Most European countries had an excellent POTS. In Finland the last analog POTS switch was replaced in the beginning of 1990s. Today, land lines are mostly used for DSL.
This is due to almost complete lack of service and equipment separation in USA (i.e. SIM cards). Here in Finland tying these things together is actually illegal (to protect the rights of the consumer). When you buy a Nokia phone in USA, it has e.g. AT&T logo on it and is locked into AT&T service. Generally AT&T doesnt sell you a SIM card, so if you wanna have a particular latest Nokia model, your only option is to wait as long as AT&T sells it to you (if ever).
It does make a difference. I want my phone to function where ever I travel. So far my tri-band GSM covers Europe and Asia completyly but only small areas within USA. As far as I know, the next time I come visit US, opening a cheap American cell phone service just for a few weeks isn't possible either (typically half a year minimum. Here in Finland you can get a used cell phone equipment for $15 or less, opening a service is free, it's ready to use the next day, can be terminated any time and being a tourist isn't an issue).
Besides, the 3G phones will be like seven-band, most likely contaning a GSM in addition to the UMTS/CDMA2000 radio.
You make it sound as if it was a natural and logical billing principle; The truth is, in US the cell phone numbers weren't allocated under a separate area code (which is the standard in many countries). A basic principle of billing phone calls says the caller should always know roughly how much the call will cost him. In US the caller cannot see from the number whether it is a cell phone or wired one. Thus the telco charges cell phone owners even when receiving calls (the same priciple rest of the world uses whenever the cell phone is roaming).
About call "plans" (prepaid monthly minutes) you mentioned; That's sick and wrong. The greedy telco makes you pay for calls you are only planning to make. I refuse to ever pay anything but actual calls, billed afterwards by seconds.
Other shotrcomings of cell phone service in USA include the complete lack of SIM cards (separation of service and phone equipment), limited support for SMS and typical half-a-year-minumum service provider lock-in. Luckily number portability is on the way.
I completely agree. One such interesting vehicle was the Timberjack walking harvester. On the other hand there's still a number of feasible alternatives between rubber tire and legged motion system; One example is tracks used by bulldozers and armored vehicles.
This guy said what I was about to suggest; Why don't get a few friends other than your fellow workers and spend some good time with them, outside your apartment.
Yes and no. Microsoft crafted a HTML4 extension called Vector Markup Language (VML) into Internet Explorer and submitted it to W3C. Surprisingly W3C refused to accep it as is (VML contains embedded VBScript and Windows Metafiles among other things). W3C had recieved similar propososals also from at least Adobe. They ended up creating a new standard (SVG) from scratch, though influenced by submissions from Adobe and Microsoft. The result? Adoption of SVG has been very slow so far. Internet Explorer has supported VML since version 5.0, but SVG only through Adobe's buggy plugin.
Re:iPods DO get you laid
on
iPod-Jacked
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· Score: 1
"The only countries that seem to be looking at this type of thing are extremely socialist or totalitarian in nature (Vietnam, China, European Union, etc.)"
Since when is the EU "extremely socialist" or "totalitarian in nature"? Since when is it even a country?
Obviously the poster is a US citizen since considering European wellfare system as socialistic is a common habit in USA. And usually these people don't know so much about Europe after all. So just ignore him.
Some of this is already here. There are several vendors supplying door locks that can be opened with a cell phone (http://www.ouman.fi/english/lammonsaatimet/eh60/e h60.html). A few friends of mine have a cottage a few hours drive from their house. On the way there they call the cottage's cell phone system to switch the sauna stove or electric heating on.
Here in Helsinki we have a car sharing community where you pay certain sum; The club owns a bunch of cars parked in the downtown when they are not used. When a member wants to use the car, he reserves it using web or cell phone. When he goes for to use it, he calls the car's cell phone, which opens the car's doors. Car keys are inside the car. After using it he parks it in downtown and leaves the keys inside. He only pays for gas and some nominal fee per hour for using it (this should cover insurance and maintenance). This car share club aims to fulfill the needs of people who only occasionally have a need for a car (usually they use the excellent Helsinki area public transportation system). It's a great idea, but as far as I know, the project hasn't been a huge success; the problem is all the members want to reserve the car for the weekend and it remains mostly unused during the week.
In Finland we've had cell phone payment enabled vending machines, car washers, public transportation tickets etc. for lets say five years.
As someone already suggested, all kind on problems could arise from such use of phones. A lot of people here have a cell phone service paid by their employer. Both the employers and tax officers soon found it problematic people were buying all sorts of pricy, personal stuff with their phones. I think the telecom operators have been working on to resolve this problem by providing a possibility to split the service bill into personal and work categories... or perhaps we'll soon see phones with slots for multiple SIM cards (someting VISA, MasterCard et al have been suggesting).
I agree. I think there is a real market for virtually undestroyable cadgets. Sure, it'll cost way more to produce a digital camera with with a magnesium case and mechanics to enclose all the components inside the case when the device is inactive. But I'm willing to pay for that. Make them cameras, PDAs and phones water, dirt and concrete -proof and you'll have a total killer product.
As far as I know there aren't such products. There's been a few water resistant cell phone models, but what I really want is something even more durable than those.
No, Win key != Ctrl-Esc. Try e.g. Win-e (brings up file manager). Typing Ctrl-Esc-e won't do the trick. So Ctrl-Esc-r doing the same thing as Win-r is just a coincidance having to with dialog shortcuts. Win key really is a unique modifier key.
However, expect to see the CLR running on platforms other than straight up Windows in the future.
I wouldn't expect. Microsoft made the exact same promises when they introduced DCOM in 1997, but DCOM "implementatations" on platforms other than Windows have always been completely useless. This is kinda like WinNT's Posix "support" they introduced just for marketing purposes. Vendor-lock-in is very high in Microsoft's list of priorities, admit it!
I completely agree. This might be cool technology but in this case it definitily does not solve any relevant real world problem. Can't really say before trying one these myself, but I'd suspect this is a lot worse user interface than plain old arrow keys... This concept has been out there quite some time already and I always thought: What a brain dead idea.
Re:Adds to the confusion
on
Aethera 1.0
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· Score: 1
I think the key to migration from Microsoft solutions to open source are the applications. That is, introduce open source applications running on win32 as alternatives to the applications you are already using. Once the users are already comfortable with such cross platform applications as OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gimp, Dia, Pan, Gaim, Eclipse etc. swithing the underlaying operating system won't be such a shocking experience. Also, this way you can do it appliction by application instead of swithing over all at once. Now all we need is more truly portable desktop applications...
Amen brother. VB6 is a nightmare. It tries to hide away complexities of COM programming by doing this and that automagically, but usually swrews up things big time. You'll spend incredible aomunts of time trying to guess what VB is doing this time. No wondwer Microsoft has discontinued this crappy programming language...
Yes, technically the reason is C++ ABI but as the original poster pointed out, using C++ ABI as the plugin interface is the problem, not the fact that gcc folks tend to break their backwards compatibility every now and then. As someone else already mentioned a compiler (or preferably programming language) independent binary interface should be introduced (COM is a well known example of such). I thought Mozilla is already heavily based on compiler independent binary interfaces (XPCOM) so what's the case with plug-ins?
I worked for a little while doing Visual BASIC programming, and it wasn't that bad.
Apparently you didn't do it for long enough to realise it actully is very bad. It's just horrible. I could see nigthmares how VB continues to screw up its automatic variant typecasts, COM binary compatibility etc. The debugger never worked on anything more complex than a simple dialog based application. VB is worst that ever happened to me as a programmer. I've also been there developing software in a VMS cluster, compiling the code as batch processing and stuff. VMS is a pleasure compared to illogical, behind the scenes screw up piece of crap called Visual Basic. The product is inferior even in Microsoft standards and they have discontinued it in favor of C# and the other.Net stuff.
Some of us keep forgetting we are talking about US court system where such fears are indeed reasonable. Besides I find it hard to believe McBride and co. think they are telling the truth...
I'm a Finn and I find that comment very hard to believe (unless the people you kwow from here are younger then 7 years or older than 75). All the people I know have a personal cell phone, or at least share one with someone else (old couples, family's youngest kids)
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Most European countries had an excellent POTS. In Finland the last analog POTS switch was replaced in the beginning of 1990s. Today, land lines are mostly used for DSL.
This is due to almost complete lack of service and equipment separation in USA (i.e. SIM cards). Here in Finland tying these things together is actually illegal (to protect the rights of the consumer). When you buy a Nokia phone in USA, it has e.g. AT&T logo on it and is locked into AT&T service. Generally AT&T doesnt sell you a SIM card, so if you wanna have a particular latest Nokia model, your only option is to wait as long as AT&T sells it to you (if ever).
It does make a difference. I want my phone to function where ever I travel. So far my tri-band GSM covers Europe and Asia completyly but only small areas within USA. As far as I know, the next time I come visit US, opening a cheap American cell phone service just for a few weeks isn't possible either (typically half a year minimum. Here in Finland you can get a used cell phone equipment for $15 or less, opening a service is free, it's ready to use the next day, can be terminated any time and being a tourist isn't an issue).
Besides, the 3G phones will be like seven-band, most likely contaning a GSM in addition to the UMTS/CDMA2000 radio.
You make it sound as if it was a natural and logical billing principle; The truth is, in US the cell phone numbers weren't allocated under a separate area code (which is the standard in many countries). A basic principle of billing phone calls says the caller should always know roughly how much the call will cost him. In US the caller cannot see from the number whether it is a cell phone or wired one. Thus the telco charges cell phone owners even when receiving calls (the same priciple rest of the world uses whenever the cell phone is roaming).
About call "plans" (prepaid monthly minutes) you mentioned; That's sick and wrong. The greedy telco makes you pay for calls you are only planning to make. I refuse to ever pay anything but actual calls, billed afterwards by seconds.
Other shotrcomings of cell phone service in USA include the complete lack of SIM cards (separation of service and phone equipment), limited support for SMS and typical half-a-year-minumum service provider lock-in. Luckily number portability is on the way.
Needless to say, I'm European.
I completely agree. One such interesting vehicle was the Timberjack walking harvester. On the other hand there's still a number of feasible alternatives between rubber tire and legged motion system; One example is tracks used by bulldozers and armored vehicles.
Eastern Europe doesn't cover Finland and Sweden which also use "Russian gauge" (http://parovoz.com/spravka/gauges-e.html).
This guy said what I was about to suggest; Why don't get a few friends other than your fellow workers and spend some good time with them, outside your apartment.
Yes and no. Microsoft crafted a HTML4 extension called Vector Markup Language (VML) into Internet Explorer and submitted it to W3C. Surprisingly W3C refused to accep it as is (VML contains embedded VBScript and Windows Metafiles among other things). W3C had recieved similar propososals also from at least Adobe. They ended up creating a new standard (SVG) from scratch, though influenced by submissions from Adobe and Microsoft. The result? Adoption of SVG has been very slow so far. Internet Explorer has supported VML since version 5.0, but SVG only through Adobe's buggy plugin.
You're an American, right?
You could use your skills for open source development. Consider getting a real job to make your living.
"The only countries that seem to be looking at this type of thing are extremely socialist or totalitarian in nature (Vietnam, China, European Union, etc.)"
Since when is the EU "extremely socialist" or "totalitarian in nature"? Since when is it even a country?
Obviously the poster is a US citizen since considering European wellfare system as socialistic is a common habit in USA. And usually these people don't know so much about Europe after all. So just ignore him.
Some of this is already here. There are several vendors supplying door locks that can be opened with a cell phone (http://www.ouman.fi/english/lammonsaatimet/eh60/e h60.html).
A few friends of mine have a cottage a few hours drive from their house. On the way there they call the cottage's cell phone system to switch the sauna stove or electric heating on.
Here in Helsinki we have a car sharing community where you pay certain sum; The club owns a bunch of cars parked in the downtown when they are not used. When a member wants to use the car, he reserves it using web or cell phone. When he goes for to use it, he calls the car's cell phone, which opens the car's doors. Car keys are inside the car. After using it he parks it in downtown and leaves the keys inside. He only pays for gas and some nominal fee per hour for using it (this should cover insurance and maintenance). This car share club aims to fulfill the needs of people who only occasionally have a need for a car (usually they use the excellent Helsinki area public transportation system). It's a great idea, but as far as I know, the project hasn't been a huge success; the problem is all the members want to reserve the car for the weekend and it remains mostly unused during the week.
In Finland we've had cell phone payment enabled vending machines, car washers, public transportation tickets etc. for lets say five years.
As someone already suggested, all kind on problems could arise from such use of phones. A lot of people here have a cell phone service paid by their employer. Both the employers and tax officers soon found it problematic people were buying all sorts of pricy, personal stuff with their phones. I think the telecom operators have been working on to resolve this problem by providing a possibility to split the service bill into personal and work categories... or perhaps we'll soon see phones with slots for multiple SIM cards (someting VISA, MasterCard et al have been suggesting).
I agree. I think there is a real market for virtually undestroyable cadgets. Sure, it'll cost way more to produce a digital camera with with a magnesium case and mechanics to enclose all the components inside the case when the device is inactive. But I'm willing to pay for that. Make them cameras, PDAs and phones water, dirt and concrete -proof and you'll have a total killer product.
As far as I know there aren't such products. There's been a few water resistant cell phone models, but what I really want is something even more durable than those.
No, Win key != Ctrl-Esc. Try e.g. Win-e (brings up file manager). Typing Ctrl-Esc-e won't do the trick. So Ctrl-Esc-r doing the same thing as Win-r is just a coincidance having to with dialog shortcuts. Win key really is a unique modifier key.
However, expect to see the CLR running on platforms other than straight up Windows in the future.
I wouldn't expect. Microsoft made the exact same promises when they introduced DCOM in 1997, but DCOM "implementatations" on platforms other than Windows have always been completely useless. This is kinda like WinNT's Posix "support" they introduced just for marketing purposes. Vendor-lock-in is very high in Microsoft's list of priorities, admit it!
I completely agree. This might be cool technology but in this case it definitily does not solve any relevant real world problem. Can't really say before trying one these myself, but I'd suspect this is a lot worse user interface than plain old arrow keys... This concept has been out there quite some time already and I always thought: What a brain dead idea.
I think the key to migration from Microsoft solutions to open source are the applications. That is, introduce open source applications running on win32 as alternatives to the applications you are already using. Once the users are already comfortable with such cross platform applications as OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gimp, Dia, Pan, Gaim, Eclipse etc. swithing the underlaying operating system won't be such a shocking experience. Also, this way you can do it appliction by application instead of swithing over all at once. Now all we need is more truly portable desktop applications...
Amen brother. VB6 is a nightmare. It tries to hide away complexities of COM programming by doing this and that automagically, but usually swrews up things big time. You'll spend incredible aomunts of time trying to guess what VB is doing this time. No wondwer Microsoft has discontinued this crappy programming language...
Yes, technically the reason is C++ ABI but as the original poster pointed out, using C++ ABI as the plugin interface is the problem, not the fact that gcc folks tend to break their backwards compatibility every now and then. As someone else already mentioned a compiler (or preferably programming language) independent binary interface should be introduced (COM is a well known example of such). I thought Mozilla is already heavily based on compiler independent binary interfaces (XPCOM) so what's the case with plug-ins?
I worked for a little while doing Visual BASIC programming, and it wasn't that bad.
.Net stuff.
Apparently you didn't do it for long enough to realise it actully is very bad. It's just horrible. I could see nigthmares how VB continues to screw up its automatic variant typecasts, COM binary compatibility etc. The debugger never worked on anything more complex than a simple dialog based application. VB is worst that ever happened to me as a programmer. I've also been there developing software in a VMS cluster, compiling the code as batch processing and stuff. VMS is a pleasure compared to illogical, behind the scenes screw up piece of crap called Visual Basic. The product is inferior even in Microsoft standards and they have discontinued it in favor of C# and the other
Java IDE Eclipse makes also a promising C/C++ IDE with CDT plugin.
Some of us keep forgetting we are talking about US court system where such fears are indeed reasonable. Besides I find it hard to believe McBride and co. think they are telling the truth...
Bush government made up stories of weapons of mass destruction to justify starting the war with Iraq (2003).
> yes I do know people there without mobiles
I'm a Finn and I find that comment very hard to believe (unless the people you kwow from here are younger then 7 years or older than 75). All the people I know have a personal cell phone, or at least share one with someone else (old couples, family's youngest kids)