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Censorship

Submission + - Amazon Wipes Kindle and account; won't say why. (bekkelund.net)

rtfa-troll writes: Thinking of giving someone a Kindle or other restricted tablet for Christmas? Maybe you should think again. Amazon reserves the right to destroy it's contents at any time and won't even explain why. At least this is what Martin Bekkelund is claiming in his blog posting which includes the contents of emails from Michael Murphy at Amazon's Executive Customer Relations with the classic quotes "Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action." and "we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts". How would you feel if your father in law's book collection suddenly disappeared from the kindle you bought him with no explanation? This story has been picked up by the UK Newspaper the Guardian although an Amazon sales rep claimed it was false to one commenter there The Guardian states that Amazon has refused to give any official comment so far. Even if this does turn out to be false, it's a good reminder of what can and will happen when DRM means that big media no longer has pirate copies to compete against. This kind of remote wipe is going to be difficult to avoid since both Microsoft and Apple also reserve the power to remotely wipe your device (though in Apple's case this is only ever known to have been used for security reasons and even Google tied Android tablets could be forced to install such a feature with a court order. Almost the only devices immune to this type of attack are third party (non Google integrated) Android tablets and Mer based tablets aimed at Linux hackers.
DRM

Submission + - Outlawed by Amazon DRM (bekkelund.net)

Pelekophori writes: From the article:

"A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation."

Comment Re:Small Market (Score 1) 284

(There is also no legal requirement to provide such Finnish-on-Finnish transcription service, so the availability of such special-needs subtitles is pretty much limited to some select shows produced by YLE, the local public broadcaster.)

Actually, there is, but it only affects YLE. They have to provide hearing-impaired subtitles to 60% of their Finnish and Swedish programming, and the required percentage grows by 10 percentage points each year until 100% of Finnish and Swedish programs need to subtitled in 2016.

Source: Law (Valtioneuvoston asetus televisio-ohjelmiin liitettävästä ääni- ja tekstityspalvelusta)

Graphics

Nvidia's Fermi Architecture Debuts; Nouveau Driver Already Working 70

crookedvulture writes Nvidia has lifted the curtain on reviews of its latest GPU architecture, which will be available first in the high-end GeForce GTX 680 graphics card. The underlying GK104 processor is much smaller than the equivalent AMD GPU, with fewer transistors, a narrower path to memory, and greatly simplified control logic that relies more heavily on Nvidia's compiler software. Despite the modest chip, Nvidia's new architecture is efficient enough that The Tech Report, PC Perspective, and AnandTech all found the GeForce GTX 680's gaming performance to be largely comparable to AMD's fastest Radeon, which costs $50 more. The GTX 680 also offers other notable perks, like a PCI Express 3.0 interface, dynamic clock scaling, new video encoding tech, and a smarter vsync mechanism. It's rather power-efficient, too, but the decision to focus on graphics workloads means the chip won't be as good a fit for Nvidia's compute-centric Tesla products. A bigger GPU based on the Kepler architecture is expected to serve that market." Read on below for good news (at least if you prefer Free software) from an anonymous reader. Update: 03/22 19:35 GMT by T : Mea culpa -- that headline should say "Kepler," rather than Fermi; HT to Dave from Hot Hardware (here's HH's take on the new GPU).

Comment How it works in Finland (Score 5, Informative) 355

Here's how it works here in Finland:
You either
a) buy the phone yourself (HTC Titan is ~590 EUR ~= 773 USD), and then have a plan without a phone. Example plans:
0.66e / month, 0.066e / min, 0.066e / sms
3.90e / month, includes 3000min in-network calls, others 0.069e/min, 0.069e/sms
38.90e / month, 3000 min to all networks, 3000 sms messages.
Unlimited non-NATted incoming-ports-open mobile broadband (HSPA+, max 15Mbps) is 13.90e / month (other speed classes exist), or 20.85e / month total for an extra SIM card ("MultiSIM") + USB modem (i.e. you get unlimited broadband in both your phone and computer for that price).
These contract are normally non-fixed-term, so you can cancel/switch operators anytime. Note that in Finland only outgoing calls are paid by the mobile user, incoming calls are paid by the caller (mobile numbers have a separate number block).

or b) buy a plan with a phone. This is a bit different from the US subsidies in that you pay *nothing* up-front, and the plans are actually the same as in (a) above, but there is an additional separate monthly cost for the phone. However, the "subsidy" is very small, only a few percents (e.g. HTC Titan total additional cost is 576 EUR, just 2.5% below normal market price). These are generally 2 year contracts. AFAIK these kind of bundling contracts are generally not allowed, but a special time-limited law was enacted in 2006 allowing such contracts to be made for 3G phones only, and it has been extended at least once since.

The prices above are for Saunalahti, but other carriers have very similar pricing and plans.

At least my impression from all this is that we seem to pay more for the phones, but our plans are otherwise way cheaper (when compared to the US)...

Comment Re:Already implemented here (Score 1) 299

At least here in Finland I don't usually have to stop at intersections when there is no traffic. I don't think it is 10 seconds (that's a long time), but still enough for you to not have to slow down while waiting for the light to change (or at least slow down only very little)...

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