It's quite possible...

...to make a Skype call over a good dial-up connection of say, 48,000bps. Granted there's a comically large delay, but it's just about, barely, will-do-in-a-pinch possible.

"The problem is that all of the ad agencies require a unique id as a minimum."

There must be some that don't. Angry Birds didn't require that until recently. Sure you can't make up a number unique to the installation (as opposed to the device) and use that instead?

"But an algorithm is an invented method of doing something"

An algorithm is any iterative mathematical formula that uses its output as part of the input for the next iteration, if you wish to be pedantic.

It's still math, and allowing software patents has still fucked the system up. So you can put in a whole load of hard work making a different implementation of the same algorithm? Isn't that a good thing? We wouldn't have the PC if software patents had been anywhere near as pervasive in the late 70s/early 80s as they are now. That's a whole industry that's appeared, and all because IBM could copyright but not patent the IBM PC BIOS.

These days, Compaq would have been dragged into the court and bankrupted by lawyer fees and reparations so fast their collective feet wouldn't have hit the floor until they were dumped on the street without a shirt on the backs. We'd likely still be paying Commodore, Atari or Sinclair ridiculous prices per megabyte for the privilege of a hard disk on our welded-shut and completely incompatible home computers, and the very idea you could install the same software on three different computers from three different competing manufacturers would probably be scoffed at.

You might consider software patents to be advantageous, but the costs really outweigh the benefits. Just look at the cold war situation the IT industry is in right now, where if you don't have nukes^Wsoftware patents, you might as well bend over and beg the established players to use lube first.

I suppose an alternative idea...

...would be if you paid for the cell and it acted like a public hotspot. The provider(s) you're contracted with could offer to re-imburse you a certain percentage of anybody else's calls routed through your cell. You get a potential for a little money earner, the mobile providers get lots and lots of little cells about the place for comparitively little investment, and (in theory) everyone is a happy bunny. Sort of like how solar panels on your roof can be used to pump any excess 'leccy back into the grid and pay you for it.

Still, right now yes I would pay (a small amount) for a device to give guaranteed coverage (to me, not everybody) within the four walls of my house. From what I'm aware you're not "paying twice" like some people are stating. You just pay the usual amount. You already have an Internet connection at home (or at least, I assume most commentards here do), and it's not like one compressed-to-buggery duplex audio stream is going to impact much on even a poor broadband connection. Are you "paying twice" to use Skype Out?

Which makes me think. Why can't a smartphone with wifi use the wifi to talk to the operator?

+1 for truth

It's funny because it's oh so true.

Tesco

Tesco's strategy is to spam everywhere with stores, even if those stores don't make a particularly huge amount of money. Why?

Because once a Tesco is there, it becomes much more difficult for anybody else to get a start-up going. Why bother shopping anywhere else, when there's a Tesco just around the corner?

Sneaky eh?

"However, Tesco don't push their brands 'over' their competior brands"

Been to a Tesco lately? Have a look at the positioning of the products on the shelves.

You could buy Red Bull at £1-something for a 250ml can. Or, directly above it, a litre bottle of Tesco Kx for a quid. It's the same all over the store.

"This is Kemi, north Finland."

And this is an ex mining village in the North West of England. You'll find a similar thing happens here, partly because we know our neighbours. The only worries you might have are the occasional smackhead scouting the garages on their way past to get to the next village and their latest fix.

Problem is the Internet is not like some semi-rural village that only got 3G a little while ago and has more cows and horses than phone masts. When it's just as easy for someone from a bad part of Manchester to open your door as someone from a few doors down, you'd lock your door too!

And analogies are still bullshit.

Nice selective quoting.

However my original post is right up there. You forgot about the "by simple HTML or CSS hacks" bit.

Murdoch's paywall isn't a paywall. It's a vain hope that everyone's browsers comform to Murdoch's rules. Guess what? They don't!

I'm sure the old Digger could start getting litigous. Start throwing his weight around and punishing someone for daring to be clever. Or, alternatively, he could get someone to rustle up a paywall, as opposed to a joke. Stops the problem at its source then, y'see.

The quality of free newspapers...

...is quite high compared to such illustrious paid publications as The Sun and the Daily Mail.

My hollerin' and squealin'...

...is for Murdoch's benefit, surprisingly enough. I'm frankly quite happy that his publications are going behind paywalls, as I don't read any of them anyway.

Trying to paint me as some freetarded spoiled child is not going to work. I haven't demanded anybody take their paywall down. Not even implied it. Go look up and read my posts again. What is it I'm suggesting? Not "let people read articles for free", more like "fix your shit because people WILL read it for free."

You can squeal and holler and stamp your feet if you like. Fact is this world is not some giant Amish community. The hippy-dippy kumbaya approach doesn't work in the real world, and when you're attached to a network that's rapidly trying to include all seven billion people on this planet then people will circumvent moronically designed paywalls. Hoping that the government will get involved and start slicing people's hands off is just plain sadistic when you could just fix the problem with your badly designed site!

"who cares whether it's built using hardware, firmware, software, or a combination?"

Because you might as well try and patent e=mc^2 if you're going to patent software? It's math. Algorithms. Really shouldn't be patentable because they come so thick and fast that allowing them has flooded the USPTO (and other patent offices) with so much gunk that they have no choice but to approve first and worry about it later.

That and would you really like a world where it's possible to say "e=mc^2. And any usage of that equation shall be chargeable at $5USD per instance, because you're doing it on a computer"? Well, right now, we are living in that world and the constant, ever-increasing sue-balls being thrown around are a symptom of this disease.

Seriously, software has been copyrightable since the dawn of computing. That's protection enough, but some companies and some lawyers want to have copyright AND patent protection on something that should never have been patentable in the first place.

Re: What's yours is mine too

"In some societies locks are not necessary because there is no theft."

[citation needed]

"Your argument is that because the locks are inadequate, you are entitled to the contents of the house."

No. However what I will say is that under UK law, if a front door is left open and you walk in, you cannot be charged with breaking and entering. Despite that though, all analogies are bullshit and I do wish you'd come up with an argument instead.

"You've pissed in the well and everyone has to drink it."

I have? I didn't make a site with such piss poor security that anybody with a browser extension can bypass the paywall without it even nearly being a hack. WSJ could install Drupal or Wordpress and have better security!

Besides, this is the Internet, not some Amish community. Having a website with more holes in it than a colander is idiocy of the highest order, and my original point stands: Punishing the writers of these extensions would merely be shooting the messenger. It's not dealing with the problem at all, which is a paywall that doesn't do shit. According to some articles, you don't even need a browser extension for fuxache. Read http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-read-the-wsj-for-free-online-2009-6 to see what I mean!

Whatever my opinion of news sites going behind paywalls, the fact is this is a stupid move by WSJ and any other news site that works in a similar fashion. Fix it, Murdoch, or next time this happens it won't be a developer writing an extension. It'll be someone from Nigeria scraping your entire bloody site and putting it on the Amazon Bookstore!

But hey, keep downvoting me. Keep on loading them magazines up and firing. Keep on ignoring the issue. Whatever you do, don't bother actually putting those articles behind a proper authentication system.

PC Gaming sector

That would be the businesses that find it perfectly acceptable to install layer upon layer of malware onto your computer, slowing your machine down with needless bullshit and all under the guise of "anti-piracy", right?

PC owner here, by the way. If it has compulsory Steam installation, is made by EA or Ubisoft or anything similar, then it goes straight back on the shelf. Couldn't give a shit about the reviews. It's a toy. I can live without it.

Amusing to see many of these such games being ripped and torrented within days of release though.

"Play FPS games via P2P"

How else do you expect to play them? Someone has to be the server, unless of course you're paying silly amounts of money for your own co-lo box or getting locked into some publisher-owned-server deal that can be switched off whenever the sequel comes out. Then who's the mug?

I don't mind the ads.

What I do mind is anything other than "Internet Access" required to deliver them. That includes phone state and identity, and definitely includes location awareness. Also SMS sending/receiving, being able to read contact data, and the numerous other permissions that some apps require for no good reason at all.

Your right to a return on your work does not trump my right to privacy, and I will take active measures to defend myself. If you don't want your app being used by people with adblockers, then don't make your app require stupid permission levels. Simples!

Or to paraphrase a certain Cupertinian businessman: "Change your app's permissions. Not that big a deal."

Dirty Cheaters!

And if Sonic 3's annoyingly difficult level select was proving annoying, you could try this:

Start Sonic 2 up.

Enable level select + whatever else.

Rip the cart out.

Insert Sonic 3.

Press reset.

Tada, Sonic 3 with cheats enabled. Well, presuming you didn't blow the Megadrive up, though I never did manage to break anything by ripping a cart out. I discovered this way before the official cheat was discovered, and most miffed that magazines wouldn't print it. Tsh, liability issues. Wimps!

Mmm, I likes me that blue kool aid

Two different games really. Mario was a traditional platformer, with puzzle and exploration elements.

Sonic on the other hand, while it had exploration elements, was more of a racing game. Asides the collection of Chaos Emeralds, the whole point of Sonic was to see how fast you could do a level. If you were skilled at the game, it was entirely possible to complete some levels in mere seconds. However you had to know exactly when to jump, where to land for the next jump, how to land so you rolled perfectly down a slope or hit a spring in just the right place...

Yeah. Two different games. You might as well compare Zelda to Virtua Racing.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up (and an Up to be sure)

You were supposed to do it before the screen flashed white, as Sonic was barrelling toward the screen and busting the Sega logo all over the place. Still damned tricky though, hence my other post here on how to cheat at enabling the cheat!

Also Sonic & Knuckles + any random game = fun.

*nix is almost as silly with its messages.

"You don't exist. Go away."

Seriously?

"Y'all need a license from google for an API key."

For the app, yes. The developer signs that, not the hardware manufacturer nor the OS vendor.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

Nowhere in there do I see "you can use this on Android, but not on Meego, and definitely not on iOS or that Microsoft thing." Now, if you were on about Android Market or the Maps app (as opposed to API), then yes I would agree. Google would be most upset about those things running anywhere other than approved platforms. However, nothing there stops developers releasing their own apps for Ovi, Bada, Amazon App Store or whatever else they like.

The whole point of Google's APIs is that anybody on any platform can access them, shirley?

Was about to say a similar thing.

I mean on one of the first lectures at uni, the prof said something like "say what you like about Microsoft, they have been the one company that has achieved Bill Gates' dream of putting a PC in every home."

I just had to put my hand up and mention "uhm, wasn't that Compaq, who first reverse-engineered the PC BIOS, thus opening up a simple product into an entire industry made of many different manufacturers all wanting us to spend money on their products, thus enabling the rapid explosion of the PC as a platform, the success of which Microsoft simply rode the coat tails of and claimed responsibility for?"

His response was "Shh, we don't mention the war."

Funny guy.

"Spawn of satin."

Silk?

Velvet?

Corduroy?

Velcro?

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Indeed.

What the hell is with these cross-site-login things anyway?

Heat powered fridge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

Going from propane to coal gas needs but a change of gas jets.

Given that the 2001 UK census data is over 30 terabytes...

...methinks they'd probably still be downloading it now.

Now that'd be one hell of a torrent.

Update:

New firmware. Few hundred megabytes of shite downloaded.

...and the Tab tells me I'm still running 2.2. Hang on?

Spoke too soon!

Just tried today. "New Firmware Available".

Will give it a go shortly. Time to see whether it works or bricks, I guess!

Not for me it isn't.

Kies is either not working, or Samsung are just being arses. Mind you, it might be because I bought the thing from PC World. In any case, it's a 3G-equipped model GT-P1000, takes any SIM, isn't locked to any particular carrier...

...and still doesn't have Gingerbread.

Baseband version P1000XXJK5, build number FROYO.XWJJ7, if that helps any. Running Ubuntu right now so can't be arsed rebooting into Win7 to run Kies, but I remember the last three digits that Kies reports being CPW, which others seem to reckon means "Carphone Warehouse". Wut?

For linking to torrents?

Seriously?

Eww, 3.0 UI

It's awful. Really. Why does it suit a tablet better than 2.x?

Plus the 3G version IS a phone, or at least contains the chipset for it. Right now I have a dialler that lets me make calls. As I understand it, Honeycomb has no dialler.

So a reduced functionality, and a UI that just reminds me of Microsoft when they went all Fisher Price. No thanks.