davidw

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davidw
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  • CarPlay helps Australian police scan license plates automatically

    davidwdavidw
    lesterkrimbaugh said:
    ApplePoor said:
    The UK police have had a camera on the front of their squad cars for years. When they come up behind you, they know immediately if the road tax has been paid, the MOT inspection is current and there is a valid insurance policy in force. They also know the gender of the mandatory listed drivers on the insurance policy. So if a girl friend is driving the boy friend's car and no females are on the policy, there will be a pull over for clarification. Another feature is if there is no insurance, they have the option to take the car to the crusher right then.

    So big brother is watching every where. 
    Police in the US have side facing cameras as well as front and rear cameras. The cameras are constantly scanning license plates and automatically alert police to any suspicious vehicle – even parked cars. We sometimes see them at the mall driving up and down the rows of parked cars.

    Here in San Francisco, meter person scooters had cameras on them for years. But back when they were first installed, the public was told that those license plate readers were to check for overtime parking violations. In SF (and I imagine in most cities) parking meters are usually placed in front of businesses. Those meters usually have a 20 minutes to 2 hours time limit. One is not allowed to keep feeding the meter all day long, without moving their vehicle. If the meter person suspects that a vehicle been there for longer than time limit of the meter, they would need to chalk mark the tires and then check for the mark after the time limit had passed again.

    But with the vehicle mounted cameras, the on board computer can inform the meter person that the same car been parked in the same spot, since the last time the meter person passed by. So even if there is still time on the meter the second time around, the meter person would know if a vehicle been parked there for over the time limit of the meter. So the vehicle will get a ticket for overtime parking, regardless if there's still time on the meter. It seems that in these metered business areas, the employees of the businesses would take up these metered spaces and keep feeding the meters all day long. Thus taking away parking spaces for those that are there to patronize the businesses.

    But of course today, those cameras are now tied to the police data base and vehicles with a high amount of unpaid tickets will get booted. While stolen vehicles or vehicles that the police might be searching for also get flagged and reported to the police.

    Right now, SF through a Federal grant, is in the process of installing 400 pole mounted license plate readers through out the city. (I believed Oakland (across the Bay) is doing the same.) But we're still a long way from being as efficient as London or Paris or Berlin or most other major cites in the EU, in tracking any car as it makes its way through the city. Here, we are still mainly depending on license plate readers instead of live video "traffic" cameras.

    When ever there is a terrorist attack in some major EU city, I'm still amazed at how the police is able to track the car used in the crime, back to the neighborhood where the criminals first boarded the vehicle and the path it took through the city to get to (or away from) the crime scene. Criminals there can't fool law enforcement by changing the plates half way to or from, the crime scene. The police there would know exactly where they stopped to change the plates. 
    tiredskills

  • Don't expect cheaper iCloud storage as Apple wins another monopoly lawsuit

    davidwdavidw
    DAalseth said:
    It’s not mandatory to purchase iCloud storage. 

    And competitor services exist from Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, etc. 
    The point being that yes you can connect your Mac or iPhone or iPad to these services, but can you set Photos to backup and share through them? I mean natively within the app. I write a lot in Pages. Can you use one of these services as the default saving location so you can share the files between devices as it is with iCloud? I don’t think it is. If it is let me know, I’d love to use some of these less expensive services, but I haven’t found a way. If you can’t then Apple is being a bit heavy handed. 

    Sure you can link to these and other cloud services, but if everything you want to do is kludgy you are limited as to how you can use them, then you really don’t have access. 

    The thing is that Photos (on iOS), Pages and others are Apple free software. Of course they're highly integrated with their iCloud. If you want to use Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive to easily save your data and save on cost, then use their free software. Nothing is stopping you from using Google and Microsoft software, in order to easily save your data on their cloud services. Apple do not have to make their free software easy to use with Google Drive or Microsoft One drive. You don't think Microsoft One Drive is more easy to use with Microsoft software than with Apple or Google software? So long as Apple do not prevent their users from using Google and Microsoft software or prevent Google and Microsoft from using their own cloud services on their software (that runs on Apple devices), Apple is not doing anything wrong or illegal.


    You think its Google that makes it easy to transfer your data from an Android phone to an iPhone? No, Google makes it easy to transfer your data from an iPhone to an Android phone. Apple and Google have no interest in providing free software, that makes it easy to switch to a competitors devices.  I'm sure that if you use Google Doc, you can just as easily save your data on Google Cloud, as you could saving your Pages data in the iCloud. And this also goes for Microsoft software being more highly integrates with their own cloud services. 

    There's a reason why iCloud storage is more expensive than that of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Apple lease cloud storage from Google and Amazon. Apple have no where near the cloud storage capacity that Google, Amazon and Microsoft has. What cloud servers Apple has is mainly for their own internal business like iTunes Store, App Store, pushing software upgrades and updates on their devices, music and movie streaming, etc. and it's still not enough. Apple rely on Google and Amazon for their customers iCloud storage. No way Apple can compete with Google, Amazon and Microsoft when it comes to profiting from charging for cloud storage.




    williamlondonwatto_cobratiredskills

  • Apple objects to Australia plan to regulate Apple Pay

    davidwdavidw
    Honkers said:
    davidw said:
    Honkers said:
    chasm said:
    This is a VERY transparent attempt by the Australian banks and their lackey, Mr Chalmers, to limit the use of digital payment systems like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay *because* when those are used, those companies collect a very small (in the hundredths of a cent per dollar transacted) fee that comes out of the fees the bank chargers the merchant.
    I believe the average rate is somewhere around 0.15% of the purchase amount, so a bit more than you imply.

    Your research skill is OK. Your math skill is questionable.

    You are correct in that Apple Pay fee (to the CC issuer) is 0.15% of the total transaction. If you were to correctly do the math, you would come up with this ...

    On a $1 transaction using Apple Pay

    The CC issuer gets 3% or  $.03 from the merchant. (.03 x $1)

    Apple gets .15% or  $.0015 from the CC issuer. (.0015 x $1)

    So just what part of .0015 cent per dollar is not ........ in the hundredths of a cent per dollar transacted ..... as @Chasm claimed?

    The "very small" fee is much easier to see on a larger scale. On a $1000 transaction, the CC issuer charges the merchant $30 and Apple get $.15 cents from the CC issuer. So the CC issuer is only paying out .5% of what they charge the merchant. (.15 / 30 X 100). .5% is still a very small fee.

    Maybe it's your reading skill and you thought @Chasm said ...... in the hundredths of a percent of dollar transacted and not ..... "in the hundredths of a cent per dollar transacted".  Big difference.
    $0.0015 is not the same as 0.0015¢.  $0.0015 is 0.15¢.  So not "hundredths of a cent", unless you consider 15 hundredths to be a proper use of hundredths, which I do not, since it's 15% of a cent, over a seventh.   If you do then the term is pretty much meaningless, 0.99¢ would be 99% and also hundredths of a cent, 99 of them.

    A $1000 purchase would net Apple $1.50 on a 0.15% transaction fee.  I have no idea how you've managed to get that so wrong, you've tied yourself up in knots.

    My reading and math skill is fine.  Check your own, and maybe try being less of a bloviated ass to people who you don't know next time.

    You're right. My mistake. It's just that here in the US, we get use to seeing  $.03 as 3 cents. So when the math showed .03, it looks like how I normally see 3 cents (but with the $). Therefore the .0015 looks like .0015 cents. But i needed to move the decimal point over 2 places to get "cents".

    But actually,  $.0015 is .0015 cents. Once the $ is in front of any dollar value, the numbers after the decimal point is cents. 3 cents is written as $.03. So .15 cents is written as $.0015. But my calculation wasn't using the $, so to get cents, I needed to move the decimal point over 2 places in the final value. which would lead to .15 cents (with no $).




    watto_cobratiredskills

  • UK launching investigation of Apple App Store after anti-competition complaints

    davidwdavidw
    crowley said:
    There's no such thing as "unfair terms" when it comes to the use of my property.  Meet my terms, or GTFO.  The same is true for Apple and their property, i.e. the App Store.
    Nope.  Private property used for private things is very different from commercial property used for commercial things.  Commerce has rules.
    Nope. You are thinking about the wrong kind of "property". Try copyrights, patents and trademarks.

    Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

    What Epic wants to do is beyond "fair use" of Apple i.P.. That which is iOS. The government should not or can not force Apple to share their I.P. with others, without Apple  being fairly compensated for their work. Even with the use of "eminent domain" of real property, the government compensate the property owner for its fair value. It is just not taken away. 



    Now, I would think the government can limit one from sharing their I.P. with foreign nationals, if they think it might pose a national security issue, but to step in and try to limit how one can use their I.P. for commercial purposes might end up being unconstitutional. Even if the I.P. is a monopoly. Microsoft was never in danger of having "Windows" taken away from them or being forced to provide "Windows" for free, to anyone that wants to profit from it.  

    With that being said, since were talking about the UK here, they might not value I.P. rights, as we do here in the US.  They don't have to follow the US Constitution. 



    tiredskills