I got married last year and had to get an engagement ring. My wife wanted a simple ring with a simple diamond. I don't have any answers to the ethical questions you raise, but I can address the "I know I'm going to get screwed by the jeweler". You don't have to be.
I got my diamond from Blue Nile, as have two other people I know at work. The diamond was very reasonably priced, and of exceptional quality. I had a custom setting made in white gold (~$500) at a local jeweler. When I took the diamond to have it set in the ring they were *stunned* at the price I got for the diamond given its quality. Comparable diamonds were priced easily $1000 over what I paid for it at Blue Nile.
And you know what? My wife loved it. Absolutely loved it. It was exactly what she wanted.
(FWIW I checked bluenile.com and didn't see anything about whether they have ethical diamonds. It might be worth calling them to find out.)
If you find this kind of subject interesting I suggest you also check out Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley M. Corriher. It's a similar type of cookbook: heavy on the science of food and cooking, with sample recipes. Ms. Corriher contributes frequently to food magazines like Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated. In this month's Fine Cooking she went into gory details on the cause of freezer burn and how to prevent it.
If you don't mind an MS product, there are several wireless card solutions available for the Pocket PC. My guess is that they'd probably also work on a Palm.
Options include:
Symbol CF card, $179.95 Socket CF card, $179.95 Zircom PC card, $79.95
I got all the prices from www.mobileplanet.com. I use an iPaq with a wireless PC card all the time, and love it. Of course, I'm probably a tad biased...
You're absolutely correct, I completely forgot about that.
You can also use a Palm or Pocket PC with bluetooth to talk with an Ericsson T68. We have several people at work with an iPaq and a T68 who sync their mail that way.
There are fairly few solutions for this that work reliably, especially in the US.
Your problems with voicestream are expected: I assume your wireless email delivery solution with them is based on SMS, and unfortunately voicestream SMS delivery is far from reliable.
You have a couple of options:
1) Get a Blackberry (www.blackberry.com). The service is *expensive* on a monthly basis, but email delivery is rock solid. I had one for a while, and got addicted to it.
2) Get a smartphone or a PDA with integrated wireless that supports POP/IMAP. There are a few on the market today (someone mentioned the Kyocera smartphone, there's also the Handspring Treo), although the current products are lacking in several regards.
3) Wait a few months there will be Smartphone and/or wireless PDA combos from Microsoft (don't hurt me, they aren't bad products), or from SonyEricsson and Nokia. www.voicestream.com has pre-signup info for the MS wireless PDA, not sure on release dates for the SonyEricsson or Nokia devices.
I know it sucks to say wait a few months, but things really will get better shortly. Most of the new devices rolling out are capable of real data connections back to your corporation through dial-up or VPN, and therefore don't have the security issues of forwarding mail through a gateway. The newer devices also support lots of local storage, so the viewing interactions are far better than with wap phones, where you have to be in coverage to deal with your mail.
There's no reason for any phone company to make the investement in making such a phone. The U.S. is the only large market with such a bizarro set of divergent standards. I highly doubt there are enough customers in the U.S. who:
- Know there are multiple network standards - Who roam enough that multiple network support would be necessary - Would be willing to buy the phyiscally huge phone that would be required (look at the Nokia GSM/TDMA combo available from AT&T) - Would be willing to pay for a phone that expensive (license fees to GSM, Qualcomm, etc, for networks I'll likely never use)
Before you suggest that it's because the operators don't want people to jump networks, perhaps one should first look and see whether end users would actually make use of the product:)
If phoneboy's summary is correct, this lawsuit is a joke. Let's look at each piece separately:
The carriers basically dictate required features to handset manufacturers.
I've seen these requirements, and they don't generally dictate anything other than what the GSM standards require. It's a way to ensure that all the phones on the network have the same set of features for the customer. Take Orange for example, a major operator in the U.K. They require 2-line support on all their phones, so they can offer phones with 2-lines to all their customers. This is a customer win, and is a key reason to pick Orange over someone else in the U.K.
Phones are tied to specific carriers and cannot be moved between carriers.
Absolutely! No question! And they should be! That lovely little Nokia 8290 you just got was likely subsidised to the tune of $100-$150 by your new operator. If the operator wants any chance of getting their money back for that subsidy, they have to prevent you from getting a cheap phone from them and then grabbing a SIM from another operator.
Most operators will gladly unlock your phone for you so you can use it on another network, especially in Europe. Just call them up and ask. They might charge you ~$50, but that's still less than their subsidy. Even Voicestream in the US will do this for free if you ask them, I've had it done.
Carriers refuse to allow handsets on their network they didn't approve.
This is flat out wrong. I've been using tri-band phones that I purchase in Europe over in the U.S. for years with my basic Voicestream SIM. In fact, I've never purchased a phone from Voicestream. Cingular does this as well. AT&T currently doesn't sell SIM-only packages, but they are going to. (Keep in mind they *just* started GSM service, and are still trying to get everything sorted out).
Manufacturers thus cannot sell handsets that aren't approved by carriers because carriers will not allow them to be used.
True, you cannot sell a handset *to an operator* that the operator hasn't approved for sale on their network. This is because the operator is responsible for all the support calls, replacement, and management of the phones on their network. Would you buy 1,000,000 phones from a company if it hasn't passed your quality assurance tests? Heck no!
If your phone fails these tests then it just means that you can't sell your phone to the operator directly and have to make it available through other channels. But (and again, if I've seen these tests) if you can't pass the tests then something is *seriously* wrong with your phone.
While it hasn't hit the U.S. yet, there are companies in Europe that make a killing selling phones that are not tied to a specific operator. Carphone Warehouse is a great example from the U.K., and you can bet that now that the U.S. has woken up to cellular it won't be too long before the same types of companies are available here.
All of this rises costs for the consumer, making it difficult and more expensive to switch carriers, and unfairly restrains trade for both handsets and cellular services.
This is the statement that shocked me the most. Have you *looked* at cellphone pricing and plans lately? My newspaper is constantly filled with offers that include 1, 2, or even 4 phones for *free*, with tons of minues included. For $29.99 a month I can get a really nice phone and more airtime than I can possibly use in a month.
If the operators *couldn't* lock their phones to their network to guarantee they'll make back their subsidy, do you actually think the prices will go *down*?
You misquoted Brian's message. He didn't say "I used to use exchange", he said "I used to RUN exchange". What he meant was he used to be the head of the exchange group at Microsoft (he ran the group).
I'd argue it's the network operators that want the cameras on the phones, not the users. And it's not for any user benefit:)
European operators in particular paid obscene amounts of money for the rights to radio spectrum for 3G networks. Now they have to recoup their costs. Can you think of anything that would run on a cellphone and would use up huge amounts of data, thus leading to nice big phone bills for users to pay? Well, the only thing that operators can come up with is video.
So, the operators tell all the handset people they want cameras to do video teleconferencing and send still pics as MMS/email message attachments. The handset people badly want to sell phones to the operators, so they go do it.
Yeah, it'd be cool to have your phones read your email to you. But, if the chip just supports English (I'm ignoring the Mandarin part, I know, but bear with me), it's a long way from making it into real cellphones.
A cellphone isn't built to serve just English people. Phone manufacturers cram multiple languages into a single phone, and the chip would have to support all those languages at once. The manufacturers to this so they can make *one* phone and sell it to all the countries in Europe. This is, of course, less of a problem in North America, but let's face it, Europe is a vastly bigger cellphone market. The last thing a phone manufactuer is going to do is throw a chip in that costs them more money but only serves English-speaking people.
1. Can you have a fun tech job, without the worry of suddenly being unemployed?
Absolutely! Find a company that has a stable, well-thought out business plan and a real, well-founded, plan for making money. There are thousands of them out there. They may not be small in terms of the number of people they have, but perhaps the team you sign up to work on *is* small and feels like a startup.
2. If you are you forced (as I am) to get your fun on the side what are some good projects to get involved in?
Just read Slashdot, I'm sure you'll find something:P
What do you to unwind and have a bit of 'fun' in the workplace?
Much to the dismay of the leasing company that manages our building, we do office pranks. They generally involve paint and some sort of theme that has nothing to do with the interests of the person in the office. We've done themes from Hello Kitty to igloos to pink butterflies. All very pretty, of course, much to the dismay of the occupant of the office:)
I love my tech job. I work pretty normal hours, and only occasionally have to work late. I work weekends every once and a while too, but those are pretty rare. The people I work with are extremely smart, passionate about their work, love what they do, and really want to make the project succeed. I have the freedom to pick up interesting side projects, and can learn about whatever technolgoies that interest me. If I want to bring a nerf gun into work, I doubt anyone would stop me. I've worked with the same company through two school internship, then full time for the last three years. I have zero worries about job security. Where do I work? Microsoft of course:P
While GPRS is *capable* of supporting simultaneous voice and data calls, none of the handsets currently being built, and none of the networks currently rolling out GPRS, are doing this in the first wave.
Just getting the data part of GPRS up and running on the networks has been an amazingly difficult thing for operators, base station providers, and handset vendors to get working.
I don't know if they still use it, but when I was at the University of Toronto we used a toy operating system called Minotaur that was written in Object Oriented Turing.
Yeah, it's small. And the keyboard is tiny. BUT, the keyboard has been very well laid out, and they do lots of nice shortcut things to make typing easier. With two thumbs, you can get going VERY fast.
Of course, you wouldn't want to write a novel on it, but for brief replies to messages, it is perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
I got married last year and had to get an engagement ring. My wife wanted a simple ring with a simple diamond. I don't have any answers to the ethical questions you raise, but I can address the "I know I'm going to get screwed by the jeweler". You don't have to be.
I got my diamond from Blue Nile, as have two other people I know at work. The diamond was very reasonably priced, and of exceptional quality. I had a custom setting made in white gold (~$500) at a local jeweler. When I took the diamond to have it set in the ring they were *stunned* at the price I got for the diamond given its quality. Comparable diamonds were priced easily $1000 over what I paid for it at Blue Nile.
And you know what? My wife loved it. Absolutely loved it. It was exactly what she wanted.
(FWIW I checked bluenile.com and didn't see anything about whether they have ethical diamonds. It might be worth calling them to find out.)
If you find this kind of subject interesting I suggest you also check out Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley M. Corriher. It's a similar type of cookbook: heavy on the science of food and cooking, with sample recipes. Ms. Corriher contributes frequently to food magazines like Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated. In this month's Fine Cooking she went into gory details on the cause of freezer burn and how to prevent it.
If you don't mind an MS product, there are several wireless card solutions available for the Pocket PC. My guess is that they'd probably also work on a Palm.
Options include:
Symbol CF card, $179.95
Socket CF card, $179.95
Zircom PC card, $79.95
I got all the prices from www.mobileplanet.com. I use an iPaq with a wireless PC card all the time, and love it. Of course, I'm probably a tad biased...
Well, it's not exactly open source, but Microsoft does have a complete SDK for clippy (or, more officially, the "Microsoft Assistant").
And to answer another question from someone else who replied to this, yes, in fact, you can create your own characters.
You're absolutely correct, I completely forgot about that.
You can also use a Palm or Pocket PC with bluetooth to talk with an Ericsson T68. We have several people at work with an iPaq and a T68 who sync their mail that way.
There are fairly few solutions for this that work reliably, especially in the US.
Your problems with voicestream are expected: I assume your wireless email delivery solution with them is based on SMS, and unfortunately voicestream SMS delivery is far from reliable.
You have a couple of options:
1) Get a Blackberry (www.blackberry.com). The service is *expensive* on a monthly basis, but email delivery is rock solid. I had one for a while, and got addicted to it.
2) Get a smartphone or a PDA with integrated wireless that supports POP/IMAP. There are a few on the market today (someone mentioned the Kyocera smartphone, there's also the Handspring Treo), although the current products are lacking in several regards.
3) Wait a few months there will be Smartphone and/or wireless PDA combos from Microsoft (don't hurt me, they aren't bad products), or from SonyEricsson and Nokia. www.voicestream.com has pre-signup info for the MS wireless PDA, not sure on release dates for the SonyEricsson or Nokia devices.
I know it sucks to say wait a few months, but things really will get better shortly. Most of the new devices rolling out are capable of real data connections back to your corporation through dial-up or VPN, and therefore don't have the security issues of forwarding mail through a gateway. The newer devices also support lots of local storage, so the viewing interactions are far better than with wap phones, where you have to be in coverage to deal with your mail.
I'll take a stab at answering #4:
:)
There's no reason for any phone company to make the investement in making such a phone. The U.S. is the only large market with such a bizarro set of divergent standards. I highly doubt there are enough customers in the U.S. who:
- Know there are multiple network standards
- Who roam enough that multiple network support would be necessary
- Would be willing to buy the phyiscally huge phone that would be required (look at the Nokia GSM/TDMA combo available from AT&T)
- Would be willing to pay for a phone that expensive (license fees to GSM, Qualcomm, etc, for networks I'll likely never use)
Before you suggest that it's because the operators don't want people to jump networks, perhaps one should first look and see whether end users would actually make use of the product
If phoneboy's summary is correct, this lawsuit is a joke. Let's look at each piece separately:
The carriers basically dictate required features to handset manufacturers.
I've seen these requirements, and they don't generally dictate anything other than what the GSM standards require. It's a way to ensure that all the phones on the network have the same set of features for the customer. Take Orange for example, a major operator in the U.K. They require 2-line support on all their phones, so they can offer phones with 2-lines to all their customers. This is a customer win, and is a key reason to pick Orange over someone else in the U.K.
Phones are tied to specific carriers and cannot be moved between carriers.
Absolutely! No question! And they should be! That lovely little Nokia 8290 you just got was likely subsidised to the tune of $100-$150 by your new operator. If the operator wants any chance of getting their money back for that subsidy, they have to prevent you from getting a cheap phone from them and then grabbing a SIM from another operator.
Most operators will gladly unlock your phone for you so you can use it on another network, especially in Europe. Just call them up and ask. They might charge you ~$50, but that's still less than their subsidy. Even Voicestream in the US will do this for free if you ask them, I've had it done.
Carriers refuse to allow handsets on their network they didn't approve.
This is flat out wrong. I've been using tri-band phones that I purchase in Europe over in the U.S. for years with my basic Voicestream SIM. In fact, I've never purchased a phone from Voicestream. Cingular does this as well. AT&T currently doesn't sell SIM-only packages, but they are going to. (Keep in mind they *just* started GSM service, and are still trying to get everything sorted out).
Manufacturers thus cannot sell handsets that aren't approved by carriers because carriers will not allow them to be used.
True, you cannot sell a handset *to an operator* that the operator hasn't approved for sale on their network. This is because the operator is responsible for all the support calls, replacement, and management of the phones on their network. Would you buy 1,000,000 phones from a company if it hasn't passed your quality assurance tests? Heck no!
If your phone fails these tests then it just means that you can't sell your phone to the operator directly and have to make it available through other channels. But (and again, if I've seen these tests) if you can't pass the tests then something is *seriously* wrong with your phone.
While it hasn't hit the U.S. yet, there are companies in Europe that make a killing selling phones that are not tied to a specific operator. Carphone Warehouse is a great example from the U.K., and you can bet that now that the U.S. has woken up to cellular it won't be too long before the same types of companies are available here.
All of this rises costs for the consumer, making it difficult and more expensive to switch carriers, and unfairly restrains trade for both handsets and cellular services.
This is the statement that shocked me the most. Have you *looked* at cellphone pricing and plans lately? My newspaper is constantly filled with offers that include 1, 2, or even 4 phones for *free*, with tons of minues included. For $29.99 a month I can get a really nice phone and more airtime than I can possibly use in a month.
If the operators *couldn't* lock their phones to their network to guarantee they'll make back their subsidy, do you actually think the prices will go *down*?
You misquoted Brian's message. He didn't say "I used to use exchange", he said "I used to RUN exchange". What he meant was he used to be the head of the exchange group at Microsoft (he ran the group).
I'd argue it's the network operators that want the cameras on the phones, not the users. And it's not for any user benefit :)
:)
European operators in particular paid obscene amounts of money for the rights to radio spectrum for 3G networks. Now they have to recoup their costs. Can you think of anything that would run on a cellphone and would use up huge amounts of data, thus leading to nice big phone bills for users to pay? Well, the only thing that operators can come up with is video.
So, the operators tell all the handset people they want cameras to do video teleconferencing and send still pics as MMS/email message attachments. The handset people badly want to sell phones to the operators, so they go do it.
Doesn't matter if it's useful
Yeah, it'd be cool to have your phones read your email to you. But, if the chip just supports English (I'm ignoring the Mandarin part, I know, but bear with me), it's a long way from making it into real cellphones.
A cellphone isn't built to serve just English people. Phone manufacturers cram multiple languages into a single phone, and the chip would have to support all those languages at once. The manufacturers to this so they can make *one* phone and sell it to all the countries in Europe. This is, of course, less of a problem in North America, but let's face it, Europe is a vastly bigger cellphone market. The last thing a phone manufactuer is going to do is throw a chip in that costs them more money but only serves English-speaking people.
1. Can you have a fun tech job, without the worry of suddenly being unemployed?
Absolutely! Find a company that has a stable, well-thought out business plan and a real, well-founded, plan for making money. There are thousands of them out there. They may not be small in terms of the number of people they have, but perhaps the team you sign up to work on *is* small and feels like a startup.
2. If you are you forced (as I am) to get your fun on the side what are some good projects to get involved in?
Just read Slashdot, I'm sure you'll find something :P
What do you to unwind and have a bit of 'fun' in the workplace?
Much to the dismay of the leasing company that manages our building, we do office pranks. They generally involve paint and some sort of theme that has nothing to do with the interests of the person in the office. We've done themes from Hello Kitty to igloos to pink butterflies. All very pretty, of course, much to the dismay of the occupant of the office :)
I love my tech job. I work pretty normal hours, and only occasionally have to work late. I work weekends every once and a while too, but those are pretty rare. The people I work with are extremely smart, passionate about their work, love what they do, and really want to make the project succeed. I have the freedom to pick up interesting side projects, and can learn about whatever technolgoies that interest me. If I want to bring a nerf gun into work, I doubt anyone would stop me. I've worked with the same company through two school internship, then full time for the last three years. I have zero worries about job security. Where do I work? Microsoft of course :P
While GPRS is *capable* of supporting simultaneous voice and data calls, none of the handsets currently being built, and none of the networks currently rolling out GPRS, are doing this in the first wave. Just getting the data part of GPRS up and running on the networks has been an amazingly difficult thing for operators, base station providers, and handset vendors to get working.
I don't know if they still use it, but when I was at the University of Toronto we used a toy operating system called Minotaur that was written in Object Oriented Turing.
Yeah, it's small. And the keyboard is tiny. BUT, the keyboard has been very well laid out, and they do lots of nice shortcut things to make typing easier. With two thumbs, you can get going VERY fast.
Of course, you wouldn't want to write a novel on it, but for brief replies to messages, it is perfect.