God forbid someone have a smart phone, do smart phone stuff over wifi, and just use it as a regular phone the rest of the time not eating into AT&T's precious bandwidth.
I have a smartphone (Galaxy S2), on AT&T. I don't have a data plan. It's called go-phone. They'll happily give you a SIM card, and the plans are reasonable. I can pay as I go, or pay $25 a month and get 250 minutes and unlimited SMS. I can choose to buy data to go along with that too. The only drawback is you have to pay for your phone upfront.
So don't let facts get in your way. If you buy your phone up front, you have plenty of options for service, and choose to buy precisely what you need, for less than being on a contract. If American consumers were smart enough to buy their phones up front and use pre-paid phone plans, we'd see more competition in the wireless market. Instead, most people see a free or heavily subsidized phone, and gladly sign up for 2 years paying much more for service to pay back the cost of the phone, and then they complain when the carrier they are locked to for two years doesn't deliver what they thought they were getting.
Save up your money, buy an unlocked phone, and then shop for pre-paid service. Thats how most other civilized countries do it.
Good point. I guess I did not read the fine print on that. But come to think of it, this has been a problem with CDMA phones as long as they've existed. As far as I know, it's pretty hard to buy an unlocked CDMA phone and use it with a different carrier than the one who sold it. I know some people who used to offer a service where they actually flashed the chips on a Verizon CDMA phone to allow for it to be used with Sprint. It was a lot more complicated than the relatively simple unlocking that can be done to a GSM phone to make it work with another GSM carrier. Even jailbreaking an iPhone is not overly complicated these days, and according to the law, it's not illegal. Carriers just want to be dicks.
With that said, I wonder why Sprint or Verizon wouldn't accept an unlocked phone. I wonder if it is a limitation of CDMA that makes it overly complicated. I know for a fact that both AT&T and T-Mobile are more than happy to sell me a SIM card when I walk in with an unlocked phone, and judging from the fine print on Apple's page, it seems it might be more of a technical limitation of CDMA, instead of the carriers not wanting to sell service to someone.
In most other countries, this is how it is - the phone is separate from the carrier.
Currently, most GSM phones are sold as quad-band phones, meaning they support four different frequencies of GSM, and therefore, support just about every carrier that uses GSM. Even if there are a handful of different frequencies, the underlying LTE technology is the same, so let's hope that it will be like GSM, where we see "quad-band LTE" or however many bands there end up being in use across the world.
I'm excited with the developments in LTE, because it's nice to see that all carriers in the USA will eventually be supporting the same standard. For far too long in the states we've had so much confusion and complication because of CDMA vs GSM. I'm glad that the CDMA carriers (Verizon and Sprint) are finally upgrading to a better standard.
I'm dreaming of a future where the USA will be like the rest of the world, where we'll be able to buy an unlocked phone, and use it on any carrier we chose. I'm currently using an unlocked phone, but my choice in carriers is limited to just AT&T (being as T-Mobile doesn't cover here). It's still cheaper, if you buy an unlocked phone, and then get a prepaid SIM card. Life would be so much simpler if all the carriers supported one standard, and an LTE phone would work with any network.
It might be Apple that pushes us to this point. As they've repeatadly shown, they prefer to only build one model of phone. The iPhone finally got a CDMA variant last year, but this year, it's all one model again, because they found a chip that supports both CDMA and GSM, as well as all 3g frequencies. Apple wants to build an LTE phone, and all carriers want to have it, and Apple will not want to build two different LTE phones. Meaning we'll get one LTE phone, and as LTE is backwards compatible with GSM, it requires a SIM card. When they do that, and other manufactures start doing it, we'll see an era where it might just be possible to buy an unlocked phone in the USA, and be able to buy a SIM card from any network you want to use.
This is my dream, but I'm thinking there has to be a catch. Why would the carriers want this kind of arrangement? They want to be able to lock people in, because they don't want to compete based just on who has the best service / price. But maybe, this is just an inconvenient fact for them, as the rest of the world moved on and developed standards, and in our global world, it just doesn't make sense to have your own proprietary standards anymore. CDMA is dying, and now so is WiMax. Both standards were only used by a few carriers, manufacturing phones and equipment to support them was more expensive just based on economies of scale, and they were unfriendly for the consumer. GSM is vastly more consumer friendly than CDMA, in terms of convenience and customer choice.
So, does the USA finally enter the 21st century, and have mobile phone systems that don't confuse the rest of the world?
I am sitting a floor above ~400 call center agents, this is in the USA. 100% of them use English as their primary language. 10% of them also speak another language.
I'm sitting two floors above a call center, with several hundred agents, who are all Americans and speak English as their first language, in addition to a couple who speak Spanish. We're a major internet and catalog retailer, and we haven't outsourced our call centers on purpose, because we find in our business we need to have good customer service, or we lose our customers. I used to work in that call center that I'm sitting above, when I couldn't find a job in IT immediately after I graduated. Through my hard work, my education, and expertise in computers, I was promoted to a better job. This is how things should be in all companies. At least it still happens some places.
It makes sense. Think about all the business that T-Mobile lost while this thing was pending. People did not renew, some people did not switch to T-Mobile due to the uncertainty, etc. If it DOESN'T go through, T-Mobile needs to be compensated for that loss.
Copying a post of mine from earlier, yes, T-Mobile actually will be compensated quite well for this.
If this deal is blocked, it would not be bad news for T-Mobile as some here have claimed. According to Bloomberg,
"Should regulators reject the deal, which would create the biggest U.S. wireless carrier, AT&T would have to pay Deutsche Telekom $3 billion in cash. It would also provide T-Mobile USA with wireless spectrum in some regions and reduced charges for calls into AT&T’s network, for a total package valued at as much as $7 billion, Deutsche Telekom said this month."
So T-Mobile would get $3 billion in cash, more spectrum, and reduced fees for calls going through AT&T's network. This would seem to be good news for T-Mobile, as all of these things would make them more competitive.
If this deal is blocked, it would not be bad news for T-Mobile as some here have claimed. According to Bloomberg,
"Should regulators reject the deal, which would create the biggest U.S. wireless carrier, AT&T would have to pay Deutsche Telekom $3 billion in cash. It would also provide T-Mobile USA with wireless spectrum in some regions and reduced charges for calls into AT&T’s network, for a total package valued at as much as $7 billion, Deutsche Telekom said this month."
So T-Mobile would get $3 billion in cash, more spectrum, and reduced fees for calls going through AT&T's network. This would seem to be good news for T-Mobile, as all of these things would make them more competitive.
I can already guess what this program is going to look like. In my small city, and many other small towns in the country, a company called Open Range (http://www.openrange.net) has recently been offering Internet service that they brand as "4g". It uses WiMax. One of their flyers was left on my door, offering a free one month trial, so I decided to give it a try, just for the heck of it. They provide a unit that looks like an oversized wireless router, with giant antennas on it. This device recieves the WiMax, and it also has a built in wireless router. They also offer phone service through the unit - it has phone jacks in the back. The internet is $40 a month, and it goes to about $60 if you want the phone service as well.
The internet is actually unlimited. But it isn't what I'd consider to be broadband. They claim speeds of up to 4 Mbit. In reality, I found that speed varied quite a bit, depending on time of day mostly. Sometimes it could get very slow. And doing something bandwidth intensive on it would take up so much bandwidth it would significantly slow my browsing even. So in the end, I decided it wasn't for me. There are other options in this city, and I think for the price, DSL would be better. I have cable, and while cable is more expensive, it at least provides an 8 Mbit connection that is always reliably right around it's advertised speed.
I believe this company is partially financed by government grants and or low interest government loans. Since we're considered a rural area, it was part of the rural broadband initiative. However, this still doesn't help the people who live outside of my city. This wireless doesn't reach them, the cable company won't run cable out there, and the phone company won't upgrade their lines outside of the city to handle DSL. To top it all off, the cell phone service around here isn't great. In the city (of 20,000 people) AT&T hasn't even yet upgraded to 3g, T-Mobile doesn't offer service, Sprint doesn't either, leaving Verizon the only game in town if you want to use data on a mobile device. Enough whining about my city.
Anyways, I fail to see what this will accomplish. All the decent sized towns and cities in America already have choices for internet, which are already better than 4g. Still no one will be covering the really rural folks who live outside of town. So. What does this accomplish? Nothing, really, except to waste more taxpayer money. Maybe the competition will help lower broadband prices? I haven't seen that happen yet in my city, the 4g isn't really priced low enough to bring droves of people away from what they already have. Even if it was dirt cheap, it just isn't fast enough for me anyways.
I'm from Pennsylvania. Sales of wine and liquor are highly regulated by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB). The places in the state that can sell liquor are state-run stores. Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania can't sell beer, same thing with convenience stores. The idea to sell wine from vending machines in grocery stores is not a really new idea, nor was it the idea of the retailers. The state actually approved of the wine vending machines, in response to many consumers wishing that they could at least purchase some wine while buying food. This isn't really a forward-thinking idea, actually. If we were really in the 21st century, Pennsylvanians would be able to buy wine and beer right at Wal-Mart and other places right off the shelves, and the cashiers can check IDs. I've seen the wine vending machines, they actually came out a few months ago in some other grocery stores. I don't like them because the machine only stocks a few varieties of the most popular wine. Not nearly the selection one would find at a "state store" or the even bigger selection one would find if he felt so inclined as to cross the border.
As a side note, I live close to the border. In my town, due to the state's arcane laws, there is no place to buy beer after 8:00 PM - unless one goes to the bar and buys carryout by the six packs. So we've been known to make beer runs to a neighboring state, where there is a convenience store that sells by the case, just a few miles from the state line.
I haven't actually used the new wine vending machines, but I know some who have, and they complain that it's not that fun, sometimes there are some issues, and last I knew, there was only one employee at the remote location that verifies the IDs. So, there is some waiting, and sometimes some issues with reading the cards. YMMV. Anyways, even though it seems cool, and *OMG YAY technology!* It isn't really a step in the right direction, as far as my state's arcane laws are concerned.
I second that. About a year ago, I was setting up a new Xserve, and I was configuring it, getting ready to take it to our data center and throw it in a rack. I work in an office with a bunch of Mac users, and everyone was walking by, saying "What kind of Mac is THAT?" It never dawned on them that Mac made servers too. To them, they saw a funky looking long, skinny machine that ran OS X.
As someone who's job it is to be a server administrator for two Xserves, and systems administrator for our corporate network of Mac workstations, this news saddens me. No longer can I throw my title out as "Mac Server Administrator" at geeky parties to the amusement of my friends who work on Linux and Windows servers.
Seriously though, the Xserve will be missed, at least in my organization. Unlike many Apple products, they aren't toys, they were designed for the enterprise and had many useful functions. They are extremely useful to me, running FileMaker Databases, providing NetBoot services for imaging Mac workstations, hosting AFP file shares, and when connected with a rackmount RAID array, make for a very nice backup server (Time Machine!).
Also, the OS X Server software is really a great server OS, a fully Unix certified OS that also provides many other innovative and useful tools. Sure, I can do most of what I do on a different server, but, damn, Apple just makes my job so easy!
RIP Xserve, you will be missed, at least by this Systems Admin.
Your skype is the Verizon blessed and hobbled version. It uses Verizon voice minutes for the first leg into the cloud. Therefore it's only useful in saving on international long distance charges. This new Skype can use WiFi.
In my opinion, using the voice minutes for the first leg into the cloud severely cuts down on latency and improves call quality. I much prefer making calls with Skype on my Verizon phone than I prefer trying to make Skype calls over WiFi with my iPhone.
Also, I'd like to point out that before this update, Skype for Android (at least with my Verizon Droid) would route my out-going Skype calls to a regular phone number, where it was presumably dialing into a computer than would then route my call over IP to the destination. Since I had unlimited calling on my phone, I found this to actually be better quality than calls directly over WiFi or my internet connection. Less latency, and better quality, in my opinion.
If I recall, no US carrier has ever allowed VOIP traffic on 3g. On my AT&T iPhone, Skype has to use WiFi. Appears to be the same case on my Verizon Droid too.
I recently went on a trip to Russia. I bought a cheap SIM card with a data plan for my (jailbroken) iPhone, and just out of curiosity, I launched Skype, it it let me place a call right over 3g! That saved me a lot of money for calling my family back home. Not to mention that cell phone plans and data is cheaper there than in the US too. Amazing what some real competition in a market can do.
Was I the only one to notice that the first screenshot in this review shows Baghdad, with a note that it is occupied, and will "produce extra un-happiness until a courthouse is built"?
Apparently, all America needs to do sort out the mess in Iraq is build some courthouses. We all know that the court system in America makes everyone happy.
I actually like the implementation of Skype that they did for Android. I own a Droid, and I use the Skype calling to call my girlfriend, who lives in another country (we hope to be re-united soon). The nice thing about their Android application is that when I dial her, it places the call through my phone by dialing a domestic number, presumably a server somewhere, which then patches me through to her phone. The service is a lot more clear, and has less latency than when I call her on my iPhone Skype, or from my computer, as in those cases it's passing the call through WiFi and my internet connection.
The rates are the cheapest I have found for calling, and I'm very satisfied with the service, it's as good as direct dialing. So that's my.02, which is about what I pay a minute to talk to my loved one, and it's well worth it.
I'm satisfied with Skype and I wish them the best, I hope that they don't screw it up.
On the fourth floor of my office building, we felt it. I noticed my desk moving, and my bobble-heads bobbling. Walked out of my office and everyone was running around, not sure what to do. Lasted for about 20 seconds, was mostly a swaying motion in my building. People on the ground didn't feel it as much, but up higher it was felt more. It subsided and we all sat back down and continued working. Don't get many quakes here in Pennsylvania - this was the first one I ever felt.
Technically you can get by with SharePoint in a shop that's not 100% Windows. But don't try.
I work in a company that is mixed Macs and Windows. I'm the Mac admin. The heads of the IT department decided to use Sharepoint. While the experience is much better for the Windows users, it *DOES* work for the Mac users as well. Yes, they have to sign in to use it, as our Macs aren't on the AD domain. Sometimes it doesn't like Safari (but we also have Firefox available for our Mac users, and it seems to get along with that). Now that the users are used to it, it's not much of a problem. In a company that's 90% PCs, we don't have much say in what they use, so for us, it works, and the minor inconveniences for Mac users is a small tradeoff.
It might not be the way I would have done it, but I haven't had a problem with it. I'm not saying you should use it, I'm just saying that it will work, and in production, it's not as much of a PITA as others have have been claiming.
I have a Droid. Therefore I don't have to decide if I want to use an on screen keyboard or a conventional keyboard. I have both. I have my cake and I get to eat it too. Although I'm not sure which I prefer, as I use both the on-screen and regular keyboard about equally, I think I'm a little faster with the regular keyboard. But for a short text, sometimes it's more convenient to just use the on-screen. Otherwise, I didn't find this article too worth-while.
I do this all the time. I live in a rural area where some people still have dial-up. They get infected. I'm known as the computer geek, so they call me. I either go to their house, confirm that it's malware, etc, and then take the computer home with me, where I have broadband, my big box of tools, spare parts, etc, and work on it there, or just have them drop it off. I'll then either download what I need to clean the system, or I'll just completely re-install it for them. It's nice doing it from the comfort of my home. I can let it install or run scans while I work on other things. When it's done, I call them up, or go deliver it. And I get paid. Imagine that.
I find that trying to work over dial-up is impossible, or a huge waste of my time, when it's much quicker to drive to my house than to wait for something to download. Also, trying to talk users through things over the phone, especially when they are on dial-up or hampered by a slow, infected computer, is an even bigger waste of time! So, even if you love this person, and want to just do it as a favor, then do yourself a favor, and take the computer somewhere where you have the proper tools, a good connection, and can do it at your leisure.
If it's your favorite browser, what does it matter how fast it is?
A browser is a lot like a girlfriend. My favorite browser is my favorite because I know how it works, the little tricks and shortcuts, and I've been with it for a while and it's true to me. It's kind of like having a girlfriend. Sure, she may not be the prettiest or fastest or smartest girl around, but she's there for me, and I know how she works, and I know all the little tricks and shortcuts to make her work well for me.
I believe that much of the core functionality of Safari is part of OS X. On the Mac, most applications continue to run, even if you close the windows. This gets to be a problem where I work, where we have our graphics designers on Mac systems. They frequently complain about their systems being slow. That's because they'll run Photoshop, and close the windows, and not realize it's still running, and then launch InDesign, and Illustrator, and close those windows, and leave the applications still running, and then they'll open up Office to read some documents, and close the windows, and not realize Word or Excel is still running. Then of course, they have Safari running and Mail running, and usually iTunes running for their music.. Then they wonder why their systems are slow... So sometimes, that feature isn't much of a feature. You have to remember to actually go to the menu and close the application once you are done.
At work, I use Macs, at home, I use Linux:)
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God forbid someone have a smart phone, do smart phone stuff over wifi, and just use it as a regular phone the rest of the time not eating into AT&T's precious bandwidth.
I have a smartphone (Galaxy S2), on AT&T. I don't have a data plan. It's called go-phone. They'll happily give you a SIM card, and the plans are reasonable. I can pay as I go, or pay $25 a month and get 250 minutes and unlimited SMS. I can choose to buy data to go along with that too. The only drawback is you have to pay for your phone upfront.
So don't let facts get in your way. If you buy your phone up front, you have plenty of options for service, and choose to buy precisely what you need, for less than being on a contract. If American consumers were smart enough to buy their phones up front and use pre-paid phone plans, we'd see more competition in the wireless market. Instead, most people see a free or heavily subsidized phone, and gladly sign up for 2 years paying much more for service to pay back the cost of the phone, and then they complain when the carrier they are locked to for two years doesn't deliver what they thought they were getting.
Save up your money, buy an unlocked phone, and then shop for pre-paid service. Thats how most other civilized countries do it.
With that said, I wonder why Sprint or Verizon wouldn't accept an unlocked phone. I wonder if it is a limitation of CDMA that makes it overly complicated. I know for a fact that both AT&T and T-Mobile are more than happy to sell me a SIM card when I walk in with an unlocked phone, and judging from the fine print on Apple's page, it seems it might be more of a technical limitation of CDMA, instead of the carriers not wanting to sell service to someone.
Currently, most GSM phones are sold as quad-band phones, meaning they support four different frequencies of GSM, and therefore, support just about every carrier that uses GSM. Even if there are a handful of different frequencies, the underlying LTE technology is the same, so let's hope that it will be like GSM, where we see "quad-band LTE" or however many bands there end up being in use across the world.
I'm dreaming of a future where the USA will be like the rest of the world, where we'll be able to buy an unlocked phone, and use it on any carrier we chose. I'm currently using an unlocked phone, but my choice in carriers is limited to just AT&T (being as T-Mobile doesn't cover here). It's still cheaper, if you buy an unlocked phone, and then get a prepaid SIM card. Life would be so much simpler if all the carriers supported one standard, and an LTE phone would work with any network.
It might be Apple that pushes us to this point. As they've repeatadly shown, they prefer to only build one model of phone. The iPhone finally got a CDMA variant last year, but this year, it's all one model again, because they found a chip that supports both CDMA and GSM, as well as all 3g frequencies. Apple wants to build an LTE phone, and all carriers want to have it, and Apple will not want to build two different LTE phones. Meaning we'll get one LTE phone, and as LTE is backwards compatible with GSM, it requires a SIM card. When they do that, and other manufactures start doing it, we'll see an era where it might just be possible to buy an unlocked phone in the USA, and be able to buy a SIM card from any network you want to use.
This is my dream, but I'm thinking there has to be a catch. Why would the carriers want this kind of arrangement? They want to be able to lock people in, because they don't want to compete based just on who has the best service / price. But maybe, this is just an inconvenient fact for them, as the rest of the world moved on and developed standards, and in our global world, it just doesn't make sense to have your own proprietary standards anymore. CDMA is dying, and now so is WiMax. Both standards were only used by a few carriers, manufacturing phones and equipment to support them was more expensive just based on economies of scale, and they were unfriendly for the consumer. GSM is vastly more consumer friendly than CDMA, in terms of convenience and customer choice.
So, does the USA finally enter the 21st century, and have mobile phone systems that don't confuse the rest of the world?
Sounds like where I work. Do we work at the same company? I don't like naming where I work.. but sounds familiar!
I am sitting a floor above ~400 call center agents, this is in the USA. 100% of them use English as their primary language. 10% of them also speak another language.
I'm sitting two floors above a call center, with several hundred agents, who are all Americans and speak English as their first language, in addition to a couple who speak Spanish. We're a major internet and catalog retailer, and we haven't outsourced our call centers on purpose, because we find in our business we need to have good customer service, or we lose our customers. I used to work in that call center that I'm sitting above, when I couldn't find a job in IT immediately after I graduated. Through my hard work, my education, and expertise in computers, I was promoted to a better job. This is how things should be in all companies. At least it still happens some places.
It makes sense. Think about all the business that T-Mobile lost while this thing was pending. People did not renew, some people did not switch to T-Mobile due to the uncertainty, etc. If it DOESN'T go through, T-Mobile needs to be compensated for that loss.
Copying a post of mine from earlier, yes, T-Mobile actually will be compensated quite well for this.
If this deal is blocked, it would not be bad news for T-Mobile as some here have claimed. According to Bloomberg,
"Should regulators reject the deal, which would create the biggest U.S. wireless carrier, AT&T would have to pay Deutsche Telekom $3 billion in cash. It would also provide T-Mobile USA with wireless spectrum in some regions and reduced charges for calls into AT&T’s network, for a total package valued at as much as $7 billion, Deutsche Telekom said this month."
So T-Mobile would get $3 billion in cash, more spectrum, and reduced fees for calls going through AT&T's network. This would seem to be good news for T-Mobile, as all of these things would make them more competitive.
"Should regulators reject the deal, which would create the biggest U.S. wireless carrier, AT&T would have to pay Deutsche Telekom $3 billion in cash. It would also provide T-Mobile USA with wireless spectrum in some regions and reduced charges for calls into AT&T’s network, for a total package valued at as much as $7 billion, Deutsche Telekom said this month."
So T-Mobile would get $3 billion in cash, more spectrum, and reduced fees for calls going through AT&T's network. This would seem to be good news for T-Mobile, as all of these things would make them more competitive.
I can already guess what this program is going to look like. In my small city, and many other small towns in the country, a company called Open Range (http://www.openrange.net) has recently been offering Internet service that they brand as "4g". It uses WiMax. One of their flyers was left on my door, offering a free one month trial, so I decided to give it a try, just for the heck of it. They provide a unit that looks like an oversized wireless router, with giant antennas on it. This device recieves the WiMax, and it also has a built in wireless router. They also offer phone service through the unit - it has phone jacks in the back. The internet is $40 a month, and it goes to about $60 if you want the phone service as well. The internet is actually unlimited. But it isn't what I'd consider to be broadband. They claim speeds of up to 4 Mbit. In reality, I found that speed varied quite a bit, depending on time of day mostly. Sometimes it could get very slow. And doing something bandwidth intensive on it would take up so much bandwidth it would significantly slow my browsing even. So in the end, I decided it wasn't for me. There are other options in this city, and I think for the price, DSL would be better. I have cable, and while cable is more expensive, it at least provides an 8 Mbit connection that is always reliably right around it's advertised speed. I believe this company is partially financed by government grants and or low interest government loans. Since we're considered a rural area, it was part of the rural broadband initiative. However, this still doesn't help the people who live outside of my city. This wireless doesn't reach them, the cable company won't run cable out there, and the phone company won't upgrade their lines outside of the city to handle DSL. To top it all off, the cell phone service around here isn't great. In the city (of 20,000 people) AT&T hasn't even yet upgraded to 3g, T-Mobile doesn't offer service, Sprint doesn't either, leaving Verizon the only game in town if you want to use data on a mobile device. Enough whining about my city. Anyways, I fail to see what this will accomplish. All the decent sized towns and cities in America already have choices for internet, which are already better than 4g. Still no one will be covering the really rural folks who live outside of town. So. What does this accomplish? Nothing, really, except to waste more taxpayer money. Maybe the competition will help lower broadband prices? I haven't seen that happen yet in my city, the 4g isn't really priced low enough to bring droves of people away from what they already have. Even if it was dirt cheap, it just isn't fast enough for me anyways.
That would also work if you were in the 19th century.
Living in this state, sometimes I think it would be easier to go back in time to buy liquor. Now if only my dad hadn't sold his DeLorean...
I'm from Pennsylvania. Sales of wine and liquor are highly regulated by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB). The places in the state that can sell liquor are state-run stores. Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania can't sell beer, same thing with convenience stores. The idea to sell wine from vending machines in grocery stores is not a really new idea, nor was it the idea of the retailers. The state actually approved of the wine vending machines, in response to many consumers wishing that they could at least purchase some wine while buying food. This isn't really a forward-thinking idea, actually. If we were really in the 21st century, Pennsylvanians would be able to buy wine and beer right at Wal-Mart and other places right off the shelves, and the cashiers can check IDs. I've seen the wine vending machines, they actually came out a few months ago in some other grocery stores. I don't like them because the machine only stocks a few varieties of the most popular wine. Not nearly the selection one would find at a "state store" or the even bigger selection one would find if he felt so inclined as to cross the border. As a side note, I live close to the border. In my town, due to the state's arcane laws, there is no place to buy beer after 8:00 PM - unless one goes to the bar and buys carryout by the six packs. So we've been known to make beer runs to a neighboring state, where there is a convenience store that sells by the case, just a few miles from the state line. I haven't actually used the new wine vending machines, but I know some who have, and they complain that it's not that fun, sometimes there are some issues, and last I knew, there was only one employee at the remote location that verifies the IDs. So, there is some waiting, and sometimes some issues with reading the cards. YMMV. Anyways, even though it seems cool, and *OMG YAY technology!* It isn't really a step in the right direction, as far as my state's arcane laws are concerned.
I second that. About a year ago, I was setting up a new Xserve, and I was configuring it, getting ready to take it to our data center and throw it in a rack. I work in an office with a bunch of Mac users, and everyone was walking by, saying "What kind of Mac is THAT?" It never dawned on them that Mac made servers too. To them, they saw a funky looking long, skinny machine that ran OS X.
As someone who's job it is to be a server administrator for two Xserves, and systems administrator for our corporate network of Mac workstations, this news saddens me. No longer can I throw my title out as "Mac Server Administrator" at geeky parties to the amusement of my friends who work on Linux and Windows servers. Seriously though, the Xserve will be missed, at least in my organization. Unlike many Apple products, they aren't toys, they were designed for the enterprise and had many useful functions. They are extremely useful to me, running FileMaker Databases, providing NetBoot services for imaging Mac workstations, hosting AFP file shares, and when connected with a rackmount RAID array, make for a very nice backup server (Time Machine!). Also, the OS X Server software is really a great server OS, a fully Unix certified OS that also provides many other innovative and useful tools. Sure, I can do most of what I do on a different server, but, damn, Apple just makes my job so easy! RIP Xserve, you will be missed, at least by this Systems Admin.
Your skype is the Verizon blessed and hobbled version. It uses Verizon voice minutes for the first leg into the cloud. Therefore it's only useful in saving on international long distance charges. This new Skype can use WiFi.
In my opinion, using the voice minutes for the first leg into the cloud severely cuts down on latency and improves call quality. I much prefer making calls with Skype on my Verizon phone than I prefer trying to make Skype calls over WiFi with my iPhone.
Also, I'd like to point out that before this update, Skype for Android (at least with my Verizon Droid) would route my out-going Skype calls to a regular phone number, where it was presumably dialing into a computer than would then route my call over IP to the destination. Since I had unlimited calling on my phone, I found this to actually be better quality than calls directly over WiFi or my internet connection. Less latency, and better quality, in my opinion.
If I recall, no US carrier has ever allowed VOIP traffic on 3g. On my AT&T iPhone, Skype has to use WiFi. Appears to be the same case on my Verizon Droid too. I recently went on a trip to Russia. I bought a cheap SIM card with a data plan for my (jailbroken) iPhone, and just out of curiosity, I launched Skype, it it let me place a call right over 3g! That saved me a lot of money for calling my family back home. Not to mention that cell phone plans and data is cheaper there than in the US too. Amazing what some real competition in a market can do.
Was I the only one to notice that the first screenshot in this review shows Baghdad, with a note that it is occupied, and will "produce extra un-happiness until a courthouse is built"? Apparently, all America needs to do sort out the mess in Iraq is build some courthouses. We all know that the court system in America makes everyone happy.
I actually like the implementation of Skype that they did for Android. I own a Droid, and I use the Skype calling to call my girlfriend, who lives in another country (we hope to be re-united soon). The nice thing about their Android application is that when I dial her, it places the call through my phone by dialing a domestic number, presumably a server somewhere, which then patches me through to her phone. The service is a lot more clear, and has less latency than when I call her on my iPhone Skype, or from my computer, as in those cases it's passing the call through WiFi and my internet connection. The rates are the cheapest I have found for calling, and I'm very satisfied with the service, it's as good as direct dialing. So that's my .02, which is about what I pay a minute to talk to my loved one, and it's well worth it.
I'm satisfied with Skype and I wish them the best, I hope that they don't screw it up.
On the fourth floor of my office building, we felt it. I noticed my desk moving, and my bobble-heads bobbling. Walked out of my office and everyone was running around, not sure what to do. Lasted for about 20 seconds, was mostly a swaying motion in my building. People on the ground didn't feel it as much, but up higher it was felt more. It subsided and we all sat back down and continued working. Don't get many quakes here in Pennsylvania - this was the first one I ever felt.
But is STORES THE BLOBS IN THE DB, which is crazy for long term use.
We've been running this way for years. We haven't had problems from Blobs in our DB.
Technically you can get by with SharePoint in a shop that's not 100% Windows. But don't try.
I work in a company that is mixed Macs and Windows. I'm the Mac admin. The heads of the IT department decided to use Sharepoint. While the experience is much better for the Windows users, it *DOES* work for the Mac users as well. Yes, they have to sign in to use it, as our Macs aren't on the AD domain. Sometimes it doesn't like Safari (but we also have Firefox available for our Mac users, and it seems to get along with that). Now that the users are used to it, it's not much of a problem. In a company that's 90% PCs, we don't have much say in what they use, so for us, it works, and the minor inconveniences for Mac users is a small tradeoff.
It might not be the way I would have done it, but I haven't had a problem with it. I'm not saying you should use it, I'm just saying that it will work, and in production, it's not as much of a PITA as others have have been claiming.
I have a Droid. Therefore I don't have to decide if I want to use an on screen keyboard or a conventional keyboard. I have both. I have my cake and I get to eat it too. Although I'm not sure which I prefer, as I use both the on-screen and regular keyboard about equally, I think I'm a little faster with the regular keyboard. But for a short text, sometimes it's more convenient to just use the on-screen. Otherwise, I didn't find this article too worth-while.
I do this all the time. I live in a rural area where some people still have dial-up. They get infected. I'm known as the computer geek, so they call me. I either go to their house, confirm that it's malware, etc, and then take the computer home with me, where I have broadband, my big box of tools, spare parts, etc, and work on it there, or just have them drop it off. I'll then either download what I need to clean the system, or I'll just completely re-install it for them. It's nice doing it from the comfort of my home. I can let it install or run scans while I work on other things. When it's done, I call them up, or go deliver it. And I get paid. Imagine that. I find that trying to work over dial-up is impossible, or a huge waste of my time, when it's much quicker to drive to my house than to wait for something to download. Also, trying to talk users through things over the phone, especially when they are on dial-up or hampered by a slow, infected computer, is an even bigger waste of time! So, even if you love this person, and want to just do it as a favor, then do yourself a favor, and take the computer somewhere where you have the proper tools, a good connection, and can do it at your leisure.
If it's your favorite browser, what does it matter how fast it is?
A browser is a lot like a girlfriend. My favorite browser is my favorite because I know how it works, the little tricks and shortcuts, and I've been with it for a while and it's true to me. It's kind of like having a girlfriend. Sure, she may not be the prettiest or fastest or smartest girl around, but she's there for me, and I know how she works, and I know all the little tricks and shortcuts to make her work well for me.
I believe that much of the core functionality of Safari is part of OS X. On the Mac, most applications continue to run, even if you close the windows. This gets to be a problem where I work, where we have our graphics designers on Mac systems. They frequently complain about their systems being slow. That's because they'll run Photoshop, and close the windows, and not realize it's still running, and then launch InDesign, and Illustrator, and close those windows, and leave the applications still running, and then they'll open up Office to read some documents, and close the windows, and not realize Word or Excel is still running. Then of course, they have Safari running and Mail running, and usually iTunes running for their music.. Then they wonder why their systems are slow... So sometimes, that feature isn't much of a feature. You have to remember to actually go to the menu and close the application once you are done. At work, I use Macs, at home, I use Linux :)