's iPad quickly, even if Proview weren't already on the edge of the abyss.

Facebook denies poaching your text messages on Android

Re: Re: Just say no

OF COURSE YouTube records from your camera. How else are you going to create and upload a video from your phone? Trying to paint that particular permission is a sinister light is just plain silly.

Not a bad thing

"The permissions issue is as much one for Google as Facebook: Apple's iOS walls off certain phone functions from third-party apps - including text messages and phone functions. But on Android phones that information is accessible to apps, provided the user agrees on downloading the app."

So in other words: Android allows apps to ask your permission to gain functionality that is impossible on iOS. Why are you trying to paint this as a bad thing? More capability is a GOOD thing, especially when it requires explicit permission from the user.

Child abuse suspect won't be forced to decrypt hard drive

Re: I don't get it...

That's because you, like many people in this day and age, are assuming that the fifth amendment is in place to protect the guilty. It's not. It is there to protect the innocent. You can easily incriminate yourself without actually being guilty without such protection.

An example: someone you dislike very strongly was found dead in a bathroom in a bar. You happened to be at the bar at the time, but weren't involved. In the course of investigating, the police ask you how you felt about that person. Lying to a cop is a bad idea, and admitting you hated the guy puts you on a short list of suspects, so you plead the fifth (if you're smart).

The thing to remember about the American justice system is that it's built around the idea that it's better to let a guilty man go than to imprision an innocent one. That's why it sometimes seems like the criminals have more rights than the victims: a lot of the time they do.

Playboy, Virgin Galactic tout zero-grav nookie in spaaaaace!

First a .xxx domain and now this. Perhaps it's time to rename the company. 'Virgin' seems to be becoming less appropriate all the time.

Private Manning keeps mum at Wikileaks plea hearing

Re: Every minute.

For leaking documents that embarrassed the goverment? You must be joking. It's not as if anything he leaked led to a single death, or even any additional difficulties for troops on the ground.

Should he serve some time? Maybe, but he's already served it. In fact, an unconscionable amount of it was in solitary confinement. Time to let the poor guy go. Life plus 150 years for being a whistle blower is just not good for society. Do that and the next time we need a whistle blower there won't be one willing to risk it.

Re: Re: Re: "what about the OTHER 699,999 documents"

""The brass would be embarrassed if the public knew what utter muppets they are" is hardly, in my view, a compelling reason to classify something."

The US would have a very small percentage of the state secrets it currently has if everyone shared that view.

Death to Office or to Windows - choose wisely, Microsoft

Windows is NOT dying.

Windows still rules the desktop market and likely will until that market dies. Despite what world + dog seems to think desktops are going nowhere. Tablets may kill off laptops if they can come close to their capabilities, but the desktop is safe. It's survived the laptop, the netbook, and the thin client. Compared to them a machine with half (at most) of it's capabilities isn't even a challenger. It's not even a matter of processing power. It's a matter of being able to sit down with two or three 20" screens and work with multiple programs in front of you with a keyboard and a mouse. It's about having your report on one screen, your email on another, and a spreadsheet with the data you're analyzing on the other. Tablets can't do this stuff, and would be piss poor at it if you managed to force them.

The desktop is here to stay for the foreseeable future and Windows will be sticking around with it.

Xeroxiraptor: Boffins to print 3D robot dinosaur

Robotic velociraptors?

Heaven help us all...

RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon

Re: 'Renewables' still doesnt stack up numbers wise.

@itzman

That depends upon which renewable you're looking at and which technologies you use in it's production. Enough algae for enough biofuel to supply the entire United States could be grown on land equivalent to the size of New Mexico. That's still a good chunk of land, I grant you that's still a lot of land, but nowhere near what it would take to accomplish the same job with solar or wind.

Also, renewables are just as subject, if not moreso, to technological advances. Solar power WILL get more efficient if we put some effort into improving it, just as pulling oil out of the ground will.

Who's adding DRM to HTML5? Microsoft, Google and Netflix

Unfortunate reality

I hate DRM and view it as pointless. Very few DRM schemes have lasted more than a few months without being cracked, so it essentially restricts legitimate users while posing no real problem for pirates. Still there's no way that big media is going to allow content to be legally streamed without it. The possibility of DRM inside the HTML5 spec would be a marvelous way to ensure that. It would also buy Netflix, as well as similar services, the ability to be on all platforms instead of just those that support Silverlight.

Microsoft blasts 'web video killer' Motorola Mobility in EU gripe

Why is everyone screaming at Google?

All Google is doing is keeping the same liscensing model that Motorola has had for years. Why is it that no one complained about it until Google took it over? It's the same fee, it's just going to be going to a different company.

Re: Re: Re: Lets look at the time line a bit shall we @JDX

If Android genuinely infringes patents, then which ones are they? That's the problem I've had with the whole MS patent on Android thing from the get go. MS keeps screaming that Android (and Linux in general for that matter) infringes their patents, but have they ever told anyone specifically which patents are being infringed?

Re: Not Members

At least then we'd FINALLY have a standard codec for HTML5 video then. Maybe it's the evil way to go about it, but are we going to get a standard any other way?

Not that I wolud support such an evil action, regardless of the ends.

LOHAN's flying truss: One orb or two?

Hydrogen should be ok. The hydrogen was only one variable in the death of the Hindenburg. More important was whatever started the fire in the first place. Since you're unlikely to paint your weather balloon with accelerants or have passengers who are smoking there should be no problem.

Re: Re: Vertical

Following that line of thought, perhaps it would be better to rig some sort of sensor to detect when the balloon bursts and light LOHANS fire at that exact moment. I don't know how practical that is, but if it's doable you kill two birds with one stone: you get maximum altitude and you get the balloon out of the way.

Virgin boss victorious in .xxx Branson pickle

Re: Re: I don't get it...

Tell that to Mike Roesoft, what lost mikeroesoft.com in one of these disputes.

Security biz scoffs at Apple's anti-Trojan Gatekeeper

Re: Looks more like Apple locking people into the app store to me

Microsoft was forced to offer other web browsers because they had a monopoly that was damaging the market. While that case could be made with Apple's lock in to the app store no one has done so yet. Besides Apple doesn't come close to the dominance of Microsoft in the desktop/laptop market in any of their markets, not even the tablet market.

Furthermore, Microsoft was opposed by the likes of Google and Mozilla, which could affford lawyers on par with the MS legal team, in that case. The only people likely to challenge the walled garden are independant developers and jailbreakers. These people have neither the political pull nor the resources to hire good legal teams that the big corporations have.

It'd be nice if Apple users were allowed to easily tear down the walls of the garden should they choose, but I don't see it ever happening.

Google befriends Microsoft with WinDroid tablets

Interesting idea

I don't see it going anywhere, but a dual booting tablet's an interesting idea anyway.

LightSquared scrabbles to save itself after FCC stops LTE plan

LightSquared has been given a raw deal

Don't get me wrong here: the FCC made the right call. Eventually. The problem I have with it, and the one Lightsquared should be kicking up a fuss about, is that the FCC did so by changing the rules on them. LightSquared was playing by the rules and are now out shedloads of money because the FCC stupidly told them they could do something that anyone who understands radio communications should have realized was going to cause problems to a network that has now become an essential service. Daft as LightSquared's bussiness plan was the blame for it, and their loss of capital, lies squarely with the FCC IMHO.

Boy burned in Nintendo sensor substitution

Re: What? I mean... what?

I found the need for a replacement after my idiotic cat chewed up the cable on my sensor bar. I'm guessing this is a similar scenario.

Granted I broke out the soldering iron and made a new one with infrared LEDs rather than resorting to tea candles (for fear of afore mentioned mentally challenged feline setting fire to himself and/or the house).

Google tightens its Wallet after PIN reset goof

Fixed for you

"...though determined crackers will always get in."

Re: More secure?

A credit card is 'brute forced' the instant a thief lays his hands on it, even quicker than a Google Wallet. The difference is that most people are less likely to leave their credit card laying around than they are their phone.

Googorola's desire for iPhone royalties will upset Apple cart

"Apple says the terms of the licence were not fair and reasonable and non-discriminatory – so it didn't accept it."

Isn't that irrelevant? If I'm not mistaken that statement would indicate that Apple knowingly and willingly violated Motorolla's patent. Surely not liking the price of a license can't be legal grounds for ignoring IP laws....or if it is then someone should probably let the guys over at Pirate Bay know about that little loophole.

Google Wallet PIN security cracked in seconds

It'll never be impossible. If you make something unrootable all you accomplish is drawing the attention of the people smart enough to find a way to root it. As proof of this concept, I offer the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, most Motorolla phones, and every video game console made in the last 10 years (granted it's called 'hacking' on consoles, not 'rooting', but it's the same thing).

Well duh...

Pay by NFC is something that I've been hearing warnings against ever since the idea first came about. Add those inherent problems to a system that stores credit card data behind a 4 digit pin and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Russians drill into buried 20 million-year-old Antarctic lake

If that's the case....

Shouldn't you be happily thanking the Russians for digging it up for you?

Newt Gingrich wants Moon to be 51st US state

Get to the moon in 8 years? Yeah, that's doable. Tough, but doable. Establish a colony there in 8 years? Not a chance, even with a NASA funded the way it was in the 60s, and any out-of-work space workers know it. What's more, Newt knows it. He's just engaging in the traditional Presidential candidate smoke blowing. I'd be embarrassed as an American if enough people believed him to get him into office.

@LateNightLarry

Newt really shouldn't be a Tea Party darling. I have no idea if he is or not, but his political history SHOULD make him about the last canidate in the world for a Tea Party endorsement. That man's had his hand on more pork barrel bills than any two other people who are or were in the race.

Untangling the question of antimatter mass

@Trever_Pott

Outstanding explaination. Somebody get this man a beer.

The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects

"Either way, the dead record industry is going to cry when they realise that I can copy the actuall record itself as well as the song :P"

None of the 3D printers I've looked at can come close to doing that. To print a record you're talking about micrometer level detail. Really high end home 3D printers I've seen can handle .8 millimeter sized details, but nothing smaller than that.

"Quick, everyone, pirate some expensive modeling software so you can make free 3D printable models!"

Why in the world would you do that when there are so many free 3D modeling programs? And some of them are actually pretty decent looking (from my non-serious hobbiest point of view anyway).

Grey goo anyone?

Ten... IPTV set-top boxes

Roku?

Is Roku not availabel in the UK? It seems like an odd omission from this list given that it's currently whupping Apple TV's butt in the market (at least according to the numbers I've seen).

Personally I've been using my PS3 for that kind of thing for years. DLNA (with a Mediatomb box in the back room) and Netflix over wifi are all I really need. Vudu is nice on occassion when I'm being lazy or Redbox doesn't have what I want to watch.

'Space Monkey' craze: Texan students 'get high' by choking each other

New??

This was a huge craze when I was in middle school 20 years ago, and I don't think I've gone more than a year since then without hearing about the 'new' craze of the choking game. Surely after sweeping the country for the last 20 years it's not new anymore.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

The problem...

...is that Congress doesn't respond to well-reasoned discussions. They respond to large campaign contributions and highly visible demonstrations. You can put 1000 people writing polite letters to their senator on one side of an issue and one big corporation with a $500,000 campaign donation on the other and the senator will go with the big corporation every time. On the other hand, you have those 1000 march up to the senator's office with megaphones and you get his attention.

The unforunate reality of American politics is that the shouting is the only defense we have against a Congress all too willing to let itself be bought out by entities which, not being constituents of any particular congressional district, should have little or no influence in the legislature. (Yes, I'm well aware of the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations are people and I consider it to be one of the worst of a long line of idiotic decisions by the current Supreme Court.)

Woz praises Android, blasts iPhone limitations

As long as you leave the navigation app running it's fine. My problem was that I closed it to save my woefully inadequate and desperately in need of replacement battery.

Eh?

He's not that old. At 61 he's not even retirement age yet.

As for his technical expertise, he remains one of the top engineers in the world. He's probably got more widespread respect than anyone else in the technology sector. If anything he's getting more honest with age (which, given his level of honesty before, would be quite an accomplishment).

No offline

Google Navigation's lack of offline access bit me in the butt once. We stopped for lunch and when we came back out to the car we didn't have data. We were then lost for the next two hours because no one in the car remembered that they still have these analogue things called 'maps' that can generally be picked up in any service station until a week later when someone else pointed it out. I've never trusted Google Navigation without an atlas for backup since.

Woz is one of the top engineers in the world. The man could probably build a phone from chips if he really wanted to. Don't belittle him just because he sees more potential in Android than in iOS.

Most??

In one paragraph you say that he recommends iPhone for most people and in the next you quote him as only recommending it to Mac users and technophobes. Surely Mac users and technophobes don't outnumber the rest of us, so which is it?

10 years ago today: Bill Gates kicks arse over security

Um...no.

I'll admit Microsoft has gotten a lot better about security (and yes, certain other big names in the field would do well to follow their lead), but a leader in security they are not. Only a fool trusts Windows to play without antivirus and some sort of firewall.

Then again, I run antivirus even on my print server running Debian that's cut off from the internet, so maybe I'm just paranoid.

Pirate Bay dropping torrents after magnetic attraction

Re: John 174

That analogy is just as incorrect as the one of someone admiring the garden.

The original analogy is incorrect because in that case the gardener is working the garden for his own benefit, not for the entertainment of others. Now if he built a wall around it and charged admittance at the gate and people climbed over the wall instead of paying, then the analogy would be correct.

Your analogy is incorrect because there's a clear difference between copyright infringement and theft, despite what big media would have us think. In your analogy, something is lost by the gardener and therefore theft has occured, but in file sharing nothing is actually lost. Many people have tried to claim lost sales, but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, unless you think that a 16 year old kid is going to go out and buy several thousand dollars worth of music. Which is not to say that it's not still wrong, but it is NOT theft.

Tiny frog claimed as smallest vertebrate ever

And they still...

...have more integrety than both the Democratic and Republican parties combined.

Android devs get schooled on style

I've got to disagree there. For all the flack Linux gets for 'bad UI' I find a lot of the UI in Linux to be far and away better than Windows or OSX. A lot of UI (not all, granted) is about asthetics, and asthetics are all about personal preferance, so there's a lot to be said for a system that offers a couple dozen different UIs and the ability to choose between them. Some of them are geeky as hell, but some of them are just plain easy to use. My wife swears up and down that Fluxbox is easier to use than anything else she's ever seen (she actually says 'Linux' rather than 'Fluxbox' because her only experience with Linux are systems I've set up and she doesn't know any better, but meh).

Angry iPhone users bring antitrust class action against Apple

30% plus the fee to get the SDK and development license do far, far more than cover hosting costs. They'd be making a pretty decent profit at 10%. 30% is far more than any other mobile app store takes. For that matter, it's far above the industry standard for any software publishing service, even those that have the far greater expenses associated with selling physical media.

As for your Android app and toaster comment, I think you've missed the point. They want to be able to install third party apps and unlock their phones for use with other carriers without voiding their warranty. Is that really so unreasonable?

Fast food firm fields Sith sandwich

Mozzerella cheese according to the site I found when I went looking.

It's mozzerella. It actually looks rather tasty to me.