Doesn't California have 3-tier calling zones? Like within a 10 mile radius is an untimed, uncharged call, and going up from there? That is considerably more confusing than most places in the US, where you have a simple list of cities that are free to call from your city, all the rest are either local toll or long-distance (Thanks to the FCC for that local toll clusterfuck...*sigh*)
BTW, I wasn't trying to imply that the poster was an idiot, merely that he may not quite understand the US system, since he's used to another, that's all:) Besides, why are you getting worked up over a percieved insult to someone else? Why not watch your own back, eh?
Not to pick on you specifically, but I think I would be remiss in failing to point out that you, and most everyone else in this thread don't grok the real reason that the US doesn't have CPP. The average joe (not geeks) would have a fit.
We hate paying for local calls, so if someone tried to charge us money to call their cellphone, we (as a whole) wouldn't do it!
Stupid? Maybe, even probably. The way things are? Certainly. Personally, I go out of my way to make it cheap for people to call me. I have a number that anyone in the LATA can call for no charge.
I believe that an argument can be made that GSM is a generally "better" standard than the IS-136 standard, although IS-136 now pretty much has the same features. However, I don't agree that CPP is the way to go. I don't think that 100% mobile usage is the be all and end all "best case."
Also note that service providers in the US are not prohibited from using CPP, they just have to get a "special rate" prefix, like 976 or something. Note also that no one does it in the US:)
Bearers in the US are mostly 64k at this point, save for some old overflow trunks
Also, is it not true that T1 was developed before E1? And 011 was in use before 00,
in most countries?
The problem is not the US being different, per se, but that the US telecom system has little capacity for change
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Re:Wired News has an article...
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SMS vs. E-mail?
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Say I call my brother's cell phone in France from the UK, it's the same charge if I call him in Switzerland or Germany. I don't have to dial different country codes for each country (how am I meant to know what country he's in without speaking to him, or even know he's abroad? catch 22) so you just dial the same number you do in the UK, and if the cell is roaming in France it gets patched over to their GSM network.
We have Follow-Me Roaming, too, you know.:) Check the NACN membership list. If I'm roaming on any one of those providers (ones with compatible air interfaces, obviously, which, in the US for me means AMPS, NAMPS, or IS-136) calls to my local number will normally ring me. You must remember that in the US, since we have flat-rate landline calls, callers would throw a fit if they had to pay to call your mobile. Therefore the systems are both good for their respective markets.:)
That is where the comparison breaks down. In the US, most people do not pay for local calls, therefore paying to call a mobile seems outrageous. Due to that, the person with the mobile pays for the recieved call, and more if they are out of their home area, assuming their plan doesn't include roaming charges. Here, people would be loath to call you if they had to pay to call your mobile when it is free to call your landline.
The issue really boils down to the systems being different because the telecommunications philosophies are different, thanks to the flat-rate landline calls here. Therefore, I conclude that both systems have their merits. The US way would not suit those in places where you normally pay for calls, and vice versa.
If you have a landline in the US, you have to pay an ADDITIONAL fee to use TOUCHTONE dialling - yes, touchtone, as in the 60s technology that has been used in every telephone since they dropped the rotary handset.
This may be true in some states, but where I live, Touch Tone is free. It has been that way for many years.
Actually, now I'm on the landline thing... why so many problems with US landlines? I have lived in California, Texas, and Massachusetts, and they all have appallingly bad service. The long distance and local service are never integrated properly, calls frequently cannot be completed because circuits are busy, and the charges are far higher than in Europe.
You just named the three worst states as far as landline telephones are concerned. For whatever reason, while Southwestern Bell works great in Arkansas, in Texas, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. In California and Massachussetts, the PUCs have turned phone service European-style and charge per-minute for most calls (in California, calls outside a 10 mile radius, I believe). In my case, I pay $17 a month and can call 400,000 access lines or so. The calling area is most of two counties.
About Sprint PCS...they are ridiculous, pompous, self-aggrandizing, and they use deceptive marketing. (Trying to compare their Free and Clear to Cingular Nation plans, AT&T One Rate, and the like, when they charge roaming anytime you're off their network, while the others don't):)
No, the frequency isn't the problem. The issue is with receiver-pays and the lack of wide-area access to carrier without roaming. This scheme didn't just fail in the US, it failed in every country that they forced it on.
First off, if you want to have a rational discussion, you should avoid using words like "scheme," which implies that the system is a deceitful enterprise sucking the blood out of us poor American wireless users. This is not true. Also, note, that the US did not and does not force particular wireless systems on other countries.
Secondly, there _IS_ wide access (within the country, and in Canada) to carriers. If you do not want to pay for roaming, pay for a plan that includes the entire lower 48 states as no-roaming.
The frequency is indeed the problem causing the lack of transparent GSM roaming to/from the US. For example, (not to say the US's frequency allocation plans are better than Europe's, or that they are more important, it's just a number to use) had GSM in Europe used 1900MHz, it is likely that we would see more GSM providers in the US, and European GSM users would be able to roam transparently in the US. Thanks to that oversight, it isn't possible without phones that support 3 or 4 frequency bands.
One more thing, those of us who like to be reachable are just as capable of doing it as folks in Europe, we just don't answer the phone if it's not someone we feel like paying to speak with. You must remember that in the US, local calls are free, so people have a natural aversion to making a call that will cost them money. In Europe, people normally pay per minute to call, so that aversion doesn't exist. If my friends had to pay to call my mobile, they'd just wait until I got home to talk to me.;)
Finally, I'd like to point out that I don't see anything wrong with either system. They are simply suited towards differing philosphies in telecommunications. (Pay local calls vs. Free local calls, mainly)
Alternatively, shouldn't the caller pay to call the person on the mobile, as they are seeing the benefit of being able to call them when they are away from a landline?
I've always seen it as an advantage to the person with the mobile, simply because they are no longer tied to their landline phone when they are expecting a call. There is, of course, nothing forcing the person with the mobile to pay for the calling party's charges, since they can either restrict the distribution of their number, or they can choose to *gasp* not answer the phone, since nearly all digital providers in the US provide Caller ID for no charge.
This is somewhat off-topic, but the comparison between the US mobile telephony market and the market in the rest of the world (and particularly Europe) is one of my favourite examples of why a free market is not always advantageous - the imposition of the GSM standard upon the fledgling European mobile phone companies has been a license for them to print money, at the same time as achieving massive customer satisfaction, whilst the freer, no-government-imposed-standard US market has floundered.
To say that the US mobile phone market has floundered is a gross overstatement of the comparative growth rates of US and European wireless phone use. The US mobile phone market has had an enormous growth rate for the past several years. Perhaps you cannot grasp the fact that most of the US (not the geeks, but everyone else) has a different attitude about such things. Europenans see mobile phones as such a great thing because they always have to pay for a call that they place. So it is not onerus for them to pay for a call to a mobile phone. Here it is different, and so it is. That however, has nothing to do with the differing marketshare. The difference comes down to this: The US has generally better landline service (with the notable exception of the astronomical price of ISDN), and so most folks in the US see no need for a wireless phone. It serves them little purpose, and has the distinct financial disadvantage which I pointed out above.
In light of the differing attitudes towards telephony in the two regions of the world, it stands to reason that the US mobile phone industry is at a distinct disadvantage wrt the European mobile phone industry, as far as economics from the average American viewpoint.
Note: There is a wireless company in the US that has a good chance of changing this to at least some degree. Cricket, who sells a flat rate phone for $29.95 a month or so. The advantage over a land line being that you can go anywhere around town with it. The disadvantage wrt "standard" companies being that there is little or no roaming. The best you ever see is in some markets, where there is another nearby Cricket area, you will be able to roam onto the Cricket system in the neighboring city, but no others.
-Nathan
P.S. The FCC chose to let digital carriers choose their own air interfaces because they require that all 800MHz carriers maintain some level of AMPS service, and therefore the calls will always be able to go through, just with a temporary lack of the digital voice channel. Care about freedom?
Re:International Compatibility...
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SMS vs. E-mail?
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Until they [the service providers] decide to come up with some standard messaging protocals, you are pretty much screwed.
The protocol used to communicate between the handset and the MTSO is irrelevant. The only thing that matters (as in GSM) is whether there is a messaging gateway between the networks.
I used to have a phone on one of AT&T's "affiliated" networks. I could send my phone messages through AT&T or through my own provider, and vice versa. I can only assume this is because AT&T and my provider had a gateway (probably funded by AT&T so it's subscribers could recieve messages while in my provider's area).
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Re:Mobile Phone pricing in the US is just ridiculo
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SMS vs. E-mail?
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In Australia I was paying about US$5 per month for a mobile phone, not paying to receive calls and paying about US$0.25/min for outgoing calls. Given that I don't use the phone that much I was more than happy with that price. I could go anywhere in Australia with that phone and have coverage - all for that one price. I took that phone to Italy and STILL had coverage without even talking to a company in Italy.
You can do that here, just buy a pre-paid phone, and occasional pre-paid cards. I believe you can have a phone on AT&T's network for as little as $24.95 every three months. I believe that's for the 30 minute cards. I will grant you that we can't roam to Europe, which kind of sucks, but I'd wager that most people in the US with cellphones don't ever leave the US anyway, it's not like Europe, where most of the countries are larger than our average-sized states.
If you find land-line billing complex, you must have trouble grasping flat rate pricing (unless you're in California, Chicago, NYC, or one of the other areas without flat-rate calling) It's very simple. If you call someone within your free calling area, it costs you no more, if you call past that, but within your state, it will cost whatever your "in-state" long distance carrier charges you, as per your agreement with them. If you call out of state, it will cost you whatever price you have negotiated with your "in country" long distance carrier. If for whatever reason, you'd prefer to use an alternative carrier to your normal one, use a 101-xxxx code and dial up the carrier you like. Not too hard.
Where I live, the price of my land line is based on the number of subscriber lines that are within my local calling area. In Arkansas, there are three ranges of numbers. My area was recently re-classified by the PUC as being in the highest group. I still pay only $17/mo for the line (not counting tax and FCC fees, which bring it to $21/mo)
If you have questions about your telephone bill, you might try calling your telco's customer service number. I'm sure they would be happy to explain the charges you are paying (with the exception of the FCC fees, which the tier 1 support folks have problems grasping).
The point of this whole thing is simply to point out that we are not being screwed, as we don't pay per minute to call our ISP, or anyone else in the same city (and usually several neighboring ones as well). For those of us who use our phones (both mobile and land line) the US system is a much better deal. BTW, if you want a cellphone for emergency use only, just buy some old analog phone. Federal law mandates that all wireless carriers allow 911 access, for no charge, to all phones capable of operating with that carrier's signal. If, however, you want to talk, you do have to pay, although there may be some CPP plans in larger cities of the US of which I'm not aware.
Mobile services in US are quite retarded anyway - different standards, even GSM standard is different from European; different networks incompatible, no decent mobile phones (Nokia 62xx series that is)...
Perhaps if Europeans who developed GSM had not chosen a frequency which was at the time, and will be for a good while longer, in use in the US by the US Military, and instead chosen a frequency with the input of the FCC, which all countries had free, we could enjoy GSM at the same frequency as they are in Europe. Alas, the developers of GSM chose almost the worst frequency they could have, and then chose to blame the US for the incompatibility. Hrmph.
This would be true if it weren't for the other thing that cripples the US mobile telephony market - this ridiculous idea that you pay (or use up your free airtime) to receive calls! So, all the US airtime packages seem attractive... until you realise that you're actually not getting to use all those airtime minutes to make calls yourself.
The idea is not ridiculous. It is a natural extension of the way the land-line telephones work here. It is a simple extension of the philosophy that those who see the benifit should pay for it. If you choose to "go mobile," you pay for that choice. Those who call you do not. Besides, we're not paying for someone else to call us, we're paying for the finite resource of spectrum we are using.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Re:Wired News has an article...
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SMS vs. E-mail?
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In my opinion US system is screwed up. You get a ton of minutes you can only use at certain times of day or certain days and have to pay for all of them even if you end up using none.. Paying for what you actually use and getting free receiving makes much more sense(unless you really use all of your monthly quota up every month).
Apparently, you don't grok the advantages of not having to pay for local land-line calls. In certain cities or states, there are, but in most of the US, it's a flat rate for anywhere within a fairly wide (usually) calling area, and only if you place a long-distance call do you pay per minute. Due to this, along with the lack of mobile phones being in their own area codes, makes it nearly impossible to come up with a plan to implement calling party pays.
Even if it could be implemented, I would prefer the current system. I don't believe that others who are trying to reach my should have to pay for my own convienence. I pay for 550 minutes/mo with no roaming fees or long distance fees anywhere in the US, on any network with which my carrier has a roaming agreement (most of the carriers serving more than a single county, and at least one anywhere there is mobile phone service). I also get up to 200 text messages/e-mails for free each month. I am almost always within 25 minutes of my alotted 550, so the deal works well for me. I get the convienence of my phone, and having people willing to call that number to reach me, since they don't have to pay.
Many people argue that the lack of CPP in the US is causing less cellphone usage, but given how everyone I know who wants one has one, I don't really see how that can hold true. There is now even a carrier that gives you unlimited minutes for $29.95/mo, within your home area. Also, in the US, carriers are free to implement some sort of a CPP service, but there is apparently little demand for it.
People who choose to purchase blocks of Night & Weekend minutes usually do so because the rate is extremely cheap (thanks to the much lower usage during those hours), and that is when they do most of their calling. For people who use their phones during the day, they can also get a phone for $0.10/min or less for a "home area only" plan. It's really up to the individual. It is also possible, with most carriers to have either a small number of minutes or no minutes at all for a small monthly fee, but they charge you $0.40/min or so to use your phone.
If I install Linux (whichever distribution) and then go to/usr/src/linux and type in "make", will the resulting vmlinux (or vmlinuz) be identical to the kernel that I'm running right now?
In Red Hat and Mandrake, (and most others, probably), the drivers for almost everything (sans IDE disks), are built as modules, and a suitable/etc/modules.conf is generated at install time. Then on each boot Kudzu checks for new hardware and adds any necessary gunk to modules.conf to get it to load when you try to access the device.
So if you do make menuconfig (exit, yes save this), make dep;make clean;make bzImage;make modules, the generated files should indeed match the default Red Hat or Mandrake setup. As soon as you start compiling drivers into the kernel directly, you cease running the distribution's kernel.
Nah, I actually meant NTSC & ISDN. They're my two pet peeves. NTSC's quality is rubbish compared to PAL. And why have 56k when you could have 64?
And I think PAL's inferior frame rate is rubbish, what's your point? As far as ISDN, pretty much only overflow trunks using outdated equipment have restrictions on clear channel 64Kbps calls here in the US.
Speaking of which, what's up with you paying per minute to connect to the Internet over ISDN, what a crock!;) I will admit however, that the dearth of good NI-1 ISDN voice equipment makes ISDN in the US a losing proposition.
Also note that not only did Europe come up with their own standard for mobile phones (GSM, I don't have a problem with this), but they chose a frequency band (1800MHz) which was, still is, has been for a long time, and probably will be until I've been dead 500 years, in use by the US military. It seems that many European radio standards do that... But let's not turn this into a US vs. Europe bit. Suffice it to say that had the US and Europe historically had the same mobile phone frequencies, the US probably would have seen GSM much sooner, as we'd all be able to take our phones overseas.
And just for completeness, the other factor in the US's slow adoption of digital technology is that the FCC did, and still does require that all 800MHz carriers reserve channels for AMPS use. IIRC, for a good while, the 800MHz carriers couldn't run other services in that band, with the possible exception of CDPD, and then only because it is secondary to AMPS service. (If a user tries to make a voice call, and it's the last free channel, the CDPD user is out of luck.)
Personally, I think if CDPD was more widely deployed, it would make the whole wireless data thing much easier. Although the max data rate ends up being around 9600bps, for text-only browsing, that's plenty fast. It's just too bad that aside from Florida and the northeast, there's no real widespread CDPD coverage.
You really have missed Gibson's point. His point is, how much worse the situation will be if most DDoS attacks are spoofed. Then one can't do what he did (i.e. contact the ISPs of the zombie machines).
If all ISPs filtered at their borders, or even a significant portion of them did, there would be little significance in the amount of spoofed attacks.
AFAIK, the only way to spoof IP addresses in Windows is to install a new networking stack, and that is difficult to do in the kind of generic way that zombie clients work, for reasons Gibson discusses in an article at his site.
This is a fallacy. With WinPCap you can forge packets, without a reboot. Even if it does require a reboot, how many Windows users would think anything of it if their system suddenly crashed? What an easy way for the trojan that downloads WinPcap to force a reboot.
Face it, the man is a loon... (Not as big a loon as me, but still)
Config file - you mean.config? Tell me, when I do a stock installation of Red Hat Linux, where is the.config file that represents my system?
Perhaps in the kernel-source RPM?
I don't know about RedHat, but on Mandrake if you make menuconfig in/usr/src/linux, on a virgin install, it has the options the default kernel was compiled with selected.
Steve Gibson's at GCR about the DDOS attacks are priceless.
Read with a skeptical eye. There are several points he makes in there which are quite idiotic. Note how he rants about Microsoft finally implementing a real IP stack for Windows. Then compare that against his own admission that the attacks against him, and indeed, most DDoS attacks are not spoofed. Then check out the myriad ways to spoof source addresses in Windows, even with Microsoft's current half-baked IP stack.
That article makes Gibson look like the bullshit artist he is. That said, it's certainly better than nothing, assuming that everyone that reads it can sort out the crap from the good parts.
Caveat: Cisco basically does not have first level support (i.e. "'Is the router plugged in?' 'What's a router?') - you are supposed to have second level knowledge and have completed the first level troubleshooting before you call TAC.
Heh, I've been on vacation (unfortunately, I work with small offices, so no budget for other techs, just me and my cellphone), when the Cisco 804 (Which, while being just about the best ISDN router out there, blows goats anyway) lost its config for whatever reason, and the Office Manager called up TAC, and they walked her through getting it configured well enough to dial up to their ISP, and then the guy telnetted in and reconfiged the whole deal. Did a better job than when I configured it, too..:) I'd still like to know why it spontaneously lost it's startup-config though. Must have been that Florida lightning...
such that it's not possible to write software for profit ever again (atleast not in a world taken over by Linux as the OS of choice).
You seem to fail to recognize the exception that, if the libraries are distributed with your operating system, you may link against them whether or not your application is proprietary, therefore I declare your statement to be misguided and incorrect.
Despite the above, the GPL is still indeed a viral license, but it's more like a common cold virus, rather than the Ebola virus you would make it out to be.
P.S. While I realize that the invocation of the Ebola virus may seem heartless, I submit that it is indeed a good comparison.
We've got a couple of sites running with Netopia R7100s and they work great. The problem is finding a good enough pair for them. Often, in small towns, it's the only way to get anything greater than an analog dialup without leasing an expensive 56K data line. Of course, now, 2 years later, both towns have DSL through their LECs, but it's all ADSL, not SDSL.
Simple, use NAT for the humans and set up all your servers with IPs from all of your access providers, and use DNS to direct the traffic where-ever you want to go. Keep the TTL on the zone low, and you won't be out for more than a couple of minutes.
You also have the
luxury of calling party pays, unlike us poor suckers here in the US. That is one thing that I would love to see changed by the FCC.
The FCC has nothing to do with it. Blame your cellphone company. They could offer it under current regs if they wanted to. However, many of us here in the US become irate at the thought of having to pay for someone else's convienence. I pay for a cellphone not so others can pay to call me, but so I can be reachable anywhere I go because my job demands it.
Should I have to pay if you have activated call forwarding on your landline phone to some other number? No, because it is at your convienence, not mine.
Hey, that's fine if you don't beleave in the American Dream and the American way of life.
Long term intellectual property is un-American. It's also anti-freedom. Note that if I can disassemble some mechanical device, unless it's patented (evil patents) I'm perfectly free to copy it if I want to.
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Doesn't California have 3-tier calling zones? Like within a 10 mile radius is an untimed, uncharged call, and going up from there? That is considerably more confusing than most places in the US, where you have a simple list of cities that are free to call from your city, all the rest are either local toll or long-distance (Thanks to the FCC for that local toll clusterfuck...*sigh*)
BTW, I wasn't trying to imply that the poster was an idiot, merely that he may not quite understand the US system, since he's used to another, that's all :) Besides, why are you getting worked up over a percieved insult to someone else? Why not watch your own back, eh?
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Not to pick on you specifically, but I think I would be remiss in failing to point out that you, and most everyone else in this thread don't grok the real reason that the US doesn't have CPP. The average joe (not geeks) would have a fit. We hate paying for local calls, so if someone tried to charge us money to call their cellphone, we (as a whole) wouldn't do it! Stupid? Maybe, even probably. The way things are? Certainly. Personally, I go out of my way to make it cheap for people to call me. I have a number that anyone in the LATA can call for no charge.
I believe that an argument can be made that GSM is a generally "better" standard than the IS-136 standard, although IS-136 now pretty much has the same features. However, I don't agree that CPP is the way to go. I don't think that 100% mobile usage is the be all and end all "best case." Also note that service providers in the US are not prohibited from using CPP, they just have to get a "special rate" prefix, like 976 or something. Note also that no one does it in the US :)
Care about freedom?
Damn Lynx.. Short replies only...
Bearers in the US are mostly 64k at this point, save for some old overflow trunks Also, is it not true that T1 was developed before E1? And 011 was in use before 00, in most countries?
The problem is not the US being different, per se, but that the US telecom system has little capacity for change
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Say I call my brother's cell phone in France from the UK, it's the same charge if I call him in Switzerland or Germany. I don't have to dial different country codes for each country (how am I meant to know what country he's in without speaking to him, or even know he's abroad? catch 22) so you just dial the same number you do in the UK, and if the cell is roaming in France it gets patched over to their GSM network.
We have Follow-Me Roaming, too, you know. :) Check the NACN membership list. If I'm roaming on any one of those providers (ones with compatible air interfaces, obviously, which, in the US for me means AMPS, NAMPS, or IS-136) calls to my local number will normally ring me. You must remember that in the US, since we have flat-rate landline calls, callers would throw a fit if they had to pay to call your mobile. Therefore the systems are both good for their respective markets. :)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
I'm paying for a call to his usual mobile region
That is where the comparison breaks down. In the US, most people do not pay for local calls, therefore paying to call a mobile seems outrageous. Due to that, the person with the mobile pays for the recieved call, and more if they are out of their home area, assuming their plan doesn't include roaming charges. Here, people would be loath to call you if they had to pay to call your mobile when it is free to call your landline.
The issue really boils down to the systems being different because the telecommunications philosophies are different, thanks to the flat-rate landline calls here. Therefore, I conclude that both systems have their merits. The US way would not suit those in places where you normally pay for calls, and vice versa.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
If you have a landline in the US, you have to pay an ADDITIONAL fee to use TOUCHTONE dialling - yes, touchtone, as in the 60s technology that has been used in every telephone since they dropped the rotary handset.
This may be true in some states, but where I live, Touch Tone is free. It has been that way for many years.
Actually, now I'm on the landline thing... why so many problems with US landlines? I have lived in California, Texas, and Massachusetts, and they all have appallingly bad service. The long distance and local service are never integrated properly, calls frequently cannot be completed because circuits are busy, and the charges are far higher than in Europe.
You just named the three worst states as far as landline telephones are concerned. For whatever reason, while Southwestern Bell works great in Arkansas, in Texas, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. In California and Massachussetts, the PUCs have turned phone service European-style and charge per-minute for most calls (in California, calls outside a 10 mile radius, I believe). In my case, I pay $17 a month and can call 400,000 access lines or so. The calling area is most of two counties.About Sprint PCS...they are ridiculous, pompous, self-aggrandizing, and they use deceptive marketing. (Trying to compare their Free and Clear to Cingular Nation plans, AT&T One Rate, and the like, when they charge roaming anytime you're off their network, while the others don't) :)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
No, the frequency isn't the problem. The issue is with receiver-pays and the lack of wide-area access to carrier without roaming. This scheme didn't just fail in the US, it failed in every country that they forced it on.
First off, if you want to have a rational discussion, you should avoid using words like "scheme," which implies that the system is a deceitful enterprise sucking the blood out of us poor American wireless users. This is not true. Also, note, that the US did not and does not force particular wireless systems on other countries.
Secondly, there _IS_ wide access (within the country, and in Canada) to carriers. If you do not want to pay for roaming, pay for a plan that includes the entire lower 48 states as no-roaming.
The frequency is indeed the problem causing the lack of transparent GSM roaming to/from the US. For example, (not to say the US's frequency allocation plans are better than Europe's, or that they are more important, it's just a number to use) had GSM in Europe used 1900MHz, it is likely that we would see more GSM providers in the US, and European GSM users would be able to roam transparently in the US. Thanks to that oversight, it isn't possible without phones that support 3 or 4 frequency bands.
One more thing, those of us who like to be reachable are just as capable of doing it as folks in Europe, we just don't answer the phone if it's not someone we feel like paying to speak with. You must remember that in the US, local calls are free, so people have a natural aversion to making a call that will cost them money. In Europe, people normally pay per minute to call, so that aversion doesn't exist. If my friends had to pay to call my mobile, they'd just wait until I got home to talk to me. ;)
Finally, I'd like to point out that I don't see anything wrong with either system. They are simply suited towards differing philosphies in telecommunications. (Pay local calls vs. Free local calls, mainly)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Alternatively, shouldn't the caller pay to call the person on the mobile, as they are seeing the benefit of being able to call them when they are away from a landline?
I've always seen it as an advantage to the person with the mobile, simply because they are no longer tied to their landline phone when they are expecting a call. There is, of course, nothing forcing the person with the mobile to pay for the calling party's charges, since they can either restrict the distribution of their number, or they can choose to *gasp* not answer the phone, since nearly all digital providers in the US provide Caller ID for no charge.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
This is somewhat off-topic, but the comparison between the US mobile telephony market and the market in the rest of the world (and particularly Europe) is one of my favourite examples of why a free market is not always advantageous - the imposition of the GSM standard upon the fledgling European mobile phone companies has been a license for them to print money, at the same time as achieving massive customer satisfaction, whilst the freer, no-government-imposed-standard US market has floundered.
To say that the US mobile phone market has floundered is a gross overstatement of the comparative growth rates of US and European wireless phone use. The US mobile phone market has had an enormous growth rate for the past several years. Perhaps you cannot grasp the fact that most of the US (not the geeks, but everyone else) has a different attitude about such things. Europenans see mobile phones as such a great thing because they always have to pay for a call that they place. So it is not onerus for them to pay for a call to a mobile phone. Here it is different, and so it is. That however, has nothing to do with the differing marketshare. The difference comes down to this: The US has generally better landline service (with the notable exception of the astronomical price of ISDN), and so most folks in the US see no need for a wireless phone. It serves them little purpose, and has the distinct financial disadvantage which I pointed out above.
In light of the differing attitudes towards telephony in the two regions of the world, it stands to reason that the US mobile phone industry is at a distinct disadvantage wrt the European mobile phone industry, as far as economics from the average American viewpoint.
Note: There is a wireless company in the US that has a good chance of changing this to at least some degree. Cricket, who sells a flat rate phone for $29.95 a month or so. The advantage over a land line being that you can go anywhere around town with it. The disadvantage wrt "standard" companies being that there is little or no roaming. The best you ever see is in some markets, where there is another nearby Cricket area, you will be able to roam onto the Cricket system in the neighboring city, but no others.
-Nathan
P.S. The FCC chose to let digital carriers choose their own air interfaces because they require that all 800MHz carriers maintain some level of AMPS service, and therefore the calls will always be able to go through, just with a temporary lack of the digital voice channel.
Care about freedom?
Until they [the service providers] decide to come up with some standard messaging protocals, you are pretty much screwed.
The protocol used to communicate between the handset and the MTSO is irrelevant. The only thing that matters (as in GSM) is whether there is a messaging gateway between the networks.
I used to have a phone on one of AT&T's "affiliated" networks. I could send my phone messages through AT&T or through my own provider, and vice versa. I can only assume this is because AT&T and my provider had a gateway (probably funded by AT&T so it's subscribers could recieve messages while in my provider's area).
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
In Australia I was paying about US$5 per month for a mobile phone, not paying to receive calls and paying about US$0.25/min for outgoing calls. Given that I don't use the phone that much I was more than happy with that price. I could go anywhere in Australia with that phone and have coverage - all for that one price. I took that phone to Italy and STILL had coverage without even talking to a company in Italy.
You can do that here, just buy a pre-paid phone, and occasional pre-paid cards. I believe you can have a phone on AT&T's network for as little as $24.95 every three months. I believe that's for the 30 minute cards. I will grant you that we can't roam to Europe, which kind of sucks, but I'd wager that most people in the US with cellphones don't ever leave the US anyway, it's not like Europe, where most of the countries are larger than our average-sized states.If you find land-line billing complex, you must have trouble grasping flat rate pricing (unless you're in California, Chicago, NYC, or one of the other areas without flat-rate calling) It's very simple. If you call someone within your free calling area, it costs you no more, if you call past that, but within your state, it will cost whatever your "in-state" long distance carrier charges you, as per your agreement with them. If you call out of state, it will cost you whatever price you have negotiated with your "in country" long distance carrier. If for whatever reason, you'd prefer to use an alternative carrier to your normal one, use a 101-xxxx code and dial up the carrier you like. Not too hard.
Where I live, the price of my land line is based on the number of subscriber lines that are within my local calling area. In Arkansas, there are three ranges of numbers. My area was recently re-classified by the PUC as being in the highest group. I still pay only $17/mo for the line (not counting tax and FCC fees, which bring it to $21/mo)
If you have questions about your telephone bill, you might try calling your telco's customer service number. I'm sure they would be happy to explain the charges you are paying (with the exception of the FCC fees, which the tier 1 support folks have problems grasping).
The point of this whole thing is simply to point out that we are not being screwed, as we don't pay per minute to call our ISP, or anyone else in the same city (and usually several neighboring ones as well). For those of us who use our phones (both mobile and land line) the US system is a much better deal. BTW, if you want a cellphone for emergency use only, just buy some old analog phone. Federal law mandates that all wireless carriers allow 911 access, for no charge, to all phones capable of operating with that carrier's signal. If, however, you want to talk, you do have to pay, although there may be some CPP plans in larger cities of the US of which I'm not aware.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Mobile services in US are quite retarded anyway - different standards, even GSM standard is different from European; different networks incompatible, no decent mobile phones (Nokia 62xx series that is)...
Perhaps if Europeans who developed GSM had not chosen a frequency which was at the time, and will be for a good while longer, in use in the US by the US Military, and instead chosen a frequency with the input of the FCC, which all countries had free, we could enjoy GSM at the same frequency as they are in Europe. Alas, the developers of GSM chose almost the worst frequency they could have, and then chose to blame the US for the incompatibility. Hrmph.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
This would be true if it weren't for the other thing that cripples the US mobile telephony market - this ridiculous idea that you pay (or use up your free airtime) to receive calls! So, all the US airtime packages seem attractive... until you realise that you're actually not getting to use all those airtime minutes to make calls yourself.
The idea is not ridiculous. It is a natural extension of the way the land-line telephones work here. It is a simple extension of the philosophy that those who see the benifit should pay for it. If you choose to "go mobile," you pay for that choice. Those who call you do not. Besides, we're not paying for someone else to call us, we're paying for the finite resource of spectrum we are using.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
In my opinion US system is screwed up. You get a ton of minutes you can only use at certain times of day or certain days and have to pay for all of them even if you end up using none.. Paying for what you actually use and getting free receiving makes much more sense(unless you really use all of your monthly quota up every month).
Apparently, you don't grok the advantages of not having to pay for local land-line calls. In certain cities or states, there are, but in most of the US, it's a flat rate for anywhere within a fairly wide (usually) calling area, and only if you place a long-distance call do you pay per minute. Due to this, along with the lack of mobile phones being in their own area codes, makes it nearly impossible to come up with a plan to implement calling party pays.
Even if it could be implemented, I would prefer the current system. I don't believe that others who are trying to reach my should have to pay for my own convienence. I pay for 550 minutes/mo with no roaming fees or long distance fees anywhere in the US, on any network with which my carrier has a roaming agreement (most of the carriers serving more than a single county, and at least one anywhere there is mobile phone service). I also get up to 200 text messages/e-mails for free each month. I am almost always within 25 minutes of my alotted 550, so the deal works well for me. I get the convienence of my phone, and having people willing to call that number to reach me, since they don't have to pay.
Many people argue that the lack of CPP in the US is causing less cellphone usage, but given how everyone I know who wants one has one, I don't really see how that can hold true. There is now even a carrier that gives you unlimited minutes for $29.95/mo, within your home area. Also, in the US, carriers are free to implement some sort of a CPP service, but there is apparently little demand for it.
People who choose to purchase blocks of Night & Weekend minutes usually do so because the rate is extremely cheap (thanks to the much lower usage during those hours), and that is when they do most of their calling. For people who use their phones during the day, they can also get a phone for $0.10/min or less for a "home area only" plan. It's really up to the individual. It is also possible, with most carriers to have either a small number of minutes or no minutes at all for a small monthly fee, but they charge you $0.40/min or so to use your phone.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
If I install Linux (whichever distribution) and then go to /usr/src/linux and type in "make", will the resulting vmlinux (or vmlinuz) be identical to the kernel that I'm running right now?
In Red Hat and Mandrake, (and most others, probably), the drivers for almost everything (sans IDE disks), are built as modules, and a suitable /etc/modules.conf is generated at install time. Then on each boot Kudzu checks for new hardware and adds any necessary gunk to modules.conf to get it to load when you try to access the device.
So if you do make menuconfig (exit, yes save this), make dep;make clean;make bzImage;make modules, the generated files should indeed match the default Red Hat or Mandrake setup. As soon as you start compiling drivers into the kernel directly, you cease running the distribution's kernel.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Nah, I actually meant NTSC & ISDN. They're my two pet peeves. NTSC's quality is rubbish compared to PAL. And why have 56k when you could have 64?
And I think PAL's inferior frame rate is rubbish, what's your point? As far as ISDN, pretty much only overflow trunks using outdated equipment have restrictions on clear channel 64Kbps calls here in the US.
Speaking of which, what's up with you paying per minute to connect to the Internet over ISDN, what a crock! ;) I will admit however, that the dearth of good NI-1 ISDN voice equipment makes ISDN in the US a losing proposition.
Also note that not only did Europe come up with their own standard for mobile phones (GSM, I don't have a problem with this), but they chose a frequency band (1800MHz) which was, still is, has been for a long time, and probably will be until I've been dead 500 years, in use by the US military. It seems that many European radio standards do that... But let's not turn this into a US vs. Europe bit. Suffice it to say that had the US and Europe historically had the same mobile phone frequencies, the US probably would have seen GSM much sooner, as we'd all be able to take our phones overseas.
And just for completeness, the other factor in the US's slow adoption of digital technology is that the FCC did, and still does require that all 800MHz carriers reserve channels for AMPS use. IIRC, for a good while, the 800MHz carriers couldn't run other services in that band, with the possible exception of CDPD, and then only because it is secondary to AMPS service. (If a user tries to make a voice call, and it's the last free channel, the CDPD user is out of luck.)
Personally, I think if CDPD was more widely deployed, it would make the whole wireless data thing much easier. Although the max data rate ends up being around 9600bps, for text-only browsing, that's plenty fast. It's just too bad that aside from Florida and the northeast, there's no real widespread CDPD coverage.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
You really have missed Gibson's point. His point is, how much worse the situation will be if most DDoS attacks are spoofed. Then one can't do what he did (i.e. contact the ISPs of the zombie machines).
If all ISPs filtered at their borders, or even a significant portion of them did, there would be little significance in the amount of spoofed attacks.
AFAIK, the only way to spoof IP addresses in Windows is to install a new networking stack, and that is difficult to do in the kind of generic way that zombie clients work, for reasons Gibson discusses in an article at his site.
This is a fallacy. With WinPCap you can forge packets, without a reboot. Even if it does require a reboot, how many Windows users would think anything of it if their system suddenly crashed? What an easy way for the trojan that downloads WinPcap to force a reboot.
Face it, the man is a loon... (Not as big a loon as me, but still)
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Config file - you mean .config? Tell me, when I do a stock installation of Red Hat Linux, where is the .config file that represents my system?
Perhaps in the kernel-source RPM?
I don't know about RedHat, but on Mandrake if you make menuconfig in /usr/src/linux, on a virgin install, it has the options the default kernel was compiled with selected.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Steve Gibson's at GCR about the DDOS attacks are priceless.
Read with a skeptical eye. There are several points he makes in there which are quite idiotic. Note how he rants about Microsoft finally implementing a real IP stack for Windows. Then compare that against his own admission that the attacks against him, and indeed, most DDoS attacks are not spoofed. Then check out the myriad ways to spoof source addresses in Windows, even with Microsoft's current half-baked IP stack.
That article makes Gibson look like the bullshit artist he is. That said, it's certainly better than nothing, assuming that everyone that reads it can sort out the crap from the good parts.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Caveat: Cisco basically does not have first level support (i.e. "'Is the router plugged in?' 'What's a router?') - you are supposed to have second level knowledge and have completed the first level troubleshooting before you call TAC.
Heh, I've been on vacation (unfortunately, I work with small offices, so no budget for other techs, just me and my cellphone), when the Cisco 804 (Which, while being just about the best ISDN router out there, blows goats anyway) lost its config for whatever reason, and the Office Manager called up TAC, and they walked her through getting it configured well enough to dial up to their ISP, and then the guy telnetted in and reconfiged the whole deal. Did a better job than when I configured it, too.. :) I'd still like to know why it spontaneously lost it's startup-config though. Must have been that Florida lightning...
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
such that it's not possible to write software for profit ever again (atleast not in a world taken over by Linux as the OS of choice).
You seem to fail to recognize the exception that, if the libraries are distributed with your operating system, you may link against them whether or not your application is proprietary, therefore I declare your statement to be misguided and incorrect.
Despite the above, the GPL is still indeed a viral license, but it's more like a common cold virus, rather than the Ebola virus you would make it out to be.
P.S. While I realize that the invocation of the Ebola virus may seem heartless, I submit that it is indeed a good comparison.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
We've got a couple of sites running with Netopia R7100s and they work great. The problem is finding a good enough pair for them. Often, in small towns, it's the only way to get anything greater than an analog dialup without leasing an expensive 56K data line. Of course, now, 2 years later, both towns have DSL through their LECs, but it's all ADSL, not SDSL.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Simple, use NAT for the humans and set up all your servers with IPs from all of your access providers, and use DNS to direct the traffic where-ever you want to go. Keep the TTL on the zone low, and you won't be out for more than a couple of minutes.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
The FCC has nothing to do with it. Blame your cellphone company. They could offer it under current regs if they wanted to. However, many of us here in the US become irate at the thought of having to pay for someone else's convienence. I pay for a cellphone not so others can pay to call me, but so I can be reachable anywhere I go because my job demands it.
Should I have to pay if you have activated call forwarding on your landline phone to some other number? No, because it is at your convienence, not mine.
-NathanCare about freedom?
Hey, that's fine if you don't beleave in the American Dream and the American way of life.
Long term intellectual property is un-American. It's also anti-freedom. Note that if I can disassemble some mechanical device, unless it's patented (evil patents) I'm perfectly free to copy it if I want to.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?