No. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China and operates independently of PRC law in all areas except foreign policy and defense. See http://www.gov.hk/
QQ is a product produced by Tencent, Inc, located in Shenzhen, China. The south african website to which the parent linked seems to be some third party attempt to get people in south africa to use QQ's english client. Here's the real download website http://im.qq.com/ and an english about page for those who don't read chinese. http://www.tencent.com/about/about_e.shtml
The similarities between iDEN and GSM are basically that they use the same signalling format (TDMA) and that iDEN uses a modified version of GSM (8.08) A-bis for error correction and to maintain radio link integrity. Our prices here are pretty low too, it costs me less for my mobile phone (free long distance) than it would for an equivalent amount of long distance time on land line phone.
You've probably heard it before, but the reason that we (usa) didn't have digital cellular until recently was probably because of the cheapness of landline (local calls are free and unlimited) and the fact that in 1990 when gsm was just beginning there was a pretty much continent wide (well at least most of the usa and canada) analog cellular network. Granted analog sucks since it was so inefficient, expensive, insecure, and poor quality, but it worked decently well. Anyways, this announcement basically means more choice and that's a good thing.:-)
This is not true, my landline telephone bills aren't increased because my telephone company doesn't offer wireless service and the company i have my wireless service doesn't have a local/long distance service. The reason I'm guaranteed the phone will work is because Nextel is in the iDEN business and ONLY that business. They don't offer cdma phones and they don't do analog roaming therefore there 100% of their network expansion is of their iDEN network and it HAS to be because that's how they make their money.
3G is third generation cell phone technology that promising substantially increased data bandwidth (current technologies around about 9.6 kbps) perhaps enough for streaming video.
I disagree. Capitalism has provided me, the US consumer, with choices. I can choose what cellular phone protocol I wish to use. In my case, I've chosen iDEN because I believe its a better protocol than GSM and CDMA. I'd rather have this choice than have a government tell me what protocol I WILL use. I fail to see how a government funded wireless network would be better than what we have now? All that would end up happening is that taxpayers would be forced to pay for cellular infastructure whether or not they chose to use it. Would imposing such a burden and removing the element of choice be worth having coverage in remote sparsely populated backcountry areas? I think not.
Its also important to point out that, wireless networks in europe are privatized, just the protocol has been dictated by the government, so in any one country there are usually two or more GSM networks each owned by seperate companies (sometimes one is a state monopoly)
Granted GSM has its strong points like SIM cards and the convenience that comes from it being a standard, however, it is my view (and that of most capitalists) that a standard should exist because the market decided upon it than because a government dictated it.
actually that's not true. we (the usa) have many *choices* when it comes to what protocol we wish to use for cellular. there's tdma, cdma, gsm, amps, and my favorite, iDEN, to name a few. choice is good, i (and many others) would rather have a free market come up with a standard (or standards) than to have a government (or quasi-government in the case of the EU) dictate which protocol we WILL use. i for one prefer iDEN over GSM having read several hundred pages on the workings of the protocols. different protocols have different strengths and weaknesses, i'd rather make my own decision weighing the factors that are most important to ME than be stuck with a protocol that may not be the best fit for me. it this means making sacrifices when it comes to coverage then so be it, but it doesn't have to.
The nokia phones i've seen are pretty crappy too. Granted i haven't actually used the 82xx and they do look really cool in pictures and in charlie's angels, based on my real world experience (and perhaps the fact that i'm a motorola stockholder and a fan of iDEN over GSM) i'd choose motorola any day. I've had a motolola i1000plus for the past 6 months and its been incredible. believe it or not, WAP in the USA *IS* useful. I use it every day on my 1000plus to check email, get directions, news, weather and the occasion game (and yes sometimes even to check slashdot:-) ) its also got a builtin speaker phone which works great for handsfree in the. my only complaint is that its a tad larger than i'd like and it isn't dual mode. But if you love nokia, by all means go for it. choice is GOOD.
Jabber is has a functioning and robust XML-based independent instant messaging protocol. It interoperates with AIM, ICQ and other IM systems. Clients are currently much more functional than AOL's linux beta. There's a good list of clients and user info at Jabber Central.
BE maybe fast, but I tried the supposedly "free" BeOS and it locked up with a kernel fault or whatever they call it in less than 10 minutes when i asked it to play two 600 meg mpeg-1 videos at once on my dual p2 400. Geez, even windows can last longer than that. Faster opengl means diddly squat if it can't stay running without a kernel fault for more than 10 minutes. Imagine trying to frag your buddies on quake and having to reboot every 10 minutes, not a good way to win. Stability wins over speed everyday of the week.
when i tried the 2.3.* kernels on the bp6, i got apic errors too, and upon investigation (aka, searching the logs of the kernel mailing list) it turns out that the kernel didn't start pointing out apic errors until the 2.3.* series....in other words, you get the same errors on 2.2.* but it doesn't point them out to you. It's not a problem with the board, it's a problem with the user pushing the cpu past the specifications. Not to start a flame war, but I've tried the overclocking scene, and its great when it works, but I learned the hard way that believe it or not, Intel knows what they're doing when they rate a certain chip at a certain speed. Better to spend more for a faster cpu than jump at every segfault convinced its a hardware problem or end up with corrupted filesystems.
If you want to edit file formats, you'll be happy to know that Abiword uses XML as its file format. Can't say i agree with the unix feel, while it has its place, the place is not in a word processor.
The death of DIVX demonstrated that consumers will not accept a standard that further restricts their use of intellectual property when a more open standard already exists. Its too bad the "open dvd" didn't turn out to be as open as we thought. Mp3s are here, now, and will not go away soon. SDMI has to be converted to audio at some point, and as a result can and mostly likely will be recorded, circumventing the technology. Someone will find a way to grab the digital out before its converted to analog by the soundcard. The industry doesn't understand they're fighting a battle they can't win. Until they send the audio directly to people's brains, no format will be secure.
This is yet another example where the general public in benefits once patents expire. Capitalism takes control and multiple companies can compete to provide the consumer with a better product for less money or for free. The set of laws that govern IP in the USA severely need to be reformed to work properly in the internet age. The RSA patent is one of few examples of a computer-related patent that still has usefulness after it expires. 17 years is too long for a government granted and subsidized monoply.
I forgot to mention that linux sees this modem the same as anyother modem and controls it using AT commands. Only special thing was to use setserial to configure the serial port to a 16750 UART and set the baud_base to 921600 and divisor to 4 so that setting the spd_cust flag would give programs that use the serial port at the 38400 setting, 230400 bps of bandwidth.
I use an external 3comImpact ISDN modem. I have it hooked up to an old pentium 75 via a fast serial card. The serial port on the modem runs at 230400 bps and connects to a pacificcomware fast serial card (921600 bps max) so there isn't any bottleneck and i get the full 128 kbps. The pentium 75 has mandrake 6.1 on it with the ip-masquerading (aka NAT) modules loaded up and also serves as dhcp and nameserver for my home network. Having an isdn modem hooked up to a linux box provides much more flexibily than would a router configured via a web interface (IMOP of course:-) ). Diald brings up the isdn link on demand in matter of seconds, so the whole setup is basically transperant to users.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a fair number of sites available via IPv6 besides Google.
Word is that OpenID Provider 87ideven gets a good percentage of traffic via IPv6.
Just because Americans are using it doesn't mean it's not being used.
Feel free to contribute some sites available via ipv6--> http://ipv6links.net/ There are many tunnel providers that will give you a /64 or /48 for free.
Get Connected and head to http://ipv6links.net to find some sites that are available via IPv6.
Homeland Stupidity is a great ipv6-connected blog that many Slashdotters would probably like.
No. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China and operates independently of PRC law in all areas except foreign policy and defense. See http://www.gov.hk/
QQ is a product produced by Tencent, Inc, located in Shenzhen, China. The south african website to which the parent linked seems to be some third party attempt to get people in south africa to use QQ's english client. Here's the real download website http://im.qq.com/ and an english about page for those who don't read chinese. http://www.tencent.com/about/about_e.shtml
You can roam in Japan if you put your GSM sim in a 3G WCDMA phone on Vodaphone's J-Phone network. Take a look at all of their roaming partners. http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/roa_jpjp.s html
There are also several WCDMA phones that are also triband GSM in which case you wouldn't even have to switch handsets.
Good luck!
GOAT? they probably will, but mandrake has different packages and dependencies
The SDK has been available for quite a while. You have to complete a free registration to download it. http://www.idendev.com
the motorola i3000 codename "condor" will feature java and the sega games. Good luck trying to get a date out of nextel for when they'll have it.
The similarities between iDEN and GSM are basically that they use the same signalling format (TDMA) and that iDEN uses a modified version of GSM (8.08) A-bis for error correction and to maintain radio link integrity. Our prices here are pretty low too, it costs me less for my mobile phone (free long distance) than it would for an equivalent amount of long distance time on land line phone. You've probably heard it before, but the reason that we (usa) didn't have digital cellular until recently was probably because of the cheapness of landline (local calls are free and unlimited) and the fact that in 1990 when gsm was just beginning there was a pretty much continent wide (well at least most of the usa and canada) analog cellular network. Granted analog sucks since it was so inefficient, expensive, insecure, and poor quality, but it worked decently well. Anyways, this announcement basically means more choice and that's a good thing. :-)
This is not true, my landline telephone bills aren't increased because my telephone company doesn't offer wireless service and the company i have my wireless service doesn't have a local/long distance service. The reason I'm guaranteed the phone will work is because Nextel is in the iDEN business and ONLY that business. They don't offer cdma phones and they don't do analog roaming therefore there 100% of their network expansion is of their iDEN network and it HAS to be because that's how they make their money.
3G is third generation cell phone technology that promising substantially increased data bandwidth (current technologies around about 9.6 kbps) perhaps enough for streaming video.
I disagree. Capitalism has provided me, the US consumer, with choices. I can choose what cellular phone protocol I wish to use. In my case, I've chosen iDEN because I believe its a better protocol than GSM and CDMA. I'd rather have this choice than have a government tell me what protocol I WILL use. I fail to see how a government funded wireless network would be better than what we have now? All that would end up happening is that taxpayers would be forced to pay for cellular infastructure whether or not they chose to use it. Would imposing such a burden and removing the element of choice be worth having coverage in remote sparsely populated backcountry areas? I think not. Its also important to point out that, wireless networks in europe are privatized, just the protocol has been dictated by the government, so in any one country there are usually two or more GSM networks each owned by seperate companies (sometimes one is a state monopoly) Granted GSM has its strong points like SIM cards and the convenience that comes from it being a standard, however, it is my view (and that of most capitalists) that a standard should exist because the market decided upon it than because a government dictated it.
actually that's not true. we (the usa) have many *choices* when it comes to what protocol we wish to use for cellular. there's tdma, cdma, gsm, amps, and my favorite, iDEN, to name a few. choice is good, i (and many others) would rather have a free market come up with a standard (or standards) than to have a government (or quasi-government in the case of the EU) dictate which protocol we WILL use. i for one prefer iDEN over GSM having read several hundred pages on the workings of the protocols. different protocols have different strengths and weaknesses, i'd rather make my own decision weighing the factors that are most important to ME than be stuck with a protocol that may not be the best fit for me. it this means making sacrifices when it comes to coverage then so be it, but it doesn't have to.
The nokia phones i've seen are pretty crappy too. Granted i haven't actually used the 82xx and they do look really cool in pictures and in charlie's angels, based on my real world experience (and perhaps the fact that i'm a motorola stockholder and a fan of iDEN over GSM) i'd choose motorola any day. I've had a motolola i1000plus for the past 6 months and its been incredible. believe it or not, WAP in the USA *IS* useful. I use it every day on my 1000plus to check email, get directions, news, weather and the occasion game (and yes sometimes even to check slashdot :-) ) its also got a builtin speaker phone which works great for handsfree in the. my only complaint is that its a tad larger than i'd like and it isn't dual mode. But if you love nokia, by all means go for it. choice is GOOD.
Jabber is has a functioning and robust XML-based independent instant messaging protocol. It interoperates with AIM, ICQ and other IM systems. Clients are currently much more functional than AOL's linux beta. There's a good list of clients and user info at Jabber Central.
BE maybe fast, but I tried the supposedly "free" BeOS and it locked up with a kernel fault or whatever they call it in less than 10 minutes when i asked it to play two 600 meg mpeg-1 videos at once on my dual p2 400. Geez, even windows can last longer than that. Faster opengl means diddly squat if it can't stay running without a kernel fault for more than 10 minutes. Imagine trying to frag your buddies on quake and having to reboot every 10 minutes, not a good way to win. Stability wins over speed everyday of the week.
i disagree...infinite recursion is definitely worse than infinite recursion
when i tried the 2.3.* kernels on the bp6, i got apic errors too, and upon investigation (aka, searching the logs of the kernel mailing list) it turns out that the kernel didn't start pointing out apic errors until the 2.3.* series....in other words, you get the same errors on 2.2.* but it doesn't point them out to you. It's not a problem with the board, it's a problem with the user pushing the cpu past the specifications. Not to start a flame war, but I've tried the overclocking scene, and its great when it works, but I learned the hard way that believe it or not, Intel knows what they're doing when they rate a certain chip at a certain speed. Better to spend more for a faster cpu than jump at every segfault convinced its a hardware problem or end up with corrupted filesystems.
If you want to edit file formats, you'll be happy to know that Abiword uses XML as its file format. Can't say i agree with the unix feel, while it has its place, the place is not in a word processor.
The death of DIVX demonstrated that consumers will not accept a standard that further restricts their use of intellectual property when a more open standard already exists. Its too bad the "open dvd" didn't turn out to be as open as we thought. Mp3s are here, now, and will not go away soon. SDMI has to be converted to audio at some point, and as a result can and mostly likely will be recorded, circumventing the technology. Someone will find a way to grab the digital out before its converted to analog by the soundcard. The industry doesn't understand they're fighting a battle they can't win. Until they send the audio directly to people's brains, no format will be secure.
This is yet another example where the general public in benefits once patents expire. Capitalism takes control and multiple companies can compete to provide the consumer with a better product for less money or for free. The set of laws that govern IP in the USA severely need to be reformed to work properly in the internet age. The RSA patent is one of few examples of a computer-related patent that still has usefulness after it expires. 17 years is too long for a government granted and subsidized monoply.
I forgot to mention that linux sees this modem the same as anyother modem and controls it using AT commands. Only special thing was to use setserial to configure the serial port to a 16750 UART and set the baud_base to 921600 and divisor to 4 so that setting the spd_cust flag would give programs that use the serial port at the 38400 setting, 230400 bps of bandwidth.
I use an external 3comImpact ISDN modem. I have it hooked up to an old pentium 75 via a fast serial card. The serial port on the modem runs at 230400 bps and connects to a pacificcomware fast serial card (921600 bps max) so there isn't any bottleneck and i get the full 128 kbps. The pentium 75 has mandrake 6.1 on it with the ip-masquerading (aka NAT) modules loaded up and also serves as dhcp and nameserver for my home network. Having an isdn modem hooked up to a linux box provides much more flexibily than would a router configured via a web interface (IMOP of course :-) ). Diald brings up the isdn link on demand in matter of seconds, so the whole setup is basically transperant to users.