It does (well in quite a few countries). That's precisely what I've just outlined (in response to the OP's assertion that all other Western countries are reliant on Visa/MC - it's not true).
I've never understood why America doesn't seem to have an EFTPOS (electronic funds at point of sale) system that doesn't rely on Mastercard/Visa etc. From what I've seen all your 'debit' cards over there are essentially just masquerading as credit cards (i.e. are Visa or Mastercard, with a 16 digit number and an expiry date etc.), just that the funds come from your bank account, not from credit.
In my country EFTPOS is a completely separate thing from MC/Visa debit cards. You get to the checkout, swipe your standard ATM card, type your PIN and you are good to go. But there's no Visa or MC logo on the cards and they don't have a credit-card-like number or expiry date etc. (Note that you CAN also get the Visa/MC debit cards - they are useful for shopping online and overseas trips - but they aren't the only type of cashless payment card).
So where I live it's perfectly possible to have nothing to do with those companies. I don't really use them for anything, other than having one credit card that I basically never use... just there for complete emergencies etc.
Yeah, I like the idea of getting rid of a dedicated caps lock key and mapping caps lock to 'double tap shift' or something, but as you say, you'd have to consider the consequences of that.
I have similar habits to you (tend to accidentally turn on that damn sticky keys, especially in games where shift = run and I have a little burst of run-walk-run-walk-run:P
If the double tap had to be very rapid (think mouse double clicking) though, I doubt you'd accidentally activate it very often. It seems to me that the behaviour of absent mindedly tapping shift while making up your mind about something wouldn't depress shift rapidly enough to trigger it in that case...
Noone is suggesting that a 'caps lock' feature should be entirely absent. They are just saying it probably doesn't, in this day and age, require a huge, dedicated, prominently placed key. Double tapping shift or something to toggle allcaps would make sense: your allcaps functionality is still there and still able to be quickly activated, and the space occupied by the old caps lock key can now be used for something more useful.
Agreed. I hate that the key is ~called~ the Windows key and that it has a Windows logo on it, but having a modifier key of some description in that spot is good, and does get used a lot. Out of those you mention I use Win+D the most. I do lock my screen regularly too but tend to radpidly go "ctrl-alt-del, Enter" to do that instead.
Win+Pause is a good one too: brings up the System control panel/device manager/etc. Especially if you spend a lot of your time setting up computers or diagnosing issues, this is a real time saver compared to going Control Panel -> System, or right clicking My Computer and picking 'Properties' (all of which do the same thing).
MMOs. I play a few and every freaking key on my keyboard is needed (or if not absolutely 'needed', it is at least very nice to have). Mostly bound to opening up various dialogs and menus and stuff (e.g. inventory, crafting window, chat channels, things related to trade and commerce, quest informaion, maps, group-finding features, skill management etc; not to mention all the actual skills themselves which are usually bound to the numeric keys/function keys + modifiers)...
IMO they should implement caps lock as a soft toggle at the OS level. For instance by holding down shift for a second or two (or double tapping it, ala iOS), it would toggle allcaps on and off.
I agree that there is an occasional need for caps lock - but its rarer than something that deserves its own large, prominently-placed dedicated key on the keyboard, I think.
Yeah agreed. Problem is it's hard to switch regularly between the two, so people who are used to inverted mouse for flight sims end up using it in other games, such as FPS and MMO games where you have a camera control.
I grew up mostly playing flight sims, so I ended up being a mouse inverter in FPS too. In my head, it makes sense: pushing ~forward~ on the mouse is like moving my head forward on my neck, which would cause me to look ~down~. Similarly pulling back on the mouse is like pulling my head back, and thus looking up.
The reason this doesn't seem to make sense to other people is that they think of the mouse as moving 'up and down' (like a cursor on a screen), not 'forward and back' in three-dimensional space. But the mouse is on a horizontal plane, so to me, I'm moving it forward and back, into and away from the monitor.
But most people think I'm weird. People who invert mouse seems to be a dying breed among younger gamers it seems. I wonder how long it will be until games start not even having the option to do it. Basically anyone that never played flight sims (or doesn't understand how a control column works on a real plane) don't 'get' invert mouse at all.
That's the thing though: oversubscription is the only way you can offer affordable residential internet services. That's the point of pay as you go: the ISP can forecast fairly accurately, how much bandwidth they are going to need (and thus how much they have spare), because they know the amount of data they have sold their customers in a given month. As customers' demand more bandwidth (i.e. upgrade their plans to ones with higher caps/lower per-MB cost), they can easily know when they will need to upgrade hardware etc.
Without caps you can get the situation where a sudden, unexpected killer app blows all your bandwidth forecasts out of the water and you end up having network congestion or having to resort to traffic shaping/prioritisation techniques to keep your network going at an acceptable rate.
I am a citizen of both the US and Australia and have internet services in both countries. The difference in ISP philosophies is quite interesting. In Australia 'pay as you go' Internet is the norm, and has been since the dawn of broadband internet access. You select a plan with a given download cap (ranging from ~15 GB at the low end to >1 TB at the high end). If you exceed your downloads in a month, your traffic is slowed dramatically (e.g. 128 kbps). This is better than cutting you off completely but still makes anything but very basic email and web surfing impossible. ISPs tend not to be as 'bundle-oriented' as in the US. They sell you an amount of data, and generally don't force you to bundle TV/phone/other services with it. Bundles exist, sure, but they aren't compulsory or as common as in the US. Also, most ISPs never do any form of traffic shaping (e.g. torrent throttling), deep packet inspection, or prioritisation. They sell you a 'block' of data and since you are paying for what you use, they couldn't care less what you use it for.
In the US they obviously sell you an amount of bandwidth (i.e. a speed), rather than an amount of data. The download allowances are generally unlimited; however the speeds offered are generally slower than in Australia for an equivalent type of service (e.g. DSL maxes out at 6 Mbps in most of the US, whereas (up to) 24 Mbps ADSL2+ is ubiquitous in Australia. I suppose since they are selling you unlimited downloads they have to limit the speed more (which is an indirect way of 'capping' your download limit anyway). Some US ISPs also deprioritise certain types of traffic, such as P2P.
There are pros and cons to each business model. On one hand, I do enjoy not having to monitor my usage in the US. You can just use the net without thinking about how much you are downloading. That is nice. However, I regularly experience awful quality of service from US ISPs, particularly in peak periods: random packet loss, slowdowns and other obvious signs of network congestion. I also don't like the idea that (some) ISPs are sniffing my traffic and deprioritising certain traffic. Even if it doesn't significantly impact my speeds, I just don't like the ~idea~ of it.
In Australia, you do have to be slightly conscious of what you're downloading (although you should really be choosing a plan with a cap that fits your 'natural' usage of the Internet, so you don't have to think about it as much as you might expect). On the other hand, I do find the quality of service significantly better than the average US ISP. The service acheives its rated speed any time of day or night on any type of traffic - no peak period slowdown (note: some Aussies stuck on RIMs will disagree with this, but RIM congestion is a separate issue than core ISP network congestion).
So I don't see any real harm in a company choosing to offer pay as you go/capped style Internet. Provided there's a good choice of caps (as there is in Australia... let's face it, a 1 terabyte cap might as well be unlimited for most intents and purposes). For light users especially, there's a benefit because the small-cap plans are generally dirt cheap - my parents in Australia are on a 10 GB plan that cos
You do realise that if you own land of that size, it is mostly 'remotely' managed. GPS-tagged livestock. High-res satellite imagery. Detailed weather synoptic charts and forecasts. Decent quality internet service is needed for this. It is not 1950 anymore.
Also you are implying that such people are working 24/7 and have zero relaxation time. Do you not also think that people that live and work in such places should be able to enjoy the same online entertainment options (IPTV, gaming, etc) as those living in cities? What about their spouses and children? Shouldn't they be able to communicate rapidly and effectively with the outside world (e.g. video chat with relatives living far away)?
Precisely. Something like 97% of Australia's population can receive Internet via more conventional means: fibre/cable/dsl in cities and towns, and 3G for 'rural, but not stupidly remote'. This technology is aimed at the remaining 3% who have no means of getting the Internet at all except via satellite. The truly remote. Those whose nearest neighbour is 200 km away and own cattle stations larger than some US states. The kind of people who aren't even connected to the electricity grid but rather generate their own power via generators/solar.
The tech has very major limitations, but for the purpose it's aimed at, it should work very well. At the moment these people rely on satellite, which while OK in terms of throughput, has awful latency.
This list was nothing anyone with a bit of background in transport, communications and logistics infrastructure couldn't come up with themselves. Obviously ports through which a large proportion of your imports/exports pass would have an economic impact if they were destroyed. Obviously telecommunications cables that carry a large proportion of your traffic would cause disruption if destroyed. Same with known monopoly suppliers of various medical products and vaccines.
I suppose you could argue this leak makes listing such targets a bit more convenient but it wasn't exactly top secret information. In fact, none of the leaked cables are particularly sensitive so far - a few of them carry a 'secret' designation but there's no highly classified or top secret information in there. Mostly, these cables are just confirming things that were: a) obvious, but largely unspoken; or b) that we all suspected anyway.
That symptom suggests (or in fact, screams) 'cell overload'.
The cell/tower only allows x simultaneous connections to it. Your phone has one. However there are no slots left for the other phones, so they have to seek to the next available tower, which will obviously be further away and have worse reception (or in fact, no reception at all).
So yes you are right to point the finger at AT&T. Sounds like they are not provisioning their network adequately in your area.
They must be referring to voice traffic. Nothing else makes sense. AT&T doesn't even KNOW you are using some dude's Wifi in Mexico if you are just using it for pure data...
Another reason why the whole 'phone tied to carrier' situation in the US needs to end. In the most of the world (US and Japan are two notable exceptions) you can buy any phone you want and take it to any carrier.
Of course part of the reason for this is that the US still uses two completely different technologies (CDMA/TDMA on Sprint, Verizon and GSM/HSDPA on ATT and T-Mobile). But still you should be able to take your phone to a different carrier on the same technology*...
* T-Mobile does actually offer some bring-your-own-phone plans and I believe is the only major carrier to do so. However this is a moot point if some of the most desirable phones (e.g. iPhone) are locked to another carrier to begin with.
I'm sure dissatisfaction has a lot to do with the iPhone antenna issue.
I don't think so. I use an iPhone 4 without any form of bumper or case and have never had a single dropped call or data slowdown etc. But I don't live in America and don't use AT&T.
The iPhone is a GSM/HSDPA phone like any other. Problems such as dropped calls lie with your carrier, not the hardware.
I suspect 90% of the antennagate 'issue' in the US was in fact a problem with AT&T and people living in areas with terrible reception, rather than a major issue with the phone itself. Yes if you bridge the two external antennas you do increase signal attenuation (i.e. lose a bar or two). And yes in retrospect this is probably a design flaw that they should have thought about. But the fact that the antenna is external in the first place makes its base level of sensitivity greater than an internal one, so on balance, it's got no worse reception overall than its competitors (and if you don't 'bridge the gap', has demonstrably better reception than most).
Home connections are capped in Australia... but only a retard would jump on here and complain about it. It would be bad if a connection was capped at some amount and you ~had no choice~ about it. But that's not how it works. In Australia your ISP will always offer various plans with larger or smaller caps, and you pick the one that suits your needs.
There's nothing inherently bad about caps. They are fine provided there is a choice of plans, with different caps at different price points, that you can choose from based on your usage patterns. So anyone getting on here going "well my HOME connection is capped at 5 GB" might be telling the truth, but they have actively chosen to be capped at that level, so they have no right to complain.
For instance, my ISP currently offers: 15, 30, 60, 150, 300, 600 and 1000 GB plans. I'm on the 30 GB plan ($29.95) because it suits my usage (I generally use ~25 GB a month). It's only $10 more to double that to 60 GB if I needed to (and you can switch between plans at will, with no penalty). I don't see how this is a bad thing. In fact I rather prefer this kind of plan structure than the one-size-fits-all approach, because it means light users can get REALLY cheap plans (like $10 a month). Heavy users that want to chew through a terabyte a month can do so if they wish - it will just cost them more to go on a higher end plan. Pay for what you use, and for your relative impact on the ISP's network - sounds fair to me...
Just to clarify, I'm not shooting you down and I agree 100% with your assertion that things such as roads should be overengineered. But Sydney's geography and demographics pose some issues that aren't simple to resolve, that's all. It can be done but it would be 10x as expensive as in a place that had substantial amounts of through traffic/was flat and had space available on the outskirts/didn't have everyone trying to get in nad out of a few small areas every day.
Thing is I don't think there's much in the way of 'through traffic' that's causing these problems. Australia isn't like Europe or the US where there's towns and cities all over the place (meaning a lot of traffic in any location is simply driving through there to get to another place). 99% of the traffic in Sydney would be there because it is, in fact, trying to get to places within the city of Sydney.
As it happens if you do genuinely intend to simply pass through Sydney (say, you're driving from Canberra to Brisbane) you ~can~ largely bypass Sydney via the M6. This still goes 'through' the outskirts of Sydney but is a limited access road and usually flows OK.
Building more such roads in the surrounding suburban/rural areas won't really fix anything because the problem is in the core of the city and is not caused by traffic merely passing through. Furthermore, Sydney's geography would make building such roads a challenge. It's hemmed in on all sides by either National Park, ocean, or very very steep terrain at the base of the Blue Mountains that would make road building an epic engineering feat.
A nitpick, but an important one: the government in question here is a State government, not the 'Australian' (Federal) Government. To be exact, the government of New South Wales (which contains Sydney).
I'm sure most of you will roll your eyes but I can imagine Americans would have a similar reaction if an article called, say, the government of South Carolina or Idaho or Minnesota or something, 'the American government'.
Most NSW residents would agree with you in principle. However it's not very practical in many areas of Sydney - there's simply no space to put extra lanes on many roads without the Government reclaiming massive (and I mean massive) numbers of homes and businesses. Which would cost a stupendous amount of money and cause an absolute uproar.
In fact for the last 10 years, most of Sydney's major road expansions have had to be underground for this very reason. See, for example, the M5 Tunnel or Lane Cove Tunnel (wiki either of these if interested). As you can imagine, drilling 6+ lane roads through solid rock for miles upon miles costs... quite a bit. But that's the only real option.
We are talking about the ratio of download to upload speeds offered for residential connections. They could be 1:1 but still be 'oversold in 1:10 or 1:50' ratios. Not talking about contention ratios here.
Also I wasn't saying I 'wanted' anything. I was merely observing that residential plans based on newer technologies e.g. FTTH/FTTN) are already far more symmetrical than, say, a traditional DSL plan. Closer to 1:2 - 1:5... and these are plans that are being offered now by various ISPs in different countries.
But yeah, ratio between download and upload speeds has little to do with contention ratios/overselling. Naturally any consumer level/residential plan will be oversold, and if you want dedicated bandwidth you will indeed have to pay for it, regardless of the speeds we are talking about.
Ah interesting. So ok, maybe not 'any' other country. But I travel fairly widely for work and haven't had to do it outside of the US (although
Admittedly I haven't flown in the UK since around 2006. So it seems something has changed there. But as of now, they certainly don't make you do it in any of Asia, Australia, NZ etc.
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It does (well in quite a few countries). That's precisely what I've just outlined (in response to the OP's assertion that all other Western countries are reliant on Visa/MC - it's not true).
Having said that, it varies by country a lot...
I've never understood why America doesn't seem to have an EFTPOS (electronic funds at point of sale) system that doesn't rely on Mastercard/Visa etc. From what I've seen all your 'debit' cards over there are essentially just masquerading as credit cards (i.e. are Visa or Mastercard, with a 16 digit number and an expiry date etc.), just that the funds come from your bank account, not from credit.
In my country EFTPOS is a completely separate thing from MC/Visa debit cards. You get to the checkout, swipe your standard ATM card, type your PIN and you are good to go. But there's no Visa or MC logo on the cards and they don't have a credit-card-like number or expiry date etc. (Note that you CAN also get the Visa/MC debit cards - they are useful for shopping online and overseas trips - but they aren't the only type of cashless payment card).
So where I live it's perfectly possible to have nothing to do with those companies. I don't really use them for anything, other than having one credit card that I basically never use ... just there for complete emergencies etc.
Yeah, I like the idea of getting rid of a dedicated caps lock key and mapping caps lock to 'double tap shift' or something, but as you say, you'd have to consider the consequences of that.
I have similar habits to you (tend to accidentally turn on that damn sticky keys, especially in games where shift = run and I have a little burst of run-walk-run-walk-run :P
If the double tap had to be very rapid (think mouse double clicking) though, I doubt you'd accidentally activate it very often. It seems to me that the behaviour of absent mindedly tapping shift while making up your mind about something wouldn't depress shift rapidly enough to trigger it in that case...
Noone is suggesting that a 'caps lock' feature should be entirely absent. They are just saying it probably doesn't, in this day and age, require a huge, dedicated, prominently placed key. Double tapping shift or something to toggle allcaps would make sense: your allcaps functionality is still there and still able to be quickly activated, and the space occupied by the old caps lock key can now be used for something more useful.
Agreed. I hate that the key is ~called~ the Windows key and that it has a Windows logo on it, but having a modifier key of some description in that spot is good, and does get used a lot. Out of those you mention I use Win+D the most. I do lock my screen regularly too but tend to radpidly go "ctrl-alt-del, Enter" to do that instead.
Win+Pause is a good one too: brings up the System control panel/device manager/etc. Especially if you spend a lot of your time setting up computers or diagnosing issues, this is a real time saver compared to going Control Panel -> System, or right clicking My Computer and picking 'Properties' (all of which do the same thing).
MMOs. I play a few and every freaking key on my keyboard is needed (or if not absolutely 'needed', it is at least very nice to have). Mostly bound to opening up various dialogs and menus and stuff (e.g. inventory, crafting window, chat channels, things related to trade and commerce, quest informaion, maps, group-finding features, skill management etc; not to mention all the actual skills themselves which are usually bound to the numeric keys/function keys + modifiers)...
IMO they should implement caps lock as a soft toggle at the OS level. For instance by holding down shift for a second or two (or double tapping it, ala iOS), it would toggle allcaps on and off.
I agree that there is an occasional need for caps lock - but its rarer than something that deserves its own large, prominently-placed dedicated key on the keyboard, I think.
Yeah agreed. Problem is it's hard to switch regularly between the two, so people who are used to inverted mouse for flight sims end up using it in other games, such as FPS and MMO games where you have a camera control.
I grew up mostly playing flight sims, so I ended up being a mouse inverter in FPS too. In my head, it makes sense: pushing ~forward~ on the mouse is like moving my head forward on my neck, which would cause me to look ~down~. Similarly pulling back on the mouse is like pulling my head back, and thus looking up.
The reason this doesn't seem to make sense to other people is that they think of the mouse as moving 'up and down' (like a cursor on a screen), not 'forward and back' in three-dimensional space. But the mouse is on a horizontal plane, so to me, I'm moving it forward and back, into and away from the monitor.
But most people think I'm weird. People who invert mouse seems to be a dying breed among younger gamers it seems. I wonder how long it will be until games start not even having the option to do it. Basically anyone that never played flight sims (or doesn't understand how a control column works on a real plane) don't 'get' invert mouse at all.
Also worth pointing out that he hasn't actually been formally charged with ~anything~. They just want him for questioning.
That's the thing though: oversubscription is the only way you can offer affordable residential internet services. That's the point of pay as you go: the ISP can forecast fairly accurately, how much bandwidth they are going to need (and thus how much they have spare), because they know the amount of data they have sold their customers in a given month. As customers' demand more bandwidth (i.e. upgrade their plans to ones with higher caps/lower per-MB cost), they can easily know when they will need to upgrade hardware etc.
Without caps you can get the situation where a sudden, unexpected killer app blows all your bandwidth forecasts out of the water and you end up having network congestion or having to resort to traffic shaping/prioritisation techniques to keep your network going at an acceptable rate.
I am a citizen of both the US and Australia and have internet services in both countries. The difference in ISP philosophies is quite interesting. In Australia 'pay as you go' Internet is the norm, and has been since the dawn of broadband internet access. You select a plan with a given download cap (ranging from ~15 GB at the low end to >1 TB at the high end). If you exceed your downloads in a month, your traffic is slowed dramatically (e.g. 128 kbps). This is better than cutting you off completely but still makes anything but very basic email and web surfing impossible. ISPs tend not to be as 'bundle-oriented' as in the US. They sell you an amount of data, and generally don't force you to bundle TV/phone/other services with it. Bundles exist, sure, but they aren't compulsory or as common as in the US. Also, most ISPs never do any form of traffic shaping (e.g. torrent throttling), deep packet inspection, or prioritisation. They sell you a 'block' of data and since you are paying for what you use, they couldn't care less what you use it for.
In the US they obviously sell you an amount of bandwidth (i.e. a speed), rather than an amount of data. The download allowances are generally unlimited; however the speeds offered are generally slower than in Australia for an equivalent type of service (e.g. DSL maxes out at 6 Mbps in most of the US, whereas (up to) 24 Mbps ADSL2+ is ubiquitous in Australia. I suppose since they are selling you unlimited downloads they have to limit the speed more (which is an indirect way of 'capping' your download limit anyway). Some US ISPs also deprioritise certain types of traffic, such as P2P.
There are pros and cons to each business model. On one hand, I do enjoy not having to monitor my usage in the US. You can just use the net without thinking about how much you are downloading. That is nice. However, I regularly experience awful quality of service from US ISPs, particularly in peak periods: random packet loss, slowdowns and other obvious signs of network congestion. I also don't like the idea that (some) ISPs are sniffing my traffic and deprioritising certain traffic. Even if it doesn't significantly impact my speeds, I just don't like the ~idea~ of it.
In Australia, you do have to be slightly conscious of what you're downloading (although you should really be choosing a plan with a cap that fits your 'natural' usage of the Internet, so you don't have to think about it as much as you might expect). On the other hand, I do find the quality of service significantly better than the average US ISP. The service acheives its rated speed any time of day or night on any type of traffic - no peak period slowdown (note: some Aussies stuck on RIMs will disagree with this, but RIM congestion is a separate issue than core ISP network congestion).
So I don't see any real harm in a company choosing to offer pay as you go/capped style Internet. Provided there's a good choice of caps (as there is in Australia ... let's face it, a 1 terabyte cap might as well be unlimited for most intents and purposes). For light users especially, there's a benefit because the small-cap plans are generally dirt cheap - my parents in Australia are on a 10 GB plan that cos
You do realise that if you own land of that size, it is mostly 'remotely' managed. GPS-tagged livestock. High-res satellite imagery. Detailed weather synoptic charts and forecasts. Decent quality internet service is needed for this. It is not 1950 anymore.
Also you are implying that such people are working 24/7 and have zero relaxation time. Do you not also think that people that live and work in such places should be able to enjoy the same online entertainment options (IPTV, gaming, etc) as those living in cities? What about their spouses and children? Shouldn't they be able to communicate rapidly and effectively with the outside world (e.g. video chat with relatives living far away)?
Precisely. Something like 97% of Australia's population can receive Internet via more conventional means: fibre/cable/dsl in cities and towns, and 3G for 'rural, but not stupidly remote'. This technology is aimed at the remaining 3% who have no means of getting the Internet at all except via satellite. The truly remote. Those whose nearest neighbour is 200 km away and own cattle stations larger than some US states. The kind of people who aren't even connected to the electricity grid but rather generate their own power via generators/solar.
The tech has very major limitations, but for the purpose it's aimed at, it should work very well. At the moment these people rely on satellite, which while OK in terms of throughput, has awful latency.
This list was nothing anyone with a bit of background in transport, communications and logistics infrastructure couldn't come up with themselves. Obviously ports through which a large proportion of your imports/exports pass would have an economic impact if they were destroyed. Obviously telecommunications cables that carry a large proportion of your traffic would cause disruption if destroyed. Same with known monopoly suppliers of various medical products and vaccines.
I suppose you could argue this leak makes listing such targets a bit more convenient but it wasn't exactly top secret information. In fact, none of the leaked cables are particularly sensitive so far - a few of them carry a 'secret' designation but there's no highly classified or top secret information in there. Mostly, these cables are just confirming things that were: a) obvious, but largely unspoken; or b) that we all suspected anyway.
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!!
That symptom suggests (or in fact, screams) 'cell overload'.
The cell/tower only allows x simultaneous connections to it. Your phone has one. However there are no slots left for the other phones, so they have to seek to the next available tower, which will obviously be further away and have worse reception (or in fact, no reception at all).
So yes you are right to point the finger at AT&T. Sounds like they are not provisioning their network adequately in your area.
They must be referring to voice traffic. Nothing else makes sense. AT&T doesn't even KNOW you are using some dude's Wifi in Mexico if you are just using it for pure data...
Another reason why the whole 'phone tied to carrier' situation in the US needs to end. In the most of the world (US and Japan are two notable exceptions) you can buy any phone you want and take it to any carrier.
Of course part of the reason for this is that the US still uses two completely different technologies (CDMA/TDMA on Sprint, Verizon and GSM/HSDPA on ATT and T-Mobile). But still you should be able to take your phone to a different carrier on the same technology*...
* T-Mobile does actually offer some bring-your-own-phone plans and I believe is the only major carrier to do so. However this is a moot point if some of the most desirable phones (e.g. iPhone) are locked to another carrier to begin with.
I'm sure dissatisfaction has a lot to do with the iPhone antenna issue.
I don't think so. I use an iPhone 4 without any form of bumper or case and have never had a single dropped call or data slowdown etc. But I don't live in America and don't use AT&T.
The iPhone is a GSM/HSDPA phone like any other. Problems such as dropped calls lie with your carrier, not the hardware.
I suspect 90% of the antennagate 'issue' in the US was in fact a problem with AT&T and people living in areas with terrible reception, rather than a major issue with the phone itself. Yes if you bridge the two external antennas you do increase signal attenuation (i.e. lose a bar or two). And yes in retrospect this is probably a design flaw that they should have thought about. But the fact that the antenna is external in the first place makes its base level of sensitivity greater than an internal one, so on balance, it's got no worse reception overall than its competitors (and if you don't 'bridge the gap', has demonstrably better reception than most).
Home connections are capped in Australia ... but only a retard would jump on here and complain about it. It would be bad if a connection was capped at some amount and you ~had no choice~ about it. But that's not how it works. In Australia your ISP will always offer various plans with larger or smaller caps, and you pick the one that suits your needs.
There's nothing inherently bad about caps. They are fine provided there is a choice of plans, with different caps at different price points, that you can choose from based on your usage patterns. So anyone getting on here going "well my HOME connection is capped at 5 GB" might be telling the truth, but they have actively chosen to be capped at that level, so they have no right to complain.
For instance, my ISP currently offers: 15, 30, 60, 150, 300, 600 and 1000 GB plans. I'm on the 30 GB plan ($29.95) because it suits my usage (I generally use ~25 GB a month). It's only $10 more to double that to 60 GB if I needed to (and you can switch between plans at will, with no penalty). I don't see how this is a bad thing. In fact I rather prefer this kind of plan structure than the one-size-fits-all approach, because it means light users can get REALLY cheap plans (like $10 a month). Heavy users that want to chew through a terabyte a month can do so if they wish - it will just cost them more to go on a higher end plan. Pay for what you use, and for your relative impact on the ISP's network - sounds fair to me...
Just to clarify, I'm not shooting you down and I agree 100% with your assertion that things such as roads should be overengineered. But Sydney's geography and demographics pose some issues that aren't simple to resolve, that's all. It can be done but it would be 10x as expensive as in a place that had substantial amounts of through traffic/was flat and had space available on the outskirts/didn't have everyone trying to get in nad out of a few small areas every day.
Thing is I don't think there's much in the way of 'through traffic' that's causing these problems. Australia isn't like Europe or the US where there's towns and cities all over the place (meaning a lot of traffic in any location is simply driving through there to get to another place). 99% of the traffic in Sydney would be there because it is, in fact, trying to get to places within the city of Sydney.
As it happens if you do genuinely intend to simply pass through Sydney (say, you're driving from Canberra to Brisbane) you ~can~ largely bypass Sydney via the M6. This still goes 'through' the outskirts of Sydney but is a limited access road and usually flows OK.
Building more such roads in the surrounding suburban/rural areas won't really fix anything because the problem is in the core of the city and is not caused by traffic merely passing through. Furthermore, Sydney's geography would make building such roads a challenge. It's hemmed in on all sides by either National Park, ocean, or very very steep terrain at the base of the Blue Mountains that would make road building an epic engineering feat.
A nitpick, but an important one: the government in question here is a State government, not the 'Australian' (Federal) Government. To be exact, the government of New South Wales (which contains Sydney).
I'm sure most of you will roll your eyes but I can imagine Americans would have a similar reaction if an article called, say, the government of South Carolina or Idaho or Minnesota or something, 'the American government'.
Most NSW residents would agree with you in principle. However it's not very practical in many areas of Sydney - there's simply no space to put extra lanes on many roads without the Government reclaiming massive (and I mean massive) numbers of homes and businesses. Which would cost a stupendous amount of money and cause an absolute uproar.
In fact for the last 10 years, most of Sydney's major road expansions have had to be underground for this very reason. See, for example, the M5 Tunnel or Lane Cove Tunnel (wiki either of these if interested). As you can imagine, drilling 6+ lane roads through solid rock for miles upon miles costs ... quite a bit. But that's the only real option.
Um I think you misunderstand something.
We are talking about the ratio of download to upload speeds offered for residential connections. They could be 1:1 but still be 'oversold in 1:10 or 1:50' ratios. Not talking about contention ratios here.
Also I wasn't saying I 'wanted' anything. I was merely observing that residential plans based on newer technologies e.g. FTTH/FTTN) are already far more symmetrical than, say, a traditional DSL plan. Closer to 1:2 - 1:5 ... and these are plans that are being offered now by various ISPs in different countries.
But yeah, ratio between download and upload speeds has little to do with contention ratios/overselling. Naturally any consumer level/residential plan will be oversold, and if you want dedicated bandwidth you will indeed have to pay for it, regardless of the speeds we are talking about.
Ah interesting. So ok, maybe not 'any' other country. But I travel fairly widely for work and haven't had to do it outside of the US (although
Admittedly I haven't flown in the UK since around 2006. So it seems something has changed there. But as of now, they certainly don't make you do it in any of Asia, Australia, NZ etc.