The ability to switch out SIM cards is actually quite useful. But those who think that America is the whole world won't understand that.
I live in Asia; we've got a larger population than the US, and many, many more cell phones. They're all GSM phones and every one has a SIM card (or two, maybe three).
Here's how it comes in handy: cell carrier X decides that all calls to customers on cell carrier X are free. What if you're a customer of cell carrier Y? Just swap in a X SIM; they're available everywhere for a buck or so. Need to make a long call to someone on carrier Z? Swap the SIM and away you go.
That's called "freedom of choice" - too bad that Americans have forgotten about it. We pay about $5 per month for our cell service - why are you paying so much for the same thing on a locked down phone with a two year contract?
When they tell you that it costs that much to provide the service they're lying to you. It actually costs that much to provide the service, and also provide an ultra-luxurious lifestyle to the executives of the cell phone company.
This is the first time I've seen Anonymous Coward be the only one who gave good information. It's the call termination fees that they're collecting that makes it a very profitable operation.
With multiple phone companies, a flaw was found in the way phone service was billed. Big call centers could locate in small communities; they might have a few outgoing lines that they paid for, and they'd receive millions of inbound calls. The small town phone company would have to build enough capacity for those millions of calls but could only charge for the small number of physical lines in their service area.
The solution was call termination fees; the originating phone company pays a small fee to the destination phone company. It's just a fraction of a cent, but if there's a large number of inbound calls it can add up. This solved the imbalance in the phone system - and created an opportunity for VOIP gateways and services like Grand Central / Google Voice.
When you call one of those numbers, they terminate your call and pocket the fee. Then they ship your call out on the internet as a VOIP call. Whenever you see some service offering a free incoming phone number - it's being paid for by the call termination fees.
First of all, AT&T's Viewdata was a "walled garden" (if you want to call it that). You could choose from the selections they provided, and pay by the minute for the privilege. For most folks, it was a long distance connection, too. It wasn't too early, it was totally impractical. No fun at 300 baud - when you could get it to go that fast.
When BBS systems started to show up, there was a reason for people to use them. No "per minute / byte" charges, and other local users to chat / message with. I started a BBS when high-speed modems were 2400 baud. Over a few years it grew to 25 incoming lines, 14,400 and 28,800 access - and a huge library of files. I remember spending big bucks to buy 688 Mb ESDI drives to expand the system. At $20 per year for a subscription, it made money very well. There was FidoNet - and QWK mail, etc. to move messages around. I wrote some of that mail software myself.
Whew; 4 "nodes" per 386/25 using DesqView and QEMM and LanTastic. It worked well for the day.
But the fun was over too soon - as ISP systems became common and people could get on the Internet (remember Trumpet Winsock?) - that was the end of BBS systems. What us sysops did to help - we got people to buy modems and learn how to use them. We were the training wheels for the new Internet generation.
WTF? US providers are some of the least expensive in the world? That's not true at all.
We have two cell phones here and we pay about $5 per month for service on both of them. We don't pay for incoming calls or texts and there's no contract. If I want to use data, then I can pay $1 per day for unlimited - $5 for a week, $20 for a month. Tethering? No problem; they'll even almost give you the USB dongle for your laptop.
I've got a WiFi 3g / 4g thingie that cost $25, and using it to support several devices is covered by the data costs I already described.
And the cell phone companies here are making money hand over fist. You're getting screwed big time in the US - and you're too ill-informed to realize it.
And by the way, unlimited means "all the data you can move" here; no caps or limits.
The point is to increase the efficiency of the courts. That whole "I didn't know I was drunk" defense is useless when everybody is equipped to determine this on their own.
Microsoft is just using the same kind of "logic" that my ex-wife did during our divorce. Accuse, accuse, accuse with all the bad information they can manufacture.
It doesn't matter if you're innocent or not; most folks will only remember the accusation.
Get the facts and you'll see what this is really all about; Microsoft trying to beat down a competitor using any and all tactics they can
It's because alcohol is an almost perfect replacement for gasoline and can be used to extend the current supply or replace it if needed.
Replacement fuels are only useful if they actually, you know, replace what we're already using. Or would you have the biofuel companies give everyone a free car that use their special fuel?
Suggest to your father that the countries you mentioned are largely third-world countries where $3 per day is a good living wage. That should help him understand that those folks are unable to purchase music at the retail price, and the only option they have to listen to tunes is piracy.
Troll much? Given Microsoft's track record - don't deny it, it's carefully documented, there's no way I'd consider letting them have any input in an election.
Sure, they may have a great idea - but their history is clear and it's not going to go away. They missed their chance to be the "company that everyone trusts" a long, long time ago.
That's surprisingly insightful. These robots still have a long way to go before they could be useful combat troops - but they're getting too close for comfort.
Here's my prediction: when robotic combat troops are deployed, they'll be deployed against American citizens.
Protip: use Gmail's filters to automatically label and/or move messages into folders as they arrive. This gets you the best of both worlds; no hassles putting labels on things, and you can search the whole works as easily as you'd search a huge inbox.
Microsoft has a long history of promoting all the fancy new features their upcoming version of Windows will have - and then leaving most if not all of them out of the final product.
Don't get excited about their announcements, wait until the shipping version is ready and see what they've really got.
I evaluated those for use by a major transportation company. They were almost completely useless; Windows "tablet edition" had too many gotchas where you needed to use a keyboard to proceed. The battery life was short; 90 minutes if you used it lightly.
And the construction; thin plastic casing with easy-break flaps and port covers. Incredibly fragile - but still heavy and a little too bulky.
They offered much and delivered too little. HP is still trying to play that game and failing at it to this day.
HP's problems are much worse than that. They've been driving customers away for years now - and those customers won't be coming back.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt a few times, but the DV2000 laptop was end of my relationship with HP. It had that bad Nvidia chip; HP knew those chips were bad and they had a warehouse full of laptops with bad chips in them. What did they do about it? Yup, they sold those laptops knowing they'd fail.
What did HP do about it? My experience was that their "customer service" hung up on me twice and the email response to my request for help amounted to little more than "go F yourself".
I guess fraud is OK when a corporation does it. I'll never forget, though - and I will NEVER buy any HP product again. I'll advise my friends and family to avoid them.
It'd be better to keep them out of open source; they'd screw up a wet dream.
Each time you let a corporation or the government have information about what you do or where you go, you're building the fascist society that you so vehemently deny is coming.
You may have no problem today with having someone else know that you parked in spot a-33 at the mall at 4:33, then you bought dinner for two at the Cheesecake Factory (per your debit / credit) card, then left the parking lot at 5.24. You arrived at the No-tell-hotel at 6:12 and checked into room 163 with your friend and spent 1.2 hours there.
Here's the thing that you never consider: the only reason that law enforcement collects information is to further an investigation. If some hooker bought it at the No-tell-hotel at 6:30, you'll be one of the prime suspects. If someone who stayed there on that day is busted for possession, they'll be coming to ask you a few questions.
This stuff doesn't make the law enforcement people smarter, it just makes them lazier. They can look at all of the nifty data and find someone to pin the crime on without ever setting their donut down.
Sure, quote that line about "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to worry about". And then consider that what you think is wrong and what someone else thinks is wrong (MADD for example) are two very different things. Maybe your parking data will show up in a criminal trial; maybe it'll show up in your divorce proceedings. But rest assured, it'll never show up in any place where it does YOU any good.
A: It's a big world and there's lots of different countries. Many that you don't hear about in the news.
B: Your feet aren't nailed to the floor.
Some of us looked at what was going on and hopped on a plane to someplace less fascist. You could too - if you want.
This sounds great if you're going on a fishing expedition. Heck, we don't know what kind of evidence you might have or if you'll dispose of it, so let's come kick your door in and search through your possessions. If you've done nothing wrong, you won't have anything to worry about, right?
There are specific rules for gathering evidence. The constitution may be tattered, but it still is the law of the land and it speaks to this particular issue.
I'm still trying to find a way to justify that "she only paid $60 so she knew it was stolen" stuff. If she'd paid less than $100 for a new HP TouchPad would that prove it was stolen? Did anyone consider the value of a used laptop in a buyer's market? $60 may have been the fair market value of that item, not proof that she knew it was stolen.
Maybe, just maybe - she bought that laptop in good faith at a reasonable price. The previous owner left some monitoring software on it and things went downhill from there. Now the monitoring company has been caught sharing her personal information with the public so they're going to toss up all the plausible deniability they can to escape legal liability for their acts. It's cheaper to pay off that previous owner to say what they want than to pay their lawyers, you know.
There's another answer to the accusation: it's almost never a good idea to give gifts to charity under your name.
Once you're identified as someone who gives to the less fortunate, you'll have fundraisers and grifters of all kinds crawling out of the woodwork looking to get some for themselves.
By giving anonymously, you can do good deeds and move on to doing other good deeds without interference.
Try this educational experiment: give $5 each to three or four famous charities; United Way, Salvation Army, etc. Give them your name, address and phone number and see what happens. After a year you'll be much wiser and you'll be able to imagine what it'd be like if you were known to be super rich.
Heck, don't give them your address or phone number and they'll still find you. Of course, you'd probably already know this if you're someone who gives to those less fortunate than yourself.
There's a great big world full of people that exists outside of the borders of the US, you know.
GSM phones are inexpensive and easy to find - and there's billions of people living in remote areas who don't have cell service. Like most of China, for example - you only hear about the "good" parts of that country, not the real China where people are called "peasants"
Inexpensive cell towers like described here could change their world - there's no entrenched monopoly to compete with and there's not enough profit to justify building a corporate cell tower. A few of these working in a mesh network would be cost effective and bring communication to a greater portion of the world's population.
That was clearly written by someone who doesn't own and has never used an "iDevice".
I have an iPad - and it's full of MP3 tunes and EPUB books. None of them were purchased from iTunes and none of them have DRM or were "blessed" by Apple.
I didn't have to "hack" or "jailbreak" my iPad to do this; iTunes will happily load your iDevice with all the questionably obtained content you could want. You can use open source replacements for iTunes if you insist - but you probably won't gain any functionality.
As long as you keep yelling about how locked-down the iDevices are and insisting that you'd rather have a locked-down Android device, you'll never understand why Apple sells millions and millions of their products.
Almost every company depends on networked computers to perform critical daily tasks. IT's function is to provide and maintain the computing infrastructure.
Unfortunately, there's MBA types counting beans and looking for places to save money. They look at IT and see a cost center; IT adds nothing to the bottom line.
So let's start with a company with a healthy IT department; since they do their jobs, all the computing resources are up and running, problems are few and far between and quickly resolved.
The bean counters look at the situation and how much they're paying IT - and see that everything is working fine. What are we paying these folks for? Lay them off to save money.
Things keep running for months but start to fall apart around the edges; the users fix some of their PC problems and work around others. At about 18 months or so something critical goes down; the Exchange server takes a crap or something similar. Now they're in a panic; we need qualified IT staff, pronto. So they start hiring again (at a higher pay scale) and the cycle repeats.
Try not to confuse this cycle with the longer cycle that moves computing power from the server to the desktop, then back to the server, back to the desktop and now back to the server. "Cloud" is just BS talk; it's dumb terminals on the desk and everything on the servers (again).
Working in IT is like being in a big game of musical chairs. The pay is good when you're getting paid, but there are gaps between the jobs. Right now isn't good for IT people, but in a year or two...
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The ability to switch out SIM cards is actually quite useful. But those who think that America is the whole world won't understand that.
I live in Asia; we've got a larger population than the US, and many, many more cell phones. They're all GSM phones and every one has a SIM card (or two, maybe three).
Here's how it comes in handy: cell carrier X decides that all calls to customers on cell carrier X are free. What if you're a customer of cell carrier Y? Just swap in a X SIM; they're available everywhere for a buck or so. Need to make a long call to someone on carrier Z? Swap the SIM and away you go.
That's called "freedom of choice" - too bad that Americans have forgotten about it. We pay about $5 per month for our cell service - why are you paying so much for the same thing on a locked down phone with a two year contract?
When they tell you that it costs that much to provide the service they're lying to you. It actually costs that much to provide the service, and also provide an ultra-luxurious lifestyle to the executives of the cell phone company.
This is the first time I've seen Anonymous Coward be the only one who gave good information. It's the call termination fees that they're collecting that makes it a very profitable operation.
With multiple phone companies, a flaw was found in the way phone service was billed. Big call centers could locate in small communities; they might have a few outgoing lines that they paid for, and they'd receive millions of inbound calls. The small town phone company would have to build enough capacity for those millions of calls but could only charge for the small number of physical lines in their service area.
The solution was call termination fees; the originating phone company pays a small fee to the destination phone company. It's just a fraction of a cent, but if there's a large number of inbound calls it can add up. This solved the imbalance in the phone system - and created an opportunity for VOIP gateways and services like Grand Central / Google Voice.
When you call one of those numbers, they terminate your call and pocket the fee. Then they ship your call out on the internet as a VOIP call. Whenever you see some service offering a free incoming phone number - it's being paid for by the call termination fees.
Just remember "Plays For Sure" and you wont be fooled
First of all, AT&T's Viewdata was a "walled garden" (if you want to call it that). You could choose from the selections they provided, and pay by the minute for the privilege. For most folks, it was a long distance connection, too. It wasn't too early, it was totally impractical. No fun at 300 baud - when you could get it to go that fast.
When BBS systems started to show up, there was a reason for people to use them. No "per minute / byte" charges, and other local users to chat / message with. I started a BBS when high-speed modems were 2400 baud. Over a few years it grew to 25 incoming lines, 14,400 and 28,800 access - and a huge library of files. I remember spending big bucks to buy 688 Mb ESDI drives to expand the system. At $20 per year for a subscription, it made money very well. There was FidoNet - and QWK mail, etc. to move messages around. I wrote some of that mail software myself. Whew; 4 "nodes" per 386/25 using DesqView and QEMM and LanTastic. It worked well for the day.
But the fun was over too soon - as ISP systems became common and people could get on the Internet (remember Trumpet Winsock?) - that was the end of BBS systems. What us sysops did to help - we got people to buy modems and learn how to use them. We were the training wheels for the new Internet generation.
WTF? US providers are some of the least expensive in the world? That's not true at all.
We have two cell phones here and we pay about $5 per month for service on both of them. We don't pay for incoming calls or texts and there's no contract. If I want to use data, then I can pay $1 per day for unlimited - $5 for a week, $20 for a month. Tethering? No problem; they'll even almost give you the USB dongle for your laptop.
I've got a WiFi 3g / 4g thingie that cost $25, and using it to support several devices is covered by the data costs I already described.
And the cell phone companies here are making money hand over fist. You're getting screwed big time in the US - and you're too ill-informed to realize it.
And by the way, unlimited means "all the data you can move" here; no caps or limits.
The point is to increase the efficiency of the courts. That whole "I didn't know I was drunk" defense is useless when everybody is equipped to determine this on their own.
Microsoft is just using the same kind of "logic" that my ex-wife did during our divorce. Accuse, accuse, accuse with all the bad information they can manufacture.
It doesn't matter if you're innocent or not; most folks will only remember the accusation.
Get the facts and you'll see what this is really all about; Microsoft trying to beat down a competitor using any and all tactics they can
It's because alcohol is an almost perfect replacement for gasoline and can be used to extend the current supply or replace it if needed.
Replacement fuels are only useful if they actually, you know, replace what we're already using. Or would you have the biofuel companies give everyone a free car that use their special fuel?
Suggest to your father that the countries you mentioned are largely third-world countries where $3 per day is a good living wage. That should help him understand that those folks are unable to purchase music at the retail price, and the only option they have to listen to tunes is piracy.
Don't forget to ask for unemployment when you get fired.
Troll much? Given Microsoft's track record - don't deny it, it's carefully documented, there's no way I'd consider letting them have any input in an election.
Sure, they may have a great idea - but their history is clear and it's not going to go away. They missed their chance to be the "company that everyone trusts" a long, long time ago.
That's surprisingly insightful. These robots still have a long way to go before they could be useful combat troops - but they're getting too close for comfort.
Here's my prediction: when robotic combat troops are deployed, they'll be deployed against American citizens.
Protip: use Gmail's filters to automatically label and/or move messages into folders as they arrive. This gets you the best of both worlds; no hassles putting labels on things, and you can search the whole works as easily as you'd search a huge inbox.
Microsoft has a long history of promoting all the fancy new features their upcoming version of Windows will have - and then leaving most if not all of them out of the final product.
Don't get excited about their announcements, wait until the shipping version is ready and see what they've really got.
I evaluated those for use by a major transportation company. They were almost completely useless; Windows "tablet edition" had too many gotchas where you needed to use a keyboard to proceed. The battery life was short; 90 minutes if you used it lightly.
And the construction; thin plastic casing with easy-break flaps and port covers. Incredibly fragile - but still heavy and a little too bulky.
They offered much and delivered too little. HP is still trying to play that game and failing at it to this day.
HP's problems are much worse than that. They've been driving customers away for years now - and those customers won't be coming back.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt a few times, but the DV2000 laptop was end of my relationship with HP. It had that bad Nvidia chip; HP knew those chips were bad and they had a warehouse full of laptops with bad chips in them. What did they do about it? Yup, they sold those laptops knowing they'd fail.
What did HP do about it? My experience was that their "customer service" hung up on me twice and the email response to my request for help amounted to little more than "go F yourself".
I guess fraud is OK when a corporation does it. I'll never forget, though - and I will NEVER buy any HP product again. I'll advise my friends and family to avoid them.
It'd be better to keep them out of open source; they'd screw up a wet dream.
Each time you let a corporation or the government have information about what you do or where you go, you're building the fascist society that you so vehemently deny is coming.
You may have no problem today with having someone else know that you parked in spot a-33 at the mall at 4:33, then you bought dinner for two at the Cheesecake Factory (per your debit / credit) card, then left the parking lot at 5.24. You arrived at the No-tell-hotel at 6:12 and checked into room 163 with your friend and spent 1.2 hours there.
Here's the thing that you never consider: the only reason that law enforcement collects information is to further an investigation. If some hooker bought it at the No-tell-hotel at 6:30, you'll be one of the prime suspects. If someone who stayed there on that day is busted for possession, they'll be coming to ask you a few questions.
This stuff doesn't make the law enforcement people smarter, it just makes them lazier. They can look at all of the nifty data and find someone to pin the crime on without ever setting their donut down.
Sure, quote that line about "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to worry about". And then consider that what you think is wrong and what someone else thinks is wrong (MADD for example) are two very different things. Maybe your parking data will show up in a criminal trial; maybe it'll show up in your divorce proceedings. But rest assured, it'll never show up in any place where it does YOU any good.
Rather than spout your opinion, how about checking the facts before you post again?
A: It's a big world and there's lots of different countries. Many that you don't hear about in the news. B: Your feet aren't nailed to the floor. Some of us looked at what was going on and hopped on a plane to someplace less fascist. You could too - if you want.
I've noticed it too. Maybe it's time to ban Anonymous Coward - or at least start his posts at -1?
This sounds great if you're going on a fishing expedition. Heck, we don't know what kind of evidence you might have or if you'll dispose of it, so let's come kick your door in and search through your possessions. If you've done nothing wrong, you won't have anything to worry about, right?
There are specific rules for gathering evidence. The constitution may be tattered, but it still is the law of the land and it speaks to this particular issue.
I'm still trying to find a way to justify that "she only paid $60 so she knew it was stolen" stuff. If she'd paid less than $100 for a new HP TouchPad would that prove it was stolen? Did anyone consider the value of a used laptop in a buyer's market? $60 may have been the fair market value of that item, not proof that she knew it was stolen.
Maybe, just maybe - she bought that laptop in good faith at a reasonable price. The previous owner left some monitoring software on it and things went downhill from there. Now the monitoring company has been caught sharing her personal information with the public so they're going to toss up all the plausible deniability they can to escape legal liability for their acts. It's cheaper to pay off that previous owner to say what they want than to pay their lawyers, you know.
There's another answer to the accusation: it's almost never a good idea to give gifts to charity under your name.
Once you're identified as someone who gives to the less fortunate, you'll have fundraisers and grifters of all kinds crawling out of the woodwork looking to get some for themselves.
By giving anonymously, you can do good deeds and move on to doing other good deeds without interference.
Try this educational experiment: give $5 each to three or four famous charities; United Way, Salvation Army, etc. Give them your name, address and phone number and see what happens. After a year you'll be much wiser and you'll be able to imagine what it'd be like if you were known to be super rich.
Heck, don't give them your address or phone number and they'll still find you. Of course, you'd probably already know this if you're someone who gives to those less fortunate than yourself.
There's a great big world full of people that exists outside of the borders of the US, you know.
GSM phones are inexpensive and easy to find - and there's billions of people living in remote areas who don't have cell service. Like most of China, for example - you only hear about the "good" parts of that country, not the real China where people are called "peasants"
Inexpensive cell towers like described here could change their world - there's no entrenched monopoly to compete with and there's not enough profit to justify building a corporate cell tower. A few of these working in a mesh network would be cost effective and bring communication to a greater portion of the world's population.
That was clearly written by someone who doesn't own and has never used an "iDevice".
I have an iPad - and it's full of MP3 tunes and EPUB books. None of them were purchased from iTunes and none of them have DRM or were "blessed" by Apple.
I didn't have to "hack" or "jailbreak" my iPad to do this; iTunes will happily load your iDevice with all the questionably obtained content you could want. You can use open source replacements for iTunes if you insist - but you probably won't gain any functionality.
As long as you keep yelling about how locked-down the iDevices are and insisting that you'd rather have a locked-down Android device, you'll never understand why Apple sells millions and millions of their products.
Almost every company depends on networked computers to perform critical daily tasks. IT's function is to provide and maintain the computing infrastructure.
Unfortunately, there's MBA types counting beans and looking for places to save money. They look at IT and see a cost center; IT adds nothing to the bottom line.
So let's start with a company with a healthy IT department; since they do their jobs, all the computing resources are up and running, problems are few and far between and quickly resolved.
The bean counters look at the situation and how much they're paying IT - and see that everything is working fine. What are we paying these folks for? Lay them off to save money.
Things keep running for months but start to fall apart around the edges; the users fix some of their PC problems and work around others. At about 18 months or so something critical goes down; the Exchange server takes a crap or something similar. Now they're in a panic; we need qualified IT staff, pronto. So they start hiring again (at a higher pay scale) and the cycle repeats.
Try not to confuse this cycle with the longer cycle that moves computing power from the server to the desktop, then back to the server, back to the desktop and now back to the server. "Cloud" is just BS talk; it's dumb terminals on the desk and everything on the servers (again).
Working in IT is like being in a big game of musical chairs. The pay is good when you're getting paid, but there are gaps between the jobs. Right now isn't good for IT people, but in a year or two...