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How Great Cheap Phones Never Get to the U.S.
prostoalex writes "Gary Krakow from MSNBC is impressed with Motorola's C116 phone only to find out that that the phone is not available in the US. The reason? 'A very, very basic GSM handset that handles incoming and outgoing calls as well as SMS messages, the C116 is sold all over the world -- except for the United States. It's not sold here because it's too cheap!' The phone is targeted for emerging markets, where people don't like to tie themselves into monthly contracts, and with little value proposition presents little interest to US wireless operators."
Yeah, unless you're on MySpace.
Man, am I bored.
"...the latter because pre-pay is anonymous and untraceable"
We have had GSM pre-pay in Australia for quite a few years now. I bought a second hand mobile for my daughter and let her pay for the cards with her own cash. This should have all been private and untraceable.
Well it's not, turns out the govt has mandated that to use a mobile you must have a special govt regulated identifier, I think they call it a "phone number", anyway the device won't work without it. This "phone number" can be entered into a special machine that allows the govt to contact a pre-paid user any time they choose.
Oh BTW, mobiles with strong encryption are illegal over here (pretty much everywhere else too) and in some cases I think that is justifyable. Example: Cartoon riots and the youth race riots in France and Australia last year were grossly manipulated towards violence by "groups" using sms "social networks" to disseminate provocative disinformation and organise "the angry mob's" location and timing. A herd of sms enabled humans is like any other heard, a few react to some vague danger signal with a vague alarm call, the heard becomes nervous, a few start moving away from where everyone is looking, one bolts, their nearest neighbour/relative follows... Once the stampede starts no individual in the herd really knows where they are going or what they are trampling underneath them.
Having said that I also concede the "peace is war" argument, it is quite possible one or more of these "groups" are part of the government, stirring the pot a bit to test who runs first on particular race/religion/whatever issues. I mean why fight the neo-nazis and AQ sympathizers head on, get them to stomp on each other a bit and see who are the puppeter's. The public may even give bonus points to the government for quashing a riot quickly and "even-handedly".
If you are lucky you have two options, live in a civilization based on authoriy figures or live in tribal anarchy, there maybe more options if you are prepared to discount the past performance of the human race and most of the findings from the fields of ecology, phycology and game theory.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/casepossgen.htm
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"The apostrophe in it's marks a contraction of it is or it has. The possessive its has no apostrophe."