The US Congress should require them to advertise a minimum.
So if they want to say, "Upto 1000 kbps," that's fine but they also have to add, "Guaranteed throughput of 500 kbps, or you'll receive a one day credit on your bill for each occurrence."
>>>and compression? really? that's your solution? please stop talking, now
If you have a limited bandwidth line, like dialup or cellphone, compression is a perfectly viable solution to the problem. It's why Opera added it to their version 10 of their browser. It's why it's used for HD Radio, and HDTV, or on youtube, or on DVD/Bluray movies.
For you to imply that compression should not be considered a solution is silly.
Re:I have often wondered about this.
on
The Many Faces of 3G
·
· Score: 0, Troll
>>>He said that he feels
Oh well that makes it okay then.:-) If I say I "feel" that government taxation is too high, I don't have to actually prove it, or back it up with numbers do I? Maybe I am being anal but I simply thought the poster should be corrected when he said his cellphone was as slow as a 2 kbit/s line.
His comment was as "off" as if I were to say the national debt is $13 billion. (Hint: It's actually trillion.) Or if I said the EU lies about 3 miles away from the US. Or it only took the astronauts 0.003 days to reach the moon. Or 1000 + 1000 = 2.
I mean: 2400 is really, really slow. We're talking Commodore=64 slow. I doubt anybody's cellphone literally takes an hour to download a webpage.
Not steal. It doesn't forbid copying the bible into your own personal notebook. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself. But the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine...
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson
Therefore:
While I can claim ownership of this bible, and label you a "thief" if you steal it (because I have been deprived of use of the computer), I have NO natural right to claim ownership of the ideas contained within. Your copying of text deprives me of nothing. I still possess knowledge.
The need to curse thieves of expensive hand-written Bibles disappeared when the printing press appeared, and Bibles became as plentiful as leaves to wipe your arse. Then nobody cared if you took it from the church (it was easily replaced). Some even started giving bibles away, in order to educate the masses. And of course the bible is not and never has been copy-protected.
>>>don't assume what other people do or do not know.
Okay. Let's assume the guy is correct, and the speed is the same as a 2400 bps modem. At that rate the typical 700 kilobyte webpage (like slashdot) would take nearly an HOUR to view. Do you think the guy's connection was really the slow?
True but a credit card dispute costs nothing. "Hello? Yes I would like to dispute a charge. I was sold this phone with the explicit warranty that it was 3G and would work with Sprint's network. But it never has worked with Sprint's 3G network."
"Thank you sir, and did you contact the store?"
"Yes. They refused to help me."
"Okay. Return the phone and make sure you get tracking to prove it was returned. We will investigate this and then refund the money back to your credit card, after the tracking shows the phone was returned."
(later)
Ahhh I see they refunded the 30 dollars. Fantastic. You see: Credit cards also provide warranties, and they require their partners (stores) to be honest in their dealings with customers. If the store has violated that contract then the money will be sucked out of the store's account, and put back into yours.
Re:I have often wondered about this.
on
The Many Faces of 3G
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
>>>Every phone I've tried browsing the web on makes me just about cry with frustration - I feel like I'm back in college with a 2400 baud modem again.
Exaggerate much? The 2400 baud* modem you're talking about is a 2k connection. That's slow enough you can see the text scroll across the screen. I doubt your cell is anywhere near that slow. Voice calling alone requires at least 8k data rate to produce intelligible speech, and most phones will provide greater than dialup speeds (>50k).
My local ISP which I've considered joining says they provide upto 1,400,000 wireless..... almost three orders of magnitude higher than a 2400 bps modem. Have you tried installing Opera Mini web browser? It uses text/image compression to speed things up.
* * Trivia: The baud rate is actually 600... with 4 bits per symbol.
Nobody ever bothered to sue [Radio Shack] in 2002, and they should have. I know I wouldn't have stood for it. I would have found some way to get my money back, or a free 3G phone that worked with Sprint, since that's what I was told I was getting. But no. Instead people just allow themselves to get screwed and never fight back against the megacorps.
Whatever the companies want, apparently. RTFA and you'll see: "In 2002, I got my first cell phone. "You want this one," said the salesman at the RadioShack, pointing to a sleek model then on sale. "It's a 3G phone. It'll work with Sprint's new 3G network they're rolling out later this summer." (image shows phone has 3G on it) "A few months later -- I called Sprint and tried to subscribe. "Sir, you need a 3G phone to sign up," they told me. "I have one!" I said proudly. "It says 3G CDMA right on the back!" "Oh, I'm sorry sir. We've changed the labeling of that model. That phone doesn't have true 3G. If you like I would be happy to sell you the next model, the SCP-6400, which has true 3G."
LAWSUIT.
False advertising, misleading technical description, bait-and-switch. Of course nothing happened. Nobody ever bothered to sue Sprint in 2002, and they should have. I honestly don't understand people who allow themselves to be ripped off like that, and do nothing to recover the money and/or get a replacement Working model that matches what was originally advertised.
>>>Or do you post on Slashdot because you have no life?
Curse you Mr Insightful Anonymous. Of course if slashdot (and the internet in general) didn't exist, then I might learn to do something useful. Like how to talk to women, get married, and have kids to carry on my genes.
Or I might end-up being addicted to something else - like record collecting. And still have no life. It's hard to say.
Ditto MS BASIC 7(?) on the old 1985 Amiga - included demos with sound.
Plus TV shows, especially scifi ones, do this all the time. The computers don't have to make noise but the audio engineer added the sound to keep the show from being dull.
>>>The congress, being voter-minded will jump on the bandwagon
Congress didn't listen to the voters when polls showed over 80% were against the Bush Bailout Bill and nearly 80% were against passage of PelosiCare, so what makes you think they'll start listening to voters now?
>>>>>The government is a babbling retard playing with its own feces >> >>Right...because NOT doing anything about it seems to have worked oh so well.
You're right. The government should do something - namely revoke the monopoly they gave Comcast* in the first place. That way other companies could come in and compete with alternative internet services (like FiOS). - You decry the problem without seeming to realize that government Caused the problem themselves (by giving comcast a monopoly).
* * Replace comcast with whatever monopoly serves your area * Cox, cablevision, time-warner, et cetera.
It is extremely difficult to throw-out a couple million ballots (or add a couple million ballots), simply because of the sheer weight of moving all that material (thousands of pounds)
PLUS, and this is the key point, wireless is a competitive market. I have over 10 different wireless providers to choose from - if one sucks I can wait for my one-year-contract to run out (or for them to change the terms, which lets me terminate immediately), and then switch to another that doesn't block websites or torrents.
Government should only regulate in case of monopoly or duopoly. As is true with wired internet providers, but not wireless.
RIAA and their proposed "net neutrality" that blocks sites I want to see, is precisely why we need to put power into the hands of the citizens to make their OWN choices. (i.e. Verizon sucks, I'm switching to Virgin Mobile or ATT or Cricket or Clear or Sprint or AppleISP or.....) We need to stop treating citizens as too stupid to make their own decisions, and stop giving politicians the role of surrogate parents. Neither they nor their corporate bosses can be trusted.
We can only trust ourselves. That's where the power should lie.
PLUS, and this is the key point, wireless is a competitive market. I have over 10 different wireless providers to choose from - if one sucks I can wait for my one-year-contract to run out (or for them to change the terms, which lets me terminate immediately), and then switch to another that doesn't block websites or torrents.
Government should only regulate in case of monopoly or duopoly. As is true with wired internet providers, but not wireless.
Telephone modems operate at the hardware level too, and yet store 8 bits per transmitted symbol.
It should be possible to do the same with the magnetic symbols on a disk, if the head could read the "level" of the magnetism (from 0 to 255) at each location. Even if we could only do levels 0 to 3, that would allow us to encode 2 bits per spot on the drive instead of just 1 bit.
>>>Wrong, R18 means less censorship. Because anything above the M15 rating would not be just outright banned like it is now.
No instead they'd ban everything above R18. All you've done is move the age higher, but not stopped the government from banning adult material (like the Playboy Game) they deem inappropriate for 18 year olds.
>>>Ultimately I'm a proponent of computerized voting
But the flaw with this and virtually all the other machines adopted between 2001 and 2003 is there's no paper trail. That means the results can easily be changed and no way to audit the results.
The system we had in Maryland (before it got thrown out) was just about perfect. You simply drew a line next to the candidate you wanted, and then the ballot was scanned immediately and tallied. It ensured the vote was registered before the voter left, had the rapid counting ability of a computer, but still provided a paper trail for later auditing of the computer's tally.
Then they threw away for a system with no paper trail. Stupid.
>>>I'm sorry, but if that's how you talk to cops, you kind of deserve whatever happens to you. You never argue with a police officer, ever
You've been marked troll, but you're actually right. The best way to talk to the man with the gun is (1) respect (2) calmness and (3) try to avoid talking at all (remaining silent is your right).
Still I would be honest with the cop..... I fear that if I turn-off the camera or audio recorder, I might be harmed. I would also ask the cop if I'm allowed to record the conversation with pen-and-paper, after I turn off the audio recorder.
>>>Cities are also far, far more subsidized then any rural area is.
False. Most of the money paid in taxes comes from cities. Most of the expenditure than gets redirected to rural states (per capita) for those long empty roads to nowhere, subsidies to farm corporations to grow preferred stocks (like corn), subsidies to phone and electric companies to provide service to rural communities (the universal service fund), and so on. Rural citizens pay less and get more.
As for trains versus cars, trains average 25 passenger-miles per gallon-equivalent of energy use. There are many cars that exceed that value, like my Honda Insight at 70 pmpg. (Also rated by ACEEE.org as the cleanest car on the road.) To say trains are cleaner is an oversimplification.
They are cleaner versus a gas guzzling SUV, but they are not cleaner than the high-MPG diesels or hybrids, because trains often run empty or near-empty. That inefficiency drags down their overall effectiveness.
>>>The problem isn't a lack of R18, the problem is that anything not meeting 'standards' is illegal.
Good point. The government should not have the power to ban adults from buying items. The government is not your daddy or mommy. I used to think, "Well if America falls to tyranny, there's always the freedom-loving Aussieland," but apparently I was wrong. Australia is ruled by a tyranny of oligarchs that won't even let you play an adult game.
>>>It's much more logical and consistent for a parent to be able to say "you can't watch any 18 rated films" to a child..... Oh, I forgot, the fucking libertarians have taken over the asylum, so if it's done by the government it's necessarily evil. >>>
Please tell me this goofball is not serious. He's really arguing that libertarianism (freedom/liberty) is bad and authoritarian "we will censor things that might be dangerous for you" government is better??? Frakkin' a. I moved out of my parents house a long time ago. I don't need the politicians to step-in and replace them. I don't need to be censored from seeing games/movies/whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
The US Congress should require them to advertise a minimum.
So if they want to say, "Upto 1000 kbps," that's fine but they also have to add, "Guaranteed throughput of 500 kbps, or you'll receive a one day credit on your bill for each occurrence."
>>>and compression? really? that's your solution? please stop talking, now
If you have a limited bandwidth line, like dialup or cellphone, compression is a perfectly viable solution to the problem. It's why Opera added it to their version 10 of their browser. It's why it's used for HD Radio, and HDTV, or on youtube, or on DVD/Bluray movies.
For you to imply that compression should not be considered a solution is silly.
>>>He said that he feels
Oh well that makes it okay then. :-) If I say I "feel" that government taxation is too high, I don't have to actually prove it, or back it up with numbers do I? Maybe I am being anal but I simply thought the poster should be corrected when he said his cellphone was as slow as a 2 kbit/s line.
His comment was as "off" as if I were to say the national debt is $13 billion. (Hint: It's actually trillion.) Or if I said the EU lies about 3 miles away from the US. Or it only took the astronauts 0.003 days to reach the moon. Or 1000 + 1000 = 2.
I mean: 2400 is really, really slow. We're talking Commodore=64 slow. I doubt anybody's cellphone literally takes an hour to download a webpage.
Not steal. It doesn't forbid copying the bible into your own personal notebook. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself. But the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine...
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson
Therefore:
While I can claim ownership of this bible, and label you a "thief" if you steal it (because I have been deprived of use of the computer), I have NO natural right to claim ownership of the ideas contained within. Your copying of text deprives me of nothing. I still possess knowledge.
Precisely.
The need to curse thieves of expensive hand-written Bibles disappeared when the printing press appeared, and Bibles became as plentiful as leaves to wipe your arse. Then nobody cared if you took it from the church (it was easily replaced). Some even started giving bibles away, in order to educate the masses. And of course the bible is not and never has been copy-protected.
>>>don't assume what other people do or do not know.
Okay. Let's assume the guy is correct, and the speed is the same as a 2400 bps modem. At that rate the typical 700 kilobyte webpage (like slashdot) would take nearly an HOUR to view. Do you think the guy's connection was really the slow?
Neither do I. I think he was exaggerating. A lot.
True but a credit card dispute costs nothing. "Hello? Yes I would like to dispute a charge. I was sold this phone with the explicit warranty that it was 3G and would work with Sprint's network. But it never has worked with Sprint's 3G network."
"Thank you sir, and did you contact the store?"
"Yes. They refused to help me."
"Okay. Return the phone and make sure you get tracking to prove it was returned. We will investigate this and then refund the money back to your credit card, after the tracking shows the phone was returned."
(later)
Ahhh I see they refunded the 30 dollars. Fantastic. You see: Credit cards also provide warranties, and they require their partners (stores) to be honest in their dealings with customers. If the store has violated that contract then the money will be sucked out of the store's account, and put back into yours.
>>>Every phone I've tried browsing the web on makes me just about cry with frustration - I feel like I'm back in college with a 2400 baud modem again.
Exaggerate much? The 2400 baud* modem you're talking about is a 2k connection. That's slow enough you can see the text scroll across the screen. I doubt your cell is anywhere near that slow. Voice calling alone requires at least 8k data rate to produce intelligible speech, and most phones will provide greater than dialup speeds (>50k).
My local ISP which I've considered joining says they provide upto 1,400,000 wireless..... almost three orders of magnitude higher than a 2400 bps modem. Have you tried installing Opera Mini web browser? It uses text/image compression to speed things up.
*
* Trivia: The baud rate is actually 600... with 4 bits per symbol.
[correction]
Nobody ever bothered to sue [Radio Shack] in 2002, and they should have. I know I wouldn't have stood for it. I would have found some way to get my money back, or a free 3G phone that worked with Sprint, since that's what I was told I was getting. But no. Instead people just allow themselves to get screwed and never fight back against the megacorps.
>>>What the heck does it mean?
Whatever the companies want, apparently. RTFA and you'll see: "In 2002, I got my first cell phone. "You want this one," said the salesman at the RadioShack, pointing to a sleek model then on sale. "It's a 3G phone. It'll work with Sprint's new 3G network they're rolling out later this summer." (image shows phone has 3G on it) "A few months later -- I called Sprint and tried to subscribe. "Sir, you need a 3G phone to sign up," they told me. "I have one!" I said proudly. "It says 3G CDMA right on the back!" "Oh, I'm sorry sir. We've changed the labeling of that model. That phone doesn't have true 3G. If you like I would be happy to sell you the next model, the SCP-6400, which has true 3G."
LAWSUIT.
False advertising, misleading technical description, bait-and-switch. Of course nothing happened. Nobody ever bothered to sue Sprint in 2002, and they should have. I honestly don't understand people who allow themselves to be ripped off like that, and do nothing to recover the money and/or get a replacement Working model that matches what was originally advertised.
>>>Or do you post on Slashdot because you have no life?
Curse you Mr Insightful Anonymous. Of course if slashdot (and the internet in general) didn't exist, then I might learn to do something useful. Like how to talk to women, get married, and have kids to carry on my genes.
Or I might end-up being addicted to something else - like record collecting. And still have no life. It's hard to say.
Ditto MS BASIC 7(?) on the old 1985 Amiga - included demos with sound.
Plus TV shows, especially scifi ones, do this all the time. The computers don't have to make noise but the audio engineer added the sound to keep the show from being dull.
>>>The congress, being voter-minded will jump on the bandwagon
Congress didn't listen to the voters when polls showed over 80% were against the Bush Bailout Bill and nearly 80% were against passage of PelosiCare, so what makes you think they'll start listening to voters now?
>>>>>The government is a babbling retard playing with its own feces
>>
>>Right...because NOT doing anything about it seems to have worked oh so well.
You're right. The government should do something - namely revoke the monopoly they gave Comcast* in the first place. That way other companies could come in and compete with alternative internet services (like FiOS). - You decry the problem without seeming to realize that government Caused the problem themselves (by giving comcast a monopoly).
*
* Replace comcast with whatever monopoly serves your area
* Cox, cablevision, time-warner, et cetera.
It is extremely difficult to throw-out a couple million ballots (or add a couple million ballots), simply because of the sheer weight of moving all that material (thousands of pounds)
That's why the paper trail is difficult to alter.
PLUS, and this is the key point, wireless is a competitive market. I have over 10 different wireless providers to choose from - if one sucks I can wait for my one-year-contract to run out (or for them to change the terms, which lets me terminate immediately), and then switch to another that doesn't block websites or torrents.
Government should only regulate in case of monopoly or duopoly. As is true with wired internet providers, but not wireless.
You're both wrong.
RIAA and their proposed "net neutrality" that blocks sites I want to see, is precisely why we need to put power into the hands of the citizens to make their OWN choices. (i.e. Verizon sucks, I'm switching to Virgin Mobile or ATT or Cricket or Clear or Sprint or AppleISP or.....) We need to stop treating citizens as too stupid to make their own decisions, and stop giving politicians the role of surrogate parents. Neither they nor their corporate bosses can be trusted.
We can only trust ourselves. That's where the power should lie.
PLUS, and this is the key point, wireless is a competitive market. I have over 10 different wireless providers to choose from - if one sucks I can wait for my one-year-contract to run out (or for them to change the terms, which lets me terminate immediately), and then switch to another that doesn't block websites or torrents.
Government should only regulate in case of monopoly or duopoly. As is true with wired internet providers, but not wireless.
Telephone modems operate at the hardware level too, and yet store 8 bits per transmitted symbol.
It should be possible to do the same with the magnetic symbols on a disk, if the head could read the "level" of the magnetism (from 0 to 255) at each location. Even if we could only do levels 0 to 3, that would allow us to encode 2 bits per spot on the drive instead of just 1 bit.
>>>Wrong, R18 means less censorship. Because anything above the M15 rating would not be just outright banned like it is now.
No instead they'd ban everything above R18. All you've done is move the age higher, but not stopped the government from banning adult material (like the Playboy Game) they deem inappropriate for 18 year olds.
>>>Ultimately I'm a proponent of computerized voting
But the flaw with this and virtually all the other machines adopted between 2001 and 2003 is there's no paper trail. That means the results can easily be changed and no way to audit the results.
The system we had in Maryland (before it got thrown out) was just about perfect. You simply drew a line next to the candidate you wanted, and then the ballot was scanned immediately and tallied. It ensured the vote was registered before the voter left, had the rapid counting ability of a computer, but still provided a paper trail for later auditing of the computer's tally.
Then they threw away for a system with no paper trail. Stupid.
>>>I'm sorry, but if that's how you talk to cops, you kind of deserve whatever happens to you. You never argue with a police officer, ever
You've been marked troll, but you're actually right. The best way to talk to the man with the gun is (1) respect (2) calmness and (3) try to avoid talking at all (remaining silent is your right).
Still I would be honest with the cop..... I fear that if I turn-off the camera or audio recorder, I might be harmed. I would also ask the cop if I'm allowed to record the conversation with pen-and-paper, after I turn off the audio recorder.
>>>Cities are also far, far more subsidized then any rural area is.
False. Most of the money paid in taxes comes from cities. Most of the expenditure than gets redirected to rural states (per capita) for those long empty roads to nowhere, subsidies to farm corporations to grow preferred stocks (like corn), subsidies to phone and electric companies to provide service to rural communities (the universal service fund), and so on. Rural citizens pay less and get more.
As for trains versus cars, trains average 25 passenger-miles per gallon-equivalent of energy use. There are many cars that exceed that value, like my Honda Insight at 70 pmpg. (Also rated by ACEEE.org as the cleanest car on the road.) To say trains are cleaner is an oversimplification.
They are cleaner versus a gas guzzling SUV, but they are not cleaner than the high-MPG diesels or hybrids, because trains often run empty or near-empty. That inefficiency drags down their overall effectiveness.
>>>The problem isn't a lack of R18, the problem is that anything not meeting 'standards' is illegal.
Good point. The government should not have the power to ban adults from buying items. The government is not your daddy or mommy. I used to think, "Well if America falls to tyranny, there's always the freedom-loving Aussieland," but apparently I was wrong. Australia is ruled by a tyranny of oligarchs that won't even let you play an adult game.
>>>It's much more logical and consistent for a parent to be able to say "you can't watch any 18 rated films" to a child..... Oh, I forgot, the fucking libertarians have taken over the asylum, so if it's done by the government it's necessarily evil.
>>>
Please tell me this goofball is not serious. He's really arguing that libertarianism (freedom/liberty) is bad and authoritarian "we will censor things that might be dangerous for you" government is better??? Frakkin' a. I moved out of my parents house a long time ago. I don't need the politicians to step-in and replace them. I don't need to be censored from seeing games/movies/whatever.