"There's just no evidence that MJ contains any spyware, or that it is snooping around your hard drive and sending your personal information to anyone."
You're still missing the point, Rose. We don't know of any other phone number that MagicJack blocks other than freeconference.com. You are wanting MagickJack to put on their television ads, web site, pre-sales chat line, and everywhere else they promote themselves that they don't allow calls to this scam conference calling service? That is ridiculous.
We also don't know if any mainstream carriers like AT&T are blocking numbers, I bet they are (for one reason or another).
Not only does it needlessly take away from the practical truth that they allow unlimited calls to any US/Canadian number, but it essentially advertises this bogus "free" conference service. Even if there were 100 such numbers that they block, for various reasons, it still would be 99.99998% of the numbers available in those two countries (assuming at least 500 million numbers).
As for your less-than-direct online chat with MJ, most people think of "conference calling" as a 3-way call they initiate on their own phone or a legitimate 3rd-party service. In which case, their answer to you was just fine. I'm really happy to see that a direct question about a specific service is answered correctly by the online chat people.
I don't use MagicJack because I don't like the USB-connection scheme, installing software, keeping my computer on all the time, and (newly discovered) the idea they might put advertising on my screen. However, it seems to be a great option for people who want to use conventional phone equipment and pay even less than Skype for their calls. I simply can't fault them for blocking access to numbers like freeconference.com which have usury connection fees, even if at the same time they are advertising "call anyone in the US or Canada."
Why aren't you more steamed at freeconference.com for not disclosing their business model and the fact that some networks "aren't compatible" with them?
False advertising? Let me get this straight. The "free" conferencing call service Mike wants to use is -- by his own admission -- a scam which is bilking phone companies out of perhaps millions of dollars, thanks to a loophole in a law that was intended for an entirely different purpose. The MagicJack owner has taken the time to respond here and explain that firstly their company isn't subject to the regulations that would require them to connect you to this number, and secondly that they don't connect you precisely because they are trying to offer an extremely low-cost service to their customers. I see the "free" conferencing call service Mike refers to as analogous to those scams which try to get you to call certain offshore numbers that cost hundreds of dollars. The only difference is that it's the phone companies being bilked, not the end consumer. If MagicJack was blocking calls to such offshore numbers, we'd be hailing them as protecting consumers from bogus charges.
If you ask me, anyone who is using FreeConference.com is simply aiding and abetting the unethical business policies of that company. I have no sympathy for them or anyone who's trying to get a free ride. TANSTAAFL.
Let's say there is a hundred or so phone numbers that MagicJack won't connect you to. That is a tiny, less-than-half-a-percent of the phone numbers it WILL work for. I don't think it's reasonable for them to have a page of "fine print" in their ads that goes into the fact it won't connect you to scam services like freeconference.com, etc.
It seems to me MagicJack makes good on its promises and while it's not a service I would use, I don't think they are being dishonest, nor do I have any sympathy for Mike or the point he's trying to make in this post. It should be entitled, "Can a Phone Service Provider Block Calls to A Small Number of Scam Service Numbers that Will Charge So Much Money to the Phone Service Provider that it Can't Sustain Its Business Model?"
You're missing the point. If Apple's going to block apps based on obscenity, which is their choice, then it's hypocrisy to ban something because it can access The Kama Sutra (a classic) while it approves of "Chat Rooms," which seems to lack any redeeming value.
[Also, it strikes me you're on a high horse of a different kind.]
If you want a great example of Apple's hypocrisy, try downloading the "Chat Rooms" app. This is a completely irresponsible chat app which asks no registration, does not let you block/ignore offensive users, has no private messaging abilities, no mechanism to report abuse, an easily circumvented "bad words" filter, and does not let you reserve a username. Indeed it doesn't even prevent you from specifying a username already in use. The result is complete anarchy and filth, as there is no accountability on anyone's part.
At any moment, you can log into one of the eight rooms and watch every disgusting, vile, and illegal thing you can imagine. While the room topics are such things as "Sports" and "Finance" the actual chat is 100% sex, racism, spam, drugs, and perversion. It's not unusual to see 13yo kids (or at least those claiming to be) sending out their IM addresses, email addresses and even phone numbers in the open.
It makes a Yahoo chat room seem like a Sunday school social.
The very design of the application -- oblivious to lessons learned from 20 years of other public chat rooms -- is what enables this kind of behavior. Sure, chat rooms are never completely safe, but this one has so few controls, it's criminally negligent.
Complaints to Apple have been ignored, and the review I wrote about this was not approved. (Indeed, there seem to be suspiciously few published reviews given the number of downloads.)
Here's an example where Apple is continuing to distribute an app which -- while merely annoying to adults -- is patently dangerous to the millions of minors with iPod Touches.
It's hypocrisy because Apple can apparently "think ahead" in the case of an eBook reader, but can't see the obvious problems in an utterly unrestricted and unredeemable social app like this.
I started out my professional life as a newspaper reporter. This story reminds me of two anecdotes from that time.
- My first "real" job as a journalist was writing for my local newspaper, I don't think I was older than 18. The editor took my under his wing there. In addition to giving me an actual ID card for the paper, he presented me a certificate, printed on yellow stock [yellow journalism], labeled "Golden Typewriter." The certificate imparted all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of a journalist unto me. The joke about the certificate was that it was completely unnecessary.
- Later on as a cop beat reporter at a newspaper in Georgia, I was chatting with one of my police sources at the station one afternoon. Our talk turned to work and at one point he looked at me and said, "Don't you guys have to be licensed or something?" I smiled and said, "Nope."
Of course this was well before the dawn of the Web. Nevertheless, we should work hard to ensure that "citizen journalist" remains a redundant term.
No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, it's true. However, the woman's actions make it clear that her intent was to get close to and injure the girl in a way that was only possible by deception.
She deliberately posed as an attractive young man. She deliberately romanced/courted the young girl under this false identity in order to gain her trust and intimacy. She deliberately inflicted emotional pain and told the girl, "The world would be a better place without you."
Now, anyone hearing that from someone they were in love with would suffer. And it wouldn't be the first time that someone took their life over a breakup. The difference here is this online persona was created with the specific intent to gather information that would not be possible using one's actual identity, and to magnify the emotional impact of the sick game she was playing. Would Megan have been as upset if it was Sarah Drew or her mother trash-talking her? No. And this is why they created the fake profile.
If common sense morality doesn't tell you this is wrong, I seriously doubt an obscure statute or paragraph in a TOS is going to stop you. It doesn't matter that she didn't read/accept it; last time I checked, ignorance of the law is not a defense.... and you DO have to click the box that says you accept these terms when you create an account.
No one *has* to use MySpace. No one forces you to click the "I accept the terms" box.
The Drews used MySpace as a weapon. Perhaps it was more effective than imagined, but they certainly were out to get revenge. I don't think there's any question about that, no matter how much they try to minimize it.
As for the Anonymous Coward who rolls out 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), it seems to me that "knowingly or recklessly" causing bolidly injury or death certainly applies here. Again, this was not something they could have pulled off without the fake profile.
There is no slippery slope. It doesn't turn "everyone" into a criminal. If you don't like a site's TOS, don't use that site. There is a difference between posting an off-topic comment and orchestrating an emotional attack on someone that leads to their death.
Lori Drew is facing potential prison time because her TOS violations were *materially significant* (misrepresenting who she was, harassing another member) to the tragedy that ultimately occurred. She could not have gotten into that young girl's head without pretending to be who she was not, and there would not have been a suicide if it weren't for the cruel harassment inflicted. There is a REAL link between the violation of TOS and the HARM caused to others. It's hard to imagine how having the middle name "Ralph" could injure anyone.
Sure we all hate long legal agreements, we all click through TOS checkboxes, etc. but we don't all use websites with malicious intent like Lori Drew did. If this is the only crime they can find to prosecute this evil woman, then I say by all means, throw the book at her for it.
She didn't become a criminal by simply breaking TOS... she became a criminal by intentionally and successfully f***king with a young girls's mind, and she broke MySpace TOS as a necessary step in her plot to do so.
Her use of MySpace therefore was not innocent and the TOS were not trivial. Re-posting her lawyer's pathetic rationalization like this is simply making TechDirt appear tone-deaf to the real issues here.
I'm not sure what the "bad precedent" is here. This isn't SecondLife where the characters created are assumed to be fantasy. MySpace has a terms of service that was violated.
Parts of that terms of service include not using it to harass other members (8.2) and not pretending to be someone you're not (8.14) ... this is just for starters... Who knows if these terms were preceisely the same as they were when the crime was committed, but I'm sure they were substantially the same.
Now, basically what MySpace is saying is you're authorized to use the service if you follow these rules. If you don't, you're not allowed to use the service. That's where the unauthorized access and fraud business comes in. To my thinking, that's perfectly valid as a legal premise to go forward.
Finally, let me remind you Capone was caught on the basis of tax evasion, not murder, extortion, etc. I think it's perfectly valid to introduce the suicide as this shows the intent (mental distress) and results of their actions.
What is so hurtin' about PDF? I'm complaining about this because the
experience SUX even on my 22" monitor and quad-core processor.
I'll go into some more detail about why iPaper sucks:
It's not just smartphone users who are stiffed. How about all those with
disabilities who rely on accessibility software to read or enlarge type?
What if I want to save an important document like this? Sorry, you've
got to go to a web site and register for an account!
What if the iPaper guys go belly up? What are you going to do with all
those iPaper docs? They'll be gone or unusable.
Like many Flash apps, this one doesn't support near-universal UI
concepts like arrow keys or pressing the space bar to scroll.
If there was a passage I wanted to copy and paste for comment, I can't
do it.
It's buggy as hell. You can easily click around a few times and mess up
the UI to the point it doesn't know what page it's on to what it's showing,
to the point where the browser itself has to be completely shut down.
iPaper outstandingly poor at large documents, bogging down and flipping
out.
Flash MAY be approaching open source, the iPaper format is 100%
proprietary. PDF *is* open. There are a large variety of viewers on every
platform. Don't minimize the benefit of having information in an ubiquitous
format. Isn't being able to read this letter on anything from an iPhone to a
Palm Treo to a Blackberry desirable, beneficial, and enlightened?
Information when you need it?
Finally, as I said before, it's practically unreadable at the size and
resolution presented here.
Every time I see an iPaper used I groan because I know it's going to be a
very frustrating experience. Yeah it's neat to see the page inline like a
graphic... but in every other aspect it's a usability nightmare.
In fact you could pretty much get the benefit of iPaper by taking a screen
shot of the page and linking that to the PDF.
It's not a Flash issue... Flash is great in certain circumstances. Just not
not this one.
I don't like the ruling either but it's not as though the court's logic is that flawed. "Fair Use" is about incorporating small portions of copyrighted work in a new work for the purpose of commentary, etc. Google's image search is just a collection of pics from other people.
The argument that really gave me a guffaw was, "If the "artist" behind an image doesn't want it found in Google, don't put it online."
It is like saying, if you don't want your car stolen, don't park it outside? I mean sure, that's an effective way to prevent most theft, but destroys the utility of a car if you can't park at the mall or a restaurant, etc. Stealing is illegal, and I should be confident that if someone does steal my car, they will be punished once they're caught and convicted.
As for unapproved inline hotlinking, a lot of people think it SHOULD be criminal, as it steals not only the creative work, but also the bandwidth of the original webserver.
The only valid argument here is that the benefit/utility of Google images (and perhaps also hotlinking) outweighs the drawbacks.
Are PDFs too good for TechDirt? Or is there some reason why you don't want people with non-Flash-enabled browsers (such as smart phones) to read this stuff?
Not only that but this document is embedded in such a way that you can't "fullscreen" ... instead you have to reduce it to an almost unreadable, nastilly pixellated size.
Please don't use this iPaper crap again for your documents. PDF viewers are based on an open standard and available for far more platforms.
Mike forgets the biggest reason not to like this format -- that you're getting pre-compressed music -- and picks up on this, "they're so small you'll lose them!" argument.
Personally, I like the small form factor, the lack of DRM, and the fact the cards can be re-used. A lot of other sentences are head-scratchers, too.
- "Not a new format at all?" Well, MP3 isn't new, but buying music on a microSD card is.
- "most folks know that removable storage is annoyingly inconvenient compared to just using a blank disc and moving around the music you already have." Um, ok, what is a blank disc if not removeable media? And what kind of blank disc are you talking about? A floppy can't hold even one song. A CD holds a whole 700MB (a fraction of a music collection), and a DVD, dual-sided, a whole 9GB. That's if you wanna sit around and wait for the burn process to complete, a time-consuming and arduous task even with the fastest burners. If I didn't have a network handy (or if I had a huge amount of files to move) I would probably use -- a flash drive/SD card! Those microSD cards are coming out in 32GB sizes and soon much larger.
- "I don't want to have to remember to put a specific microSD card into my phone if I want to hear a band -- especially when it's ridiculously easy for me to just transfer music from my computer to my phone instead." Hm. I suppose you COULD walk around with a microSD "wallet" full of your purchased music, but I assume most people will COPY the music to their device and use the card as backup or erase it and use it for storage.
I think this *physical* format will indeed be more convenient and appealling for a lot of users who will be able to walk into a store, buy music, and listen to it immediately on their phone. (But sadly, not their iPods and iPhones, until Apple gets a clue and starts adding a microSD slot to those devices.)
The iPhone: No MMS multimedia messages, no video recording, no PAM tethering, no unauthorized applications, no [legal] unlocking, no choice of providers. = No Sale
Don't forget that Prince recently gave away one of his albums in a move that didn't make a lot of record execs happy. I highly doubt this has anything to do with money. Maybe it has more to do with how "Nothing Compares 2u" was butchered on the compilation? Who knows. He has the right to do what he wants with his licenses. And the folks in Norway would have the right to cover his stuff if they paid the license fees, but they didn't.
I don't know enough about the specs of the OLPC to say this affirmatively, but they could potentially be using them to watch movies and become film buffs.
"Getting into exactly how it works and the reasoning behind it isn't worth mentioning here."
Oh yes, we wouldn't want to get into the reasons why the laws are the way they are before criticizing them.
Lazy.
Re:
"There's just no evidence that MJ contains any spyware, or that it is snooping around your hard drive and sending your personal information to anyone."
http://askbobrankin.com/magic_jack_good_or_evil.html
Re: Re: RE: Still Lying
You're still missing the point, Rose. We don't know of any other phone number that MagicJack blocks other than freeconference.com. You are wanting MagickJack to put on their television ads, web site, pre-sales chat line, and everywhere else they promote themselves that they don't allow calls to this scam conference calling service? That is ridiculous.
We also don't know if any mainstream carriers like AT&T are blocking numbers, I bet they are (for one reason or another).
Not only does it needlessly take away from the practical truth that they allow unlimited calls to any US/Canadian number, but it essentially advertises this bogus "free" conference service. Even if there were 100 such numbers that they block, for various reasons, it still would be 99.99998% of the numbers available in those two countries (assuming at least 500 million numbers).
As for your less-than-direct online chat with MJ, most people think of "conference calling" as a 3-way call they initiate on their own phone or a legitimate 3rd-party service. In which case, their answer to you was just fine. I'm really happy to see that a direct question about a specific service is answered correctly by the online chat people.
I don't use MagicJack because I don't like the USB-connection scheme, installing software, keeping my computer on all the time, and (newly discovered) the idea they might put advertising on my screen. However, it seems to be a great option for people who want to use conventional phone equipment and pay even less than Skype for their calls. I simply can't fault them for blocking access to numbers like freeconference.com which have usury connection fees, even if at the same time they are advertising "call anyone in the US or Canada."
Why aren't you more steamed at freeconference.com for not disclosing their business model and the fact that some networks "aren't compatible" with them?
Re: Re: Dur dur dur
False advertising? Let me get this straight. The "free" conferencing call service Mike wants to use is -- by his own admission -- a scam which is bilking phone companies out of perhaps millions of dollars, thanks to a loophole in a law that was intended for an entirely different purpose. The MagicJack owner has taken the time to respond here and explain that firstly their company isn't subject to the regulations that would require them to connect you to this number, and secondly that they don't connect you precisely because they are trying to offer an extremely low-cost service to their customers. I see the "free" conferencing call service Mike refers to as analogous to those scams which try to get you to call certain offshore numbers that cost hundreds of dollars. The only difference is that it's the phone companies being bilked, not the end consumer. If MagicJack was blocking calls to such offshore numbers, we'd be hailing them as protecting consumers from bogus charges.
If you ask me, anyone who is using FreeConference.com is simply aiding and abetting the unethical business policies of that company. I have no sympathy for them or anyone who's trying to get a free ride. TANSTAAFL.
Let's say there is a hundred or so phone numbers that MagicJack won't connect you to. That is a tiny, less-than-half-a-percent of the phone numbers it WILL work for. I don't think it's reasonable for them to have a page of "fine print" in their ads that goes into the fact it won't connect you to scam services like freeconference.com, etc.
It seems to me MagicJack makes good on its promises and while it's not a service I would use, I don't think they are being dishonest, nor do I have any sympathy for Mike or the point he's trying to make in this post. It should be entitled, "Can a Phone Service Provider Block Calls to A Small Number of Scam Service Numbers that Will Charge So Much Money to the Phone Service Provider that it Can't Sustain Its Business Model?"
Re: Re: Obscenity
You're missing the point. If Apple's going to block apps based on obscenity, which is their choice, then it's hypocrisy to ban something because it can access The Kama Sutra (a classic) while it approves of "Chat Rooms," which seems to lack any redeeming value.
[Also, it strikes me you're on a high horse of a different kind.]
Obscenity
If you want a great example of Apple's hypocrisy, try downloading the "Chat Rooms" app. This is a completely irresponsible chat app which asks no registration, does not let you block/ignore offensive users, has no private messaging abilities, no mechanism to report abuse, an easily circumvented "bad words" filter, and does not let you reserve a username. Indeed it doesn't even prevent you from specifying a username already in use. The result is complete anarchy and filth, as there is no accountability on anyone's part.
At any moment, you can log into one of the eight rooms and watch every disgusting, vile, and illegal thing you can imagine. While the room topics are such things as "Sports" and "Finance" the actual chat is 100% sex, racism, spam, drugs, and perversion. It's not unusual to see 13yo kids (or at least those claiming to be) sending out their IM addresses, email addresses and even phone numbers in the open.
It makes a Yahoo chat room seem like a Sunday school social.
The very design of the application -- oblivious to lessons learned from 20 years of other public chat rooms -- is what enables this kind of behavior. Sure, chat rooms are never completely safe, but this one has so few controls, it's criminally negligent.
Complaints to Apple have been ignored, and the review I wrote about this was not approved. (Indeed, there seem to be suspiciously few published reviews given the number of downloads.)
Here's an example where Apple is continuing to distribute an app which -- while merely annoying to adults -- is patently dangerous to the millions of minors with iPod Touches.
It's hypocrisy because Apple can apparently "think ahead" in the case of an eBook reader, but can't see the obvious problems in an utterly unrestricted and unredeemable social app like this.
Journalists, citizen and otherwise
I started out my professional life as a newspaper reporter. This story reminds me of two anecdotes from that time.
- My first "real" job as a journalist was writing for my local newspaper, I don't think I was older than 18. The editor took my under his wing there. In addition to giving me an actual ID card for the paper, he presented me a certificate, printed on yellow stock [yellow journalism], labeled "Golden Typewriter." The certificate imparted all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of a journalist unto me. The joke about the certificate was that it was completely unnecessary.
- Later on as a cop beat reporter at a newspaper in Georgia, I was chatting with one of my police sources at the station one afternoon. Our talk turned to work and at one point he looked at me and said, "Don't you guys have to be licensed or something?" I smiled and said, "Nope."
Of course this was well before the dawn of the Web. Nevertheless, we should work hard to ensure that "citizen journalist" remains a redundant term.
It's not just a cute little ad...
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A349745
Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't be ridiculous
> "[...]don't comment if you haven't followed the lawsuit."
Hey, maybe you should put that into the TechDirt TOS ;)
Re: Re: Don't be ridiculous
No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, it's true. However, the woman's actions make it clear that her intent was to get close to and injure the girl in a way that was only possible by deception.
She deliberately posed as an attractive young man. She deliberately romanced/courted the young girl under this false identity in order to gain her trust and intimacy. She deliberately inflicted emotional pain and told the girl, "The world would be a better place without you."
Now, anyone hearing that from someone they were in love with would suffer. And it wouldn't be the first time that someone took their life over a breakup. The difference here is this online persona was created with the specific intent to gather information that would not be possible using one's actual identity, and to magnify the emotional impact of the sick game she was playing. Would Megan have been as upset if it was Sarah Drew or her mother trash-talking her? No. And this is why they created the fake profile.
If common sense morality doesn't tell you this is wrong, I seriously doubt an obscure statute or paragraph in a TOS is going to stop you. It doesn't matter that she didn't read/accept it; last time I checked, ignorance of the law is not a defense.... and you DO have to click the box that says you accept these terms when you create an account.
No one *has* to use MySpace. No one forces you to click the "I accept the terms" box.
The Drews used MySpace as a weapon. Perhaps it was more effective than imagined, but they certainly were out to get revenge. I don't think there's any question about that, no matter how much they try to minimize it.
As for the Anonymous Coward who rolls out 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), it seems to me that "knowingly or recklessly" causing bolidly injury or death certainly applies here. Again, this was not something they could have pulled off without the fake profile.
There is no slippery slope. It doesn't turn "everyone" into a criminal. If you don't like a site's TOS, don't use that site. There is a difference between posting an off-topic comment and orchestrating an emotional attack on someone that leads to their death.
Don't be ridiculous
Lori Drew is facing potential prison time because her TOS violations were *materially significant* (misrepresenting who she was, harassing another member) to the tragedy that ultimately occurred. She could not have gotten into that young girl's head without pretending to be who she was not, and there would not have been a suicide if it weren't for the cruel harassment inflicted. There is a REAL link between the violation of TOS and the HARM caused to others. It's hard to imagine how having the middle name "Ralph" could injure anyone.
Sure we all hate long legal agreements, we all click through TOS checkboxes, etc. but we don't all use websites with malicious intent like Lori Drew did. If this is the only crime they can find to prosecute this evil woman, then I say by all means, throw the book at her for it.
She didn't become a criminal by simply breaking TOS... she became a criminal by intentionally and successfully f***king with a young girls's mind, and she broke MySpace TOS as a necessary step in her plot to do so.
Her use of MySpace therefore was not innocent and the TOS were not trivial. Re-posting her lawyer's pathetic rationalization like this is simply making TechDirt appear tone-deaf to the real issues here.
No joke here
I'm not sure what the "bad precedent" is here. This isn't SecondLife where the characters created are assumed to be fantasy. MySpace has a terms of service that was violated.
http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms
Parts of that terms of service include not using it to harass other members (8.2) and not pretending to be someone you're not (8.14) ... this is just for starters... Who knows if these terms were preceisely the same as they were when the crime was committed, but I'm sure they were substantially the same.
Now, basically what MySpace is saying is you're authorized to use the service if you follow these rules. If you don't, you're not allowed to use the service. That's where the unauthorized access and fraud business comes in. To my thinking, that's perfectly valid as a legal premise to go forward.
Finally, let me remind you Capone was caught on the basis of tax evasion, not murder, extortion, etc. I think it's perfectly valid to introduce the suicide as this shows the intent (mental distress) and results of their actions.
What is so hurtin' about PDF? I'm complaining about this because the experience SUX even on my 22" monitor and quad-core processor.
I'll go into some more detail about why iPaper sucks:
Every time I see an iPaper used I groan because I know it's going to be a very frustrating experience. Yeah it's neat to see the page inline like a graphic... but in every other aspect it's a usability nightmare.
In fact you could pretty much get the benefit of iPaper by taking a screen shot of the page and linking that to the PDF.
It's not a Flash issue... Flash is great in certain circumstances. Just not not this one.
I don't like the ruling either but it's not as though the court's logic is that flawed. "Fair Use" is about incorporating small portions of copyrighted work in a new work for the purpose of commentary, etc. Google's image search is just a collection of pics from other people.
The argument that really gave me a guffaw was, "If the "artist" behind an image doesn't want it found in Google, don't put it online."
It is like saying, if you don't want your car stolen, don't park it outside? I mean sure, that's an effective way to prevent most theft, but destroys the utility of a car if you can't park at the mall or a restaurant, etc. Stealing is illegal, and I should be confident that if someone does steal my car, they will be punished once they're caught and convicted.
As for unapproved inline hotlinking, a lot of people think it SHOULD be criminal, as it steals not only the creative work, but also the bandwidth of the original webserver.
The only valid argument here is that the benefit/utility of Google images (and perhaps also hotlinking) outweighs the drawbacks.
I really bleeping hate iPaper.
Are PDFs too good for TechDirt? Or is there some reason why you don't want people with non-Flash-enabled browsers (such as smart phones) to read this stuff?
Not only that but this document is embedded in such a way that you can't "fullscreen" ... instead you have to reduce it to an almost unreadable, nastilly pixellated size.
Please don't use this iPaper crap again for your documents. PDF viewers are based on an open standard and available for far more platforms.
I don't get this post.
Mike forgets the biggest reason not to like this format -- that you're getting pre-compressed music -- and picks up on this, "they're so small you'll lose them!" argument.
Personally, I like the small form factor, the lack of DRM, and the fact the cards can be re-used. A lot of other sentences are head-scratchers, too.
- "Not a new format at all?" Well, MP3 isn't new, but buying music on a microSD card is.
- "most folks know that removable storage is annoyingly inconvenient compared to just using a blank disc and moving around the music you already have." Um, ok, what is a blank disc if not removeable media? And what kind of blank disc are you talking about? A floppy can't hold even one song. A CD holds a whole 700MB (a fraction of a music collection), and a DVD, dual-sided, a whole 9GB. That's if you wanna sit around and wait for the burn process to complete, a time-consuming and arduous task even with the fastest burners. If I didn't have a network handy (or if I had a huge amount of files to move) I would probably use -- a flash drive/SD card! Those microSD cards are coming out in 32GB sizes and soon much larger.
- "I don't want to have to remember to put a specific microSD card into my phone if I want to hear a band -- especially when it's ridiculously easy for me to just transfer music from my computer to my phone instead." Hm. I suppose you COULD walk around with a microSD "wallet" full of your purchased music, but I assume most people will COPY the music to their device and use the card as backup or erase it and use it for storage.
I think this *physical* format will indeed be more convenient and appealling for a lot of users who will be able to walk into a store, buy music, and listen to it immediately on their phone. (But sadly, not their iPods and iPhones, until Apple gets a clue and starts adding a microSD slot to those devices.)
I suspect it had more to do with Walker's attitude once he was caught, and his willingness to work with law enforcement to use his talent for good.
The iPhone: No MMS multimedia messages, no video recording, no PAM tethering, no unauthorized applications, no [legal] unlocking, no choice of providers. = No Sale
Don't forget that Prince recently gave away one of his albums in a move that didn't make a lot of record execs happy. I highly doubt this has anything to do with money. Maybe it has more to do with how "Nothing Compares 2u" was butchered on the compilation? Who knows. He has the right to do what he wants with his licenses. And the folks in Norway would have the right to cover his stuff if they paid the license fees, but they didn't.
I don't know enough about the specs of the OLPC to say this affirmatively, but they could potentially be using them to watch movies and become film buffs.