What i haven't seen a comment on, though I didn't look super closely, is that the visual voice mail feature downloads your voice messages as audio files to the phone. Over the weeks these three were gone it could have downloaded a lot of messages. As near as I can tell you can't turn this off unless you goto airplane mode or completely switch off the device. I guess you would need a dataplan anywhere for the iPhone even if you just wanted to use it for voice.
It wasn't hyped by Mac a lot more than Cingular hyped the Blackjack. ..they had fancy commercials too. It was more the press and users blowing things out of proportion because Mac was getting into a new business and that stirred up a lot of discussion. If you look at an iPhone commercial, they're pretty simple. ..a finger demonstrating web, e-mail, phone, and iPod-type functions. The Blackjack has fancy graphics, design, music, etc. Don't blame a product for falling short of media hype.
I'll get blasted for this because Steve Jobs, at the announcement, was a little psycho-hyper about it, and agreed, but also, he was introducing something somewhat new and I've found working in a corporation that when you do something new, like add a completely new type of device to your product line, you have to explain it a bunch of times before people understand what's going on.
No product, especially something as personal as your phone, is going to satisfy everyone, and they're not designed to, which is why there are so many to choose from. The iPhone does what it does, and it does it reasonably well (though yeah, the phone feature is the hardest to use). It's a consumer entertainment device so why are so many people hard on it for business. If something else is better for you (you need SSH, Microsoft exchange, etc.) get a phone that has those features. If you can't live without a keyboard, get a phone with a physical keyboard.
Frankly, for the last two years I've kept a Razr and a video iPod crammed in my pocket, and I'm happy to have one device, that also gives me internet when I need it, in a single device. I wish it had 3G and some other things, but it's also a first generation device. The first iPod kinda sucked too, but not so bad it didn't make a big impact.
Regarding price, AT&T, and other 'problems' people talk about, get over it. If T-mobile is better for you, go with 'em. Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone if you don't want to.
By analogy: When I was shopping for a car recently I looked at cool 50K sports car that only seats 2. Well, I drive around with friends a lot and a 4 seater is much more my speed, and I got one with lots of power for about $30K. I could say, as some do with the iPhone, "It only seats two and costs $50K! I can get a 4 seater for half that." So get the freakin' 4 seater.
The iPhone is clearly a luxury device designed for a certain market, but not all markets. Is all the griping over this to protect a moron from going into and Apple store, dropping $600 and saying, "WAit, this isn't what I wanted at all." People aren't that dumb, and if they are and have that kind of money, let 'em. Frankly, no cell phone could be perfect, especially with this group. Someone did an analysis on Slashdot I think of the 'ideal' mobile device and then proved it couldn't be made by any one manufacturer because of patent and licensing issues. Go get the phone with the features you want. I showed my iPhone to my parents and they said, "Hmm, we just need a phone that makes phone calls." So I helped them find a simple phone with big buttons because that's what they needed.
Or is all the griping because you secretly want an iPhone and are frustrated because you can't justify the cost because it doesn't have a feature you truly need. Hmm. I think a lot of the bitching about the AT&T lockout is becuase people still have contracts they can't cancel and really want one. Life's not fair (and yeah, as an AT&T customer for some time now they kinda suck, but what tradeoffs are you willing to make?) IF you're not willing, nobody is forcing you to.
2) It may not be a hard cap but may be looking at the top 1% of users month to month and seeing if they're consistently high, or just spiked.
3) They could be looking neighborhood by neighborhood, explaining why one poster lost his net and a little while later so did his neighbor. The neighbor was probably close to being in the top 1% and then was when the first person lost their connection.
4) I could see them wanting to limit illegal downloads because of past cases seeking to sue the carriers for illegal data being sent on their network. The largest downloaders are most likely (though not necessairly) transmitting/downloading illegal content.
5) There are several people who posted that they are running their business, or are logged into their business 24/7, and that's not what residential accounts are for. I do use my residential account for work once in a great while, and for less bandwidth than downloading a TV program for iTunes, but if you're VPNed in constantly and transferring large files for work, your employer should be getting you a business account.
6) The other issue I haven't seen mentioned is that really large use could be an indicator to Comcast that multiple people are sharing a connection. With wireless routers and bridges it is possible for multiple appartments/condos/and even some single family dwelling users to share a connection (I get my neighbors unencrypted router at full strength and full speed). I don't know if Comcast would have a better method than 'huge overages' to be able to tell that this is the case. It truly wouldn't be fair if a bunch of my neighbors were splitting one connection and degrading the quailty of my service with only me using it.
7) This could also be a sign that someone's router is hijacked and performing illegal activities without the owner's consent. Sadly, they should be helping the user fix it, but most people at the helpdesk at multiple cable proviers indicate a low level of technical expertise.
8) It's been a while since I checked but I think the agreement says you won't run servers off the residential line. They might be assuming that the large useage is resulting from something like that.
Since joining the corporate world I usually find that strange and illogical policies like, "Unlimited usage within reason" are the result of some kind of assumptions being made that don't translage well into policy. It could be as simple as a consultant saying, "A 300 GB/month user HAS to be hosting an illegal HD-DVD sharing site and you could get sued by Hollywood for not doing something about it," or, "Those limits are being hit by multiple units sharing a single connection and costing you money while degrading their neighbors service."
They should just work with the customer rather than, I suspect, assuming you're a criminal and cutting the service. "Cut down the usage," is probably corporate relations way of saying, "We know what you're REALLY doing, now knock it off." Clearly if you stop illegal file sharing your usage would snap in line with the 'average' user.
As proof of the corporate simple thinking I offer this personal experience: I once lost my cable the day after a windstorm. Calling the company I was told, "We're showing an outage in your area." Ok, windstorm was bad and a temporary loss is ok in cases like that. Days and then weeks go by and they keep telling me, "We're showing an outage in your neighborhood. I then find my neighbors (in a condo complex) are connected. Apparently "area" is your box in your house only. I realized that my neighbor across the hall moved away without telling anyone. Several phone calls later I convinced them to come make sure they hadn't disconnected my cable when disconnecting the neighbors cable. "Sir, that doesn't happen, but we'll come check but if that's not the case you're paying for the visit." Sure enough, wrong switch, and they reimbursed my lost time.
The same thing happened in the 60's and 70's when the government freaked out that Russia was gonna make too many technological gains and it was imperative we boost the number of scientists, so they started programs to encourage people to get engineering, math, and scientist jobs. The result was a lot of out-of-work engineers. There of course was a boost in productivity and and labor shortages got filled. As I see it:
1) This would perhaps reduce stigma of scientists as geeks and dweebs and elevate the status of such training in our society.
2) This assumes there's enough jobs, or would be enough job creation, to place all of these people.
3) It would certainly increase the number of people in science majors who don't have any interest or passion for sciences, but are there for the free ride.
4) Let's face it, these programs are hard. What do you do about people who made it into an engineering program, couldn't hack it or really really hated it, and wanted to change majors. Do they cough up the back tuition for their freshman and sophomore years? Do you kick them out with no degree?
5) Given the stories of test scores fewer and fewer kids are prepared for college level math and science. If you want more scientists, improve the grade school and high school curriculums and you'll get more people going into those fields out of real interest and passion for the subjects.
6) The teaching option is difficult too. Where the best teachers are really needed are not where people with freshly minted, high-salary gaining engineering degrees are going to end up. Few in their right mind are going to want to move to an inner city for 4 years where teachers are getting beat up (and does this program pay for their teaching credential too?
The government really needs to stop trying to shape what people study based on perceived notions of where we're lacking. These are students, people, making choices about their careers and their lives (at age 17/18 no-less) and shouldn't be treated as some commodity whose growth you can control with subsidies and tax breaks. To do so is to apply a model for the military to the US scientific future.
The counter argument to the fundies can also be made here as well. Perhaps they have confused myth with fact. People who REALLY know religious history (not just religion) know that the bible stories are myths designed to get at other deeper truths (the same way that nobody actually believes that Superman exists but his stories teach us about the potential for choosing good).
I'd be happy to have an intelligent discussion about the gaps in the evolutionary records, evidence that should be there but hasn't been found (yet!), and subtle implications of the ubiquitous genetic code, etc., if they would have an honest discussion that the Garden of Eden story didn't actually happen as written, but is a myth designed to set the philosophical stage that somehow nature is inferior to man, and thus our job is to correct nature, not worship it. (I don't agree, but that's the precept that found its way into Western belief). Then you can have a discussion.
The original poster wants to have an intelligent discussion, in sound bites, about complex topics, with people ill-equipped to do so. I'm not concerned about a candidates nuanced understanding of mitochondrial DNA sequence conservation, but instead want to understand that they have an open mind, know how to pick scientific advisors that do understand nuanced issues of evolution (and other timely areas of science), and can say they don't know but are willing to listen and consider. That's a good leader.
Science in our culture sits at a disadvantage because it is not understood well by many, and indeed is complex and not meant to be fully understood by the masses, at least not the really detailed stuff. Briniging it into debates designed for topics that can be summed up in 30second YouTube clips will always put it in a bad light. "I believe in evolution because there's a lot of data out there and smart people seem to agree on that," just doesn't come off as well as, "Middle class tax breaks are needed so the American family can prosper and protect our way of life from terrorists." Umm, there's really no arguing with the last statement, whereas the first statement seems somehow unfounded and nebulous (so is the last statement but you'd look evil for contradicting it). Just look at John Kerry. There was someone who actually could make a nuanced argument. "I voted for X in one case, and Y in another, and while that looks contractictory it's not because of some issues that aren't apparent to the public and here they are."
You want better politicians, raise the kids to step back and look at the bigger picture. "Are there riders on this gun control law that aren't good for America? Maybe we shouldn't vote for it until those are removed." Responding to situations with the 'obvious' answer is almost always wrong.
--eor--
(end of rant)
Actually, they have conserved momentum many times. There were several epsiodes where, for one reason or another, they couldn't use engines to propel themselves out of something so used a short burst of impulse power and let the inertia carry them to safety. They've even used gravitational slingshots, like sattelites use, to move and steer, and note that they even have to make small course corrections from time to time to account for passing near star's and other large gravitationaly dense bodies.
Arguing whether or not they ignored this or that or co-opted new terms to sound cool isn't really the issue. The show dealt with socio-political issues that, if we were to buy into the plot, couldn't be shrouded in blatantly proposterous explanations of space travel. "Fire up the zoltron and let's get out of here!" By acknowledging, and often though not always, the issues with space travel (they did after all install 'inertial dampeners' to keep the crew from being splattered onto the aft bulkhead when the ship accelerated to light speed), and providing something of a solution to it, they did stoke the dreamers more, and perhaps helped the non-dreamers to dream a little, that the seemingly out there may be solvable. p
And besides, the audience wouldn't have bought BS solutions to space travel. To put it in a modern context, we all would've shut of the TV is Scotty explained the transporter as, "A series of tubes." These even became interesting plot devices. In a Voyager episode, the transporter's 'pattern buffer' where a person's pattern is stored before reassembly (I suppose by some kind of quantum entaglement phenomenon) was used to temporariliy hide telepaths they were helping smuggle across a border (a-la-underground railroad). I like that they used often used their own made-up technology consistently to address the social commentary plots from time to time.
Exactly. I think the key is that if Star Trek wants us to pay attention to the socio-political commentary that underscores most episodes, it has to bring some reality into the physics too. They can't be saying, "Genetic tailoring of embryos to the parent's liking is wrong," (7th season of Voyager) while also saying the instrument that could perform the manipulation is called a zoltron or something silly like that. For those who don't believe I would submit that, based on recent technological history, Trekkies would have abandoned the show long ago if Scotty had explained the transporters as, "well, it's,...a series of tubes."
Paying attention to the reality of the situation and 'stretching it out' to make the show work I think helped people to dream that solutions to fundamental problems might be possible and expand our vision.
Really? Well, current scientific models suggest that at the current rate of environmental decay that in 100 years we won't even have gravity anymore. It'll seem pretty important then!
There were examples of using tachyon particles to convey information when the subspace transceiver was down. They also use tachyons to spot cloaked ships, since the cloak somehow bends light around the ship, a tachyon particle would be the logical choice to see through the cloak.
I also like how they did take into account basic physics where possible. For example, the transporters have an intertial compensator so when you transport from a ship orbiting a planet at about 13,000 miles and hour to the surface of a planet, you don't go skipping and bumping along the surface at Mach 17.
They also considered the complications of space travel. Realzing that a ship would be subject to great forces when turning or jumping to warp, they created the 'inertial dampener' to compensate for the fact that jumping a ship to 100-times the speed of light would splatter the crew on the after bulkhead. This technology also featured prominently in battles where inertial dampeners would go off-line and the ship would shake terribly. They brought in real problems from physics, and then invented magical technology to address the problem with that bit of faith that maybe someday we'd understand our way out of that issue. This is much more rigorous and nuanced than the flagrant disregard for any reality the article's author is trying to address.
Actually, Star Trek should be given more due than that. They spent a lot of time considering real physics when coming up with some of their ideas. It's science FICTION but they based a lot of it in basic principles. Warp drive functions by bunching space up in front of the ship, and then letting it expand, carrying the ship forward. Gravitational fields and some concepts of wormholes work the same way. The problem is a matter/antimatter reaction doesn't provide enough energy for this, but being the most energetic source imagineable, they went with it. They took real ideas in quantum and theoretical physics and ignored the details. You would use a tachyon particle beam to communicate at faster-than-light speeds since the particles (if the existed outside of mathematical constructs) travel faster than light. Never mind that they can't be used to convey information. This 'stretching' of the physics into fiction is a little different than the bus from Speed example that falgrantly ignores the most basic concepts of Newtonian mechanics. Bravo to the professor for trying to bring a little reality back to where it's due.
It does vary drastically by field, and while Slashdot is really for the more CS-savy, computers are used by a lot of scientists who aren't the most technically oriented. People who like to take pictures of developing embryos don't have much use for the powerful equation editors in LaTeX, but do need powerful graphics. My group was concered with a variety of things from cell biology, gene sequencing data, spectroscopic analysis of biological molecules, and determination of molecular structure. The last task is very computationally and grpahically intensive. Traditionally a group like that had Unix boxes for the number crunching and SGI's for the visulaization. However, at the time of the release of OSX the desktop Macs and some Macbooks were getting powerful enough to handle that kind of work too, and now they are certainly more than powerful enough.
You really have a hard time beating the convenience of a single machine that can handle absolutely every task you need to do, AND makes it easy through a consistent and intuitive GUI with access to a shell for more fancy stuff. Like I said, a first year grad student with just a little Linux experience could be off and running on their Mac in an hour or two, whereas on the Linux cluster they'd still be getting their.cshrc,.login, and paths setup, and without the help of anyone from the IT organization.
The question is, do you want to spend time making your machine work, get the installation, and get it tweaked out, or just sit down and do your work. I'm in a corporate environemnt now that has Windows and Linux only and it takes so long sometimes to get updates approved and installed that we've found it easier to write little things on a rouge Macbook and get our stuff done that way.
There was a quesiton in there as to why researchers seem to prefer Macs. When I was in grad school the Mac with OS X was a perfect machine for us. Everything we need could run on it.
You could run the Linux apps that did the number crunching (not high end physics stuff, but still datasets around a gig or more that took an hour or so).
You could run the visulaization software and model building softare, also Linux based.
You had shells to log into the Linux cluster if you needed access to more power.
Disk mounting and sharing was easy amongst other Macs, nfs clients, and even the PCs.
The entire Microsoft office suite ran. I realize OpenOffice provides all the same utilies, but most journals, conferences, and employers in our field require papers, abstracts, and resumes be submitted in Microsoft Word, and slides in Powerpoint. Other programs were not accepted, or, when tried, we ran into compatibility issues.
Photoshop ran really well for making figures.
So it wasn't uncommon for someone to be sitting at their computer running a job, building a model, putting the results in powerpoint, writing the figures in word, sending the results out on their integrated e-mail client, letting your advisor know all was well with a quick video conference through the integrated camera, all while listening to music on iTunes streaming off a neighbor's Mac through the library sharing feature, and all without any specific new training required.
For our group the hardware was expensive of course, but we made up for it by lab-wide shared software. If you bought your own Mac essentially all the software was free and you'd be up and running in an hour at full productiivty. This is one reason Macs do well in research environments. It's not that you couldn't rig a PC or a Linux box to do all of this, but it would take some serious effort and know how that many grad students outside a computer science/physics type have (we were a biochemistry and biophysics group), and university labs generally have little to no IT support. The Macs just work and you can get you research started with little thought to the computer on your desk that rarely crashes, and that is worth the extra cost of the hardware in a grant-driven environment anyday. (I mean, the Mac is $500-$1000 more than a comparably configured PC, but how much IT support can you buy over a period of 2-4 years for $500-$1000. ..not much, it pays for itself indirectly).
I remember a computerized exhibit at a science museum (I think the Exploratorium in San Francisco) when I was in college (mid 90's) that had computers playing DNA and protein sequences in an interactive exhibit. The authors of this patent really missed the boat. The DNA gives you 4 'notes' to play with, and sure you can make more by looking for specific sequences, but protein codes, and there's lots of them, have 20 notes, and tons more if you make combinations. I suspect protein music is more interesting than DNA music.
Perhaps another illustration is simply what iTunes did. DRM high quality songs at higher price, DRM-loaded less-quality at a lower price. You can file share the DRM-free songs if you want, but why would you spread around what you paid more for when people can already get it for less elsewhere.
And before you guys point out that the more expensive DRM-free version of iTunes has the purchaser info embedded and thus is not DRM-free, I have to call shenanigans. If the issue, as it's usually stated, is I was fair-use of my music, then there you have it. Copy it as much as you like. Even the DRM-coded iTunes tracks were pretty flexible. You could put them on 5 computers simultaneously, and even let people play them over the network, they just couldn't copy them (its even nice for previews, including previews of movies and TV shows, though I do wish they were longer). I agree that the files should not be restricted to iPods, but overall it's a nice system, especially for as early as it was.
So, I ask, if all you want is fair use of your own media, making copies of CDs for your car, DVDs for your media player or backup, then why is there so much angst and anger over this. Get a good external hard drive, a copy of Handbrake or something like it, and quietly do your own thing. Hell, even copy your Netlfix DVDs (that crime is as old as hooking two VCRs together back in the 80's when video rental started). If you're using torrents, p2p, or other upload/download services to obtain personal copies of material you didn't pay for, then it's stealing by any ancient ethical definition of stealing, regardless of what the law actually says.
If you disagree then tell me what is 'right' about the amount of file-sharing going on.
Thank you. It was my first/. post and I wasn't familiar with the right way to do it. When I typed it in, broken into paragraphs, it looked fine, and I didn't know that/. wouldn't retain those. Since that post I looked up the codes and will do better. I appreciate your help.
So really this gets at what I've felt is the case for a long time. Long-standing copyright law doesn't work properly when applied to modern technology, media, and formats. It was designed back when copying with fidelity was a problem and so the lack of easy copying was, in itself, enforcement. Now, with the means in everyone's hands, they see the need to enforce it. Perhaps people could turn towards developing a new model for intellectual property that manages to work in the digital age so that movies, TV, music, etc., can be distributed and properly compensated. It would be a radical change from everything we know and probably wouldn't look like what we have now at all. But it seems more productive than having lawyers, companies, and hackers trying to constantly one-up each other, which cannot have postive outcomes long term.
This is specious reasoning. I wasn't arguing the law, I said it's wrong to obtain the efforts of someone else's work for free. File sharing says, almost at its core, that the result of a person's efforts (say the artist in this case) has no right to compensation for the enjoyment of their work and that it essentially becomes public property. I understand that there are some artists, especially new ones, who will distribute their work for free to get initial notice, but eventually they will want to be paid for their efforts (cuz' they have bills to pay too). As implemented, copyright law is flawed, agreed, but I was making more of the argument that obtaining materials you didn't pay for isn't ethical and you don't have a right to other people's work, even if you do have the skills and ability to take it.
Oooh, or even better: what if we continue to see mergers between broadband providers and content providers (AOL/Time Warner anyone) and they combine forces to actually monitor what you're doing and lock it out when it's clear you're sharing music illegaly. Or, less obviously big brother, couple purchases of legal media with bandwidth restrictions. Idea: You have purchased The Matrix from iTunes. YOu are now authorized for 2 GB of additional high-speed bandwidth this month to download it. When you're done we will throttle your quota/connection speed back to the apporpriate level for general browsing. "Unlimited" service would then become VERY expensive (unaffordable for students maybe) in an effort to reap percieved losses by charging higher subscriptions.
Keep it up, you'll see. . .
I think it's interesting how people work hard to find ways to circumvent copy protection, move files in sureptitious ways that violate the spirit of the law, but not the law itself, to avoid being sued, disabling logs so you can't track who visited a site, etc., to cover up the true behavior which is illegal file sharing.
However, despite this you blast RIAA anytime it tries a new way of getting at the information it needs to proceed with its mission of preventing file sharing. I don't agree with all their tactics, but if a file sharer has the right to get creative and try things, why shouldn't they?
I aggre with a lot of you about fair use. I like having my music on a server so I can get to it wherever I am. But I think we all know that people who put their music on-line (maybe even passowrd protected) for their own use and prevent others from copying it is really the minority and the bulk of the traffic, torrents, etc., is really people just stealing music. You have a file (video, music, whatever) that you didn't pay for? It's wrong, regardless if you can prove through legal loopholes that the way you did it isn't illegal, or that you did it in a way that couldn't be tracked.
Trying to constantly one-up 'the man' by cracking all encryption, circumventing logs, etc., in the pursuit of acquiring that which you didn't pay for is wrong and to persist in this will one day result in some very draconion or strange move on the industry's part that will really make it hard for everyone. Remember when Mom &/or Dad said, "Well, if you can't be trusted with that responsibilty then we'll just take it away altogether." It'll probably have initial effects we don't predict. Example: The loss in revenue and pressure from stock holders results in music companies only signing the most popular acts who generate such volume that even with illegal downloading they'll generate enough revenue anyway. This would result in more 'watered down cookie cutter' type artists or groups that have the widest appeal and shutout creative and experimental artists trying something new (you like your up-and-coming indepedent artists too right?). We could enter an 'Orwellian' era where the only options are American Idol winners and runners up stocking the shelves. For access you could imagine something where they goto a streaming-on-demand model involving subscriptions or pay-to-play, perhaps encrypting them with some kind of time-sensitive key, rather than letting you get files or even CDs, or giving you files but tying them to a USB dongle with your permissions on it. I realize these technical hurdles I toss out might all be solvable by good hackers, but the idea is to point out that there may be some model that allows them to generate revenue while also reallly hampering file loading.
The argument that DRM treats the consumer like a criminal is true and I agree. But if you keep behaving in a criminal way. . .
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What i haven't seen a comment on, though I didn't look super closely, is that the visual voice mail feature downloads your voice messages as audio files to the phone. Over the weeks these three were gone it could have downloaded a lot of messages. As near as I can tell you can't turn this off unless you goto airplane mode or completely switch off the device. I guess you would need a dataplan anywhere for the iPhone even if you just wanted to use it for voice.
I'll get blasted for this because Steve Jobs, at the announcement, was a little psycho-hyper about it, and agreed, but also, he was introducing something somewhat new and I've found working in a corporation that when you do something new, like add a completely new type of device to your product line, you have to explain it a bunch of times before people understand what's going on.
Frankly, for the last two years I've kept a Razr and a video iPod crammed in my pocket, and I'm happy to have one device, that also gives me internet when I need it, in a single device. I wish it had 3G and some other things, but it's also a first generation device. The first iPod kinda sucked too, but not so bad it didn't make a big impact.
Regarding price, AT&T, and other 'problems' people talk about, get over it. If T-mobile is better for you, go with 'em. Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone if you don't want to.
By analogy: When I was shopping for a car recently I looked at cool 50K sports car that only seats 2. Well, I drive around with friends a lot and a 4 seater is much more my speed, and I got one with lots of power for about $30K. I could say, as some do with the iPhone, "It only seats two and costs $50K! I can get a 4 seater for half that." So get the freakin' 4 seater.
The iPhone is clearly a luxury device designed for a certain market, but not all markets. Is all the griping over this to protect a moron from going into and Apple store, dropping $600 and saying, "WAit, this isn't what I wanted at all." People aren't that dumb, and if they are and have that kind of money, let 'em. Frankly, no cell phone could be perfect, especially with this group. Someone did an analysis on Slashdot I think of the 'ideal' mobile device and then proved it couldn't be made by any one manufacturer because of patent and licensing issues. Go get the phone with the features you want. I showed my iPhone to my parents and they said, "Hmm, we just need a phone that makes phone calls." So I helped them find a simple phone with big buttons because that's what they needed.
Or is all the griping because you secretly want an iPhone and are frustrated because you can't justify the cost because it doesn't have a feature you truly need. Hmm. I think a lot of the bitching about the AT&T lockout is becuase people still have contracts they can't cancel and really want one. Life's not fair (and yeah, as an AT&T customer for some time now they kinda suck, but what tradeoffs are you willing to make?) IF you're not willing, nobody is forcing you to.
1) It informs their competitors
2) It may not be a hard cap but may be looking at the top 1% of users month to month and seeing if they're consistently high, or just spiked.
3) They could be looking neighborhood by neighborhood, explaining why one poster lost his net and a little while later so did his neighbor. The neighbor was probably close to being in the top 1% and then was when the first person lost their connection.
4) I could see them wanting to limit illegal downloads because of past cases seeking to sue the carriers for illegal data being sent on their network. The largest downloaders are most likely (though not necessairly) transmitting/downloading illegal content.
5) There are several people who posted that they are running their business, or are logged into their business 24/7, and that's not what residential accounts are for. I do use my residential account for work once in a great while, and for less bandwidth than downloading a TV program for iTunes, but if you're VPNed in constantly and transferring large files for work, your employer should be getting you a business account.
6) The other issue I haven't seen mentioned is that really large use could be an indicator to Comcast that multiple people are sharing a connection. With wireless routers and bridges it is possible for multiple appartments/condos/and even some single family dwelling users to share a connection (I get my neighbors unencrypted router at full strength and full speed). I don't know if Comcast would have a better method than 'huge overages' to be able to tell that this is the case. It truly wouldn't be fair if a bunch of my neighbors were splitting one connection and degrading the quailty of my service with only me using it.
7) This could also be a sign that someone's router is hijacked and performing illegal activities without the owner's consent. Sadly, they should be helping the user fix it, but most people at the helpdesk at multiple cable proviers indicate a low level of technical expertise.
8) It's been a while since I checked but I think the agreement says you won't run servers off the residential line. They might be assuming that the large useage is resulting from something like that.
Since joining the corporate world I usually find that strange and illogical policies like, "Unlimited usage within reason" are the result of some kind of assumptions being made that don't translage well into policy. It could be as simple as a consultant saying, "A 300 GB/month user HAS to be hosting an illegal HD-DVD sharing site and you could get sued by Hollywood for not doing something about it," or, "Those limits are being hit by multiple units sharing a single connection and costing you money while degrading their neighbors service."
They should just work with the customer rather than, I suspect, assuming you're a criminal and cutting the service. "Cut down the usage," is probably corporate relations way of saying, "We know what you're REALLY doing, now knock it off." Clearly if you stop illegal file sharing your usage would snap in line with the 'average' user.
As proof of the corporate simple thinking I offer this personal experience: I once lost my cable the day after a windstorm. Calling the company I was told, "We're showing an outage in your area." Ok, windstorm was bad and a temporary loss is ok in cases like that. Days and then weeks go by and they keep telling me, "We're showing an outage in your neighborhood. I then find my neighbors (in a condo complex) are connected. Apparently "area" is your box in your house only. I realized that my neighbor across the hall moved away without telling anyone. Several phone calls later I convinced them to come make sure they hadn't disconnected my cable when disconnecting the neighbors cable. "Sir, that doesn't happen, but we'll come check but if that's not the case you're paying for the visit." Sure enough, wrong switch, and they reimbursed my lost time.
1) This would perhaps reduce stigma of scientists as geeks and dweebs and elevate the status of such training in our society.
2) This assumes there's enough jobs, or would be enough job creation, to place all of these people.
3) It would certainly increase the number of people in science majors who don't have any interest or passion for sciences, but are there for the free ride.
4) Let's face it, these programs are hard. What do you do about people who made it into an engineering program, couldn't hack it or really really hated it, and wanted to change majors. Do they cough up the back tuition for their freshman and sophomore years? Do you kick them out with no degree?
5) Given the stories of test scores fewer and fewer kids are prepared for college level math and science. If you want more scientists, improve the grade school and high school curriculums and you'll get more people going into those fields out of real interest and passion for the subjects.
6) The teaching option is difficult too. Where the best teachers are really needed are not where people with freshly minted, high-salary gaining engineering degrees are going to end up. Few in their right mind are going to want to move to an inner city for 4 years where teachers are getting beat up (and does this program pay for their teaching credential too?
The government really needs to stop trying to shape what people study based on perceived notions of where we're lacking. These are students, people, making choices about their careers and their lives (at age 17/18 no-less) and shouldn't be treated as some commodity whose growth you can control with subsidies and tax breaks. To do so is to apply a model for the military to the US scientific future.
I'd be happy to have an intelligent discussion about the gaps in the evolutionary records, evidence that should be there but hasn't been found (yet!), and subtle implications of the ubiquitous genetic code, etc., if they would have an honest discussion that the Garden of Eden story didn't actually happen as written, but is a myth designed to set the philosophical stage that somehow nature is inferior to man, and thus our job is to correct nature, not worship it. (I don't agree, but that's the precept that found its way into Western belief). Then you can have a discussion.
The original poster wants to have an intelligent discussion, in sound bites, about complex topics, with people ill-equipped to do so. I'm not concerned about a candidates nuanced understanding of mitochondrial DNA sequence conservation, but instead want to understand that they have an open mind, know how to pick scientific advisors that do understand nuanced issues of evolution (and other timely areas of science), and can say they don't know but are willing to listen and consider. That's a good leader.
Science in our culture sits at a disadvantage because it is not understood well by many, and indeed is complex and not meant to be fully understood by the masses, at least not the really detailed stuff. Briniging it into debates designed for topics that can be summed up in 30second YouTube clips will always put it in a bad light. "I believe in evolution because there's a lot of data out there and smart people seem to agree on that," just doesn't come off as well as, "Middle class tax breaks are needed so the American family can prosper and protect our way of life from terrorists." Umm, there's really no arguing with the last statement, whereas the first statement seems somehow unfounded and nebulous (so is the last statement but you'd look evil for contradicting it). Just look at John Kerry. There was someone who actually could make a nuanced argument. "I voted for X in one case, and Y in another, and while that looks contractictory it's not because of some issues that aren't apparent to the public and here they are."
You want better politicians, raise the kids to step back and look at the bigger picture. "Are there riders on this gun control law that aren't good for America? Maybe we shouldn't vote for it until those are removed." Responding to situations with the 'obvious' answer is almost always wrong. --eor-- (end of rant)
Arguing whether or not they ignored this or that or co-opted new terms to sound cool isn't really the issue. The show dealt with socio-political issues that, if we were to buy into the plot, couldn't be shrouded in blatantly proposterous explanations of space travel. "Fire up the zoltron and let's get out of here!" By acknowledging, and often though not always, the issues with space travel (they did after all install 'inertial dampeners' to keep the crew from being splattered onto the aft bulkhead when the ship accelerated to light speed), and providing something of a solution to it, they did stoke the dreamers more, and perhaps helped the non-dreamers to dream a little, that the seemingly out there may be solvable. p And besides, the audience wouldn't have bought BS solutions to space travel. To put it in a modern context, we all would've shut of the TV is Scotty explained the transporter as, "A series of tubes." These even became interesting plot devices. In a Voyager episode, the transporter's 'pattern buffer' where a person's pattern is stored before reassembly (I suppose by some kind of quantum entaglement phenomenon) was used to temporariliy hide telepaths they were helping smuggle across a border (a-la-underground railroad). I like that they used often used their own made-up technology consistently to address the social commentary plots from time to time.
It was a joke. Meant to be moderated as funny.
Paying attention to the reality of the situation and 'stretching it out' to make the show work I think helped people to dream that solutions to fundamental problems might be possible and expand our vision.
Really? Well, current scientific models suggest that at the current rate of environmental decay that in 100 years we won't even have gravity anymore. It'll seem pretty important then!
I also like how they did take into account basic physics where possible. For example, the transporters have an intertial compensator so when you transport from a ship orbiting a planet at about 13,000 miles and hour to the surface of a planet, you don't go skipping and bumping along the surface at Mach 17.
They also considered the complications of space travel. Realzing that a ship would be subject to great forces when turning or jumping to warp, they created the 'inertial dampener' to compensate for the fact that jumping a ship to 100-times the speed of light would splatter the crew on the after bulkhead. This technology also featured prominently in battles where inertial dampeners would go off-line and the ship would shake terribly. They brought in real problems from physics, and then invented magical technology to address the problem with that bit of faith that maybe someday we'd understand our way out of that issue. This is much more rigorous and nuanced than the flagrant disregard for any reality the article's author is trying to address.
Actually, Star Trek should be given more due than that. They spent a lot of time considering real physics when coming up with some of their ideas. It's science FICTION but they based a lot of it in basic principles. Warp drive functions by bunching space up in front of the ship, and then letting it expand, carrying the ship forward. Gravitational fields and some concepts of wormholes work the same way. The problem is a matter/antimatter reaction doesn't provide enough energy for this, but being the most energetic source imagineable, they went with it. They took real ideas in quantum and theoretical physics and ignored the details. You would use a tachyon particle beam to communicate at faster-than-light speeds since the particles (if the existed outside of mathematical constructs) travel faster than light. Never mind that they can't be used to convey information. This 'stretching' of the physics into fiction is a little different than the bus from Speed example that falgrantly ignores the most basic concepts of Newtonian mechanics. Bravo to the professor for trying to bring a little reality back to where it's due.
You really have a hard time beating the convenience of a single machine that can handle absolutely every task you need to do, AND makes it easy through a consistent and intuitive GUI with access to a shell for more fancy stuff. Like I said, a first year grad student with just a little Linux experience could be off and running on their Mac in an hour or two, whereas on the Linux cluster they'd still be getting their .cshrc, .login, and paths setup, and without the help of anyone from the IT organization.
The question is, do you want to spend time making your machine work, get the installation, and get it tweaked out, or just sit down and do your work. I'm in a corporate environemnt now that has Windows and Linux only and it takes so long sometimes to get updates approved and installed that we've found it easier to write little things on a rouge Macbook and get our stuff done that way.
You could run the Linux apps that did the number crunching (not high end physics stuff, but still datasets around a gig or more that took an hour or so).
You could run the visulaization software and model building softare, also Linux based.
You had shells to log into the Linux cluster if you needed access to more power.
Disk mounting and sharing was easy amongst other Macs, nfs clients, and even the PCs.
The entire Microsoft office suite ran. I realize OpenOffice provides all the same utilies, but most journals, conferences, and employers in our field require papers, abstracts, and resumes be submitted in Microsoft Word, and slides in Powerpoint. Other programs were not accepted, or, when tried, we ran into compatibility issues.
Photoshop ran really well for making figures.
So it wasn't uncommon for someone to be sitting at their computer running a job, building a model, putting the results in powerpoint, writing the figures in word, sending the results out on their integrated e-mail client, letting your advisor know all was well with a quick video conference through the integrated camera, all while listening to music on iTunes streaming off a neighbor's Mac through the library sharing feature, and all without any specific new training required.
For our group the hardware was expensive of course, but we made up for it by lab-wide shared software. If you bought your own Mac essentially all the software was free and you'd be up and running in an hour at full productiivty. This is one reason Macs do well in research environments. It's not that you couldn't rig a PC or a Linux box to do all of this, but it would take some serious effort and know how that many grad students outside a computer science/physics type have (we were a biochemistry and biophysics group), and university labs generally have little to no IT support. The Macs just work and you can get you research started with little thought to the computer on your desk that rarely crashes, and that is worth the extra cost of the hardware in a grant-driven environment anyday. (I mean, the Mac is $500-$1000 more than a comparably configured PC, but how much IT support can you buy over a period of 2-4 years for $500-$1000. . .not much, it pays for itself indirectly).
I remember a computerized exhibit at a science museum (I think the Exploratorium in San Francisco) when I was in college (mid 90's) that had computers playing DNA and protein sequences in an interactive exhibit. The authors of this patent really missed the boat. The DNA gives you 4 'notes' to play with, and sure you can make more by looking for specific sequences, but protein codes, and there's lots of them, have 20 notes, and tons more if you make combinations. I suspect protein music is more interesting than DNA music.
And before you guys point out that the more expensive DRM-free version of iTunes has the purchaser info embedded and thus is not DRM-free, I have to call shenanigans. If the issue, as it's usually stated, is I was fair-use of my music, then there you have it. Copy it as much as you like. Even the DRM-coded iTunes tracks were pretty flexible. You could put them on 5 computers simultaneously, and even let people play them over the network, they just couldn't copy them (its even nice for previews, including previews of movies and TV shows, though I do wish they were longer). I agree that the files should not be restricted to iPods, but overall it's a nice system, especially for as early as it was.
So, I ask, if all you want is fair use of your own media, making copies of CDs for your car, DVDs for your media player or backup, then why is there so much angst and anger over this. Get a good external hard drive, a copy of Handbrake or something like it, and quietly do your own thing. Hell, even copy your Netlfix DVDs (that crime is as old as hooking two VCRs together back in the 80's when video rental started). If you're using torrents, p2p, or other upload/download services to obtain personal copies of material you didn't pay for, then it's stealing by any ancient ethical definition of stealing, regardless of what the law actually says.
If you disagree then tell me what is 'right' about the amount of file-sharing going on.
Thank you. It was my first /. post and I wasn't familiar with the right way to do it. When I typed it in, broken into paragraphs, it looked fine, and I didn't know that /. wouldn't retain those. Since that post I looked up the codes and will do better. I appreciate your help.
So really this gets at what I've felt is the case for a long time. Long-standing copyright law doesn't work properly when applied to modern technology, media, and formats. It was designed back when copying with fidelity was a problem and so the lack of easy copying was, in itself, enforcement. Now, with the means in everyone's hands, they see the need to enforce it. Perhaps people could turn towards developing a new model for intellectual property that manages to work in the digital age so that movies, TV, music, etc., can be distributed and properly compensated. It would be a radical change from everything we know and probably wouldn't look like what we have now at all. But it seems more productive than having lawyers, companies, and hackers trying to constantly one-up each other, which cannot have postive outcomes long term.
This is specious reasoning. I wasn't arguing the law, I said it's wrong to obtain the efforts of someone else's work for free. File sharing says, almost at its core, that the result of a person's efforts (say the artist in this case) has no right to compensation for the enjoyment of their work and that it essentially becomes public property. I understand that there are some artists, especially new ones, who will distribute their work for free to get initial notice, but eventually they will want to be paid for their efforts (cuz' they have bills to pay too). As implemented, copyright law is flawed, agreed, but I was making more of the argument that obtaining materials you didn't pay for isn't ethical and you don't have a right to other people's work, even if you do have the skills and ability to take it.
Oooh, or even better: what if we continue to see mergers between broadband providers and content providers (AOL/Time Warner anyone) and they combine forces to actually monitor what you're doing and lock it out when it's clear you're sharing music illegaly. Or, less obviously big brother, couple purchases of legal media with bandwidth restrictions. Idea: You have purchased The Matrix from iTunes. YOu are now authorized for 2 GB of additional high-speed bandwidth this month to download it. When you're done we will throttle your quota/connection speed back to the apporpriate level for general browsing. "Unlimited" service would then become VERY expensive (unaffordable for students maybe) in an effort to reap percieved losses by charging higher subscriptions. Keep it up, you'll see. . .
I think it's interesting how people work hard to find ways to circumvent copy protection, move files in sureptitious ways that violate the spirit of the law, but not the law itself, to avoid being sued, disabling logs so you can't track who visited a site, etc., to cover up the true behavior which is illegal file sharing. However, despite this you blast RIAA anytime it tries a new way of getting at the information it needs to proceed with its mission of preventing file sharing. I don't agree with all their tactics, but if a file sharer has the right to get creative and try things, why shouldn't they? I aggre with a lot of you about fair use. I like having my music on a server so I can get to it wherever I am. But I think we all know that people who put their music on-line (maybe even passowrd protected) for their own use and prevent others from copying it is really the minority and the bulk of the traffic, torrents, etc., is really people just stealing music. You have a file (video, music, whatever) that you didn't pay for? It's wrong, regardless if you can prove through legal loopholes that the way you did it isn't illegal, or that you did it in a way that couldn't be tracked. Trying to constantly one-up 'the man' by cracking all encryption, circumventing logs, etc., in the pursuit of acquiring that which you didn't pay for is wrong and to persist in this will one day result in some very draconion or strange move on the industry's part that will really make it hard for everyone. Remember when Mom &/or Dad said, "Well, if you can't be trusted with that responsibilty then we'll just take it away altogether." It'll probably have initial effects we don't predict. Example: The loss in revenue and pressure from stock holders results in music companies only signing the most popular acts who generate such volume that even with illegal downloading they'll generate enough revenue anyway. This would result in more 'watered down cookie cutter' type artists or groups that have the widest appeal and shutout creative and experimental artists trying something new (you like your up-and-coming indepedent artists too right?). We could enter an 'Orwellian' era where the only options are American Idol winners and runners up stocking the shelves. For access you could imagine something where they goto a streaming-on-demand model involving subscriptions or pay-to-play, perhaps encrypting them with some kind of time-sensitive key, rather than letting you get files or even CDs, or giving you files but tying them to a USB dongle with your permissions on it. I realize these technical hurdles I toss out might all be solvable by good hackers, but the idea is to point out that there may be some model that allows them to generate revenue while also reallly hampering file loading. The argument that DRM treats the consumer like a criminal is true and I agree. But if you keep behaving in a criminal way. . .