Why would anyone sell, or for that matter buy, a smartphone without "unlimited" internet usage?
Because outside of Sprint 4G service (at least as far as I know) 5GB capped plans are all that there are in the US:(
True. Here in India the two iPhone providers (Vodafone and Airtel) do not have any unlimited data plans for iPhone. The rates range from $0.001/10kB to $0.006/50kB with a fixed free usage allowance of a few hundred MBs in data plans.
The only unlimited data plans that exist are for Blackberry phones. Another point to note here is, India does not have any 3G service provider except for the state run MTNL and BSNL. The bidding for 3G spectrum by private providers gets delayed by a few months every time due to "circumstances beyond the control" of the telecom ministry.
PS: I checked the rates while converting from INR 5paise and 30paise respectively to USD. yes, I am aware of verizon math... $0.002 and 0.002c:) PPS: I was tempted to provide a comparison with Indian mobile data rates just because the call rates in Indian mobile market are one of the lowest in the world. i.e., free Incoming calls and SMS. Outgoing rates as low as 2.5c or $0.025 per minute or SMS (INR 1)
If you're running Linux as your desktop OS, I suspect you have the necessary knowledge & skills to change the default search engine in your web browser
I think not many would take efforts to find that out.
I help administer a lab of ~20 computers with Ubuntu NIS/NFS setup. Although many users are comfortable with linux, not many are inquisitive enough to tweak around with settings. e.g., 1. Most users dont know how to change default programs to open a file. Say default acroread to open pdf files. This can be done by right click on any pdf file ->properties->open with and choose from radio button options 2. Many dont know about the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+L for direct access to firefox address bar and CTRL+K for search bar 3. Although many users prefer Thunderbird for emails, they are unaware of setting it as the default email client from System->Preferences->PreferredApplications so on and so forth.
Why would anyone at IBM still remember what they said in 2005? That's ancient history.
Its strange that you find this acceptable. Please tell me that you were looking for sarcassm there.
TFA talks about at least two patents being asserted by IBM for which they have pledged not to assert as recently as in 2005. Now, as a matter of good faith I think it does not matter whether IBM said it in 2005 or 1905.
My advice to IBM would be --- "If you dont mean it... dont say it"
However, this 'hole in the roof, bottle' method will not work in modern structures with concrete roofs and more importantly when there are more than one floors in a building.
The article points to a interesting way of lighting a room by sunlight captured at a distant spot. This may not completely replace the traditional lighting because of concerns like lighting on cloudy days and during the evening and night hours. But, this can definitely help in reducing energy consumption. Again, as many readers have already pointed out, the website is thin on details and the important thing to know would be the total cost of ownership of such a system and the lighting capacity of such a system on an average i.e. replace how many bulbs etc.
Yes guys, bandwidth was _always_ reported using SI prefixes
Yet, the telecom industry wanted to latch on to the binary 128kbps, 256kbps, and 512kbps connections when they could have been easily 100kbps, 200kbps and 500kbps ?
In other words: * leave everything in the IT industry the way it is * tell the HD makers that they are wrong to measure in base ten (since the US Gov already requires them to put that on their packaging, no big deal) * No one has to sound retarded when talking to the 99% of the population who has no clue about this stupid base2/10 war with hard drive marketing droids by saying 'mebi' or 'gibi'.
Exactly. Dont give in to the mistakes of HDD manufacturers and legalize their wrong advertising.
Doesn't pint/quart/gallon differ according to geography. Pint, Gallon and so on.
As long as they use the correct prefix, I don't really mind whether they use base 2 or 10 to display the numbers.
They should just use the correct prefix. i.e., base-2 for anything related to the file-system and computers.
Hard drives, on the other hand, have nothing that is fundamentally based on a power of 2. They arbitrarily use a sector size of 512 (or 4096) bytes, but everything else (number of heads, number of tracks, average number of sectors per track) has no power-of-2 connection. Therefore there's nothing wrong with reporting their size in SI notation.
Hard disk stores files, which have bytes which are basically base-2. Size of files, and one block of data is also in base-2. All file systems structures are in base-2 units. Most of the things that are exposed to the user on a hard disk "must" be in the same units. i.e., in base-2. Now, the hard disk manufacturers decided to go for SI notation for monetary gains as they could sell larger capacity drives (in Megabytes and Gigabytes) whereas the users expect to be storing files which are in Mebi and Gibibytes. Why fix the wrong thing. Instead, report everything in the "correct" units.
...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.
Thanks for the comparison. Now there is a new problem. The new font uses more space and hence resulting in more wastage of paper! Although there might be a valid argument saying 30% saving of ink is more desirable as compared to 1 extra line every 8 lines.
All of this even if we ignore the fact that people print so many emails that a change of font is going to result in tangible savings. The article mentions the cost of ink per gallon. It would have been interesting to know the total ink consumption in gallons irrespective of the matter printed.
As per my personal experience as a grad student. I have printed only 5-10 emails in many years as compared to many many technical papers.
As someone who is now collecting a fairly significant backlog of mail archives, I gotta ask: Is it worth it? How often do you actually need access to those archives and do they provide the resource you think they should?
Part of my motivation for asking is because I've changed the way I file my paper files and suspect that I could treat my email the same way. I now file all my stuff, unsorted, in a box.
I waste 0 time filing and since in reality almost never need access to the back files, there's no real penalty in the retrieval time either. Gmail uses the same philosophy. No sorting of mails into folders and the use of search whenever you need some old mail (here I assume that assigning labels is not equivalent to sorting mails into folders)
Slashdot Mirror
Do one of the following:
1. Click on the "See this document in HTML mode" link to the right
OR
2. Replace "doc" in the address bar with "documents"
Why would anyone sell, or for that matter buy, a smartphone without "unlimited" internet usage?
Because outside of Sprint 4G service (at least as far as I know) 5GB capped plans are all that there are in the US :(
True. Here in India the two iPhone providers (Vodafone and Airtel) do not have any unlimited data plans for iPhone. The rates range from $0.001/10kB to $0.006/50kB with a fixed free usage allowance of a few hundred MBs in data plans.
The only unlimited data plans that exist are for Blackberry phones. Another point to note here is, India does not have any 3G service provider except for the state run MTNL and BSNL. The bidding for 3G spectrum by private providers gets delayed by a few months every time due to "circumstances beyond the control" of the telecom ministry.
PS: I checked the rates while converting from INR 5paise and 30paise respectively to USD. yes, I am aware of verizon math... $0.002 and 0.002c :)
PPS: I was tempted to provide a comparison with Indian mobile data rates just because the call rates in Indian mobile market are one of the lowest in the world. i.e., free Incoming calls and SMS. Outgoing rates as low as 2.5c or $0.025 per minute or SMS (INR 1)
If you're running Linux as your desktop OS, I suspect you have the necessary knowledge & skills to change the default search engine in your web browser
I think not many would take efforts to find that out.
I help administer a lab of ~20 computers with Ubuntu NIS/NFS setup. Although many users are comfortable with linux, not many are inquisitive enough to tweak around with settings.
e.g.,
1. Most users dont know how to change default programs to open a file. Say default acroread to open pdf files. This can be done by right click on any pdf file ->properties->open with and choose from radio button options
2. Many dont know about the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+L for direct access to firefox address bar and CTRL+K for search bar
3. Although many users prefer Thunderbird for emails, they are unaware of setting it as the default email client from System->Preferences->PreferredApplications
so on and so forth.
Hence, I think, defaults do matter.
Why would anyone at IBM still remember what they said in 2005? That's ancient history.
Its strange that you find this acceptable. Please tell me that you were looking for sarcassm there.
TFA talks about at least two patents being asserted by IBM for which they have pledged not to assert as recently as in 2005. Now, as a matter of good faith I think it does not matter whether IBM said it in 2005 or 1905.
My advice to IBM would be --- "If you dont mean it... dont say it"
A very interesting link. Thanks :-)
However, this 'hole in the roof, bottle' method will not work in modern structures with concrete roofs and more importantly when there are more than one floors in a building.
The article points to a interesting way of lighting a room by sunlight captured at a distant spot. This may not completely replace the traditional lighting because of concerns like lighting on cloudy days and during the evening and night hours. But, this can definitely help in reducing energy consumption. Again, as many readers have already pointed out, the website is thin on details and the important thing to know would be the total cost of ownership of such a system and the lighting capacity of such a system on an average i.e. replace how many bulbs etc.
I don't understand. what do 128kbps, 256kbps and 512kbps have to do with binary numbers?
numbers from the base-2 series
128 = 2^7
256 = 2^8
512 = 2^9
Yes guys, bandwidth was _always_ reported using SI prefixes
Yet, the telecom industry wanted to latch on to the binary 128kbps, 256kbps, and 512kbps connections when they could have been easily 100kbps, 200kbps and 500kbps ?
In other words:
* leave everything in the IT industry the way it is
* tell the HD makers that they are wrong to measure in base ten (since the US Gov already requires them to put that on their packaging, no big deal)
* No one has to sound retarded when talking to the 99% of the population who has no clue about this stupid base2/10 war with hard drive marketing droids by saying 'mebi' or 'gibi'.
Exactly. Dont give in to the mistakes of HDD manufacturers and legalize their wrong advertising.
Doesn't pint/quart/gallon differ according to geography. Pint, Gallon and so on.
As long as they use the correct prefix, I don't really mind whether they use base 2 or 10 to display the numbers.
They should just use the correct prefix. i.e., base-2 for anything related to the file-system and computers.
Hard drives, on the other hand, have nothing that is fundamentally based on a power of 2. They arbitrarily use a sector size of 512 (or 4096) bytes, but everything else (number of heads, number of tracks, average number of sectors per track) has no power-of-2 connection. Therefore there's nothing wrong with reporting their size in SI notation.
Hard disk stores files, which have bytes which are basically base-2. Size of files, and one block of data is also in base-2. All file systems structures are in base-2 units. Most of the things that are exposed to the user on a hard disk "must" be in the same units. i.e., in base-2. Now, the hard disk manufacturers decided to go for SI notation for monetary gains as they could sell larger capacity drives (in Megabytes and Gigabytes) whereas the users expect to be storing files which are in Mebi and Gibibytes. Why fix the wrong thing. Instead, report everything in the "correct" units.
...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.
Thanks for the comparison. Now there is a new problem. The new font uses more space and hence resulting in more wastage of paper! Although there might be a valid argument saying 30% saving of ink is more desirable as compared to 1 extra line every 8 lines.
All of this even if we ignore the fact that people print so many emails that a change of font is going to result in tangible savings. The article mentions the cost of ink per gallon. It would have been interesting to know the total ink consumption in gallons irrespective of the matter printed.
As per my personal experience as a grad student. I have printed only 5-10 emails in many years as compared to many many technical papers.
News that we see. ... Staring at an LCD screen causes baldness.
One day we will see
they bought Jaguar from Ford few weeks ago. Don't forget Range Rover, or is that the same company? Yes it is --- Tata Motors.