himynameisJake - Slashdot User

iPhone Bill a Whopping 52 Pages Long 369

Posted by Zonk on Sunday August 12, 2007 @03:28PM from the make-the-trees-stop-crying dept.

PoliTech writes "iPhone bills are surprisingly large - 'Xbox Large', according to Ars technica: 'AT&T's iPhone bills are quite impressive in their own right. We're starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we've never seen a bill like this. One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too. What gives? The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you; well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as Data Transfer. The Type of file? Data. My total charge? $0.00. This mind-numbing detail goes on for 52 double-sided pages (for 104 printed pages!) with absolutely no variance except the size of the files.' You would think that a data company would have a more efficient billing process."

Why We Need to Expand into Space 460

Posted by Zonk on Sunday August 12, 2007 @03:20AM from the earth-that-was-could-no-longer-sustain-our-numbers dept.

Zentropa writes "Why do humans need to explore and colonize space? To save the planet and our species, argues an opinion piece in Cosmos, an Aussie science magazine. It makes some good points from an angle you may not have previously considered; for example, it's in the universe's best interest to keep us around. We make things fun. 'So what if humans pass into history? It's not just a tragedy for us, but also one for nature. Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty; no one to marvel at a sunset, revel in a view, or thrill to the breaking of a wave on a beach. As the late astronomer and author Carl Sagan once said, "we are a way for the universe to know itself". But we also deserve to continue because we have created things greater than ourselves. Not only scientific and engineering knowledge, valuable as this is -- we have also created new and beautiful ways to see the world through art, music, literature and performance.'"

World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King Officially Announced 314

Posted by Zonk on Friday August 03, 2007 @03:22PM from the you-gotta-love-the-death-knight dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wrath of the Lich King is official! BlizzCon is in full swing, and celebrants there are already enjoying the Northrend-themed imagery. For a look at what's going on, Joystiq has a liveblog of the opening ceremony up. Games For Windows magazine, meanwhile, will feature WLK its next cover. The post on the 1up site has a number of details on the next expansion, including the introduction of the Death Knight, the first new class since WOW's launch 'World of WarCraft's first Hero Class is a plate-wearing tank/DPS hybrid that works a little something like this: When players hit level 80, they'll be able to embark on a quest (similar in difficulty to the Warlock's epic mount quest, back before the level cap was raised to 70) that unlocks the ability to create a Death Knight character. The Death Knight starts at a high level (somewhere around 60 or 70, though Blizzard isn't certain yet), so you won't have to grind your way back up all over again. It's intended as an alternative, advanced class for end-game use only.'."

Submission + - Wowhead sells out to Affinity Media (wowhead.com) 1

Submitted by MattHock on Saturday June 23, 2007 @01:09PM

MattHock writes: Wowhead, the fastest growing database of World of Warcraft in-game information, has been confirmed as having been sold to ZAM (Affinity Media), owners of several other WoW databases, including Thottbot and Allakhazam. Until recently, Affinity was also the owner of IGE, a highly controversial company that sold in-game wealth for real life money, until Affinity recently sold IGE, which Wowhead claims as the reason they allowed the sale to go through. But did ZAM really sell IGE? Industy insiders highly doubt IGE and ZAM actually distanced themselves from each other, believing that the supposed sale was just actually a means of restructuring to hide the relationship, similar to how IGE's relationship to Thottbot was hidden for a number of months through a convoluted set of parent companies.

Comment Re:streaming is so 1997 (Score 1, Interesting) 108

by himynameisJake on Saturday February 04, 2006 @03:47AM (#14640646) Attached to: Low Cost Webcast Optimizations?

I think you should examine the situation a little more closely.

For instance, if you produce a video that uses a song from Britney Spears (not that anyone would ever do that, but play along), the licenses required to allow people to physically download copies of that song to their hard drives are different and usually vastly more expensive than releasing the video as a live stream or as part of an on-demand system. The primary question of this article was maintaining fiscal responsibility, not opening the door to a finanical raping by the RIAA/MPAA.

Torrents are also nowhere near easy enough to use for the everyday consumer. It's nice to think so because, after all, everyone on Slashdot is a computer genius, but when you're trying to reach the broadest market possible, things like torrents and other forms of P2P are not viable options. Internet streaming is still, and will continue to be for some time, the best option for delivering content media to consumers at home.

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