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The_Saint_ST1

Listed below are comments made by The_Saint_ST1 between Wednesday, 21st May 2008 and Wednesday, 30th September 2009.

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Who wins from an Orange iPhone? 05:29am on 30 Sep 2009 Unlikely to be good for Orange or Vodafone for that matter. You have to consider that all the majority of revenue is essentially directly AND indirectly controlled by Apple, whether through licensing deals, app purchases and other over-the-air services. In all, this amounts to the service providers ending up as a so-called 'dumb-pipe'.

Essentially, all that the operators will receive in terms of recognition is their logo on a funky bit of kit, little in the way of profit. Worse thing is, other users are subsidising this the growth in traffic, whilst Apple is enjoying the ride! Imagine if all mobile comms manufacturers used this route, there wouldn't be any networks available to run any of this kit in the first place.

Bring on the LiMo handsets for a more open ended future is what I say...
Lily unites musicians against file-sharing 03:55am on 26 Sep 2009 REMOVE DRM =
REMOVE THE RESTRICTION OF THE TRANSPORTATION OF THE MUSIC I PAID FOR

Remove this barrier to purchasing music and I will happily accept any changes which are needed for the artists to be protected.
Apart from the forward thinking Universal Records, No other label has openly supported DRM free purchased downloads in *MP3 format*, and this essentally means I cannot listen to my MP3s in my car without taking the host player with me... In this case, I am unwilling to take my desktop into my car and plug it into the Car stereo. In many cases, the only way to get DRM free music is to rip it from a CD or rip it off the internet, and from the internet file-sharing system, the quality of the MP3s are below average. the DRM status quo is unacceptable and will only continue to encourage those that want the freedom to what they want with their acquired music, to download illegally.

Look at 7digital's sales after the started to remove DRM.. they shot up six-fold! In my opinion, it is the record industry that needs to wake up and smell the coffee, adapt to the change... More carrot please.. don't just think the stick is the only thing that's going to get you anywhere.
Express exit 02:43am on 02 Jul 2009 Yes, National Express is a truly, truly dreadful awful company and we had to put up with their trains (Central and Centro) for years. Rolling stock looking absolutely shambolic, compared to Chiltern, and using roughly the same aged rolling stock. And driver contracts which only included voluntary Sunday working?? Absolutely stupid and ridiculous, half the trains never ran on Sunday, so we always had to put up with a 3.5 hour journey from Leicester, through Derby(!) to Birmingham, or suffer the rigours of, yep you guessed it, a rail-replacement bus service. Now LondonMidland are in charge, the trains are clean, most are air-conditioned, and even the old cross-city commuter trains look and feel nicer to ride in. I hope National Express NEVER receives another franchise again. EVER!
BT and the iPlayer 11:19am on 15 Jun 2009 To be honest with you, an ISP (and a very large poorly run ISP at that) demanding money payment from any content provider sets a very dangerous precedent to all those that provide on the net. BT has long had a history of lazy, slack, greedy, bureacratic, misjudged business execution (as can be seen by the mobile phone debacle of the 90's) and they are desperately trying to catch up with the rest of the competition with what they are able to provide. BT's problems are entirely of its' own doing, and, like a stroppy child, refusing to play the broadband game and make it work (positively) to their advantage..

BBC.. DO *NOT* GIVE IN.....
Apple's "brave" price rise 1:12pm on 21 Mar 2009 Hmm.. well, more fool Apple for not going the budget route. I have purchased my latest OSX program and have successfully, without any problems, installed it onto my Advent 4213.. I might also add that this is a dual boot installation so I get the best of both worlds and OSX runs really smoothly- However, this little netbook's party trick is 3G connectivity and OSX seems to handle it very well. Apple are missing an opportunity here...
Does Dell covet Apple's design status? 01:28am on 19 Mar 2009 I'm sorry, but for a brand to really position itself as 'cool' they have to overhaul their whole brand image. DELL are synonymous with 'a PC' - doesn't matter which box it gets chucked it in, as long as it works and no-one claims back the warranty that's all they care about.

If they think that this machine will have a 'halo' affect on the rest of their products then they are most certainly barking up the wrong tree.

I remember a phrase that GM's director of design said as he took up office a few years ago, whilst he was unravelling the mess of blandness of all the products - Good products should be design-led and not brand-led. So look at their brands - XPS, Inspiron.. They all look the same blocky, bulky eyesores in perhaps a different shade of silver or black etc, etc...

To have an effect on the way that they want people to perceive DELL, they really need to take a look at *all* their products and not just rely on the halo one.

And another thing... Who says good design has to be expensive???
Map of the week: Two car households 7:02pm on 17 Jul 2008 Considering that most of the greenhouse gases come from commerce and industry, and the fact that Methane from Biomass outstrips that from having cars - AND coupled to the fact that emissions and consumption from cars has improved over the years as a matter progress through consumer demand - NOT from legislation alone - I feel totally guilt free about owning a Mini to head off to work and do my shopping trips, and a 4 litre sporty Jaguar for long journeys and weekends.. Sorry but there is still NO 100% conclusive proof that the CO2 increases over the past 100 years have caused changes in earth's temperature.. And there are bigger problems than cars. The destruction of the rain forest is by far the biggest problem since it acts as the planets regulator. Stop the destruction and allow the earth to regulate itself properly.
Firefox 3 - triumph or disaster? 03:14am on 22 Jun 2008 I have used Opera and I love it for its speed, but for some reason certain small quirks can render it unstable, though still usable. Firefox for me is the heavy hitter (well it should be judging by the hit my CPU and RAM takes), but I love the plugins, the accessiblity to the community, the fact that the GUI is really simple no at all fiddly, the fact tha I can just type in a bit of the name of the URL and it'll find the one I need automatically. Firefox is pretty much here to stay.. now I just need a couple of my favourite plugins updated and I'll be away.. Pity you can't get it for you're Nokia Phone..
DRM is dead, long live DRM 01:36am on 21 May 2008 I do agree with the concerns of the artists to a certain degree in that blatant ripping off will always hurt them in their profession. However, those that will habitually rip off the artist, will continue to do so and penalising the majority of MP3 listeners who do buy MP3s by legal means is not the way

I have suggested that DRM be removed but replaced with a user stamp encoded directly into the music data. This way, any tracks that are copied, will carry the stamp of the purchaser and if lots of different tracks are spotted with the purchaser's stamp, then they can be brought to book for allowing their MP3's to be distributed.. a couple of songs may get them a warning, but for those who will distribute habitually, they could then be given a suitable punishment. Those found with the same stamped track may also be dealt with accordingly. The only flaw is that you may run into privacy issues.

And, I might add, that buying a track with a DRM 'virus' does not necessarily guarantee you CD quality music as I found to my dismay when I purchased a dance track from a well known UK online store - I this case, I may well have been better off trying to find a dodgy copy...

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