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Comment: Anciant business model (Score 3, Insightful) 290

by ze_jua (#43534807) Attached to: HTC Does What Google Wouldn't: Sell an LTE Phone That Sidesteps AT&T

Subsidizes phones is a business model from the past.

It's so heavily broken that I can't even understant :
- Why (we) the people accepted this ? (Okay, GSM phones were VERY expensive in 1996...)
- Why did the banksters allowed the carriers to steal their favourite business (small consumer credits with huge interests) !?

Since past year, here in France, one carrier (and then... every other) bagan to sell "low cost" subscription. It's in fact the same service, without the cost of the "subsidized" phone. Minus 30€ a month (or more).

24 months later, you have 24*30=720€ to buy the unlocked phone of your choice.

For people who prefer to pay 25-30€ a month to pay their handset, banks are back in the dance, with credit offers to buy your unkocked phone on a 24 months credit.

Government

+ - Child's Play: Food Makers Hook Kids on Mobile Games->

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes "Another example of toxic marketing. From the article, "Makers of snacks, sweet drinks and candy have long been under government and public pressure to limit advertising to minors on TV and the Web. They are now finding the unregulated medium of mobile devices an effective substitute to trigger demand and cinch brand loyalty. Young children can master the largely intuitive touch screens well before they read. A recent survey by research firm NPD Group found that 37% of 4- and 5-year-old Americans were using such mobile devices as a smartphone, tablet or iPod Touch, compared with less than a quarter of children that age who used a laptop computer. The food-industry games generally have rudimentary graphics and objectives simple enough for small children to understand. They have raised debate over who should be responsible for their impact on children—parents or the government.""
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Idle

+ - Romney Girl Video Shutdown by Universal->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Universal Music Group submitted a cease and desist letter to pull down the "Romney Girl" video. They claim a violation of their intellectual property rights on the 90ies song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua. The producers of Romney Girl (Agenda Project Action Fund) refer to the fair use exception. They have blocked access to the video temporarily. It will be seen if it will appear somewhere else on the internet and if it will become even more popular by the Streisand effect (660000 clicks on youtube")."
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Businesses

+ - Hardware is dead->

Submitted by
ze_jua
ze_jua writes "In this article, Jay Goldberg, a financial analyst who travels to Shenzhen several times a year, analyses the potential consequences of the very low cost of hardware he found there on the consumer electronic industry worldwide.

He wrote this piece of text after he found a very nice $45 Androïd 4 tablet. Are we so close of given away tablets?"
Link to Original Source
Apple

+ - Rare operating Apple 1 rakes in $374,500 at Sotheby's auction->

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "It's not one of a kind but pretty darn close. Sotheby's this week auctioned off a rare working Apple 1 computer for $374,500 to an unnamed bidder. The price was more than double the expected price listed on the Sotheby's web site.
The Sotheby's notes about the Apple 1 say it is one of six thought to be operational boxes and one of about 50 known to exist."
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Comment: Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score 1) 208

by ze_jua (#29993832) Attached to: Colleges Secretly Test Music-Industry Project

Same shit in France.

Every blank media (even extrenal hard drives, USB keys, flash cards and iPods!) have very big "tax" going to the SACEM (French RIAA), but it doesn't give us the right to use these blank medium to... record music!!

(In fact the system is a bit more complex, but the summary is correct).

Free bonus, the tax is indexed on the size of the media (in bytes, not in centimeter ;) !

Businesses

Coders, Your Days Are Numbered 305

Posted by timothy
from the yes-but-in-what-base dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister argues that communication skills, not coding skills, are a developer's greatest asset in a bear economy. 'Too many software development teams are still staffed like secretarial pools. Ideas are generated at the top and then passed downward through general managers, product managers, technical leads, and team leads. Objectives are carved up into deliverables, which are parceled off to coders, often overseas,' McAllister writes. 'The idea that this structure can be sustainable, when the US private sector shed three-quarters of a million jobs in March 2009 alone, is simple foolishness.' Instead, companies should emulate the open source model of development, shifting decision-making power to the few developers with the deepest architectural understanding of, and closest interaction with, the code. And this shift will require managers to look beyond résumés 'choked with acronyms and lists of technologies' to find those who 'can understand, influence, and guide development efforts, rather than simply taking dictation.'" Update: 04/04 19:52 GMT by T : InfoWorld's link to the archived version of the story on open source development no longer works; updated with Google's cached version.
Bug

+ - The serial killer never existed - German CSI owned->

Submitted by ze_jua
ze_jua writes "In Germany, police tracked an unknown and very dangerous serial killer for two years, when they discovered that the cotton swabs that they were using to collect DNA samples were contaminated, certainly by DNA of an employe at the factory.

From the article : The murderer dubbed "The Phantom of Heilbronn" had been baffling German investigators for two years. The criminal was a rarity, a female serial killer, and a very busy one: Police had linked DNA evidence from 40 crimes — including the famous homicide of a policewoman in the southern German town of Heilbronn — to the same woman. (...)

Full article here."
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Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.

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