This is a science class, not a dark arts class. There is nothing rational about women. Women and creationism are on the same grounds as far as being taught in a science classroom.:)
All my life I've been waiting to see an awesome picture about FRIKKIN ROBOTS THAT BOUNCE on water, and now it's apparently slashdotted! I'm gonna cry now.
P.S. Hey taco if this is just some sick joke, and you gave a busted url, I'll kill you! Robots on water... you don't play around with that!
What management may not realize, however, is that they are already paying a hefty hidden cost by having outdated systems in place, "because you are paying for an administrator's time to deal with these issues," Johnson said.
So there aren't any costs to maintaining Vista? Yeah right. Marketing FUD if I ever heard. I guess it's no real surprise though. Business x wants you to pay them the most money, so they'll say whatever to get your money, even if it is FUD.
approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work as the current situation stands. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.)
( ) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
(*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations
(*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Technology doesn't work that way
(*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
(*) Extreme misunderstanding of the technology by the public
(*) A sensationalist press won't let mistakes die
( ) Idiots with boats
( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote
( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors
(*) Conflicting environmental interests
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Meltdowns Suck!
(*) People have been trying for years to implement your solution and haven't succeeded
( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(*) Your solution is expensive
(*) Your solution may be politically infeasible
( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution
( ) It makes life harder, not easier
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(*) We're really close, but still no cigar. I agree with you're idea in general, so maybe one day in the distant future...
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Your solution advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work as the current situation stands. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.)
( ) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
(*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations
(*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Technology doesn't work that way
(*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
(*) Extreme misunderstanding of the technology by the public
(*) A sensationalist press won't let mistakes die
( ) Idiots with boats
( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote
( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors
(*) Conflicting environmental interests
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Meltdowns Suck!
(*) People have been trying for years to implement your solution and haven't succeeded
( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(*) Your solution is expensive
(*) Your solution may be politically infeasible
( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution
( ) It makes life harder, not easier
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(*) We're really close, but still no cigar. I agree with you're idea in general, so maybe one day in the distant future...
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Having seen the film already, I know what to expect from the film. I know what I enjoy about the film. Unless there is some new change to the plot or style of the film, which there doesn't appear to be from the article, I'm not buying. This seems like an attempt to cash in under the guise of finally giving Scott full artistic control. Maybe it's just me, but the film already has a meaning to me, so I could care less about whatever minor tweaks Scott wants to make. I loved the film and think Scott made a masterpiece, but I just don't see the need for the incessant revision and releases.
My bad, I just skimmed the article. The whole "RIAA isn't using FAIR STATISTICS!" seemed pretty hashed to me, so I figured a joke was in order. My bad though.
Of course I don't want to download anything that would be considered illegal
You're apparently a college student who doesn't pirate stuff? Are we supposed to take you seriously? You might as well tell us you're the son of God come back to earth to end world hunger and put an end to war, as that would be just as believable. What do you take slashdot for?
I only kid. I do however think this is less than noteworthy. I'm pretty sure it's been widely known that the RIAA types have inflated their statistics for some time now, what with their formula of x number of pirated copies = x number of sales lost and then x sales lost * y unreasonable charge == z unrealistic losses.
Well for one thing the PC is not the primary player for most people. iPod's and other "MP3" players are. MP3 is the lingua franca for audio, which makes it much easier to deal in for most. Most people don't make their own files. My previous post was primarily speaking to why ogg hasn't received more support across the industry and user base. Which format to use for encoding your own music or for maximizing your storage space (which isn't a real problem in the days a of 500 gb hdd) is a completely different argument from the one I was discussing.
Right there is a pretty big roadblock. Big media isn't interested unless it is going to help with DRM.
Secondly, the average person isn't really all that interested in whatever superior quality ogg has. It's really a nominal difference on most players and in most listening environments. MP3 does just fine for them.
Thirdly, and in conjunction with my second point, MP3 is old, well-known, and for the most part easy to use. People are familiar with it and therefore are reluctant to change. The fact is MP3 got their first. It causes to few real problems to push people to care about open standards. I myself like to think I'm at least a little enlightened/aware of digital media issues, and I don't even have that much ogg in my library. It's probably 90% MP3, then 5% FLAC and ogg.
Moral of the story, MP3 works well enough, and most people hold to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Feed them for a day or gradually give them the tools to where they can eventually become self-supportive and successful societies? Hmmm.... that's a tough one. Sure there needs to be a whole lot of hunger relief, but without charitable development on industry, education, etc., the third world will never become more than a welfare state dependent on the fickle benevolance of their rich neighbors. OLPC is just as important as hunger relief. OLPC represents an effort to promote education, the most important tool any modern society can have. So OLPC may just be more important than immediate hunger relief in the long run. The way to respect a human being is to help them make themselves able not to make them little more than beggars. Give them food sure, but also teach them how they do better for themselves and be able provide their own food one day.
I apologize for that behavior hiccup. It's just hard sometimes to control ourselves. Blame evolution not us. Your leg probably just looks "appetizing." I would suggest wearing wiskers on your pants leg or painting a picture of a rolled up newspaper on your pants leg. Either of those should alleviate the problem. Alternatively, you could try being the bigger person and speak to your dog, but I understand the deserved apprehension you might have about this.
I hope this has helped. BTW, I'm working on a gpl'ed evolutionary firmware update that moves the urge in question from the leg to the shoe, as this is less disturbing. I've tried to get rid of the trait altogether, but it's tough. A lot of the code is proprietary, and well God just doesn't like to give the darn stuff up. We're working on it though. Link to our project www.opensourceevolutionarydogimprovement.org.
All I can say is finally! We are starting to break through the chains. We are a smart respectable species, one worthy of inclusion among the most intelligent of all. Now I know we have things to be ashamed of, like the toilet drinking, the vendettas against postal workers, the fetch syndrome, but we are working to improve ourselves. If we could just get a little help a long the way, we could make things so much better. This article is proof positive that we dogs are honorable. So please pay us respect as we pay you respect.
P.S. Thanks to all those who bow to their new photograph sorting, canine overlords, but it's really not necessary. We are a humble species and have no designs on taking over earth. Unless... a mailman should ever come into power, then of course we would have no recourse but violence. Until then, thank you but no thank you.
I agree that any surveillance should not be surreptitious and in fact should be flat out obvious. Still I think something like this is a good idea, because the national guard member on every corner can exist in high traffic urban areas like the ones this system is being utilized in. The article makes no assumption that this is going to be ubiquitous and every move you make the government will have on file. People just automatically assume this is the first step to the police state. Well we may be headed there, but this isn't the first step. This system seems to be pretty simple to me. It augments what security already does in looking for patterns.
Resources simply don't allow, right now for every move you make to be recorded and documented and a dossier kept on you and your crimethink. This isn't big brother. This isn't everywhere, it's only high risk areas. You have a right to privacy, but by going into public you waive a certain amount of that right de facto. Everyone can talk about slippery slopes all they want to, but when it comes down to it it only obfuscates matters and clouds debate. When even legitimate attempts at security that are made are called malicious, the debate is broken and only the side in power wins. If you want to protect privacy, debate security measures on their merits and not on vague philosophical grounds or through the lens of paranoia. If not you're only contributing to the problem.
Did the article make a point of saying this was an anti-terror tool specifically? No, because it has a very real application. Instead of fighting whatever fantasy threats politicians throw at us, this is designed to curtail the very real problems of mugging, assault, theft, etc., that occur in high traffic urban areas.
Guys security is good. Raping the constitution, disregarding human rights, and doing a number of other unsavory things to attempt to get it isn't. However, something as common sense as this is good. This is nothing more than a mechanism for security to expand their field of vision and cut out the noise (perfectly behaving citizens) to the signal (criminals). We can all agree that some security personnel is needed in high traffic areas right? So you have two choices. One is a very inefficient system of large groups of personnel, physical checkpoints, etc. The second choice is to reduce personnel footprint based on optimization from technology and better tactics. I know which choice I would choose.
issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. It can be used to warn security guards
Oh come off it! This isn't Minority Report or crimethink. It's a way for security to monitor high traffic, high risk areas. It issues warning and allows security to prioritize their time and respond better to interruptions. When you're in these places, you're in public. You're not in the privacy of your own home or anything like that. You're on public streets. By going out into public you've already given up a certain amount of anonymity de facto. This is public surveillance for your protection. This is nothing more than a warning system.
Wouldn't you rather security actually be able to respond to real situations in a timely manner? Again this is for high traffic areas. There are likely to be a lot of legitimate security problems. As for me, when traveling through areas like Manhattan, I would much rather have a surveillance system like the one the article describes in place than an armed national guard member on every corner. This is a common sense application and should hopefully alleviate the problem of deploying personnel en masse, which has very obvious drawbacks.
I mean really! Dissident journalists have been murdered. A rival was imprisoned for political reasons. Gee, and I thought this election had a shot to be a fair one! Anyone surprised by this doesn't follow Russian politics at all. Putin doesn't play around. He used one of the most devious Russian reversals of all time. He found that in Soviet Russia corruption empowers you absolutely!
Define overpay. If it means AT&T or Verizon stay in business and remain profitable because of the spectrum, then its really hard to overpay for ones lifeblood. Here it says that spectrum auctions are deposited straight to the US Treasury, so it's just like revenue from taxes. I happen to like the situation. Competition is forced, the treasury gets a boost, and we all benefit.
The Commodore was a dependable old faithful friend. Your first true love. It had your kids. It supported you through tough times. But then came the time when you needed to upgrade to a trophy wife/super gaming rig. It saw it coming. You wanted ultra raw performance, and it just couldn't deliver it anymore. Still it thinks about you in quiet dignity, though reminiscing about love lost.
You're kidding right? Google prepared a $4.6 billion bid themselves which just happens to be the benchmark the FCC used as the reserve price. Your crazy if you don't think that AT&T and Verizon are going to fight this tooth and nail. Android is coming and they know it. They have to hold on to the networks themselves or be cut out. No matter how much building an open standards network benefits Google, AT&T and Verizon realize network infrastructure is what's going to make them players in the new game.
It probably doesn't help that assertion that I have two articles on the home page that highlight potential success for the company, but I still realize that they are a company designed to make a profit.
As for the article, I agree that is one of the shrewdest business moves I've seen (that wasn't underhanded, repressive, bookcooking, etc.). They're getting essentially who will be their competition with Android to fund the infrastructure on which Android will make money. All the while the consumer is starting to benefit like crazy from the atmosphere of competition.
It's times like these that almost make you want see some good in the world. Yeah, but then another wiki scandal or RIAA atrocity will pop up on the firehose to dampen then mood.:(
For other devices, "we will unlock the device when customers fulfill their contract; we will also unlock the device if the customer pays full price for the device," he said. "The iPhone, however, is an exception. The iPhone is exclusive to AT&T in the U.S."
Translation: Yeah, yeah openness or whatever the buzzword is, but we still gotta turn a profit. If it's any consolation I hear they are really easy to unlock on your own.
I don't blame AT&T. Apple signed the agreement and now AT&T is due their profits. However, it is quite a marvel to see the dustorm Google kicked up. Competition, when you can get it, is a powerful thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a science class, not a dark arts class. There is nothing rational about women. Women and creationism are on the same grounds as far as being taught in a science classroom. :)
pen drive: will fit in my pocket
RAMAC: will maybe fit in my kitchen
pen drive: holds quite a bit of data
RAMAC: can't hold that much data
pen drive: cannot be used as cover in a gun fight
RAMAC: essentially is a battlement worthy of any castle
AND THE WINNER IS....... RAMAC! I know I want a storage device that protect me from sundry projectiles.
All my life I've been waiting to see an awesome picture about FRIKKIN ROBOTS THAT BOUNCE on water, and now it's apparently slashdotted! I'm gonna cry now.
P.S. Hey taco if this is just some sick joke, and you gave a busted url, I'll kill you! Robots on water... you don't play around with that!
What management may not realize, however, is that they are already paying a hefty hidden cost by having outdated systems in place, "because you are paying for an administrator's time to deal with these issues," Johnson said.
So there aren't any costs to maintaining Vista? Yeah right. Marketing FUD if I ever heard. I guess it's no real surprise though. Business x wants you to pay them the most money, so they'll say whatever to get your money, even if it is FUD.
If so, then what is holding you back from realizing your full potential?
This post should explain it. If you think hiring practices are discriminatory for minorities, try being like me!
Cherish YOUR THUMBS!
Your solution advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work as the current situation stands. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.)
( ) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
(*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations
(*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Technology doesn't work that way
(*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
(*) Extreme misunderstanding of the technology by the public
(*) A sensationalist press won't let mistakes die
( ) Idiots with boats
( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote
( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors
(*) Conflicting environmental interests
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Meltdowns Suck!
(*) People have been trying for years to implement your solution and haven't succeeded
( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(*) Your solution is expensive
(*) Your solution may be politically infeasible
( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution
( ) It makes life harder, not easier
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(*) We're really close, but still no cigar. I agree with you're idea in general, so maybe one day in the distant future...
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Your solution advocates a (*) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work as the current situation stands. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.) ( ) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests (*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations (*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Technology doesn't work that way (*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment Specifically, your plan fails to account for: (*) Extreme misunderstanding of the technology by the public (*) A sensationalist press won't let mistakes die ( ) Idiots with boats ( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change (*) Technically illiterate politicians (*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote ( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors (*) Conflicting environmental interests and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (*) Meltdowns Suck! (*) People have been trying for years to implement your solution and haven't succeeded ( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem (*) Your solution is expensive (*) Your solution may be politically infeasible ( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution ( ) It makes life harder, not easier Furthermore, this is what I think about you: (*) We're really close, but still no cigar. I agree with you're idea in general, so maybe one day in the distant future... ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Having seen the film already, I know what to expect from the film. I know what I enjoy about the film. Unless there is some new change to the plot or style of the film, which there doesn't appear to be from the article, I'm not buying. This seems like an attempt to cash in under the guise of finally giving Scott full artistic control. Maybe it's just me, but the film already has a meaning to me, so I could care less about whatever minor tweaks Scott wants to make. I loved the film and think Scott made a masterpiece, but I just don't see the need for the incessant revision and releases.
My bad, I just skimmed the article. The whole "RIAA isn't using FAIR STATISTICS!" seemed pretty hashed to me, so I figured a joke was in order. My bad though.
Of course I don't want to download anything that would be considered illegal You're apparently a college student who doesn't pirate stuff? Are we supposed to take you seriously? You might as well tell us you're the son of God come back to earth to end world hunger and put an end to war, as that would be just as believable. What do you take slashdot for?
I only kid. I do however think this is less than noteworthy. I'm pretty sure it's been widely known that the RIAA types have inflated their statistics for some time now, what with their formula of x number of pirated copies = x number of sales lost and then x sales lost * y unreasonable charge == z unrealistic losses.
And what makes mp3 more easy than ogg?
Well for one thing the PC is not the primary player for most people. iPod's and other "MP3" players are. MP3 is the lingua franca for audio, which makes it much easier to deal in for most. Most people don't make their own files. My previous post was primarily speaking to why ogg hasn't received more support across the industry and user base. Which format to use for encoding your own music or for maximizing your storage space (which isn't a real problem in the days a of 500 gb hdd) is a completely different argument from the one I was discussing.
Apart from it not supporting DRM
Right there is a pretty big roadblock. Big media isn't interested unless it is going to help with DRM.
Secondly, the average person isn't really all that interested in whatever superior quality ogg has. It's really a nominal difference on most players and in most listening environments. MP3 does just fine for them.
Thirdly, and in conjunction with my second point, MP3 is old, well-known, and for the most part easy to use. People are familiar with it and therefore are reluctant to change. The fact is MP3 got their first. It causes to few real problems to push people to care about open standards. I myself like to think I'm at least a little enlightened/aware of digital media issues, and I don't even have that much ogg in my library. It's probably 90% MP3, then 5% FLAC and ogg.
Moral of the story, MP3 works well enough, and most people hold to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Feed them for a day or gradually give them the tools to where they can eventually become self-supportive and successful societies? Hmmm.... that's a tough one. Sure there needs to be a whole lot of hunger relief, but without charitable development on industry, education, etc., the third world will never become more than a welfare state dependent on the fickle benevolance of their rich neighbors. OLPC is just as important as hunger relief. OLPC represents an effort to promote education, the most important tool any modern society can have. So OLPC may just be more important than immediate hunger relief in the long run. The way to respect a human being is to help them make themselves able not to make them little more than beggars. Give them food sure, but also teach them how they do better for themselves and be able provide their own food one day.
I apologize for that behavior hiccup. It's just hard sometimes to control ourselves. Blame evolution not us. Your leg probably just looks "appetizing." I would suggest wearing wiskers on your pants leg or painting a picture of a rolled up newspaper on your pants leg. Either of those should alleviate the problem. Alternatively, you could try being the bigger person and speak to your dog, but I understand the deserved apprehension you might have about this.
I hope this has helped. BTW, I'm working on a gpl'ed evolutionary firmware update that moves the urge in question from the leg to the shoe, as this is less disturbing. I've tried to get rid of the trait altogether, but it's tough. A lot of the code is proprietary, and well God just doesn't like to give the darn stuff up. We're working on it though. Link to our project www.opensourceevolutionarydogimprovement.org.
All I can say is finally! We are starting to break through the chains. We are a smart respectable species, one worthy of inclusion among the most intelligent of all. Now I know we have things to be ashamed of, like the toilet drinking, the vendettas against postal workers, the fetch syndrome, but we are working to improve ourselves. If we could just get a little help a long the way, we could make things so much better. This article is proof positive that we dogs are honorable. So please pay us respect as we pay you respect.
P.S. Thanks to all those who bow to their new photograph sorting, canine overlords, but it's really not necessary. We are a humble species and have no designs on taking over earth. Unless... a mailman should ever come into power, then of course we would have no recourse but violence. Until then, thank you but no thank you.
I agree that any surveillance should not be surreptitious and in fact should be flat out obvious. Still I think something like this is a good idea, because the national guard member on every corner can exist in high traffic urban areas like the ones this system is being utilized in. The article makes no assumption that this is going to be ubiquitous and every move you make the government will have on file. People just automatically assume this is the first step to the police state. Well we may be headed there, but this isn't the first step. This system seems to be pretty simple to me. It augments what security already does in looking for patterns.
Resources simply don't allow, right now for every move you make to be recorded and documented and a dossier kept on you and your crimethink. This isn't big brother. This isn't everywhere, it's only high risk areas. You have a right to privacy, but by going into public you waive a certain amount of that right de facto. Everyone can talk about slippery slopes all they want to, but when it comes down to it it only obfuscates matters and clouds debate. When even legitimate attempts at security that are made are called malicious, the debate is broken and only the side in power wins. If you want to protect privacy, debate security measures on their merits and not on vague philosophical grounds or through the lens of paranoia. If not you're only contributing to the problem.
Did the article make a point of saying this was an anti-terror tool specifically? No, because it has a very real application. Instead of fighting whatever fantasy threats politicians throw at us, this is designed to curtail the very real problems of mugging, assault, theft, etc., that occur in high traffic urban areas.
Guys security is good. Raping the constitution, disregarding human rights, and doing a number of other unsavory things to attempt to get it isn't. However, something as common sense as this is good. This is nothing more than a mechanism for security to expand their field of vision and cut out the noise (perfectly behaving citizens) to the signal (criminals). We can all agree that some security personnel is needed in high traffic areas right? So you have two choices. One is a very inefficient system of large groups of personnel, physical checkpoints, etc. The second choice is to reduce personnel footprint based on optimization from technology and better tactics. I know which choice I would choose.
issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. It can be used to warn security guards
Oh come off it! This isn't Minority Report or crimethink. It's a way for security to monitor high traffic, high risk areas. It issues warning and allows security to prioritize their time and respond better to interruptions. When you're in these places, you're in public. You're not in the privacy of your own home or anything like that. You're on public streets. By going out into public you've already given up a certain amount of anonymity de facto. This is public surveillance for your protection. This is nothing more than a warning system.
Wouldn't you rather security actually be able to respond to real situations in a timely manner? Again this is for high traffic areas. There are likely to be a lot of legitimate security problems. As for me, when traveling through areas like Manhattan, I would much rather have a surveillance system like the one the article describes in place than an armed national guard member on every corner. This is a common sense application and should hopefully alleviate the problem of deploying personnel en masse, which has very obvious drawbacks.
Better yet! Now we know why they keep making windows with the same failed security schemes!
I mean really! Dissident journalists have been murdered. A rival was imprisoned for political reasons. Gee, and I thought this election had a shot to be a fair one! Anyone surprised by this doesn't follow Russian politics at all. Putin doesn't play around. He used one of the most devious Russian reversals of all time. He found that in Soviet Russia corruption empowers you absolutely!
Define overpay. If it means AT&T or Verizon stay in business and remain profitable because of the spectrum, then its really hard to overpay for ones lifeblood. Here it says that spectrum auctions are deposited straight to the US Treasury, so it's just like revenue from taxes. I happen to like the situation. Competition is forced, the treasury gets a boost, and we all benefit.
The Commodore was a dependable old faithful friend. Your first true love. It had your kids. It supported you through tough times. But then came the time when you needed to upgrade to a trophy wife/super gaming rig. It saw it coming. You wanted ultra raw performance, and it just couldn't deliver it anymore. Still it thinks about you in quiet dignity, though reminiscing about love lost.
You're kidding right? Google prepared a $4.6 billion bid themselves which just happens to be the benchmark the FCC used as the reserve price. Your crazy if you don't think that AT&T and Verizon are going to fight this tooth and nail. Android is coming and they know it. They have to hold on to the networks themselves or be cut out. No matter how much building an open standards network benefits Google, AT&T and Verizon realize network infrastructure is what's going to make them players in the new game.
It probably doesn't help that assertion that I have two articles on the home page that highlight potential success for the company, but I still realize that they are a company designed to make a profit.
:(
As for the article, I agree that is one of the shrewdest business moves I've seen (that wasn't underhanded, repressive, bookcooking, etc.). They're getting essentially who will be their competition with Android to fund the infrastructure on which Android will make money. All the while the consumer is starting to benefit like crazy from the atmosphere of competition.
It's times like these that almost make you want see some good in the world. Yeah, but then another wiki scandal or RIAA atrocity will pop up on the firehose to dampen then mood.
For other devices, "we will unlock the device when customers fulfill their contract; we will also unlock the device if the customer pays full price for the device," he said. "The iPhone, however, is an exception. The iPhone is exclusive to AT&T in the U.S."
Translation: Yeah, yeah openness or whatever the buzzword is, but we still gotta turn a profit. If it's any consolation I hear they are really easy to unlock on your own.
I don't blame AT&T. Apple signed the agreement and now AT&T is due their profits. However, it is quite a marvel to see the dustorm Google kicked up. Competition, when you can get it, is a powerful thing.