WISPs have yet to establish a business model that can be shown to be profitable, especially in metro areas.
Cellular companies, who have billions of dollars invested in existing infrastructure, are already having a hard enough time making data services pay for themselves. Mostly, data service exists on cellular because it's "easy to do", and at the rates most cellular companies charge (by the Kb), a profit center.
However, WISPs as a general rule don't have the benefit of having their data service ride on the back of a business with an established model (cellular telephony): their sole business is selling data transport.
Look at it this way. Typical startup costs for a "consumer broadband" style service for a WISP runs, minimum, about $500 per subscriber, assuming you're not a total cheapass (that is to say, using a "real" carrier-grade solution and not 802.11b gear and hacked antennas). Since most WISPs are small startups, they expect the consumer to absorb most (if not all) of that cost. Worse, the other end (the "master site") is also very expensive: I've heard that some gear costs upwards of $6,000 to service around 30 customers.
All this on a band where you have no "right" to use it.. if somebody in between you and your subscriber does something that interferes, you're screwed.
The sad fact is that in the 2.4 and 5 GHz license-free bands, there just isn't enough spectrum to really effectively service, say thousands of customers in a 3 mile radius. This is what the cable and telephone companies serve.
This isn't to say that WISPs don't have applications.. but saying that they are a replacement for cable modem and DSL service is naive, at best.
I'm using Mac, so I have to use WirelessModem. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work.. and there's no documentation to speak of for T-Mobile...
At the junior college level, I took an Oracle DB class, and one of the exercises in the text was to create a database to catalog a music library, by artist, album title, and genre.
On my carrier, I get unlimited data usage and only 300 minutes of "anytime minutes". My PalmOne Treo is an IMing, SMSing, SSHing computer that just happens to have an expensive-to-use phone attached to it.
Many of Sirius' non-music oriented channels (like their comedy feeds) carry a high percentage of original content. Raw Dog # 147's "The Wiseguy Show", for example, has a pretty loyal following. "Four Quotas", also on # 147, is still kind-of a work in progress, but holds promise. And, Howard Stern's upcoming Sirius show should also develop nicely for the service.
This is a good move by Sirius. They spent a ton of money on programming (and less money on the technology and marketing, unlike XM), and it might actually start paying dividends if they can make a market on iTunes.
I mean c'mon people - we're talking about a huge bank here - do you really think Chase is that stupid to deploy a technology so insecure that people's "wallets" can be secretly "scanned" from across the room?
As a matter of fact, yes.
Especially considering that American banks are WAY behind the rest of the world in areas like using one-time pads or multi-factor authentication. Heck, Bank of America actually only requires use of your 4-digit PIN number from your ATM account.
In my experience, you are actually more likely to get intelligent solutions to identity theft from smaller institutions. If something "funny" goes on with my account, THEY CALL ME personally FROM THE BRANCH, with a friendly voice I recognize. They also by default have passwords set up on accounts (and discourage the use of common passwords like maiden names).
Yeah, like.. the one founded by DARPA and a bunch of bored engineers at a Southern California university.
Like.. um... the one we're on now, perhaps?
The Tragedy of the Commons is, to some extent, inevitable. This Internet was founded on these same concepts: open networking, responsible parties connecting well-maintained machines. As time has gone on, both the "responsible" and "maintained" parts have vanished, replaced by poorly adminned workstations running inherently insecure operating systems (Windows 95, 98, ME).. and vendors who are more interested in protecting their market share than encouraging open networking (and that's not just Microsoft).
Packing up and moving to the suburbs was a disastrous policy for our cities: it probably won't fare much better on the Internet.
Since they have announced that they do not have any intention of supporting IE:Mac anymore, that's not likely.
And, since I have a perfectly good mail application and word processor that came with my Mac (Mail.app and Pages), why would I want to spend all that money on Office?
Vendors may have "responded", but it has taken years.
In the lifecycle of the Internet, that's several lifetimes.
That dosen't change the core problem: as long as vendors crank out software that is insecure, I will still recommend strongly the more secure solution.
Because once they connect to the Internet with an exploited system, it becomes everybody's problem.
Much like, when somebody drives with an automobile that is a gross polluter, everybody has to breathe the air that is tainted with their car's smog. Cumulatively, this adds up to a real problem in a hurry.
Because Microsoft's E-mail client and web browser are unsafe and insecure products. People using software with default security profiles that ensure arbitrary code does not run is in everybody's best interest.
Diesel is the short-term answer to our dependance on oil. We could convert the entire US automotive fleet to diesel over a period of ten years, swap out "Smog Check" programs with a mandatory DPF canister swap, and essentially eliminate the smog problem in America's cities. Yes, there's still the greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, mostly), but that's gonna happen anytime you burn a carbon-based fuel. Anyway, once the fleet is converted to diesel, you can start substituting biodiesel over time.. allowing the infrastructure to catch up as the fleet of diesel vehicles increases.
Volkswagen's TDI engine is a shining example of what SHOULD be happening. In the New Beetle, people are getting 40+ MPG on a regular basis. I own a TDI New Beetle, and the worst mileage I get is 35 MPG, and that's driving like a jackass (lots of heavy acceleration, driving 80 MPH, etc). With effort, I easily get 45 MPG.
Here's the real kick in the pants. If I burn 80/20 or 70/30 biodiesel (80 or 70% petro, 20 or 30% biodiesel), fuel economy actually IMPROVES, as do emissions.
Turbodiesel engines perform comparably to gasoline engines in actual driving. The VW TDI-equipped vehicles all compare favorably in actual driving performance to other vehicles in their class. Car and Driver actually said that the TDI New Beetle was actually MORE FUN TO DRIVE than it's gasoline-powered brother.
Hybrids? Pfft. Let's concentrate on methane fuel cells (because, anybody who's eaten at Taco Bell can attest to how easy methane is to make from bio sources) for the 20-30 year solution, and get everybody on diesel NOW. We can start mixing 80/20 biodiesel now, slowly convert the fleet to higher mixes of bio, and then.. 20 or 30 years from now as fuel cell technology matures, cut the whole mess over to LNG, continuing to sell diesel fuel for as long as the fleet needs it.
Funny thing. I expected to have all kinds of problems finding one in Seattle. You know.. large number of geeks and all that.
So, yesterday I find myself at the Target in Southcenter. They had a large stack of them in the case. When I mean large, there were at least a dozen in there that I could see.
Except, as has been documented before, the ID requirement does absolutely nothing to increase security. All 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 would have been able to freely board, as they would have had the necessary documents and likely would have not necessarily been on any watchlist.
Re:The first out of the gate almost always loses
on
Can TiVo be Saved?
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· Score: 1
Apple didn't "lose" to Windows. You're assuming this is a zero-sum game.
Apple Computer, as a company, continues to thrive and pay reasonable dividends to it's stockholders. On a technical level, Apple's OS is widely considered superior by many in the industry.
The only "losers" when Windows came out were Atari and Commodore-Amiga: only the latter platform exists in any real context, and that's even highly debatable.
The only problem, of course, being that the "nearest state" is literally hundreds of miles away.
Somebody who lives in San Francisco, for example, would have to travel to Reno, NV: 220 miles. Similarly, somebody from Los Angeles would need to get to at least Parker, AZ (assuming there is even a AZ MVD in Parker) or Las Vegas, NV.. both are well in excess of that mileage.
I don't think it will work for political reasons. Remember, Ahhhnold got voted IN primarily because of a regressive vehicle license fee.
Fink uses the same install database as Debian, for the most part. It even uses the Debian source repository when you do an apt-get source (package). The only thing that is different is it uses a different binary tree for binary packages (which makes sense).
For the most part (and the exceptions are rare), since the package names are the same, you can apt-get install (some-debian-package), and get a nice PowerPC-native Darwin-built binary.
Isn't asking this guy about Linux somewhat akin to asking a Southern Baptist minister about Paganism? I mean, regardless, you're gonna wind up with some pretty messed up perspectives, methinks.
There is no reason why some device like what AlphaSmart makes couldn't be manufactured today for $100. It's primarly non-technical issues that prevent such things...
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WISPs have yet to establish a business model that can be shown to be profitable, especially in metro areas.
Cellular companies, who have billions of dollars invested in existing infrastructure, are already having a hard enough time making data services pay for themselves. Mostly, data service exists on cellular because it's "easy to do", and at the rates most cellular companies charge (by the Kb), a profit center.
However, WISPs as a general rule don't have the benefit of having their data service ride on the back of a business with an established model (cellular telephony): their sole business is selling data transport.
Look at it this way. Typical startup costs for a "consumer broadband" style service for a WISP runs, minimum, about $500 per subscriber, assuming you're not a total cheapass (that is to say, using a "real" carrier-grade solution and not 802.11b gear and hacked antennas). Since most WISPs are small startups, they expect the consumer to absorb most (if not all) of that cost. Worse, the other end (the "master site") is also very expensive: I've heard that some gear costs upwards of $6,000 to service around 30 customers.
All this on a band where you have no "right" to use it.. if somebody in between you and your subscriber does something that interferes, you're screwed.
The sad fact is that in the 2.4 and 5 GHz license-free bands, there just isn't enough spectrum to really effectively service, say thousands of customers in a 3 mile radius. This is what the cable and telephone companies serve.
This isn't to say that WISPs don't have applications.. but saying that they are a replacement for cable modem and DSL service is naive, at best.
Which one?
I'm using Mac, so I have to use WirelessModem. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work.. and there's no documentation to speak of for T-Mobile...
Anybody ever had any luck getting a Treo 600 working on T-Mobile for data as a modem?
I know there's a third-party app, but I could never get it to work for me...
It is that obvious.
At the junior college level, I took an Oracle DB class, and one of the exercises in the text was to create a database to catalog a music library, by artist, album title, and genre.
On my carrier, I get unlimited data usage and only 300 minutes of "anytime minutes". My PalmOne Treo is an IMing, SMSing, SSHing computer that just happens to have an expensive-to-use phone attached to it.
It's all a matter of perspective.
... which has problems on Tiger, which won't be fixed anytime soon (we're hearing).
Yes.
Many of Sirius' non-music oriented channels (like their comedy feeds) carry a high percentage of original content. Raw Dog # 147's "The Wiseguy Show", for example, has a pretty loyal following. "Four Quotas", also on # 147, is still kind-of a work in progress, but holds promise. And, Howard Stern's upcoming Sirius show should also develop nicely for the service.
This is a good move by Sirius. They spent a ton of money on programming (and less money on the technology and marketing, unlike XM), and it might actually start paying dividends if they can make a market on iTunes.
I mean c'mon people - we're talking about a huge bank here - do you really think Chase is that stupid to deploy a technology so insecure that people's "wallets" can be secretly "scanned" from across the room?
As a matter of fact, yes.
Especially considering that American banks are WAY behind the rest of the world in areas like using one-time pads or multi-factor authentication. Heck, Bank of America actually only requires use of your 4-digit PIN number from your ATM account.
In my experience, you are actually more likely to get intelligent solutions to identity theft from smaller institutions. If something "funny" goes on with my account, THEY CALL ME personally FROM THE BRANCH, with a friendly voice I recognize. They also by default have passwords set up on accounts (and discourage the use of common passwords like maiden names).
Open-only network.
Yeah, like.. the one founded by DARPA and a bunch of bored engineers at a Southern California university.
Like.. um... the one we're on now, perhaps?
The Tragedy of the Commons is, to some extent, inevitable. This Internet was founded on these same concepts: open networking, responsible parties connecting well-maintained machines. As time has gone on, both the "responsible" and "maintained" parts have vanished, replaced by poorly adminned workstations running inherently insecure operating systems (Windows 95, 98, ME).. and vendors who are more interested in protecting their market share than encouraging open networking (and that's not just Microsoft).
Packing up and moving to the suburbs was a disastrous policy for our cities: it probably won't fare much better on the Internet.
Sure, as soon as they write versions for the Mac.
Since they have announced that they do not have any intention of supporting IE:Mac anymore, that's not likely.
And, since I have a perfectly good mail application and word processor that came with my Mac (Mail.app and Pages), why would I want to spend all that money on Office?
Vendors may have "responded", but it has taken years.
In the lifecycle of the Internet, that's several lifetimes.
That dosen't change the core problem: as long as vendors crank out software that is insecure, I will still recommend strongly the more secure solution.
Because once they connect to the Internet with an exploited system, it becomes everybody's problem.
Much like, when somebody drives with an automobile that is a gross polluter, everybody has to breathe the air that is tainted with their car's smog. Cumulatively, this adds up to a real problem in a hurry.
It's simple.
Because Microsoft's E-mail client and web browser are unsafe and insecure products. People using software with default security profiles that ensure arbitrary code does not run is in everybody's best interest.
T-Mobile generally charges for both incoming and outgoing SMS messages...
Once again, we are so backwards in this country.
Diesel is the short-term answer to our dependance on oil. We could convert the entire US automotive fleet to diesel over a period of ten years, swap out "Smog Check" programs with a mandatory DPF canister swap, and essentially eliminate the smog problem in America's cities. Yes, there's still the greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, mostly), but that's gonna happen anytime you burn a carbon-based fuel. Anyway, once the fleet is converted to diesel, you can start substituting biodiesel over time.. allowing the infrastructure to catch up as the fleet of diesel vehicles increases.
Volkswagen's TDI engine is a shining example of what SHOULD be happening. In the New Beetle, people are getting 40+ MPG on a regular basis. I own a TDI New Beetle, and the worst mileage I get is 35 MPG, and that's driving like a jackass (lots of heavy acceleration, driving 80 MPH, etc). With effort, I easily get 45 MPG.
Here's the real kick in the pants. If I burn 80/20 or 70/30 biodiesel (80 or 70% petro, 20 or 30% biodiesel), fuel economy actually IMPROVES, as do emissions.
Turbodiesel engines perform comparably to gasoline engines in actual driving. The VW TDI-equipped vehicles all compare favorably in actual driving performance to other vehicles in their class. Car and Driver actually said that the TDI New Beetle was actually MORE FUN TO DRIVE than it's gasoline-powered brother.
Hybrids? Pfft. Let's concentrate on methane fuel cells (because, anybody who's eaten at Taco Bell can attest to how easy methane is to make from bio sources) for the 20-30 year solution, and get everybody on diesel NOW. We can start mixing 80/20 biodiesel now, slowly convert the fleet to higher mixes of bio, and then.. 20 or 30 years from now as fuel cell technology matures, cut the whole mess over to LNG, continuing to sell diesel fuel for as long as the fleet needs it.
Funny thing. I expected to have all kinds of problems finding one in Seattle. You know.. large number of geeks and all that.
So, yesterday I find myself at the Target in Southcenter. They had a large stack of them in the case. When I mean large, there were at least a dozen in there that I could see.
Except, as has been documented before, the ID requirement does absolutely nothing to increase security. All 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 would have been able to freely board, as they would have had the necessary documents and likely would have not necessarily been on any watchlist.
Apple didn't "lose" to Windows. You're assuming this is a zero-sum game.
Apple Computer, as a company, continues to thrive and pay reasonable dividends to it's stockholders. On a technical level, Apple's OS is widely considered superior by many in the industry.
The only "losers" when Windows came out were Atari and Commodore-Amiga: only the latter platform exists in any real context, and that's even highly debatable.
The only problem, of course, being that the "nearest state" is literally hundreds of miles away.
Somebody who lives in San Francisco, for example, would have to travel to Reno, NV: 220 miles. Similarly, somebody from Los Angeles would need to get to at least Parker, AZ (assuming there is even a AZ MVD in Parker) or Las Vegas, NV.. both are well in excess of that mileage.
I don't think it will work for political reasons. Remember, Ahhhnold got voted IN primarily because of a regressive vehicle license fee.
Fink uses the same install database as Debian, for the most part. It even uses the Debian source repository when you do an apt-get source (package). The only thing that is different is it uses a different binary tree for binary packages (which makes sense).
For the most part (and the exceptions are rare), since the package names are the same, you can apt-get install (some-debian-package), and get a nice PowerPC-native Darwin-built binary.
Well, for starters: how much do you know about the Mac hardware? Apparently, very little.
Slackware, officially, only supports x86 processors.
The Mac dosen't use an x86 processor.
Debian, on the other hand, does produce a PowerPC Linux distro.
Install Fink, and you can have all the apt-get goodness you want.
Isn't asking this guy about Linux somewhat akin to asking a Southern Baptist minister about Paganism? I mean, regardless, you're gonna wind up with some pretty messed up perspectives, methinks.
There is no reason why some device like what AlphaSmart makes couldn't be manufactured today for $100. It's primarly non-technical issues that prevent such things...
The irony, of course, being that SIP has MORE THAN ONCE been suggested as a replacement open IM protocol...