Now stop trying to make up excuses and deliberate impediments. It's not witty, it's asinine. Just because *you* may not have GSM coverage doesn't mean that nobody else does, or that it's not a viable option for a lot of people.
Some of my BB users are coming to the conclusion that the best setup is dumbphone + iPad 3g. Easy to read email/pdfs/etc, good call quality. The guys may still preder a smartphone, but if you're carrying a big purse anyway the iPad is pretty easy to add.
Can't type on an ipad very well... Some folks have no trouble with it, but the lack of tactile feedback slows me down more than I'm willing to put up with, due to missed keypresses. I find I can type faster on an Android phone with a slider QWERTY keyboard (an LG Shine Plus is what I have at the moment, but there's others which are available). Haptic feedback could probably fix that problem for me, but for some reason, there's no haptic feedback out of the box on an iPad, which is a game killer for me. Having a slider keyboard means that I don't lose screen real estate to an on-screen keyboard, and that makes the smartphone a much more usable option for working e-mail and reading docs that folks e-mail me. For anything bigger than that, I'd need a full computer anyway... I recently replaced a netbook with an ultraportable laptop. Purses/satchels that can fit a 13" laptop are easy to get, and still small/light enough to not look like a laptop bag, nor be as heavy.
So while I understand that your users may find that the iPad works great, I carry a small laptop in my purse instead. I use the phone for almost everything, and if I need to, I can open the laptop, and either use wifi where I am (seriously, even McDonald's has free wifi these days), or tether to my phone. It's also cheaper than having a tablet data plan and a separate dumb phone plan, at least for the amount I use it.:) It all depends on how you use it, but I have found that for my own uses, an iPad or similar table is an unjustifiable expense. I will not, however, ever buy a smartphone that doesn't have a slider keyboard.... that would kill the point in having a smartphone for me.
So use Pay-As-You-Go. There's no rule that says you can't have a smartphone on a dumb phone payg plan. And some payg plans would allow you to use data, too... turn mobile data off on the smart phone but have it configured, so that if you need to use google or maps, you can simply push a button on the phone to enable it, use the data you need to, then disable it. There have been times when I've used the satnav in my phone to help me find my way when I had a printed map that was out of date, or when I found myself in an area where I didn't have a printed map (forgot the book at home, or didn't think I'd stray that far)
You *can* have a smart phone for less than $10/mo. You just need to buy your own phone, and pick a cheap plan.
Which carrier offers such a plan in the United States?
Any carrier who offers a tablet plan. Just buy the SIM and put it in your cell phone, the carrier won't know the difference.
That said, you can also get a super-low minutes plan, which is useful if you're roaming in an area that doesn't have data coverage. I'm guessing that grub is using something like an iPhone, as there's an IM app that's very similar to SMS messaging on it. Personally, I have been known to break 500 texts/day, and wouldn't be able to do what he's doing. But you can still get a low minutes plan, and add data on top of it fairly cheaply, though, without sacrificing the added functionality... my plan (admittedly it's in Canada, but there are carriers in the US that offer similar plans) is 150 anytime minutes, 5pm evenings/weekends, unlimited domestic LD. That's $25/mo (they have one that's $15/mo for 50 anytime minutes, still has unlimited long distance). I have a $10/mo addon that gives call display, call waiting, call forwarding, and unlimited global texting. I'm on a flex data plan on top of that, which goes from $5/mo for 25MB to $30/mo for 3GB, tethering included, and has an overage charge of $0.02/MB. They're available, you just need to shop around and look at what are called MVNO's in the US (and usually called Fight Brands everywhere else in the world)
I personally hate it when Canadians talk about our "Miranda rights" or "District Attorneys", "The Constitution" instead of "The Charter", etc. Also good for Canadian artists & businesses that produce content & jobs. I'm getting on a tangent here...:)
We do not have "Miranda" rights, no, but we do have all of the rights that Americans would know as Miranda rights, as granted by other legislations. We do not have "District Attorneys", but we do have public prosecutors who serve exactly the same role. Those are merely a question of nomenclature. We *do*, however, have a constitution. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is section 1 of The Constitution Act, 1982. When somebody talks about the Constitution granting rights that are part of the Charter, they are absolutely correct, because the Charter is part of the Constitution.
Incidentally, we don't have "felonies" in Canada, either. We have "indictable offenses".
And no, Netflix' small library in Canada has nothing to do with CanCon. Netflix isn't a broadcaster, and isn't under those rules. It is indeed distribution rights that are the real issue.
That said, I wonder what's so different between ontario and manitoba? Shaw gives me 100Mbps for $70/month with a 500GB cap. For $120 I get 250Mbps with no cap. Even MTS (our phone company) offers 25Mbps unlimited for $75.
Different market. In Ontario, there's the Bell/Rogers duopoly, and they are borderline cartel in how they fix their prices to be essentially the same between them. Even from the same provider (Bell) in a different province (like Quebec), the plans are radically different, because they're competing against Videotron instead of Rogers, and Videotron has larger caps. Hopefully as cellular services like Wind/Mobilicity start to offer them more competition, they'll start to realize that their customers don't want to have it any more. ($40/mo for 4G cellular 'net, no monthly cap, on Mobilicity, for example)
Bell *does* offer nice plans in markets other than Ontario/Quebec, though... MTS and Bell Aliant are all under the same umbrella, and Aliant is offering 70/30 unlimited FTTH service for $70/mo in Nova Scotia, for example. For some reason, Ontario and Quebec are being left behind, and screwed over by Bell. I'll put it this way: I am paying $45/mo for a 12mbit DSL from TekSavvy, with a 300GB cap, and by Ontario standards, that's a *really* good deal. Ultimately I'm still buying service from Bell, but I'm hopeful that they'll use that money to start offering FTTH in my area.
And the time period for exercising the rights in that provision has now expired. If you didn't exercise that right when they made the change, you're SOL.
Never used a distro with E17, have you?:) the Enlightenment libs are designed from the ground up to be modular, and to allow you to pick and choose which parts of the system you want loaded, but even with bling effects (compositor) enabled, and stuff like dancing penguins on your desktop, it can still fit in less than 128MB of RAM. It's light-weight and responsive without sacrificing the eye candy or functionality.
And thanks to the modularity, it can be shoehorned into very low RAM configurations: I have seen it fit in less than 40MB of RAM without sacrificing the compositor, or any of the functionality most users expect from their desktop, just by unloading modules that you wouldn't need.
It looks more like LXDE than it does KDE, anyway. And it appears to be using nm-applet for the wireless manager, in at least some of the screenshots.:)
I question the *need* for another system like that, but I don't question the work they've done. It looks pretty clean to me, and like it's a good alternative. But considering that I use E17, I'm definitely not in their target market, nor would I consider switching, when E17 will happily run on a PII-250 with 64MB of RAM and still be quite zippy, even with the bling/compositor effects turned on.
Most *users* are on a contract, because they would rather get an iPhone for $0.99 rather than actually paying what it's worth. That said, there is legislation in the works to change the way cell carriers can handle early termination of the contract, and that's likely to change the contract situation.
All *carriers* offer no-contract options on their plans, and none of them require you to be on a contract to get a good plan. For just about all of the ones that subsidize phones at all, your choice is let them subsidize the phone purchase in return for locking into a term, or buy the phone outright and get the same plan but without a minimum term or penalties for canceling. Some carriers have a "tab" instead of a term contract, where they'll subsidize the cost of your phone, but instead of requiring you to be with them for X years, a portion of your monthly bill gets applied to paying off the tab (not raising the monthly bill, just that you get credit for say 10% of your monthly bill towards the tab), and if you still owe on the tab when you cancel, you pay off the rest of the tab and call it even. Some carriers just don't subsidize phones, and those are usually the cheaper options.
AT&T would shit themselves if some of the plans you can get in Canada were made available in the US, let alone a European or a Japanese plan.
To put things in perspective for our American friends, from a carrier like Mobilicity (one of the newer startups, only available in big cities at the moment), you can get unlimited Canada/US talk, global texting, call display, voicemail, 3-way calling, and unlimited data (including tethering) for $55/mo. If you pre-pay the year in advance it comes to about $35/mo (and that's not a special offer... the holiday special offer that's on right now is $27.50/mo for the first 6 months, or 12 months if you put it on automatic preauthorized payments). You can bring your own phone if you like, or you can buy an Android phone from them for as little as $169, and that's without a term contract. Their coverage is good as long as you don't leave the big city, and if you do leave the city, you'll roam on one of the national networks.
And if you'd rather have a plan on the national network, I am paying $40/mo for my smartphone plan... it's not unlimited data (it's a flex plan, $5/mo is the minimum data level, which I'm usually on, but it goes up to $30/mo for 3GB, tethering included even at the $5/mo level), and it's only 150 anytime minutes, but I have unlimited evenings/weekends @ 5pm-8am (which is basically unlimited talk when you're at work M-F 9-5), and unlimited long distance, as well as global texting, call display, voicemail, 3-way calling, etc. That's with Koodo, which is a fight brand wholly owned by Telus, which is one of the big 3 carriers.
And at this point, the Americans are probably saying "holy shit, you can get a plan like those in Canada?". And the Europeans and Japanese are saying "holy shit, people actually pay that much?"
Earliest date on the patent filing is April 1994, and it was issued in 2000. It appears to be describing Digital PCS, and sending data over the cellular network.
Everything it's describing can be done (and indeed has been done) on a TDMA network. TDMA was accepted as a standard in 1991, and I know for a fact (because I had the service) that Bell Canada was selling Digital PCS in 1993. While it didn't include some of the later claims (like real-time pricing information), it did have e-mail, SMS text messaging, digital telephony, and location services. (and as an aside, typing an e-mail out on a 2-line, 10-character fixed-width LCD display was teh suck)
They do exist for less than that. The Vostro V131 is $329, for example. It's a 3.2lb 13.3" ultraportable. But you do compromise a little on the system to get it for that price: it's a celeron, and only 2GB of RAM. The battery life isn't the best, either. That said, it comes with Ubuntu preinstalled, and has a matte finish on the screen. I have the preceding version of it (the V130, bought in August), and I'm very happy with it. Much happier than I was with the Atom-based netbook I replaced.
For what it is, it *is* a great buy. I'm typing this on a laptop with a Celeron U3600 1.2GHz dual core, with 2GB of RAM, and it is plenty adequate for my needs. Most users just surf the web, check facebook, and watch Youtube from time to time. Throw in an e-mail client, and you're good to go. This system also handles some light gaming (tuxkart, supertux, eskiss)... when I want to play more hardcore games, that's what my desktop is for. If all you want to do is type documents, surf the web, and check your e-mail, then that is plenty of power.
It's nothing an Atom couldn't do. Or an ARM system, for that matter. And the ARM would blow even the Atom out of the water for battery life. But find me an ARM-based 15.6" laptop, will you? Or even an Atom-based system with a screen like that. There's a usability limitation with the smaller screen you find on an Atom or ARM-based netbook, not to mention the keyboard (about 13" is the smallest laptop I've seen with a keyboard I can actually type at speed on... on a 12.1" system, the keyboard is usually either smaller, or a weird layout).
Users can just pick the breed of Linux that suits them and be immediately productive.
Ignoring the 20-30 distros they may have to download to find the one that suits them, assuming they don't have somebody recommending things to them or installing it for them....
Linux *can* be super-easy, just install it and go. But it can also be a royal pain in the ass, if the distro you've installed doesn't fit the work flow you're used to, or that you need in a computer. Finding a distro that does everything you want it to do, and that doesn't give you a migraine trying to configure is a huge part of the impediment to switching for a lot of people. Most users basically can't do it without somebody to pick a distro for them, and maybe even to show them how to use it, or at least what's different from their old system.
Why on earth would they not be using an LTS version of Ubuntu as the base? If they're going to be using Ubuntu in the first place, they're doing it wrong....
First call resolution is almost as important as 7 day repeat rate... while you do want to look at things like mttr, you want to be careful with using that as a hire 'em and fire 'em metric, because it will encourage people to cherry pick easy problems, and can penalize the people who get stuck with the hard issues. It takes 5 minutes to configure somebody's e-mail client, but it will take much longer if you have to order parts to replace defective hardware.
That would work... I'll let you take care of the people jamming stuff needlessly....
Personally, I just want a 1000W fresnel spot to point at the people behind me who forget how to turn their high beams off, or cruise around with their fog lights on at night....
That being said, your *hotel* probably has free wifi, or at the very least, is wired for Ethernet to every room. I've never had trouble finding access to the Internet when I travel, despite having travelled to some extremely unwired countries. Access may be limited to when you're at the hotel, but you will usually be able to find at least some access to the Internet. It may not be 24/7 access to the Internet, but you will be able to keep up on your e-mail. In passing, if you're worried about checking your e-mail while you're being a tourist, then something's wrong with your priorities. And if you're worried about getting lost, I weep for the future: that's what maps are for.
As for 3G roaming... if you're paying for 3G roaming (even voice) you're nuts. At worst, it costs about $15 USD to unlock your cell phone. Just buy a prepaid SIM when you get to your destination, and put it in your phone. They're available in just about every country on the planet. And *gasp* if you have a smartphone? You'll have 3G data at the rates a local would pay, rather than roaming. And failing that, buy a cheap burn phone. You'd be surprised how cheap they are outside of the US (in the UK, for example, you can buy a £10 phone from O2, and they'll throw in a £10 prepaid SIM for free).
You may want to go back to English grammar class, and pay a little more attention.:)
1. about 25% of the European Union population has never accessed the Internet. 2. about 50% of the European Union population that lives in southern/western states does not have access to the Internet at home.
The two statements are distinct, and not related. TFS/TFA are stating two separate statistics... while they're using a grammar structure that's more logical to somebody who speaks a romance language natively (French or Italian, most likely), it is perfectly grammatical in English to put it that way. "those" refers to the EU population, not the EU population that hasn't ever accessed the Internet.
Probably to protect proprietary information/technology before the patent was granted. If discussion of specifics regarding how it actually works were part of the patent application, then they're well within their rights wanting to keep that information confidential. While you make a good point about not having pointless or BS patents filed, it's worth pointing out that this isn't a bogus idea that'll never pan out. In fact, it's already been done, by Google, last year. And while there have been some hiccups in the testing, and the technology isn't ready for prime time, the technology itself is real.
If there's no evidence that it's false, then yes, a libel case would be dismissed.
But the summary could be misleading... "no evidence that what he said was false" could actually mean that there's no evidence, but it could also mean that no evidence was presented, largely because the truth of his claims has absolutely nothing to do with whether he's harassing her. What was in question wasn't the claims he was actually made, it was how he was using those claims to cause harm to her. For her own privacy, I'd be surprised if the courts even considered the truth in his claims.
But if it were even a slightly more general case, it would have sent up big red flags.
In a slightly more general case, this case probably never would have made it to court... if you keep a blog about your daily life and you make one or two posts about how much you hate X person because of the way they screwed you over, and then go back to posting about the quality of the pizza sauce on your dinner last night, then it's doubtful that you'd then go on to create anonymous e-mail addresses and use those to send links to the blog posts to the woman's employer....
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.inmarsat.com/
Now stop trying to make up excuses and deliberate impediments. It's not witty, it's asinine. Just because *you* may not have GSM coverage doesn't mean that nobody else does, or that it's not a viable option for a lot of people.
Some of my BB users are coming to the conclusion that the best setup is dumbphone + iPad 3g. Easy to read email/pdfs/etc, good call quality. The guys may still preder a smartphone, but if you're carrying a big purse anyway the iPad is pretty easy to add.
Can't type on an ipad very well... Some folks have no trouble with it, but the lack of tactile feedback slows me down more than I'm willing to put up with, due to missed keypresses. I find I can type faster on an Android phone with a slider QWERTY keyboard (an LG Shine Plus is what I have at the moment, but there's others which are available). Haptic feedback could probably fix that problem for me, but for some reason, there's no haptic feedback out of the box on an iPad, which is a game killer for me. Having a slider keyboard means that I don't lose screen real estate to an on-screen keyboard, and that makes the smartphone a much more usable option for working e-mail and reading docs that folks e-mail me. For anything bigger than that, I'd need a full computer anyway... I recently replaced a netbook with an ultraportable laptop. Purses/satchels that can fit a 13" laptop are easy to get, and still small/light enough to not look like a laptop bag, nor be as heavy.
So while I understand that your users may find that the iPad works great, I carry a small laptop in my purse instead. I use the phone for almost everything, and if I need to, I can open the laptop, and either use wifi where I am (seriously, even McDonald's has free wifi these days), or tether to my phone. It's also cheaper than having a tablet data plan and a separate dumb phone plan, at least for the amount I use it. :) It all depends on how you use it, but I have found that for my own uses, an iPad or similar table is an unjustifiable expense. I will not, however, ever buy a smartphone that doesn't have a slider keyboard.... that would kill the point in having a smartphone for me.
So use Pay-As-You-Go. There's no rule that says you can't have a smartphone on a dumb phone payg plan. And some payg plans would allow you to use data, too... turn mobile data off on the smart phone but have it configured, so that if you need to use google or maps, you can simply push a button on the phone to enable it, use the data you need to, then disable it. There have been times when I've used the satnav in my phone to help me find my way when I had a printed map that was out of date, or when I found myself in an area where I didn't have a printed map (forgot the book at home, or didn't think I'd stray that far)
You *can* have a smart phone for less than $10/mo. You just need to buy your own phone, and pick a cheap plan.
Which carrier offers such a plan in the United States?
Any carrier who offers a tablet plan. Just buy the SIM and put it in your cell phone, the carrier won't know the difference.
That said, you can also get a super-low minutes plan, which is useful if you're roaming in an area that doesn't have data coverage. I'm guessing that grub is using something like an iPhone, as there's an IM app that's very similar to SMS messaging on it. Personally, I have been known to break 500 texts/day, and wouldn't be able to do what he's doing. But you can still get a low minutes plan, and add data on top of it fairly cheaply, though, without sacrificing the added functionality... my plan (admittedly it's in Canada, but there are carriers in the US that offer similar plans) is 150 anytime minutes, 5pm evenings/weekends, unlimited domestic LD. That's $25/mo (they have one that's $15/mo for 50 anytime minutes, still has unlimited long distance). I have a $10/mo addon that gives call display, call waiting, call forwarding, and unlimited global texting. I'm on a flex data plan on top of that, which goes from $5/mo for 25MB to $30/mo for 3GB, tethering included, and has an overage charge of $0.02/MB. They're available, you just need to shop around and look at what are called MVNO's in the US (and usually called Fight Brands everywhere else in the world)
I personally hate it when Canadians talk about our "Miranda rights" or "District Attorneys", "The Constitution" instead of "The Charter", etc. Also good for Canadian artists & businesses that produce content & jobs. I'm getting on a tangent here... :)
We do not have "Miranda" rights, no, but we do have all of the rights that Americans would know as Miranda rights, as granted by other legislations. We do not have "District Attorneys", but we do have public prosecutors who serve exactly the same role. Those are merely a question of nomenclature. We *do*, however, have a constitution. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is section 1 of The Constitution Act, 1982. When somebody talks about the Constitution granting rights that are part of the Charter, they are absolutely correct, because the Charter is part of the Constitution.
Incidentally, we don't have "felonies" in Canada, either. We have "indictable offenses".
And no, Netflix' small library in Canada has nothing to do with CanCon. Netflix isn't a broadcaster, and isn't under those rules. It is indeed distribution rights that are the real issue.
That said, I wonder what's so different between ontario and manitoba? Shaw gives me 100Mbps for $70/month with a 500GB cap. For $120 I get 250Mbps with no cap. Even MTS (our phone company) offers 25Mbps unlimited for $75.
Different market. In Ontario, there's the Bell/Rogers duopoly, and they are borderline cartel in how they fix their prices to be essentially the same between them. Even from the same provider (Bell) in a different province (like Quebec), the plans are radically different, because they're competing against Videotron instead of Rogers, and Videotron has larger caps. Hopefully as cellular services like Wind/Mobilicity start to offer them more competition, they'll start to realize that their customers don't want to have it any more. ($40/mo for 4G cellular 'net, no monthly cap, on Mobilicity, for example)
Bell *does* offer nice plans in markets other than Ontario/Quebec, though... MTS and Bell Aliant are all under the same umbrella, and Aliant is offering 70/30 unlimited FTTH service for $70/mo in Nova Scotia, for example. For some reason, Ontario and Quebec are being left behind, and screwed over by Bell. I'll put it this way: I am paying $45/mo for a 12mbit DSL from TekSavvy, with a 300GB cap, and by Ontario standards, that's a *really* good deal. Ultimately I'm still buying service from Bell, but I'm hopeful that they'll use that money to start offering FTTH in my area.
And the time period for exercising the rights in that provision has now expired. If you didn't exercise that right when they made the change, you're SOL.
Never used a distro with E17, have you? :) the Enlightenment libs are designed from the ground up to be modular, and to allow you to pick and choose which parts of the system you want loaded, but even with bling effects (compositor) enabled, and stuff like dancing penguins on your desktop, it can still fit in less than 128MB of RAM. It's light-weight and responsive without sacrificing the eye candy or functionality.
And thanks to the modularity, it can be shoehorned into very low RAM configurations: I have seen it fit in less than 40MB of RAM without sacrificing the compositor, or any of the functionality most users expect from their desktop, just by unloading modules that you wouldn't need.
It looks more like LXDE than it does KDE, anyway. And it appears to be using nm-applet for the wireless manager, in at least some of the screenshots. :)
I question the *need* for another system like that, but I don't question the work they've done. It looks pretty clean to me, and like it's a good alternative. But considering that I use E17, I'm definitely not in their target market, nor would I consider switching, when E17 will happily run on a PII-250 with 64MB of RAM and still be quite zippy, even with the bling/compositor effects turned on.
Most *users* are on a contract, because they would rather get an iPhone for $0.99 rather than actually paying what it's worth. That said, there is legislation in the works to change the way cell carriers can handle early termination of the contract, and that's likely to change the contract situation.
All *carriers* offer no-contract options on their plans, and none of them require you to be on a contract to get a good plan. For just about all of the ones that subsidize phones at all, your choice is let them subsidize the phone purchase in return for locking into a term, or buy the phone outright and get the same plan but without a minimum term or penalties for canceling. Some carriers have a "tab" instead of a term contract, where they'll subsidize the cost of your phone, but instead of requiring you to be with them for X years, a portion of your monthly bill gets applied to paying off the tab (not raising the monthly bill, just that you get credit for say 10% of your monthly bill towards the tab), and if you still owe on the tab when you cancel, you pay off the rest of the tab and call it even. Some carriers just don't subsidize phones, and those are usually the cheaper options.
AT&T would shit themselves if some of the plans you can get in Canada were made available in the US, let alone a European or a Japanese plan.
To put things in perspective for our American friends, from a carrier like Mobilicity (one of the newer startups, only available in big cities at the moment), you can get unlimited Canada/US talk, global texting, call display, voicemail, 3-way calling, and unlimited data (including tethering) for $55/mo. If you pre-pay the year in advance it comes to about $35/mo (and that's not a special offer... the holiday special offer that's on right now is $27.50/mo for the first 6 months, or 12 months if you put it on automatic preauthorized payments). You can bring your own phone if you like, or you can buy an Android phone from them for as little as $169, and that's without a term contract. Their coverage is good as long as you don't leave the big city, and if you do leave the city, you'll roam on one of the national networks.
And if you'd rather have a plan on the national network, I am paying $40/mo for my smartphone plan... it's not unlimited data (it's a flex plan, $5/mo is the minimum data level, which I'm usually on, but it goes up to $30/mo for 3GB, tethering included even at the $5/mo level), and it's only 150 anytime minutes, but I have unlimited evenings/weekends @ 5pm-8am (which is basically unlimited talk when you're at work M-F 9-5), and unlimited long distance, as well as global texting, call display, voicemail, 3-way calling, etc. That's with Koodo, which is a fight brand wholly owned by Telus, which is one of the big 3 carriers.
And at this point, the Americans are probably saying "holy shit, you can get a plan like those in Canada?". And the Europeans and Japanese are saying "holy shit, people actually pay that much?"
http://www.patents.com/us-6151309.html
Earliest date on the patent filing is April 1994, and it was issued in 2000. It appears to be describing Digital PCS, and sending data over the cellular network.
Everything it's describing can be done (and indeed has been done) on a TDMA network. TDMA was accepted as a standard in 1991, and I know for a fact (because I had the service) that Bell Canada was selling Digital PCS in 1993. While it didn't include some of the later claims (like real-time pricing information), it did have e-mail, SMS text messaging, digital telephony, and location services. (and as an aside, typing an e-mail out on a 2-line, 10-character fixed-width LCD display was teh suck)
http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=nb_v131l_t20_e&c=ca&l=en&s=bsd&cs=cabsdt1&model_id=vostro-v131
They do exist for less than that. The Vostro V131 is $329, for example. It's a 3.2lb 13.3" ultraportable. But you do compromise a little on the system to get it for that price: it's a celeron, and only 2GB of RAM. The battery life isn't the best, either. That said, it comes with Ubuntu preinstalled, and has a matte finish on the screen. I have the preceding version of it (the V130, bought in August), and I'm very happy with it. Much happier than I was with the Atom-based netbook I replaced.
For what it is, it *is* a great buy. I'm typing this on a laptop with a Celeron U3600 1.2GHz dual core, with 2GB of RAM, and it is plenty adequate for my needs. Most users just surf the web, check facebook, and watch Youtube from time to time. Throw in an e-mail client, and you're good to go. This system also handles some light gaming (tuxkart, supertux, eskiss)... when I want to play more hardcore games, that's what my desktop is for. If all you want to do is type documents, surf the web, and check your e-mail, then that is plenty of power.
It's nothing an Atom couldn't do. Or an ARM system, for that matter. And the ARM would blow even the Atom out of the water for battery life. But find me an ARM-based 15.6" laptop, will you? Or even an Atom-based system with a screen like that. There's a usability limitation with the smaller screen you find on an Atom or ARM-based netbook, not to mention the keyboard (about 13" is the smallest laptop I've seen with a keyboard I can actually type at speed on... on a 12.1" system, the keyboard is usually either smaller, or a weird layout).
Users can just pick the breed of Linux that suits them and be immediately productive.
Ignoring the 20-30 distros they may have to download to find the one that suits them, assuming they don't have somebody recommending things to them or installing it for them....
Linux *can* be super-easy, just install it and go. But it can also be a royal pain in the ass, if the distro you've installed doesn't fit the work flow you're used to, or that you need in a computer. Finding a distro that does everything you want it to do, and that doesn't give you a migraine trying to configure is a huge part of the impediment to switching for a lot of people. Most users basically can't do it without somebody to pick a distro for them, and maybe even to show them how to use it, or at least what's different from their old system.
Why on earth would they not be using an LTS version of Ubuntu as the base? If they're going to be using Ubuntu in the first place, they're doing it wrong....
First call resolution is almost as important as 7 day repeat rate... while you do want to look at things like mttr, you want to be careful with using that as a hire 'em and fire 'em metric, because it will encourage people to cherry pick easy problems, and can penalize the people who get stuck with the hard issues. It takes 5 minutes to configure somebody's e-mail client, but it will take much longer if you have to order parts to replace defective hardware.
That'll work great in downtown Manhattan... what could possibly go wrong?
That would work... I'll let you take care of the people jamming stuff needlessly....
Personally, I just want a 1000W fresnel spot to point at the people behind me who forget how to turn their high beams off, or cruise around with their fog lights on at night....
Most first-world countries.
That being said, your *hotel* probably has free wifi, or at the very least, is wired for Ethernet to every room. I've never had trouble finding access to the Internet when I travel, despite having travelled to some extremely unwired countries. Access may be limited to when you're at the hotel, but you will usually be able to find at least some access to the Internet. It may not be 24/7 access to the Internet, but you will be able to keep up on your e-mail. In passing, if you're worried about checking your e-mail while you're being a tourist, then something's wrong with your priorities. And if you're worried about getting lost, I weep for the future: that's what maps are for.
As for 3G roaming... if you're paying for 3G roaming (even voice) you're nuts. At worst, it costs about $15 USD to unlock your cell phone. Just buy a prepaid SIM when you get to your destination, and put it in your phone. They're available in just about every country on the planet. And *gasp* if you have a smartphone? You'll have 3G data at the rates a local would pay, rather than roaming. And failing that, buy a cheap burn phone. You'd be surprised how cheap they are outside of the US (in the UK, for example, you can buy a £10 phone from O2, and they'll throw in a £10 prepaid SIM for free).
You may want to go back to English grammar class, and pay a little more attention. :)
1. about 25% of the European Union population has never accessed the Internet.
2. about 50% of the European Union population that lives in southern/western states does not have access to the Internet at home.
The two statements are distinct, and not related. TFS/TFA are stating two separate statistics... while they're using a grammar structure that's more logical to somebody who speaks a romance language natively (French or Italian, most likely), it is perfectly grammatical in English to put it that way. "those" refers to the EU population, not the EU population that hasn't ever accessed the Internet.
"those" in this case refers to the population at large, not the population who hasn't ever accessed the Internet.
I know the English language can be difficult, but context can help you figure out a lot if you find it confusing.
I guess my question is: Why?
Probably to protect proprietary information/technology before the patent was granted. If discussion of specifics regarding how it actually works were part of the patent application, then they're well within their rights wanting to keep that information confidential. While you make a good point about not having pointless or BS patents filed, it's worth pointing out that this isn't a bogus idea that'll never pan out. In fact, it's already been done, by Google, last year. And while there have been some hiccups in the testing, and the technology isn't ready for prime time, the technology itself is real.
If there's no evidence that it's false, then yes, a libel case would be dismissed.
But the summary could be misleading... "no evidence that what he said was false" could actually mean that there's no evidence, but it could also mean that no evidence was presented, largely because the truth of his claims has absolutely nothing to do with whether he's harassing her. What was in question wasn't the claims he was actually made, it was how he was using those claims to cause harm to her. For her own privacy, I'd be surprised if the courts even considered the truth in his claims.
But if it were even a slightly more general case, it would have sent up big red flags.
In a slightly more general case, this case probably never would have made it to court... if you keep a blog about your daily life and you make one or two posts about how much you hate X person because of the way they screwed you over, and then go back to posting about the quality of the pizza sauce on your dinner last night, then it's doubtful that you'd then go on to create anonymous e-mail addresses and use those to send links to the blog posts to the woman's employer....