- VoIP companies are asked to share the cost of maintaining IP infrastructure, in return for the burden they impose on it
Why? I already pay for my internet connection. If the money I pay for my connection doesn't cover the cost of the internet backbone, then my ISP has a bad business model. That's not my fault, is it?
BT has all the problems of an incumbent monopoly phone company. It doesn't react very quickly, is reluctant to provide new technology, and charges too much for services, especialy when they are to competitors.
A good place to find out more would be the Register which is full of stories about BT.
People in the UK can now get VoIP from BT with BT Broadband Voice. They are aiming it at people with cable connections. The odd thing is that they recommend still keeping a normal phone line.
It's quite strange to see BT doing something before anyone else.
I'm curious why tcsh is your first choice on Irix.
Because tcsh has filename completion and it's history can be recalled with the arrow keys. I have Bash installed now as well, but it gets confused because my home directory is shared between an IRIX machine and a Linux machine and some commands don't work on both.
Please note that the parent post is exagerating - it does not take 6 months to see an NHS doctor, it takes anything from 1 - 7 days depending on where you go.
Secondly, this project was the idea of the NHS, not the government, and the NHS IT director is negotiating with the government for the funding. See this Register story.
I don't understand why people put up with the phone companies in the USA.
In the UK, nearly all phone contracts are for one year. After a year, the customer only has to give one months notice to leave - none of this crap about being locked in for another year unless they take a new handset and sign a contract.
We can also change tariff mid contract, and it doesn't affect the contract end date.
We have had number portability for years now, enforced up by OFTEL the telecomms watchdog.
All phone companies have to unlock phones at the end of the contract if the customer asks, again enforced by law.
I don't understand why in the USA, phone companies get away with extending contracts by another year at the slightest excuse, locking customers into 2 year contracts, refusing to unlock phones for new SIM cards, putting extra "taxes" on the bill with no real basis, and dragging their feet over number portability. Why does the general public put up with it???
I live in the UK and I have a TV set, which I use only for DVD's and an old Amiga. I called the TV licencing people and told them I didn't want a licence for the above reasons. They made a note of that fact, and told me to unplug the arial and detune the channels, and that would be enough.
I find moving house is a good way to cut down on computer junk.
First me and my wife moved from a huge house to a tiny house... and had a computer giveaway party for all my nerd friends. It was painful, but fun to see everyones faces when they saw the more esoteric computers in my collection.
Then we emigrated to Amsterdam, and had to fit everything we owned into two cars to go on the boat. That didn't work out, so six months later we moved back to England, fitting everything into one small self-storage room for a month. Hard to deal with, but I own far less junk now.
I have to correct you here: In Britain there are Five providers, and the newest, 3, uses 3G CDMA, although it does use a SIM card. You are correct in that Orange, Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile use GSM though.
Tesco generally have phone recycling leaflets by the till. When they started they had banners over the till as well. As for batteries, I don't think anyone would object to them being placed in a phonebak box, but I don't know about tesco and charity shops taking them.
Tha facilities are there, you just aren't looking hard enough. In the UK, nearly every mobile phone shop is part of the Phonebak scheme. You can tell because they have a big green box with a recycling logo (three green arrows) on it. You can also recyle phones at charity shops, which gets them money, or at supermarkets like Tesco, who will give you 5 pounds worth of clubcard points. There is no shortage of phone and battery recycling facilities here.
A lot of phone companies will allow you to trade-in your old phone toward the cost of a new one, and then recycle the old one.
Personally I sell my old phones on eBay for a profit.
I sell mobile phones for a living and I have to point out that this isn't true. A year ago most phones were dual band, with maybe 5 - 10% tri band. Recently it's been more like 33% to 50% tri band. Of course now I have moved on to selling 3G phones and the US has once again chosen a completely incompatible standard...
Celebrating 400 years of religious intolerance. I prefer to let off my fireworks at the new year.
This has been done already...
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
...a very long time ago.
I used to have an ADDS Mentor computer. It ran the PICK operating system and had a database as the file system. The commands it used were so obscure that it was the only computer where I have ever needed to refer to the manual for basic operations but it was fast enough to run 16 users (terminals) on only a Z8000 at 8MHz with 512K of memory.
Not true. They tax you for owning a TV, whether you watch it (and what you watch) is irrelevant.
Not true either. The TV licence is for receiving broadcast TV. (From anyone, not just the BBC.) If you have a TV that is not used for receiving broadcasts, for example one that is used only for DVD's and games, you don't have to pay the licence fee. I simply rang up the licence people and said I didn't want a licence, they made a note of my reason and told me to unplug the arial and de-tune all the channels.
PAL was designed without such backward-compatibility concerns.
Actually PAL is backwards compatible with black and white TV's. It's just that the system referred to above was a 405 line system on VHF, which is what came before the 625 line TV's that led to PAL and colour.
Backwards compatible didn't extend as far as a system on a different frequency with fewer lines, going back 2 generations of TV technology.
I recommend a full length leather trenchcoat. Mine has two very deep outside pockets, and four inside pockets. Ample room for my phone, PDA, wallet, headphones, knife, lighter, torch and anything else I pick up. It beats the belt clips I used to have. Now I just have to take my coat off and I am free of all gadgets. On top of all that, it looks cool. It's just a shame the Matrix stole my look...
I'm curious, why would you think that Why do people hate America? should be labeled as 'dangerous'?
Well, it was just the first example that came to mind. I could have used the fictional "Nuclear weapons for Dummies" but I am sure in this day and age that a much less dangerous book would be enough to get someone picked up and put in prison without trial. (The UK suspended parts of the human rights act in order to imprison suspected terrorists without trial.)
I am sure that reading Why do people hate America could be enough to arouse suspcion, just as much as yelling "George Bush is a murderer" could attract unwanted police attention.
I hadn't actually read the book, just seen it on TV in Spooks, a drama about MI5 agents in the UK. It does sound like an interesting read though.
My local library (Colchester, UK) is already doing this. To check out books, I now have to place the books on the counter and swipe my library card through the computer. The titles of the books pop up on the screen, a recipt is printed and then I can go. My only concern is that someone (government, police) could set up a scanner elswhere to scan for "dangerous" books such as "Why people hate America."
I bought a second hand book from them recently. The first thing I did was rip out the label from the back containing the RFID tag.
Not likely if you reproduce the song in whole. If you used a 30 second exerpt, then it probably would.
Here is my cunning plan:
1) Take a music track ripped from a CD. 2) Split into 30 second chunks. 3) Add a review soundbite to each chunk. ("This sucks") 4) Freely distribute chunks of music with review attached.
5) End user can play all the parts in sequence, with the review chopped out by their computer.
6) Result: Sharing and playback of copyright works with no legal comeback! (Note, final step is not "profit" since there is not method of making money here.)
How many of us here on slashdot are going to get tricked in this manner? For those of us on Mac or *n*x systems the difference is obvious.
I saw a "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address" ad for the first time recently. I laughed so much I had to click on it... at which point it told me it had "detected windows!"
I think Redhat might have something to say about those degrading comments toward their software on my computer.
Aside from that, the website tried to fraudulently sell me software that won't run on my Linux system. Would an off-the-shelf Lindows user have known not to enter their credit card number?
Most of the copyright crap that's been going on in the US has been because we're letting the Europeans dictate policy to us.
That is complete crap. European "intellectual property" laws are being forced by the World Trade Organisation, which is bought and sold by US business, same as your shitty government.
A webstore is probably unneccasary for the high end SGI stuff, but why can't I buy one of the low end SGI's online? The website could sell accessories like cables, CD drives, monitors and CD media sets, even minor CPU and RAM upgrades, as well as their refurbished older workstations. A second user Octane 2 might just be in my price range - why can't I buy it online?
Slashdot Mirror
Why? I already pay for my internet connection. If the money I pay for my connection doesn't cover the cost of the internet backbone, then my ISP has a bad business model. That's not my fault, is it?
Steve.
BT has all the problems of an incumbent monopoly phone company. It doesn't react very quickly, is reluctant to provide new technology, and charges too much for services, especialy when they are to competitors.
A good place to find out more would be the Register which is full of stories about BT.
Steve.
People in the UK can now get VoIP from BT with BT Broadband Voice. They are aiming it at people with cable connections. The odd thing is that they recommend still keeping a normal phone line.
It's quite strange to see BT doing something before anyone else.
Steve.
I'm curious why tcsh is your first choice on Irix.
Because tcsh has filename completion and it's history can be recalled with the arrow keys. I have Bash installed now as well, but it gets confused because my home directory is shared between an IRIX machine and a Linux machine and some commands don't work on both.
and 1% use something else because bash/linux is too mainstream for them
I don't know about that, I use tcsh because it's pre-installed on IRIX and better then the csh.
Please note that the parent post is exagerating - it does not take 6 months to see an NHS doctor, it takes anything from 1 - 7 days depending on where you go.
Secondly, this project was the idea of the NHS, not the government, and the NHS IT director is negotiating with the government for the funding. See this Register story.
Steve.
I don't understand why people put up with the phone companies in the USA.
In the UK, nearly all phone contracts are for one year. After a year, the customer only has to give one months notice to leave - none of this crap about being locked in for another year unless they take a new handset and sign a contract.
We can also change tariff mid contract, and it doesn't affect the contract end date.
We have had number portability for years now, enforced up by OFTEL the telecomms watchdog.
All phone companies have to unlock phones at the end of the contract if the customer asks, again enforced by law.
I don't understand why in the USA, phone companies get away with extending contracts by another year at the slightest excuse, locking customers into 2 year contracts, refusing to unlock phones for new SIM cards, putting extra "taxes" on the bill with no real basis, and dragging their feet over number portability. Why does the general public put up with it???
Steve.
I live in the UK and I have a TV set, which I use only for DVD's and an old Amiga. I called the TV licencing people and told them I didn't want a licence for the above reasons. They made a note of that fact, and told me to unplug the arial and detune the channels, and that would be enough.
Steve.
Well I'm still here. I just had to change my DNS servers and I was back online. That cable wasn't the only connection across the sea you know.
Steve.
I find moving house is a good way to cut down on computer junk.
First me and my wife moved from a huge house to a tiny house... and had a computer giveaway party for all my nerd friends. It was painful, but fun to see everyones faces when they saw the more esoteric computers in my collection.
Then we emigrated to Amsterdam, and had to fit everything we owned into two cars to go on the boat. That didn't work out, so six months later we moved back to England, fitting everything into one small self-storage room for a month. Hard to deal with, but I own far less junk now.
Steve.
I have to correct you here: In Britain there are Five providers, and the newest, 3, uses 3G CDMA, although it does use a SIM card. You are correct in that Orange, Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile use GSM though.
Steve.
Tesco generally have phone recycling leaflets by the till. When they started they had banners over the till as well. As for batteries, I don't think anyone would object to them being placed in a phonebak box, but I don't know about tesco and charity shops taking them.
Tha facilities are there, you just aren't looking hard enough. In the UK, nearly every mobile phone shop is part of the Phonebak scheme. You can tell because they have a big green box with a recycling logo (three green arrows) on it. You can also recyle phones at charity shops, which gets them money, or at supermarkets like Tesco, who will give you 5 pounds worth of clubcard points. There is no shortage of phone and battery recycling facilities here.
A lot of phone companies will allow you to trade-in your old phone toward the cost of a new one, and then recycle the old one.
Personally I sell my old phones on eBay for a profit.
I sell mobile phones for a living and I have to point out that this isn't true. A year ago most phones were dual band, with maybe 5 - 10% tri band. Recently it's been more like 33% to 50% tri band. Of course now I have moved on to selling 3G phones and the US has once again chosen a completely incompatible standard...
Celebrating 400 years of religious intolerance.
I prefer to let off my fireworks at the new year.
...a very long time ago.
I used to have an ADDS Mentor computer. It ran the PICK operating system and had a database as the file system. The commands it used were so obscure that it was the only computer where I have ever needed to refer to the manual for basic operations but it was fast enough to run 16 users (terminals) on only a Z8000 at 8MHz with 512K of memory.
This is definately not a Microsoft "innovation."
Not true either.
The TV licence is for receiving broadcast TV. (From anyone, not just the BBC.) If you have a TV that is not used for receiving broadcasts, for example one that is used only for DVD's and games, you don't have to pay the licence fee. I simply rang up the licence people and said I didn't want a licence, they made a note of my reason and told me to unplug the arial and de-tune all the channels.
Steve.
Actually PAL is backwards compatible with black and white TV's. It's just that the system referred to above was a 405 line system on VHF, which is what came before the 625 line TV's that led to PAL and colour.
Backwards compatible didn't extend as far as a system on a different frequency with fewer lines, going back 2 generations of TV technology.
I recommend a full length leather trenchcoat. Mine has two very deep outside pockets, and four inside pockets. Ample room for my phone, PDA, wallet, headphones, knife, lighter, torch and anything else I pick up. It beats the belt clips I used to have. Now I just have to take my coat off and I am free of all gadgets.
On top of all that, it looks cool. It's just a shame the Matrix stole my look...
Well, it was just the first example that came to mind. I could have used the fictional "Nuclear weapons for Dummies" but I am sure in this day and age that a much less dangerous book would be enough to get someone picked up and put in prison without trial. (The UK suspended parts of the human rights act in order to imprison suspected terrorists without trial.)
I am sure that reading Why do people hate America could be enough to arouse suspcion, just as much as yelling "George Bush is a murderer" could attract unwanted police attention.
I hadn't actually read the book, just seen it on TV in Spooks, a drama about MI5 agents in the UK. It does sound like an interesting read though.
My local library (Colchester, UK) is already doing this. To check out books, I now have to place the books on the counter and swipe my library card through the computer. The titles of the books pop up on the screen, a recipt is printed and then I can go. My only concern is that someone (government, police) could set up a scanner elswhere to scan for "dangerous" books such as "Why people hate America."
I bought a second hand book from them recently. The first thing I did was rip out the label from the back containing the RFID tag.
Not likely if you reproduce the song in whole. If you used a 30 second exerpt, then it probably would.
Here is my cunning plan:
1) Take a music track ripped from a CD.
2) Split into 30 second chunks.
3) Add a review soundbite to each chunk. ("This sucks")
4) Freely distribute chunks of music with review attached.
5) End user can play all the parts in sequence, with the review chopped out by their computer.
6) Result: Sharing and playback of copyright works with no legal comeback! (Note, final step is not "profit" since there is not method of making money here.)
How many of us here on slashdot are going to get tricked in this manner? For those of us on Mac or *n*x systems the difference is obvious.
I saw a "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address" ad for the first time recently. I laughed so much I had to click on it... at which point it told me it had "detected windows!"
I think Redhat might have something to say about those degrading comments toward their software on my computer.
Aside from that, the website tried to fraudulently sell me software that won't run on my Linux system. Would an off-the-shelf Lindows user have known not to enter their credit card number?
Most of the copyright crap that's been going on in the US has been because we're letting the Europeans dictate policy to us.
That is complete crap. European "intellectual property" laws are being forced by the World Trade Organisation, which is bought and sold by US business, same as your shitty government.
A webstore is probably unneccasary for the high end SGI stuff, but why can't I buy one of the low end SGI's online? The website could sell accessories like cables, CD drives, monitors and CD media sets, even minor CPU and RAM upgrades, as well as their refurbished older workstations. A second user Octane 2 might just be in my price range - why can't I buy it online?