My experience is that anyone in favor of processing this sludge into energy has never even seen photos of the area around the Detroit Marathon refinery or the waterfront along the Detroit river where the processing by-product of coke-tar is stored. Yeah, they store that crap right on the shores of the headwaters of Lakes Erie and Ontario; the water supply for millions of people in two countries.
It isn't about anti-oil, I don't disagree the world needs oil. I need oil. This is about a form of it that is just beyond nasty to obtain and process. No one wants the coke-tar, it is stored in huge uncovered piles around Detroit getting blown into neighborhoods on both sides of the river. The plan has been to sell that stuff to China, but so far no takers. Their "plan" to mitigate the dust is to spray with with water, and just where do you think the runoff flows? If they can't sell this waste in Detroit with quick convenient access to steel mills, cement and power plants, do you think Houston will have better luck?
It is all fine and well to sit from my position in rural Michigan and say "hell yeah, turn that spigot on and gimme my $2 a gallon gasoline". But I can't; I've seen it and it is an ugly view into the future where we just don't care about larger swaths of land and the people that live there. I'm just done with the mentality of energy at any cost. If the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't affect your opinion, take a stroll and smell the coke-tar. This is a greedy grab of the last scraps of energy and the environment and people's health be damned in the process.
Oil spills from pipeline problems happen, just ask the people in Grand Rapids Michigan who are still dealing with the cleanup in the Kalamazoo river from Enbridge Energy's pipeline break. This too is Canadian tar sand oil, making its safe transit through the United States for processing.
The overlap (or lack thereof) isn't my concern, the problem is that Comcast is also a HUGE content provider.
Do you really think they'll offer competitive terms for WeatherNation considering that they own The Weather Channel?
How long before some elevated middle manager from the NBC newsroom gets the brilliant idea that it is in the best interest of Comcast to prioritize data to The Weather Channel's web site over anyone else?
At some point, Comcast has to be beaten down and told "you're too big, divest the content business or divest the physical plant".
You can view encrypted channels, you just can't view/record channels with the no copy flag set. Some cable companies set this for everything, some set it just for premium channels.
Ergo, usefulness of MythTV depends entirely upon how must customer contempt your cable company has as an operating policy.
Tivo is an "ok" product, but the increasing service fees chased me to MythTV with Silicon Dust tuners. Not an easy thing to get going, and MythTV is buggy But it's free, and it usually gets the job done.
The premise that this gets them around the expense of merchant fees is flawed because handling cash and checks is also very expensive. And it isn't without a unique set of risks like getting your deposit bag stolen at gun point. If there's enough of it, you pay another company to come and pick up your deposits. Do retailers plan on imposing a surcharge for cash too?
It seems retail businesses are taking a page from telcos in that they expect a certain level of profit and in order to accomplish that, everything is surcharged.
I was fortunate to get a first hand viewing on TV of all the Apollo missions while bouncing on the knee of my father. The Apollo 11 astronauts were my first heroes and not long after I could read I enjoyed every book, magazine and encyclopedia article I found about them and their mission.
Armstrong is the model on how to be a hero; do something exemplary and treat it as just another day at the office. Embrace knowledge, challenge your mind and enjoy your job. And when it's over, it is over. Armstrong shied away from the public spotlight and certainly passed on what would have been many lucrative opportunities to cash-in on his fame. Instead, he remained pretty much the same person after the mission as before.
Sad day today, to know of the loss of a great person.
Prior to the advent of 56K modems and their need for PRI service, ISPs had to invest capital in terminal servers and modems to put at remote sites, and haul the data back and forth on leased lines to provide local service. The CLECs offered cut rate PRI service (and not to mention avoiding the pain of having to deal with an incumbent carrier who by default installed PRIs with bit-robbing signalling, which kills 56K modems) and because they gained in termination fees, covered wide geographic swaths.
Freed from the capital investment of discrete remote sites, dial-up ISPs really stated popping up. When you could just lease a bank of modems, the market became saturated. The turnkey aspect, lower capital costs and very compelling monthly rates for PRI service made dial-up a rather profitable venture and easy to start.
Nevertheless, you are spot-on that local ISPs filled market demand where the incumbents simply faltered.
I don't disagree with your sentiments, but we're in the minority my friend. For most people, they want cheap, fast and easy access to Facebook, email and Angry Birds. You don't need a PC for that.
PCs, like most consumer electronic devices, become a commodity, disposable and then deprecated. When was the last time you fixed a VCR? When they came out, it was cheaper to have someone fix them. And then, if you had some repair skills, you could order parts for any VCR on the market. Now, just try to buy a VCR. Consumer electronics move toward no user serviceable parts; just look at the latest crop of ultra-thin laptops.
There will always be a need for PCs in the workplace and in software development. But their utility is going to be come very niche and they're well on their way to being replaced for most uses; just like the VCR.
The ability to keep track of stolen IEMI numbers and not activate a phone on that list is elementary, and in an age where you can track an iPhone across the planet via GPS, such a simple detail screams that they simply did not want to do it. Worse for AT&T, is the fact that they look up the IEMI to enforce customer use; just try to use an iPhone on a non-Iphone data plan. This check is done autonomously.
There are plenty of instances where registrations are checked to assure that they're not stolen. At one time, cell phones that were stolen were indeed blacklisted. And while I agree that AT&T may not have had a legal obligation to do so, with their customers being robbed, it certainly seems easy to say they have a moral obligation to blacklist the phones.
Of course, the consumer outrage is now full scale, and I'm sure legal requirements may indeed be forthcoming.
How about the movement to make wireless a little more consumer friendly aim for just making data use independent of the device? Now that AT&T has decided that $30 equates to some fixed level of data, then I should be free to consume that data on any device I see fit without having to pay extra for the privilege of doing so.
It is really going to take a SOPA level of consumer outrage to get these people to play nice?
Exactly. And it gets even more insidious because Monsanto and others have actively sought to use genetic modification to turn off unauthorized propagation.
So now Monsanto will no longer have to sue farmers into submission for having the misfortune of planting their public domain seed stock too close to IP protected seeded fields and picking up traits of protected plants; they just have to wait three or four seasons for the public domain seed to have its gene pool sufficiently cross-pollinated and they too will adhere to the programmed rules of unauthorized propagation. Watch as these companies slowly become the *only* source for dent/#2 corn, soybeans, red and winter wheat.
Equally concerning is that these bio-engineered crops, especially those with propagation control, put a limit to genetic diversity. We're really setting ourselves up for another potato-style famine.
"The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer's IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores.... And it doesn't collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user's name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order. "
Yet. You can bet your sweet bippy that while the mall can't get the identifying information, the mall *will* sell it to the carriers who do have the information. This would be a marketing goldmine for the carriers, and one they could not help but to exploit for fun and most importantly, profit.
I would opt out by simply not shopping at that mall. My cellular phone is for my own convenience and one that I pay to maintain, it isn't so companies can figure out where I shop and give them incentive to try to get me to be a good little consumer and spend all my money.
My tolerance for this kind of thing is getting lower each time I read stories like this. More and more, companies seem to view the public as sheep to be shorn without any expectation of privacy, rights nor recourse.
Because the larger an enterprise, the greater likelihood that each department has its own attendance and time policies. Start adding in union contracts, and now you're really having fun. I'm sure the garbage collectors in NYC are paid much much differently than the teachers. Each of those examples probably are nightmares on their own with exceptions to rules, bonuses, overtime and penalties for missed lunches.
However, this is also a case of poor project management. I would not have assigned that job to anyone but the best PPMs.
Minimizing one's tax obligations through philanthropy or legitimate tax credits, breaks or deferments is one thing, funneling money earned outside the country to shield it from the IRS or hiding money under a complex web of fraudulent companies is completely another thing. And this is what that is about; rich people realizing gains through foreign transactions and failing to report it on their taxes.
People go to jail for that. As well they should, it's a crime and the rest of society doesn't play that game. Why should the wealthy?
As far as the other half of your question, it doesn't change the illegal behavior of those involved. Whether or not the government is entitled or feels entitled doesn't change the fact that not only are those wealthy that are involved are breaking the law, they're FREELOADERS enjoying the benefits of this society without paying the costs.
In the context of wireless, it's not trivial. There are spectrum auctions, licensing, site acquisition and leasing, marketing and customer support. The fact that you call it trivial betrays a certain ignorance on the topic. It's not dial-up.
More importantly, the "entitlement-crowd" is also known as "the customer crowd". As it stands at this very moment, I have an entitlement with AT&T for data carriage services from my smart phone to any site I so desire. That entitlement remains as long as my check cashes. If AT&T decides that their network infrastructure provides a better return on investment by prioritizing or engaging in tiers of service, then I will indeed find another ISP. And if necessary, I will go without a smart phone if it no longer fits what deem as an acceptable level of service.
I'm not alone in this thinking. While I greatly enjoy all the benefits of a smart phone with internet connectivity, piss me off and I'll slide my SIM into my $40 dumb phone, cancel all my data plans and AT&T just lost $180 month while conniving to get an extra $20 a month out of me in incremental service charges.
Having worked in the wireless industry, I agree that wireless data is fundamentally different than cable or wire-line access due to the scarcity of spectrum. But that isn't an open invitation to fleece the customer, and that is what this is about more than anything. Wall Street wants an ever increasing amount of flesh, and managers are required to deliver in order to justify their own entitlements.
It's real simple; if the consumer doesn't want it, the consumer won't pay for it. As the previous posts have indicated, if this appears on any of the internet services for which I pay, they're gone. Period.
If it comes down to an internet that is tiered like cable TV channels, it's no longer the product I want to buy. And these companies that sell this stuff to telcos and MCOs can explain why the insertion of their very expensive equipment resulted in customer defections.
We're still in charge here; it may not be fun to have to give up the iPhone and the internet access at home, but if it proves a necessary point, I can certainly spend the money just as easy on something else.
There's two reasons for consumption based-billing:
1. Make Netflix a lot less inexpensive in order to keep the profit line strong on their own video offerings.
2. Raise prices. Consumption based billing won't be less expensive for people who are light users because broadband service will be $50 for the privilege of having the coax terminate at the house, and *then* you pay what the meter says. And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte. By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing, and a service pricing structure that encourages you not to use the service.
I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.
Seems this is the toe-hold into deep packet inspection that they've always wanted. This is the rationalization that is needed for ISP operated behavioral data collection and now it is no big deal to sponsor inspection of user activities for the software and Hollywood cabals.
Don't like it? Well then I guess we can't turn off those dirty bot-nets.
The problem is that while data isn't a finite resource, the spectrum used to transmit that data *is* very much finite.
If you want to talk physics, then perhaps you have some insight into how AT&T and the rest of the carriers can magically get another 850MHz band or 1900 MHz band when what they already have is used up.
Short answer, they can't! They can only take more frequencies away from other users and even that won't last long once they've fully utilized those frequencies. The truth is, unlike fiber, the carrier for the data is very much a finite and valuable resource and once it's full, there is no more.
Bandwidth is cheap and priced predictably when you can light-up another chunk of fiber. While AT&T can do that between sites, they can't run another 100MHz of spectrum. The devices only work for the bands licensed, and in those bands they have a fixed set of frequencies to use.
Therefore, there are very *few* options available to add bandwidth once the spectrum comprised of their licenses is used up. And even if the FCC grants more bands to be used (like 700MHz), the current devices already deployed can't take advantage of it when it is available.
In the case of wireless, bandwidth is very much a limited resource. It simply can't be priced as unlimited because it's not like someone can rub their hands together and there's a whole new unused 850MHz band to be used.
So don't develop for it. If you're right, you'll be there to scoop up the legions of dissatisfied users grumbling that their iPhone isn't "open" (like they know what the hell that is). Failing a bullseye on your prognostication, you can then quit being lazy and just learn Objective-C.
No one seems to mind many demands in this world to use.NET and other closed environments, but heaven forbid if Apple requires its developers to use Objective-C. Next up on the offended developers list of outrage is the requirement to know the differences between a stack and a queue. Oh my!
Re:It's part of monopoly/anti-trust laws
on
Flash Is Not a Right
·
· Score: 0, Troll
You're right! Let's continue this a little more and sue Intel because they do not support a 68k instruction set. Their lack of support seriously impedes the choice of developers who wish to use the 68k instruction set, as well as their CISC instruction set is not an open platform for the user.
Do you think Nintendo and Sony have rules concerning development for their platforms?
I don't consider it a misunderstanding over their "right", but a complete lack of understanding of the platform for which they want to develop. There's a lost art of having to program devices with limited memory and energy budgets. Thanks to the desktop, the solution wasn't to code more efficiently and have the developer bear the pain, it was just far easier to push it to the user in the form of more memory and faster processors. And yes, more energy.
This can't be done on tiny devices, and the write-once run everywhere mantra comes at a hefty expense. I also agree with Jobs' point that high level abstractions and languages *do* reduce the application down to the lowest common denominator.
At some point, Adobe and their peers will want to start putting their libraries inside the iPhone OS. We've all seen how intrusive and bloated Adobe Reader has become, that's just the kind of behavior I hope to avoid on my phone. Sure, Flash would be nice, but am I willing to get it at the cost of allowing Adobe to modify files in the OS? The alternative is that these Flash applications carry the necessary libraries with them and these simply Flash games are now pushing tens of megabytes in girth.
Furthermore, where does it end? They permit Flash, then Java and hey what about.NET/CLR for applications? How about Visual Basic on the iPhone? Wait, that we've left out the Fortran programmers so we need to support them as well.
Here's an idea. Instead of being a "Flash Developer", how about you just be a developer and understand that a language is a tool and like all tools, there's a right one for the job. Tiny device programming is a different art form, one of where less really is more and it isn't necessarily an easy world in which to work.
The draw depends upon the person. Many hams are drawn to the hobby by building their own equipment and/or antennas. There's a lot of math and theory that goes into building transmitters and creating good antenna designs. Not to mention, the pride of breaking through a pile of amateurs wanting to talk to someone in a foreign country and mentioning that you are using only 100 watts into your antenna that is a "homebrew 7 element beam at 50 feet".
Some modes in amateur radio require above average skills that the test doesn't cover; things like moonbounce, long distance microwave or satellites (hams have their own low-earth orbit satellites).
There's also the computer aspect of it. Hams have developed their own digital modes that use very low power and require DSP techniques to use, as well as software defined radios.
The hobby has a lot of interesting facets other than just talking to your friends on the radio. These are what keeps it going in an age when it's easier to just fire up Yahoo IM or use a cell phone.
Slashdot Mirror
My experience is that anyone in favor of processing this sludge into energy has never even seen photos of the area around the Detroit Marathon refinery or the waterfront along the Detroit river where the processing by-product of coke-tar is stored. Yeah, they store that crap right on the shores of the headwaters of Lakes Erie and Ontario; the water supply for millions of people in two countries.
It isn't about anti-oil, I don't disagree the world needs oil. I need oil. This is about a form of it that is just beyond nasty to obtain and process. No one wants the coke-tar, it is stored in huge uncovered piles around Detroit getting blown into neighborhoods on both sides of the river. The plan has been to sell that stuff to China, but so far no takers. Their "plan" to mitigate the dust is to spray with with water, and just where do you think the runoff flows? If they can't sell this waste in Detroit with quick convenient access to steel mills, cement and power plants, do you think Houston will have better luck?
It is all fine and well to sit from my position in rural Michigan and say "hell yeah, turn that spigot on and gimme my $2 a gallon gasoline". But I can't; I've seen it and it is an ugly view into the future where we just don't care about larger swaths of land and the people that live there. I'm just done with the mentality of energy at any cost. If the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't affect your opinion, take a stroll and smell the coke-tar. This is a greedy grab of the last scraps of energy and the environment and people's health be damned in the process.
Oil spills from pipeline problems happen, just ask the people in Grand Rapids Michigan who are still dealing with the cleanup in the Kalamazoo river from Enbridge Energy's pipeline break. This too is Canadian tar sand oil, making its safe transit through the United States for processing.
The overlap (or lack thereof) isn't my concern, the problem is that Comcast is also a HUGE content provider.
Do you really think they'll offer competitive terms for WeatherNation considering that they own The Weather Channel?
How long before some elevated middle manager from the NBC newsroom gets the brilliant idea that it is in the best interest of Comcast to prioritize data to The Weather Channel's web site over anyone else?
At some point, Comcast has to be beaten down and told "you're too big, divest the content business or divest the physical plant".
That is not entirely correct.
You can view encrypted channels, you just can't view/record channels with the no copy flag set. Some cable companies set this for everything, some set it just for premium channels.
Ergo, usefulness of MythTV depends entirely upon how must customer contempt your cable company has as an operating policy.
Tivo is an "ok" product, but the increasing service fees chased me to MythTV with Silicon Dust tuners. Not an easy thing to get going, and MythTV is buggy But it's free, and it usually gets the job done.
The premise that this gets them around the expense of merchant fees is flawed because handling cash and checks is also very expensive. And it isn't without a unique set of risks like getting your deposit bag stolen at gun point. If there's enough of it, you pay another company to come and pick up your deposits. Do retailers plan on imposing a surcharge for cash too?
It seems retail businesses are taking a page from telcos in that they expect a certain level of profit and in order to accomplish that, everything is surcharged.
I was fortunate to get a first hand viewing on TV of all the Apollo missions while bouncing on the knee of my father. The Apollo 11 astronauts were my first heroes and not long after I could read I enjoyed every book, magazine and encyclopedia article I found about them and their mission.
Armstrong is the model on how to be a hero; do something exemplary and treat it as just another day at the office. Embrace knowledge, challenge your mind and enjoy your job. And when it's over, it is over. Armstrong shied away from the public spotlight and certainly passed on what would have been many lucrative opportunities to cash-in on his fame. Instead, he remained pretty much the same person after the mission as before.
Sad day today, to know of the loss of a great person.
It is partially correct.
Prior to the advent of 56K modems and their need for PRI service, ISPs had to invest capital in terminal servers and modems to put at remote sites, and haul the data back and forth on leased lines to provide local service. The CLECs offered cut rate PRI service (and not to mention avoiding the pain of having to deal with an incumbent carrier who by default installed PRIs with bit-robbing signalling, which kills 56K modems) and because they gained in termination fees, covered wide geographic swaths.
Freed from the capital investment of discrete remote sites, dial-up ISPs really stated popping up. When you could just lease a bank of modems, the market became saturated. The turnkey aspect, lower capital costs and very compelling monthly rates for PRI service made dial-up a rather profitable venture and easy to start.
Nevertheless, you are spot-on that local ISPs filled market demand where the incumbents simply faltered.
I don't disagree with your sentiments, but we're in the minority my friend. For most people, they want cheap, fast and easy access to Facebook, email and Angry Birds. You don't need a PC for that.
PCs, like most consumer electronic devices, become a commodity, disposable and then deprecated. When was the last time you fixed a VCR? When they came out, it was cheaper to have someone fix them. And then, if you had some repair skills, you could order parts for any VCR on the market. Now, just try to buy a VCR. Consumer electronics move toward no user serviceable parts; just look at the latest crop of ultra-thin laptops.
There will always be a need for PCs in the workplace and in software development. But their utility is going to be come very niche and they're well on their way to being replaced for most uses; just like the VCR.
You do realize that Romney drafted a very similar plan?
The ability to keep track of stolen IEMI numbers and not activate a phone on that list is elementary, and in an age where you can track an iPhone across the planet via GPS, such a simple detail screams that they simply did not want to do it. Worse for AT&T, is the fact that they look up the IEMI to enforce customer use; just try to use an iPhone on a non-Iphone data plan. This check is done autonomously.
There are plenty of instances where registrations are checked to assure that they're not stolen. At one time, cell phones that were stolen were indeed blacklisted. And while I agree that AT&T may not have had a legal obligation to do so, with their customers being robbed, it certainly seems easy to say they have a moral obligation to blacklist the phones.
Of course, the consumer outrage is now full scale, and I'm sure legal requirements may indeed be forthcoming.
How about the movement to make wireless a little more consumer friendly aim for just making data use independent of the device? Now that AT&T has decided that $30 equates to some fixed level of data, then I should be free to consume that data on any device I see fit without having to pay extra for the privilege of doing so.
It is really going to take a SOPA level of consumer outrage to get these people to play nice?
Exactly. And it gets even more insidious because Monsanto and others have actively sought to use genetic modification to turn off unauthorized propagation.
So now Monsanto will no longer have to sue farmers into submission for having the misfortune of planting their public domain seed stock too close to IP protected seeded fields and picking up traits of protected plants; they just have to wait three or four seasons for the public domain seed to have its gene pool sufficiently cross-pollinated and they too will adhere to the programmed rules of unauthorized propagation. Watch as these companies slowly become the *only* source for dent/#2 corn, soybeans, red and winter wheat.
Equally concerning is that these bio-engineered crops, especially those with propagation control, put a limit to genetic diversity. We're really setting ourselves up for another potato-style famine.
TFA:
"The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer's IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores. ... And it doesn't collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user's name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order. "
Yet. You can bet your sweet bippy that while the mall can't get the identifying information, the mall *will* sell it to the carriers who do have the information. This would be a marketing goldmine for the carriers, and one they could not help but to exploit for fun and most importantly, profit.
I would opt out by simply not shopping at that mall. My cellular phone is for my own convenience and one that I pay to maintain, it isn't so companies can figure out where I shop and give them incentive to try to get me to be a good little consumer and spend all my money.
My tolerance for this kind of thing is getting lower each time I read stories like this. More and more, companies seem to view the public as sheep to be shorn without any expectation of privacy, rights nor recourse.
Because the larger an enterprise, the greater likelihood that each department has its own attendance and time policies. Start adding in union contracts, and now you're really having fun. I'm sure the garbage collectors in NYC are paid much much differently than the teachers. Each of those examples probably are nightmares on their own with exceptions to rules, bonuses, overtime and penalties for missed lunches.
However, this is also a case of poor project management. I would not have assigned that job to anyone but the best PPMs.
Minimizing one's tax obligations through philanthropy or legitimate tax credits, breaks or deferments is one thing, funneling money earned outside the country to shield it from the IRS or hiding money under a complex web of fraudulent companies is completely another thing. And this is what that is about; rich people realizing gains through foreign transactions and failing to report it on their taxes.
People go to jail for that. As well they should, it's a crime and the rest of society doesn't play that game. Why should the wealthy?
As far as the other half of your question, it doesn't change the illegal behavior of those involved. Whether or not the government is entitled or feels entitled doesn't change the fact that not only are those wealthy that are involved are breaking the law, they're FREELOADERS enjoying the benefits of this society without paying the costs.
A mobile worker like a snow plow driver has zero reason to carry a cell phone. The trucks are equipped with radios.
In the context of wireless, it's not trivial. There are spectrum auctions, licensing, site acquisition and leasing, marketing and customer support. The fact that you call it trivial betrays a certain ignorance on the topic. It's not dial-up.
More importantly, the "entitlement-crowd" is also known as "the customer crowd". As it stands at this very moment, I have an entitlement with AT&T for data carriage services from my smart phone to any site I so desire. That entitlement remains as long as my check cashes. If AT&T decides that their network infrastructure provides a better return on investment by prioritizing or engaging in tiers of service, then I will indeed find another ISP. And if necessary, I will go without a smart phone if it no longer fits what deem as an acceptable level of service.
I'm not alone in this thinking. While I greatly enjoy all the benefits of a smart phone with internet connectivity, piss me off and I'll slide my SIM into my $40 dumb phone, cancel all my data plans and AT&T just lost $180 month while conniving to get an extra $20 a month out of me in incremental service charges.
Having worked in the wireless industry, I agree that wireless data is fundamentally different than cable or wire-line access due to the scarcity of spectrum. But that isn't an open invitation to fleece the customer, and that is what this is about more than anything. Wall Street wants an ever increasing amount of flesh, and managers are required to deliver in order to justify their own entitlements.
It's real simple; if the consumer doesn't want it, the consumer won't pay for it. As the previous posts have indicated, if this appears on any of the internet services for which I pay, they're gone. Period.
If it comes down to an internet that is tiered like cable TV channels, it's no longer the product I want to buy. And these companies that sell this stuff to telcos and MCOs can explain why the insertion of their very expensive equipment resulted in customer defections.
We're still in charge here; it may not be fun to have to give up the iPhone and the internet access at home, but if it proves a necessary point, I can certainly spend the money just as easy on something else.
There's two reasons for consumption based-billing:
1. Make Netflix a lot less inexpensive in order to keep the profit line strong on their own video offerings.
2. Raise prices. Consumption based billing won't be less expensive for people who are light users because broadband service will be $50 for the privilege of having the coax terminate at the house, and *then* you pay what the meter says. And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte. By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing, and a service pricing structure that encourages you not to use the service.
I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.
Seems this is the toe-hold into deep packet inspection that they've always wanted. This is the rationalization that is needed for ISP operated behavioral data collection and now it is no big deal to sponsor inspection of user activities for the software and Hollywood cabals.
Don't like it? Well then I guess we can't turn off those dirty bot-nets.
The problem is that while data isn't a finite resource, the spectrum used to transmit that data *is* very much finite.
If you want to talk physics, then perhaps you have some insight into how AT&T and the rest of the carriers can magically get another 850MHz band or 1900 MHz band when what they already have is used up.
Short answer, they can't! They can only take more frequencies away from other users and even that won't last long once they've fully utilized those frequencies. The truth is, unlike fiber, the carrier for the data is very much a finite and valuable resource and once it's full, there is no more.
Bandwidth is cheap and priced predictably when you can light-up another chunk of fiber. While AT&T can do that between sites, they can't run another 100MHz of spectrum. The devices only work for the bands licensed, and in those bands they have a fixed set of frequencies to use.
Therefore, there are very *few* options available to add bandwidth once the spectrum comprised of their licenses is used up. And even if the FCC grants more bands to be used (like 700MHz), the current devices already deployed can't take advantage of it when it is available.
In the case of wireless, bandwidth is very much a limited resource. It simply can't be priced as unlimited because it's not like someone can rub their hands together and there's a whole new unused 850MHz band to be used.
So don't develop for it. If you're right, you'll be there to scoop up the legions of dissatisfied users grumbling that their iPhone isn't "open" (like they know what the hell that is). Failing a bullseye on your prognostication, you can then quit being lazy and just learn Objective-C.
.NET and other closed environments, but heaven forbid if Apple requires its developers to use Objective-C. Next up on the offended developers list of outrage is the requirement to know the differences between a stack and a queue. Oh my!
No one seems to mind many demands in this world to use
You're right! Let's continue this a little more and sue Intel because they do not support a 68k instruction set. Their lack of support seriously impedes the choice of developers who wish to use the 68k instruction set, as well as their CISC instruction set is not an open platform for the user.
Do you think Nintendo and Sony have rules concerning development for their platforms?
I don't consider it a misunderstanding over their "right", but a complete lack of understanding of the platform for which they want to develop. There's a lost art of having to program devices with limited memory and energy budgets. Thanks to the desktop, the solution wasn't to code more efficiently and have the developer bear the pain, it was just far easier to push it to the user in the form of more memory and faster processors. And yes, more energy.
This can't be done on tiny devices, and the write-once run everywhere mantra comes at a hefty expense. I also agree with Jobs' point that high level abstractions and languages *do* reduce the application down to the lowest common denominator.
At some point, Adobe and their peers will want to start putting their libraries inside the iPhone OS. We've all seen how intrusive and bloated Adobe Reader has become, that's just the kind of behavior I hope to avoid on my phone. Sure, Flash would be nice, but am I willing to get it at the cost of allowing Adobe to modify files in the OS? The alternative is that these Flash applications carry the necessary libraries with them and these simply Flash games are now pushing tens of megabytes in girth.
Furthermore, where does it end? They permit Flash, then Java and hey what about .NET /CLR for applications? How about Visual Basic on the iPhone? Wait, that we've left out the Fortran programmers so we need to support them as well.
Here's an idea. Instead of being a "Flash Developer", how about you just be a developer and understand that a language is a tool and like all tools, there's a right one for the job. Tiny device programming is a different art form, one of where less really is more and it isn't necessarily an easy world in which to work.
Sorry to be a buzz kill.
The draw depends upon the person. Many hams are drawn to the hobby by building their own equipment and/or antennas. There's a lot of math and theory that goes into building transmitters and creating good antenna designs. Not to mention, the pride of breaking through a pile of amateurs wanting to talk to someone in a foreign country and mentioning that you are using only 100 watts into your antenna that is a "homebrew 7 element beam at 50 feet".
Some modes in amateur radio require above average skills that the test doesn't cover; things like moonbounce, long distance microwave or satellites (hams have their own low-earth orbit satellites).
There's also the computer aspect of it. Hams have developed their own digital modes that use very low power and require DSP techniques to use, as well as software defined radios.
The hobby has a lot of interesting facets other than just talking to your friends on the radio. These are what keeps it going in an age when it's easier to just fire up Yahoo IM or use a cell phone.