Programmer, Property Tycoon, Media Mogul
I just saw one of those “authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra” type Work Places adverts. The opening line went something along the lines of:
The biggest myth is that employees are alone and unprotected, but that’s just not true. They are not alone!
Read between the lines. Tell me why I laughed!
[Updated quote on July 16th at 11:52]
Announced in November 2006, the Neo 1973, named after the year in which Marty Cooper invented the mobile phone, was released to the public today.
Unlike other mobile phones on the market, OpenMoko actively encourage owners to hack away on the device, going so far as to provide an advanced kit for an extra US$150 including a debug board, tools, an extra battery, MicroSD card and USB cable, and a rugged carry box to put them all in.
If you opt for the standard phone at US$300, you’ll get a similar package to any other phone on the market today: a battery, carry pouch, lanyard, 512Mb MicroSD card and USB cable. Standard features of the phone include:
While their site currently only shows a handful of screen shots, the interface seems slick. There are a number of “commercial” type videos featuring the Neo 1973, but none seem to show off the interface in action. Hopefully this will be available soon.The most interesting aspect of the phone, however, is the way OpenMoko support an open source philosophy. The hardware has been specifically chosen based on availability and completeness of documentation, and the phone comes with a debug port with complete access to JTAG, and a serial console!
This, coupled with the above mentioned encouragement to “take the casing apart and get at the PCB” shows a manufacturer that embraces and encourages a community of users that will hack and improve on the device, both offering hardware and software related contributions. To aid the creation of software, the device runs on a Linux kernel, uses the GNU C library, the X window system, and the GTK+ toolkit.
In a nutshell - it’s based on open source software and hardware, so the possibilities are, quite probably, endless! Or in the words of the creator: “OpenMoko is Mobile FOSS“.
To those of you that are hopping up and down itching to get your hands on one, there is one caution on OpenMoko’s wiki: “Currently it is not suitable for users. The state of the software at the moment is pre-alpha. If you order a Neo1973, DO NOT expect to be able to use it as an everyday phone for several months.”
For that reason, and because the consumer release version (the GTA02) includes 802.11 b/g WiFi, SMedia 3362 Graphics Accelerator, 2 3D Accelerometers, 256MB Flash and and upgraded processor, I’ll be waiting until October to try one out.
I just received a call from Anna, who was calling from Lifestyle Choice (or something like that) because my number had been specially selected for some offer, blah…
When she finished her intro, I calmly asked “where did you get my number from?” and she promptly hung up!
Now I realise that she doesn’t want to waste her time on someone who’s not going to get her to meet targets, but does the client employing her call centre really want her to be rude to the public and give them a bad reputation? This might be a moot point given I don’t remember the exact name of the company she was calling on behalf of, but if anyone else has recently received a call offering a free holiday and accommodation from a company that has Lifestyle in its name, please let me know. I’d like to let them know how pissed off I am. Not because they called me, but because they hung up on me.
I found this nugget of information at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) web site while trying to find a way to pay royalties separately from obtaining the media.
Downloading a movie without paying for it is no different than walking into a store and stealing a DVD off the shelf.
Erm, “no different”? I’m not a lawyer, but I think it’s very different.
Downloading a movie without paying for it is copyright infringement if you use the movie in a way not intended or authorised by the copyright holder. Walking into a store and stealing a DVD off the shelf is theft of material goods.
Downloading a movie without paying for it does not cause a financial loss to the owner. Walking into a store and stealing a DVD off the shelf does cause financial loss to the owner.
While I fully understand that copyright holders, rightfully, expect to be paid, or at least asked for permission, before their property is used, the use of FUD to distort the truth and control, confuse and scare people is not the right way to go about it.
I’m not the first to suggest this, but rather than trying desperately to stop movie distribution over the Internet, the MPAA and movie studios should be embracing this technology and using it to their benefit. People who download movies don’t require pretty packaging, DVD media or shipping. What I’d like to be able to do is to download a movie legally.
Imagine I’m at work, and decide I want to watch Epic Movie tonight. I could simply download the movie to my computer at home using bittorrent and nip over to a web site to pay the royalties. When I get home, the movie’s ready for me to watch and paid for. I can stream it to my TV or burn it onto a CD or DVD and watch it with my DVD player.
The (legal) options right now are to buy the movie, rent it, wait for it to come on TV or download movies that use some form of digital restrictions management (DRM) to stop me from using the media in the way I choose. Examples of DRM include only allowing you to watch the movie from the computer you downloaded it with, only watching it 3 times, having to run Microsoft Windows to view the movie, etc.
There are a few services that provide DRM free content, but the media can only be downloaded from their server, which means I don’t get the higher speeds and availability associated with distributed, peer-to-peer downloading.
Opponents might suggest that people will download movies and not pay for them, but that’s already happening. If you give people the choice to do the right thing, those that want to, will. Those that want it for free wouldn’t buy the DVD in the store anyway.
So tell me - anyone know how I can pay royalties for movies?