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3G Is A Dog, And Other Truths
naylorjs writes: "This is an interesting article from the BBC about the technological future, in particular broadband and wireless. What makes it more interesting is the comments about nation states and such like. A certain amount of lateral thinking in use here, something that we don't see enough of in the technology field. IMHO."
fp?
timothy sucks here to avoid lameness filter
I don't believe in nothing no more... I'm going to law school!
use it new, pay the price. let it mature, and before long you have something better and cheaper than you used to use.
you don't have to live on the cutting edge all the time. it's really a lot better to wait a little while for cheap, solid tech, instead of jumping on the bandwagon the first time it comes around and realizing you just spent hundreds of dollars on something that sucks.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Even a few years ago, I couldn't imagine what I take for granted now - the instant gratification of being able to answer any question on my mind just by calling up google.
How can some professor do better?
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
is a goddamn dog. fucking slashfaggots, stay away from the kids!
propz to c_m, e_s, and SexualAsspussy
I mean, really. Negroponte's always been so long on handwaving and short on actual technical pragmatism. And it's not like people have actually listened to a word the man said since "Being Digital".
Why is broadband good? "Different rhythm, different response time, different way of dealing with the web itself." Yeah, I bet that was your reasoning for getting DSL, too (if you happened to be stoned at the time). Except apparently you wouldn't want DSL because the order-of-magnitude speed increase over a modem "isn't giving the consumer enough difference". Apparently being able to stream live video to a handset isn't worth anything.
Well, thanks a lot, Nicholas. You can go back in your box for another five years.
-- Yoz
What companys don't realize is giving the ability to instant messange on a phone is kinda self defeating. You can just call the person. So no one is going to swich from standerd cell phones to much more expensive ones for useful purposes, just for the cool factor. And you can't make that much money of it.
It was an interesting interview, don't get me wrong, but news outlets like The Register have been telling the truth about 3G for over 2 years - for some reason there's been a stubborn refusal to believe it - perhaps because it's not what we want to hear?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Are you kidding me?
That's like Americans reporting on CULTURE...
how can you report on something you have no clue about?
Oh sure... Q in the James Bond movies is all the techno-guru...but the rest of the country is in an awfully sorry state!
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
what.
Funny...for someone who works at one of the most technically-apt universities in North America, I didn't expect to hear this from him: Again, they have lost a lot of money on 3G for reasons that had nothing to do with the marketing side of 3G. It had to do with the terrible mistake made here in the UK over the auction process that was copying a bad American idea and repeating it here. It's a dog and people shouldn't want it and in fact I don't think it will see the light of day.
3G isn't bad. The American handling of 3G is, but you shouldn't punish consumers because of the fact you believe the standard is crap. If everyone cared about what America wanted in its consumer electronics standards, then America wouldn't be the sole dissenting voice in cellular standards. The problem isn't one of technology here, but one of corporate moneylust getting in the way of good ol' common sense.
Look at how consumer electronics devices have blossomed in the Orient...They've made 3G devices a part of their lives. The reason it won't work here is because our society as a whole looks down on a lot of the new technology as being fad-ish. Until marketers get a clue and discover just how to pitch these devices and demonstrate how they can complete our meaningless lives, they're not gonna take off.
Marketers for the last five years have been following the logic which carried them through the Internet bust, which was - "If you build it, they will come." Well, no shit, Sherlock...but you have to build something that's worth a damn to them. Quit trying to push off crap and market it as the next great thing...instead, make something that can change our lives, and prove that it will.
Many companies could afford to learn this lesson from Apple.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
A: First of all, put that in context that the largest amount of semi-conductor material to flow into the home will undoubtedly be through toys. It's not TV sets; it's not refrigerators; it's not PCs; it's not handsets - it's going to be toys. The reason I use that Barbie doll example is that the Barbie doll has to be connected in order to get stories, in order to get your content.
Somehow, I think the online contents for a Barbie doll will be quite minimal.
On a serious note, I think he's got a point there. Imagine one of these toys always getting an updated interface (audio) to interact with the children. Interesting.
CmdrTaco Licks my Balls!
Hello! This garbage post is! Moderators: Eat Flaming Death!
One of the big problems of technology is that the world is broken into four groups who don't really understand each other.
Firstly, there are the technologists - the smart guys with their engineering PhDs from Stanford and the like who work for Ericsson, Qualcomm or Nokia. These people understand the technical reality of getting broadband services to handsets and the like.
Then there are the evangalists. These people post long, largely ill-informed, comments to slashdot. Sometimes they work for Gartner Group. If they're really lucky they get paid too much to work as VCs. These people don't really understand the technology, or consumers, but they tell a great story. Oh, and they love Amazon.com.
And then there are the business people. (And no, getting an MBA from Stanford does not automatically qualify you.) These people understand that 3G costs losts of money. They fret about what end demand will really be, and hire evangalists and technologists to try and raise some money. If they are lucky they get to sell their idea to some large company where the business development people really do have Stanford MBAs.
Finally, there is the other 99% of the population. Call them 'consumers'. They are rarely consulted about what they want; 'cause, hey, the evangalist tells a better story. Unfortunately, these are the people that actually buy and use the service. Unless consumers spend money the service will die.
So, to 3G: unless consumers see a compelling reason to massively up the amount they spend on telecommunications then 3G is in terrible trouble. ARPU for voice cell users is static or declining as penetration rises. (Why is this so? Because the handset, network infrastructure, maintenance, and license costs are much higher than 2G.)
So - where are the compelling applications that will encourage consumers to spend more?
Video phones, perhaps. Would you like a list of companies that died thinking consumers want to be seen on the phone. (Just think for a moment about the practicalities of walking down the street with your cell phone in front of you. Then think about the value of looking at someone in glorious jerky-and-small-vision with terrible lag.)
Stock quotes and charts, perhaps. Sorry, the days and number of day traders are on the wane.
OK. TV? Well perhaps, BUT think of the bandwidth requirements.
Email??? Sure, but a Blackberry or GPRS phone does it for cheaper.
Unless someone can find compelling *consumer* applications, then 3G is unlikely to be a commercial success.
*r
--- My dad's political betting
3G has been a pipe dream from it's inception.
Services like the lately lamented Ricochet provided speeds superior to those promised by 3G over a year ago - and people apparently didn't want to pa $70.00 per month to access the TCP/IP services in metro areas that Ricochet provided - even with unlimited access, or all-you-can-eat for that price.
3G is looking worse and worse every day. What did 3G promise?
500kbps - if you're standing still next to an unloaded base station. 120kbps standing still on a loaded network. 60kbps if you're moving - all with per-minute and/or per megabyte charges. It won't fly here in the U.S.
Hopefully someone will revive Ricochet and we can all surf wirelessly without the foibles of "freenet" 802.11b networks or the limitations of fixed wireless. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Have you ever really tried to do any of this stuff with a phone? Browse the web? Get your email? It's useless on a phone. The screen is too small and entering information into the phone is an exercise in frustration. Or you end up with a phone like the Kyocera which is a great palm, but sucks as a phone. Ever try actually holding it to your face and talking on it?
I'm all for cool technology and doing things that are cool just for the sake of doing it, but John Q. Public is never going to accept this stuff if it's a pain to use. It solves a problem that doesn't exist.
Scottaroo
----------
If your answer is Microsoft, you obviously didn't understand the question.
...is fairly bright, but I think some of the things he talks about (e.g. giving UN membership to
Nation1, a "virtual nation" composed of the world's internet-enabled children) are a bit too loony to be taken seriously
Nicholas Negroponte is fairly bright, but I think some of the things he talks about (e.g. giving UN membership to Nation1, a "virtual nation" composed of the world's internet-enabled children) are a bit too loony to be taken seriously
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I have a cell phone. I have a desktop. I have a server, and I have a portable MP3 player. I have a truck. I have a bike, and I have a muscle car.
I say that, to say this: I did not buy an El Camino. I bought a truck, and I bought (well, restored) a muscle car.
The same goes for my desktop and server. I did not buy an over powered dual-NICed desktop to also be my server on a dsl line. I bought a desktop, and a dsl line to connect to, and a Ultra Sparc in a colocated rack at a local ISP.
In the same sort of thinking, my cell phone doesn't play MP3s, although it can surf the web, I have never even bothered to try it.
To the average consumer, a phone should be a phone, first and foremost.
Features are good if they are free, but forcing me to pay twice the price for useless stuff I would never use, just makes me spend my money at another company.
visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
There was an interesting article last year in MIT's Technology Review Magazine about Negroponte leaving the Media Lab, leaving the Lab's future uncertain. The article makes a number of references to the Media Lab, including Biotech Research. It's interesting that he still refers to the Lab as "we" - I assume it's hard to let go, and probably good for the Lab to keep him around as an advisor.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Not that I don't agree with some of the points he makes, I have a real problem with the sardonic, holier-than-thou Sagan-istic manner it which he delivers it. Who is this guy, anyway? Some self appointed technology critic bent on whining his way into our hearts and minds?
The notion that the average consumer is going to be unimpressed with broadband, because it's simply not a large enough increase, is ridiculous. Has it been that long since we've been on a dialup connection?
I also fail to understand how he can say, "Well, I'm getting 100,000bits now, and you want to give me 400,000bits, will no thanks, that's not a big enough difference.
Pardon?
A 4 X speed increase? Not a large enough difference?
So, anyway, that's my 2 cents.
It is not the way that makes the man great, it is the man that makes the way great.
-CT
The guy is a pundit dressed in academic clothing, nothing more.
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of
his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and
solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart
changed,--and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the
sun, and spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for
whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have
wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine
eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow
and blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become
joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the evening,
when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the nether-world,
thou exuberant star!
Like thee must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest
happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out
of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss!
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again
going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.
2.
Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. When he
entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man,
who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And thus spake the old man to
Zarathustra:
"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by.
Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered.
Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt thou now carry
thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the incendiary's doom?
Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh
about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a dancer?
Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is
Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers?
As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up.
Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body
thyself?"
Zarathustra answered: "I love mankind."
"Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it
not because I loved men far too well?
Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me.
Love to man would be fatal to me."
Zarathustra answered: "What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto
men."
"Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take rather part of their load, and
carry it along with them--that will be most agreeable unto them: if only
it be agreeable unto thee!
If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and
let them also beg for it!"
"No," replied Zarathustra, "I give no alms. I am not poor enough for
that."
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: "Then see to it that
they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not
believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And
just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before
sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not
be like me--a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?"
"And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns
I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my
God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?"
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said:
"What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take
aught away from thee!"--And thus they parted from one another, the old man
and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be
possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD
IS DEAD!"
3.
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, he
found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced
that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus
unto the people:
I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What
have ye done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want
to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast
than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the
same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still
worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of
the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and
phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman
SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those
who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they
know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of
whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and
therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the
dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the
meaning of the earth!
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was
the supreme thing:--the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished.
Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the
delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your
soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted
stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great
contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great
contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto
you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify
existence itself!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge
as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me
passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am
fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"
The hour when we say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on
which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion."
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had
heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven;
your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy
with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--
When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: "We have
now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!"
And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who
thought the words applied to him, began his performance.
4.
Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake
thus:
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an
abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a
dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is
lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are
the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows
of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down
and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth
of the Superman may hereafter arrive.
I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that
the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.
I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the
Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh
he his own down-going.
I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going,
and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be
wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the
bridge.
I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for
the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.
I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a
virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling
to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give
back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then
asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?"--for he is willing to succumb.
I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always
doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.
I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones:
for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must
succumb through the wrath of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through
a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all
things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only
the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.
I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark
cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and
succumb as heralds.
Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the
lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.--
5.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and
was silent. "There they stand," said he to his heart; "there they laugh:
they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears.
Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their
eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do
they only believe the stammerer?
They have something whereof they are proud. What do they call it, that
which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguisheth them
from the goatherds.
They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt' of themselves. So I will
appeal to their pride.
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is
THE LAST MAN!"
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ
of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor
and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his
longing beyond man--and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing
star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any
star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no
longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?"--so
asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who
maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the
ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness"--say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth.
One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth
warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily.
He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much
poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the
pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still
wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal:
he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane,"--say the subtlest of them, and blink
thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to
their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled--otherwise
it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures
for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness,"--say the last men, and blink thereby.--
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called
"The Prologue": for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude
interrupted him. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"--they called out-
-"make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a present of the
Superman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their lips.
Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
"They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I hearkened
unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto the goatherds.
Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they
think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me
too. There is ice in their laughter."
6.
Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye
fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his
performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the
rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the
market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little
door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang
out, and went rapidly after the first one. "Go on, halt-foot," cried his
frightful voice, "go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face!--lest I
tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here between the towers? In the
tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than
thyself thou blockest the way!"--And with every word he came nearer and
nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step behind, there
happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye
fixed--he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in
his way. The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at
the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away,
and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the
depth. The market-place and the people were like the sea when the storm
cometh on: they all flew apart and in disorder, especially where the body
was about to fall.
Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body,
badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while
consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra
kneeling beside him. "What art thou doing there?" said he at last, "I knew
long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell:
wilt thou prevent him?"
"On mine honour, my friend," answered Zarathustra, "there is nothing of all
that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will
be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any more!"
The man looked up distrustfully. "If thou speakest the truth," said he, "I
lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal which
hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare."
"Not at all," said Zarathustra, "thou hast made danger thy calling; therein
there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy calling:
therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands."
When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but he
moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude.
EVEYNIGHTIPRAYTOGODT HATNICHLOASNECRGORPONTEDOESNOT BUTS&\#32;HIS"BITS"INTOTIMMAHS "ATOM"!!!!!!!
So, the miracle of 3G is that soon your home encyclopedia will be replaced by the wireless talking Barbie! Bet that will shed her dumb blonde image...
Ceci n'est pas une sig
With that as a backdrop, the truth is that what consumers want is a logarithmic scale.
I think this is the most interesting part of the article. IT is pretty much the only industry where consumers expect giant leaps in terms of performance before they upgrade. What other classical industry demands such high rates of devellopment? automotive? textile? Not really. People have come to expect more and more out of engineers over the years and the R&D to keep up with the demand has been ever increasing. Are we going to get to a point where progress is just too great and the users have no more need to upgrade, or is progress going to lag behind, thus reducing incomes and R&D --> vicious circle. I think there's a limit to how much speed is needed and that will give rise to a serious problem in a few years. What will happen when you can stream digital video uncompressed along with audio, playing games, etc on the same optic pipe? Will people go on upgrading endlessly just to show their friends "look, I can transfer my swap file from my PDA to my cell faster than you can!"...
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Well, almost.
When I last checked, Norway had a good 4,5 million people, Singapore some 4,3 million and Ireland 3,8 million. His guess for Costa Rica is quite close with 3,7 million, but is 3 out of 4 really that good for a "genius".
No big deal, I know, but it still wrecks his magic number ;)
- mipe -
slashdot is going down the tubes faster than michael can ram his dick down the throat of his ugly bitch while he's sexchatting with taco. fuck you taco. slashdot is ours.
fuck (fk) Vulgar Slang
v. fucked, fuck*ing, fucks
v. tr.
To have sexual intercourse with.
To take advantage of, betray, or cheat; victimize.
Used in the imperative as a signal of angry dismissal.
v. intr.
To engage in sexual intercourse.
To act wastefully or foolishly.
To interfere; meddle. Often used with with.
n.
An act of sexual intercourse.
A partner in sexual intercourse.
A despised person.
Used as an intensive: What the fuck did you do that for?
interj.
Used to express extreme displeasure.
Phrasal Verbs:
fuck off
Used in the imperative as a signal of angry dismissal.
To spend time idly.
To masturbate.fuck over
To treat unfairly; take advantage of.fuck up
To make a mistake; bungle something.
To act carelessly, foolishly, or incorrectly.
To cause to be intoxicated.
[Middle English, attested in pseudo-Latin fuccant, (they) fuck, deciphered from gxddbov.]
Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys," from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris," that is, "fleas, flies, and friars." The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia," mean "they [the friars] are not in heaven, since." The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields "fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli." The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]."
Only one hour (eastern time) untill troll tuesday
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
GPL considered harmful.... Yes, the explicit purpose of the GPL is to hurt programmers' livelihoods. See Richard Stallman's essay, "The GNU Manifesto," for a frank statement that this is the case. Mr. Stallman does not care whether the programmers harmed by the GPL are working for Microsoft or trying to eke out an honest living despite Microsoft; he wishes to put all of them out of business. Trouble is, it's much easier to hurt the little guy than it is to hurt Microsoft, so guess who suffers?
It is, in fact, ironic just how much the FSF's strategies resemble those of Microsoft.
Microsoft seeks to put other companies such as Netscape out of business by giving away free equivalents of every product they make. The Free Software Foundation seeks to put other companies out of business by giving away free equivalents of every products they make.
Bill Gates has all the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control. Richard Stallman has all of the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control.
Microsoft has a vast hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls. The FSF has an even larger hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls.
Meet the new boss -- same as the old boss.
TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR NETWORK APPLIANCE IS BASED ON LINUX
10) Console sometimes says "Filesystems have gone too long without fsck".
9) Randomly connects to slashdot and posts insipid comments under
anonymous-coward@yourdomain.com.
8) Supposed to be a web cache, but somehow turned into warez cache.
7) Whitepaper is 10,000 pages long, 1 page of info and 9,999 pages of
source code.
6) Manual only comes in two languages, Finnish and elisp.
5) Case made out of space age synthetic alloy of duct tape and dental
floss.
4) Not really sure what it does, but weenie administrator said purchasing
it would be good for "the community".
3) You get a mail from some dork named CmdrTaco wanting you to do an
interview about it.
2) You attach a line printer and it starts alternating between printing
banners of "FREE KEVIN" and something called DeCSS.
1) All your other network appliances complain about it getting drunk
and blasting the free software song at 3am.
This sux0rz bigtime, I don't even know if I can post. Yo.
Marxism:
Get to work. You aren't going to get paid. Your work is for the good of the people.
Free Software:
Get to work. You aren't going to get paid. Your work is for the good of the people.
'Sfunny, though, I would have thought that NN, with his cyberbooster past, would have been all over this. Maybe he's just getting to old to use a mobile phone. He probably can't cope with the buttons. The article says that he wears his reading glasses in restaurants so that he can see what he is eating.
kind of like the pig in The Dark Crystal and all that other Lloyd Alexander shit, you know what I mean. Well, gotta split, I have a Maxim shoot to do. Love ya baby.
Nowhere did it say that the link was a Negroponte interview!!!
Now how do I get the cooties out of my apron?
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
-frank
I'm telling you, and you, and everyone else too: GNU/Linux is the future. If you don't believe me well I think you are probably an "astroturfer" hired by Microsoft. Many people have been hired by The Great Satan (aka Microsoft) to discredit the fine work of Linux Thorvalds and his crew. But don't let the bastards get ya down -- Linux is the real deal, and won't be surpassed by any Capitalist Programme. I don't care if you are from the racist state of Great Britain, or the enlightened state of Israel, the facts overwhelm any opinions that may be present: If you don't like Linux then you are a dirty good-for-nothing Microsoft-loving clone.
And get this...... I hear Macintoshes only have one mouse button! Can you believe that? Those poor ignorant saps. My mouse has six buttons and that is not counting my scroll wheel. Just last week I was play Quake V and some guy kept camping. It was really pissing me off, you see. So, I get my mouse strapped on.. and I assign button six to my Proton Cannon -- and that guy tries camping. Well, let me tell you... after he tasted my proton cannon he stopped camping. Unfortunately Quake V is not Free Software as discussed in the Debian GUN/LINUX Free Software Guidelines, so I deleted it from my hard drive and threw it out the window. I won't allow proprietary software in my home. The capitalist roaders who enslave us with their "intellectual property" rhetoric have to be stopped. By violence if necessary.
I am a firm believer in DIRECT ACTION. A very firm believer. Democracy and direct action -- all power to the proletariat. Only through unity can we overcome the capitalist running dogs. I for one will not allow binaries that disregard Source Code Freedom onto my system, or my wife's system. Yeah, my wife's system. I have taught her how to use EMACS and program in LISP. She says she is at least 100 times more productive under the GNU environment than she ever was under Micro$oft Windoze. And hey, if she ever says otherwise I slap the bitch. Slap her hard. You've got to understand it is all about freedom... From Each According to His Ability, To Each According to his need -- this revolutionary principle is the foundation upon which Free Software rests, and I strongly support it.
We can't just let these Freedom-hating programmers from Micro$oft push us around. We gotta stand united, you know? Don't let the bastards push you around. Am I qualified to make such statements? AM I QUALIFIED??? You thieving moneychanger! I am the most qualified person on this web site. Why? How? I'm a hardcore protestor of the DCMA. The DCMA is how the man is going to crack down on us -- however they have forgotten the Constitution. I know the Bill of Rights by heart. The DMCA wants to destroy Our Right To Keep and Bear Child Pornography, and I'm not going to let big brother strip away our rights. I'm going to stand up and fight. Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't take this kind of totalitarian bitchslapping from their governmental Noosphere, and I'm not going to either. I've been standing in front of the White House with a "Just Say No To DMCA -- Free SKYLAB" sign for 2 weeks now.
Why, you ask? Because I'm qualified. I'm good enough, and dammit, I'm qualified. I'm an Open Free Sources programmer and I have a right to my opinion. I've been swappin' rhymes with my bro Wesley Crusher, and we both agree that programmers getting paid for their work is morally wrong. So yeah, to say I'm qualified is one thing, but the fact is I'm overqualified. I'm just that damn good. Ya wanna bet? You challenge me to battle? Okay, you Microsoft Sloth -- choose any random segment of the GNU Hurd source code, and I will tell you exactly what file it is from, and who wrote it. Yeah, I'm that good. Flawless victory. Don't believe me? Fuck you. Just try me. I'm downloading MP3s and Britney Spears porn as we speak. They say I'm a criminal, but I'm not the only one. Open the sources. Crusade the Noosphere. Free Rawanda! Don't let the bastards get ya down! Free software or Death. And I'm not joking.
Peace, out.
Eric "Da Man" Hanson
eric@pegasi.net
(finger me for GNU/PGP)
This guy still has his head in the clouds as far as the role of technology in day to day life. Online newspaper readership is not a barometer of the success or failure of the internet as a business venture. In the US, and in the world in general, e-commerce is a bomb. Billions were invested, with little to show for it except fancy $700 chairs, nice servers, and ebay. E-commerce was supposed to be the next revolution in business, bigger than the dawn of the industrial age. It was, for about 2 years, then the bottom fell out of the dot.com business model, because there was nothing concrete to show for it. This is, I think the point that he was trying to convey. We want results, not vapor. 3G is not going to be an easy transition any place that has a lot of acreage to cover. In Japan, it is much easier; the cellular situation there is a monoply. The same company owns the towers, the sevice, and the phones. If they want to implement a new technology, they do it. But look at how small Japan is, and the really cool stuff is only in Tokyo; a big enough market, in a small enough area. 3G is not easily implemented, and is not a viable solution, for the US.
Looks like Santa should have thrown those kids some HOT GRITS
No one honestly cares! Now, before you dismiss this as "troll", let's take an honest look at the situation:
I have a Motorola StarTAC using Sprint's service. Now, outside of the occasional dropped calls, I don't have a complaint about the quality of the service. Guess what I use my phone for? That's right, sending and receiving phone calls, which is exactly what 90% of America uses their phone for.
My phone is "wireless web capable". I have never used it... it doesn't appeal to me. Everytime I've seen someone using "wireless web" it looks like a novelty. 4 lines with maybe 25 characters each... nothing particularly special.
I don't have a burning desire to check my e-mail from my mobile phone... the last thing I need is some damned electronic leash. If I'm not in front of my computer, it's because I'm not doing work; if I'm not doing work, the last thing I want is to be interrupted by e-mail.
My mobile phone has a PCMCIA interface to allow "dial-up" through the cell service. The attachment runs about $200, and the speed is 19.2Kbps. I would think that if you really needed to have a wireless internet connection, 19.2Kbps would be fine. Let's face it, if having an internet connection anywhere is THAT important to you, you're probably using it for business purposes. That means e-mail, possibly messaging co-workers. No, you can't VPN into the intranet at 19.2Kbps, but I wouldn't want to try it at the numbers 3G LIKELY produces ("see, you'll get 1Mbps, but only if you're standing still between these blocks during the vernal equinox...").
Most every mobile provider offers quick messaging, and several of them DO offer e-mail to the phone.
Instead of concentrating on videophones or MP3 trading or full-color sega produced videogames, how about improving the phones? My StarTAC is fairly small, but it's not as sturdy as I would have liked. Give me a a solid 2G phone with an aluminum or titanium skin that can take a beating, and a battery that gives me 8-10 hours talk time. I'll jump on that phone for $500 long before I'd buy a 3G videophone/e-mail device/Game Boy wannabe/MP3 player for $200.
Yes, 3G might be very nice. But you can already have streaming multimedia in 2G. You just need the right technology.
And the right technology is at: www.activesky.com
He also talks about 6 or 7 thousand nation-states, then talks about the EU (a proto-nation-state) growing.
A job at MIT is like a licence to product bullshit for gullible journalists.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Actually read this article?? Started out makeing some sense and ended stoned hippy ramblings.... not that that is a bad thing. I do think the drugs had started to kick in nicely by the end.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
The article misses some of the points of what 3G is about. 3G was developed to be a converging path of current technologies to integrate them in a more practical way.
Currently there is almost a different standard for each region / country on the planet.... where is the sense in this?
3G allows technologies based on TDMA/ GSM and those based on CDMA / IS-95b to meet somewhere.
IS-136 derived technologies will merge to WCDMA/UWC-136 and IS-95b derived technologies will merge to cdma2000/3xrtt.
Handsets that are 3G capable should be able to work with any 3G network through mediation carried out at the base station.
The added bandwidth, whilst integral to the standard, is only one part of it. This defiantly was not addressed 3G was called a dog.
bleh whatever....
I would rather a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy
All the arguments you have given are (kind of) true. But just check out Japan. Their phones have at least 160x160px (and less than 90 grams weight), most are in color. And that's more than enough to use "wireless web access". 4x25 was what killed WAP, it's not what will kill 3G.
Japanese people are tottaly into mobile phones. They use them for iMode, phone-calls, mail, surfing, sending eachother pictures and some-kind-of MIDI files etc. etc. etc.
The catch is that with 3G you will not have a phone anymore but a multimedia all-purpose communication device.
boky
Damn that's too cool. I mean, that's a lot of stuff.
But isn't paying for a _personal_ sparc server _and_ dsl line paying "twice the price for useless stuff"?
If you consider yourself joe average consumer, g3 would be expected to be a smashing success! You're not average though, and g3 flunks the big one -- but damn you've got some nifty toys! Just don't smack me over the head and tell me that you got all that _and_ a wife and family.
By that point swap files will be obsolete. They already are, for some of us. ;)
The users are mostly kids with limited phone budgets who want to maximize their telephone use. SMS is ridiculously cheap, it uses essentially one frame to transfer a message. It is incredibly profitable for the telephone company, and unlike a telephone call, you can send and receive SMS messages anywhere.
See my journal, I write things there
First, the Japanese culture generally seems to be more in to tech gadgets than the American culture. Look at some of the thigns (Tamagochi) that have been huge successes over there while enjoying at most a modest (and usually less) success over here. Just because many Japanese consumers like multimedia phones, doesn't mean many Americans will. I certianly won't buy one so long as my StarTAC keeps working.
Second, getting 3G up and running in the US is going to cost a LOT. Remember, Japan is smaller than the state of Calafornia. There is a lot more square footage in the US that would need to have 3G equipment installed in. That higher cost of startup leads to higher inital service fees, which most people don't want to pay. This is espically true if the objective is to provide good coverage and high speed access.
Also along those lines 3G will have adoption troubles until there is a nice nationwide network. Right now my CDMA 1900 Sprint phone can get signal in most any city in all 50 states as well as most all highways. Unless the 3G rollout is on a massive scale it won't be able to compete and hence I won't be as likely to want it. A service is pretty useless if you can't get it in your area.
Finally, one of the things I and many others I know value about our particular cells is they are small. My StarTAC, folded up isn't a whole lot bigger than a pager. Well if you try to whack a 160+ pixel LCD on a phone, it's going to get a lot bigger. Not something I want to lug around.
I'm not saying 3G is necessiarly doomed to failure, but they have some issues to work out soon. The American and Japanese markets are NOT the same thing.
Again, they have lost a lot of money on 3G for reasons that had nothing to do with the marketing side of 3G.
3G licenses were sold (marketed) at the peak of the hype (marketing) about 3G being the "next big thing". Telecom companies paid billions, the market collapsed and these companies end up with big overdrafts. Bug**r all to do with the technology, quite a bit to do with marketing.
It had to do with the terrible mistake made here in the UK over the auction process that was copying a bad American idea and repeating it here.
An auction isn't a way to market something? ... the method? Auction off N licenses when you
know that there are at least N+1 (at the time, very rich) companies who need a
license to stay in business. Noone dares to drop out of the auction process,
so the prices spiral.
Granted, the UK auction process was a mistake. In particular it was designed to make money for the government (which it did very well), instead of to boost a developing technology
It's a dog and people shouldn't want it and in fact I don't think it will see the light of day.
So this is the nub of his argument? "It's a dog"? Any reason for saying this? Technical justifications? Nope. Just "It's a dog" ... profound insight!
With that as a backdrop, (Conclusive proof that it's a dog) the truth is that what consumers want is a logarithmic scale.
You can currently get 9.6k over GSM. 3G gives you (at least) 144k. So he *does* like 3G after all! Either that or he doesn't know what he's talking about.
3G doesn't even exist. Some people might argue that it'll come in a year or two years (don't think the Japanese have it, that's not 3G).
Ah! That clears up whether he knows what he's talking about or not. Who's going to tell NTT DoCoMo that there 3G system isn't Negroponte-compliant? What about the Korean mobile networks who implemented a 2.5G system and found that it actually worked well enough to be classified as 3G?
The sad part, and this isn't being discussed enough, is that it's no good.
The sad part is that attention-hungry half-informed talking heads like Negroponte continually hype up new technology to ridiculous levels, for others to talk it down the following year. It's happened with Internet services, WAP, Bluetooth and now 3G. It confuses the public and discredits the industry - but it makes good headlines.
3G is a new technology which is evolving from 2G (well, duh!). Will it be implemented? Yes. Will it be successful? That depends on whether people find enough uses for it ...
Just like when the internet started noone knew what it will really be used for. Just like the internet, the closest thing to a 'killer app' is already available (email for the net, voice calls for 3G). Unlike the internet it's been hyped to heaven and hell before it's been born.
3G does need informed discussion, it doesn't need Negroponte.
Here in France you can get essentially anonymous GSM service using a prepaid mobicarte or SFR SIM card. They asked me my name and they have it in a database somewhere, and they might have asked me for id, I don't recall, but at any rate it wasn't any form of id officially recognized in France such as a passport, so it could easily have been false. The handset is your standard handset of course, so it's not disposable, unless you're wealthy, but as far as I know nothing stops you from buying as many handsets as you want anonymously.
Structured data. Structured searching. The Enzyme Project
You could ofcourse have checked the Media Lab website to see where Nicholas Negroponte is. He is still there on the webpage. http://www.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/
He is working there as a director in a foreign minister role. Not strange after having been its director for about 15 years.
Use Adsense for Charity
NN:It's not where the lies come from - whether it's a silly website or a recognised authority - it's the absence of the filters. That's why again a more popular kind of filtering, where the people looking at the information can actually help filter it, is a very, very important approach for the future. It's not done very much but it could solve issues of pornography, it could solve credibility issues of the kind you just mentioned.
OK, an interview like this is probably not the place to expect a well thought out solution to the filtering problem, but this is another in a series of vague unsupported ideas he throws out there. What does this mean? How would this system work? It's easy to say that "popular kind of filtering, where the people looking at the information can actually help filter it" is a good idea, but are there any difficulties with it? Why hasn't it been implemented already? Let's hear it, Negroponte, that would be more interesting than throwaway platitudes.
Structured data. Structured searching. The Enzyme Project
Q: You say digital technology will end the nation state and eventually produce a global cyber state. Now, speaking at this moment, that looks particularly wrong, doesn't it? You have a war being fought in defence of states; you have people who don't have states - Muslims and Palestinians - saying can we have a nation state, please? So, that prediction has turned out to be very wrong.
A: No, actually, it's turned out to be quite right. Let me explain how. Clearly, the notion of a piece of land, definable - these are atoms and they have an edge and a limiting contour - as something that you relate to as a culture or as an individual is extraordinarily important. What's happened is that the nation state as we know it today happens to be the wrong size. It's too big to be local and it's too small to be global; the UK is a perfect example.
For a better answer to this question, try reading Spiral Dynamics [www.spiraldynamics.com].
Spiral Dynamics theory concerns itself with what people and nations value, and according to SD there are about seven or eight basic value systems, or 'value MEMEs' that operate in people.
Each vMEME is colour coded for ease of reference--they are (very basically):
BEIGE: vaues instinctual basic survival eg. homeless people, starving masses
PURPLE: values ethnic tribes, family and mythic rituals, eg. superstitions, corporate 'tribes'
RED: values power, impulsivity, egocentricity, and rebelling, eg. streetgangs, frontier mentality, James Bond villains
BLUE: values conformance, absolutist principles of 'right' and 'wrong', Order, and the One True Way, eg. Puritan America, Confucian China, Islamic fundamentalism
ORANGE: values achievement, escape from the 'herd', the world is a chessboard and you play to Win, eg. Wall Street, Colonialism
GREEN: values sensitivity, communitarian human bonding, dialogue, relationships, multiculturalism, eg. Postmodernism, Greenpeace
YELLOW: values integration of all of the above, as life is a kaliedoscope of natural hierarchies, systems and forms.
So even with this very rough map of the different vMEMEs, we can tentatively see that the USA is predominantly an ORANGE (personal achievement, we protect our interestes) oriented culture, but also has a significant percentage of the GREEN (no culture is better than any other, USA is an oppressor) vMEME active.
Contrast that with other parts of the world that are still firmly set in BLUE--there is One True Way, Our God is the Only God, our culture is Good and it's order must be preserved.
Or even parts of Africa that value the tribe and where lines of kinship are considered very important (PURPLE).
And applying our vMEME map to the current conflict, it would seem that the Taliban is an unhealthy mixture of the BLUE 'our religion is True,' vMEME with the RED power striving vMEME (and we'll personally take power, commit terrorist acts, and kill any of our people who disagree with us).
And remember that many people devote maybe half their lives guided by whichever vMEME is operating in them, be it ORANGE achievement or BLUE conformity.
And yet, we're somehow supposed to believe that, given enough mobile phones, our differences are going to dissapear and we're going to form a Global Cyber State?
It's difficult to see how digitally connecting everyone on the outside is somehow going to make the differences on the inside dissapear.
Imagine a student phoning a terrorist:
Western student (GREEN): let's talk, for I aknowledge and respect your culture...
Arab extreemist (RED/blue): You are not of my culture, you are an infidel--die infidel, Die!!
Perhaps the trouble with Dr. Negroponte's answer is that he's looking, like a good technologist, from the outside, at the physical systems, and talking about stuff ilke 'the size of the state being wrong'.
But by using SD we can start to fathom the depth and breadth of the inner codes and values that are operating in people and nations, and why the conflict exists not just between states but also between the different vMEMEs operating within single states.
eg.:
'they attacked us and we are just in punishing them' (BLUE),
'we have to protect our oil interests and stabilise the area' (ORANGE),
'America is oppressive and interfering with minority cultures' (GREEN)
It was a few Decembers ago and I was still in the Navy. An associate of mine (also a squid) decided that we should head south to Tijuana for a Mexican Sexual Escapade. Who am I to argue, so off we go.
We get into Tijuana, but the broads are really nasty so we take the geeksen-bus down to Ensenada. After spending some time getting lubed at Papas & Beer, we head out in search of ass. It seemed that all the American geeks were already dragging some sap around by his dick so we did what came natural to us. We looked for Mexican geeks.
We go into some nondescript underground bar and sure as shit, tit'se are geeks galore. We rent a couple named Hemos and Taco and take them back to our hotel room. Not the kind of guys to waste time, we strip our geeks and get down to business. Bob is in his bed right next to me, totally drunk, jack-hammering this geeks like he was some sort of pneumatic super-stallion.
I'm bonking my geek and Bob and I are watching each otit's's activities and laughing at each otit's. About this time, he grabs a beer off the nightstand and takes a swig. Next thing, he's spitting it at me through his teeth. We're laughing and carrying on, and his geek starts some shit in Perl. Apparently it's not getting into the shenanigans.
So Bob does what any good sailor in this situation would do: he spits beer in it's face, in order that it might share in the festivities. I thought that it was nice of him to include it in our shared celebration of lewdness. The geeks didn't think it was funny though, actually it took it as an insult, and started trying to kick him off of it's ass and out of the bed.
Now my geek is talking to the to the other geek and it grabs my pubes and starts yanking in an attempt to end our session. This bad behavior was not in my plans- hey, I just paid fifty bucks and this bitch didn't even get spit on and now it wants to high-tail it out of all this before I bust a nut? Hell no!
So Bob and I are discussing what the fuck we are going to do, still humping the geeks, when he starts farting. We're talking LOUD, squeaky, ripping farts; the kind that make your ass feel like it's being split with a razor blade. And the smell- did I mention we didn't eat that day, instead we stayed hungry in order to maximize our buzz.
I'm laughing so hard that I completely lost my hard-on, and it's all I can do to keep this geek underneath me from ripping my balls off. Bob, on the other hand, was still banging away on his geeks and about this time one of his farts goes liquid. He reaches behind him, wipes his ass onto his hand, and cleans it by wiping it onto his geeks's face.
My geeks saw this and expecting the same from me, balls up it's fist and smacks me in the forehead. Too much. Mister Nice Guy is now getting bent. So I do what any good Ambassador of the United States Navy does in a situation like this: I pull out and start pissing on it.
Bob sees this and being quick witted starts singing "My Corona" to the tune of The Knack's hit "My Sharona." As I empty what was left of "My Corona" all over this geeks's face and ass, Bob pulls out his cock and shoots a load of spooge all over his geeks's face, making special efforts to get some in it's hair.
I mean to say that this grand finale took what was left of the fight out of our geeks. They were both so mortified of what had transpired that when we got off of them they actually curled up into the fetal position and began sobbing. This was a relief to us, as we weren't sure up to this point how we were going to get out of there.
To make sure they didn't come after us, we wiped up the piss, shit, and spooge with their blouses and then liberated the receiver from the phone. On the way out the door Bob yelled "Remember the Alamo!" and we got the fuck out of Mexico quicker than Newt Gingrich can divorce a cancer-ridden spouse on it's deathbed.
Cheers,
gdb
>According to Nostraponte, site visitors have no
>problem whatsoever in paying a few cents for
>every article they read.
Which turns out to be absolutely correct for most people. I pay a monthly fee for unmetered low bandwidth allowing me to browse the web for, er, a few small coins a minute or, in pratical terms, per article. For article read whatever you want - and people will pay differing rates - so the gamer will be happy to pay a bit more for their chunk to be bigger or faster.
A yes, you say, but they are not paying for the article _itself_. True and this is maybe why people are reluctant to pay, effectively, twice.
C
Your post makes sense. It is logical, rational and Plain wrong.
Consumers the world over have shown that text messages are a very good app for those mobile digital radio communication devices that we refer to as "telephones". And that they will put up with typing on a numeric keypad, message length limitations etc.
Which is why the providers who failed to predict this are scrambling to lessen those limitations and anonnoyances in the hope that it will help them sell thier brand of electronic widgets and services.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
This is just so Neal Stephenson... the concept of education for kids being delivered as content into devices that have what would now seem to us to be the strangest UI's.
Think today's great? Should've been here *yesterday*.
"It's not where the lies come from - whether it's a silly website or a recognised authority - it's the absence of the filters. That's why again a more popular kind of filtering, where the people looking at the information can actually help filter it, is a very, very important approach for the future. It's not done very much but it could solve issues of pornography, it could solve credibility issues of the kind you just mentioned."
o .html
Well I thought it sounded like one of my projects so thought it might be of interest to someone else..
Open image directory software: http://mlug.missouri.edu/~mogmios/projects/kigdem
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Sorry, Negroponte isn't a lateral thinker. I read his "Being Digital" - what a bore. The brilliant man compared bits to atoms - wow - now that's an original idea. Any Slashdot reader could make that comparison. And this guy's a guru? OK he (co?)founded the Media Lab - that's not bad. But pleease.
I guess every group of people have to try it out for themselves and they should be allowed to do so without exception (would you please wake up Middle East, he's sleeping again during the class).
Sure, digital stuff will have profound effect on many things, even how societies organized but I'm just saying that national states aren't alone in this regard, and in fact would come to an end with or without anything digital.
And I agree with the interviewed pundit that one of the things into which national states are going to change is the local state, a small and governable group of people in a smallish piece of land. A local state may be ethnically homogenous but that is not it's main defining feature.
Btw, phones aren't just phones. I really want at least two, possibly three phones with different qualities.
Point to the list is that there can be more then one uberphone. It's like which one is the better ballplayer His Airness or ZZ? (Of course Jordan is possibly the greatest athlete ever, but that is more then made up by the images of fierce troll warrior-god.)
--Flam,
who publicly predicted that the Dutch would win the World Cup a day before they are knocked out by the Irish.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
DoCoMo (Japan's largest mobile communications company) has services that aspire to third generation mobile comms, but the technology is just perked-up second generation. There are no commercial 3G networks anywhere. Yet.
get a Free BSD!
First of all, I must say I am not very familiar with US Sprint service. I live in Europe and 3G is an important issue here as it is in US and in Japan. I must agree that costs for setting up 3G are (in most of the countries around the world) simply astronomic. Mostly because of huge government apetites. This will cetranly /slow down/ adoption of 3G, but it will not kill it.
Secondly, I've seen japanese thingies and I could not believe it: the phones are lighter and thinner than your Motorola StarTAC and have support for 160+ px and color. Some (ok, a bit bigger models) even have a build in video camera.
While it is true that people want to use phones for phone calls, I guess no one would mind being able to see the person on the other side or even stream pictures of babies firsts steps and mooshy stuff like that.
Conclusion: if there is enough interest from big companies to push this forward, eventually everybody will be using 3G.
boky
I'm very skeptical and I have absolutely no invested interest in this matter other than that as a consumer. Any one of the above questions can (or should) sink the worth of 3G in the respective countries. What's more, the question remains if the investment in 3G is more worthwhile than investment in other infrastructures and devices. For instance, I, for one, would rather have a seemlessly integrated PDA, Cell Phone, Wireless email (and maybe light weight web) device [similar to the Treo...possibly] than a cell phone with streaming video and little else [Especially given the current limitations on battery life, data entry, screen size, and so on.]
Actually Nostraponte was talking about micro pay systems for the articles not for the access. This is no more double paying for the article anymore than paying to get into a movie and then having to pay for popcorn is double paying for the concessions.
I believe the original quote is
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"
- Groucho Marx
One of my favorites...thanks for reminding me of it!
There are killer apps for 3G, you just aren't thinking of them. Sure, browsing the web with your startac is lame - but have you seen the CURRENT state of japanese phones? They pay monthly service fees, alowing the handset manufacturers to subsidize the cost - the result - thin, small phones, high resolution full color screens, java clients, long battery life. Now having a schedule, e-mail, and web in a navigable high resolution screen (you'd be suprised that a small screen is that useful when you see these)..given a few more years of development becomes an attractive st of features.
Now, talk about some killer apps. I personally think it will be location services. ie, I opt in to be notified when a good friend of mine happens to be 2 blocks away - and he has opted in also. A map comes up, with a local coffee place - and we meet there after trading a few instant messages. Obviously all the auto features are useful as well in terms of mapping, directions to food, atms, etc. Maybe United will even subsidize your long distance calls while you are sitting in their terminal because they delayed your flight.
In any event these ideas are all in vc stages right now, and there are some that make compelling use of the additional bandwidth.
Barbie needs a Cat 5 cable attached.. hmm wonder where they could put that?
It seems the fate of many new technologys goes something like this:
1) Hyped
2) Introduced
3) Debunked
4) Used
5) Taken for granted
(Of course, the process is not entirely linear.)
At the moment, a lot of people are debunking 3G,
a natural response to the hype. As there are no
phones on the market as of yet, it's too early to
say what will happen.
It's likely the people will, in fact, use 3G but
maybe not in the way intended.
(Much as the european phone companies had no idea
that SMS messaging would be a major future source
of revenue when the GSM standard was introduced)
Nicholas Negroponte is the same guy who predicted that there would be $1 trillion in e-commerce by 2000, and that micropayments will "change consumer behavior enormously.
Negroponte is yet another snake-oil salesman kept alive by the popular 'science' press.
They are always chasing sexy projects with results always being "around the corner".
Given the untold number of millions spend in the media lab, what do they have to show for it??
1. Spend $Billions to buy licenses and deploy 3G
2. ???
3. PROFIT !!!
... It is a muscle car! And I was all fired up to fart in your general direction, but being a prudent /.'er I looked it up first and it is listed.
/ mu sclecars-definition.html
Good on you!
http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclecars/general
I work in wireless, and am struggling with the current poor bitrate speeds that we have to deal with on networks right now. with 3g, speeds will go from about 9kb/s to about 56kb/s. What this guy doesn't understand is the screen size is so small, there really isn't a whole lot you can do with more than 56kb/s (unless we're talking video, and at 100kb/s, that's about the max there). Obviously, this guy they interviewed has a lot of opinions and not a whole lot of experience actually WORKING in wireless...
Multiple personality disorder - benign, life enhancing version.
What's your problem with this statement? Untill someone implements micropayments, this prediction cannot be proved or disproved. So, what's your point? That he was wrong in the sense that we still don't have micropayments? Is that his fault?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
In my work I get to hear a lot of the behind the scenes that go on a Sprint PCS. I also work with Cingular, Verison, and AT&T My experience with each company has led me to believe that Sprint is on solid ground to expand rapidly. The other companies I deal with are still trying to figure out how to change to a new technology without making the consumer think that they are making their phones obsolete. This is usualy done by changing your company name and telling customers, SUPRISE! you need a new phone! Sprint on the other hand has been very solid. They started out Digital to begin with, they now as of this year own licences for bandwidth in every part of the country. All they have left is puting up more towers, Which takes time, permision from land owners, and a couple million dollars each. Even with their growth, they still have the larges single technology, single company, siemless network in the U.S.. They are nearly ready to open up to 3G, They will start at 144 Kpbs. They already have 3G ready phones quity slipped onto store shelves. They also have GPS on the way for every phone, They have liecences from Palm for their O.S. Sprint is a gadget lovers dream company.