It's called 4G and that's exactly what they're planning to do, except they will offer a bundled telephony service because nobody really wants to have to deal with three different companies to get phone service. That doesn't mean you have to use it, obviously.
The UMTS system is being upgraded via something called the Long Term Evolution project. You'll get a 100Mbps (shared, obviously) internet connection, and the high level protocols will essentially be an evolved IMS. CDMA2000's equivalent is something called UMB. In UMTS's case, if you roam onto Wifi or WiMax, and you're using IMS, the roaming will be seamless,
So, yes, they "get it". They just need time to standardize the technology, make it good enough, and roll it out.
There is a use for WiFi on your phone, which is to support the new UMA (also known as GAN) system for GSM. This is "GSM over the Internet" and effectively turns any AP into a pseudo-GSM tower. Walk out of range of the AP, and the GSM network picks up, even if you're mid-call (so no call drops.)
What's the advantage? Well, aside from the fact some operators, notably T-Mobile in certain parts of the US, are promoting flat rate (as in $20/month, no airtime charges for Wifi calls) service with UMA, there's also the fact that you no longer have to care about whether the kitchen, bathroom, closet, or whereever else you plan to use the phone, has coverage from your favourite (ha) GSM carrier. Calls are always high quality (GSM operators with capacity problems frequenty use something called "half rate", HR or AMR-HR, to double their capacity, at the expense of call quality - but if you're on UMA, there's no need), you can build coverage where your operator can't, so in general you're a lot better off.
The problem, right now, is that most phones with Wifi don't support UMA yet, and most networks are in the process of evaluating UMA rather than implementing it. But I expect this situation to change within the year.
There's been cellphones for decades that are programmable in an unrestricted fashion. I bought my Nokia 9000 back in 1997, well after it came out, and that ran GEOS and came with a full SDK. A significant number of modern Nokias run Symbian and every few months there's an announcement of something that runs Linux, Windows CE (or whatever they call it these days), PalmOS, and others.
The key thing is, stay out of the markets where "proprietary" is considered a feature by the operator (IS-95/CDMA2000 in particular) and stick with open systems like GSM (and UMTS.) You'll find that there are huge numbers of phones out there for pretty much every type of user, and yes, geeks are a market. It may be too small for the operators to care, but the manufacturers produce phones for 'em anyway, and all you have to do is buy the phone and insert the SIM card to get running.
Always check with people in the area who use a particular carrier what their experiences are before signing up. You can't really go on "I heard bad things about...", "I heard good things about..." because if you go by that logic, they all suck.
All carriers are strong in some areas and weak in others. (Worse still, this situation changes over time, as carriers gain subscribers (bad) and expand their network (good.))
BitKeeper wasn't Free Software, and Larry McVoy proved in the Linux fiasco to be every bit cranky and kooky, so no, I don't think a company is going to avoid kookery/crankery by avoiding Free Software.
I can't believe the majority of the responses act as if that is what the FSF is objecting to. The FSF (together with most of the developers in the GNU/Linux community) is objecting to a part where Microsoft provides Novell customers with a patent indemnity, which does not apply to non Novell customers.
In other news: Tensions rise with Iran, which is a country that has 28 television stations.
Geez. Why the hell would you be concerned that Iran has 28 TV stations? What a stupid thing to threaten war over!
Seeing as some mods appear to believe this is flamebait, I'd just like to back you up on this.
"Mike" first of all offered to restore the mail, but for a $20 fee, which as the original writer pointed out, came across as extortion:
Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the $19.95 upgrade fee. This is non-negotiable.
Customer complained, pointing out how this felt and also making it clear that the "30 day login requirement" was not that clear, so it was an easy mistake to make. After a few exchanges on this subject, none of which amounted to an outright rejection of the above, this comes from Lycos:
I am the manager at Lycos.
Your e-mail will not be restored, as it's been more than 48 hours since you were notified as to what you had to do. Our policy is clear, and clearly stated on the homepage, whether or not you choose to look at it.
Nothing will be done for you.
So in the middle of discussions, Lycos decided to delete the mail anyway. Just in case there was any doubt, Mike took this one step further and wrote the following snide response:
I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.
So, yes, Lycos deleted the mail for no apparent reason beyond being cruel for personal amusement. Clearly the account holder did want to hold on to them. Clearly there was no necessity to delete the mail. Mike felt that he should punish the account holder for daring to question the legitimacy of his $20 "offer". Did he need to? Nope.
Did Lycos have a legal right to? DOES IT FUCKING MATTER? The issue here is are Lycos being assholes (answer: YES!) and does Mike deserve some criticism for his personal, rude, unhelpful and unsympathetic response? Answer: Hell yes. The fact someone has a legal right to be an asshole is not reason to believe the person is beyond criticism, that the organization is not behaving attrociously, that complaining about it is somehow "wrong", or even that the victim has not been poorly treated.
No, actually, the two aren't remotely comparable, unless you're suggesting the IPCC people were paid to produce a biased report. In which case, I'd like evidence of that. One group, those who worked on the IPCC report, is being paid to tell the truth, whatever that turns out to be, the other is being paid to state something as fact regardless of the truth. Can you seriously tell me there's no difference there?
Quite honestly, this is utterly dishonorable, and I hope no genuine scientists, whatever their views on Global Warming, took the money.
I'd also like to know whether you're just stupid, or part of the shill campaign by the global warming denial movement. Because I'm fed up with this. Every time there's an article on global warming on Slashdot, there's always someone promoting the mistruths and utterly intellectually dishonest leaps of logic as you have just done. There is no way in which someone can equate the two groups that you just did (at least, not without further explanation, such as pointing to evidence that the IPCC scientists were actually told the conclusions they had to come up with) without either being utterly, utterly, foolish beyond words, or having some external motivation to do so.
And there's always, mysteriously, enough moderators who'll mod the parent's obvious bullshit up.
What the hell is going on?
I'll calling you out on this. It's time we all did.
There's a third option, which is to create a non-revokable Class License applying to software licensed under open source licenses. That way, should the company be bought, anyone using the technology covered by the license under an open source environment will remain protected.
Personally though I'd rather just see the patent revoked. Supposedly there's another attempt brewing to get SCOTUS to look at software patents.
Me too. And I thought Madagascar was great too. Which apparently puts me and every adult I know in an even bigger minority.
On the other hand, this is Slashdot, where nobody thinks Family Guy is funny because, like, it's just pop-culture references, I mean, dude, how unoriginal and unfunny can you get? (Continue in "I don't have a television, actually" smug voice for a few hours.)
Yes, yes, yes, but why does that make you like jandrese? Or do you think that something you wrote above in some way implies the article writer makes a living increasing people's Pagerank?
They've never been "the good guy". They've gone through periods of being "the innovative guy" without doing too much evil for people to dislike them, but they're also the pioneers of the "look and feel" lawsuits that caused immense damage in the 1980s, and, especially concerning the Macintosh, have always had an absurdly controlling and proprietary attitude towards it. Even their attempts at open source have either been forced (Objective C was originally closed, and NeXT were forced to open it by the FSF, likewise WebKit et al are open because they're required to be by licensing), or with legal catches and a less than forthright approach (such as Darwin, and the evil APSL.)
They're the (mythical) Mussolini of the computer world, revered by many for making the trains run on time, but with a slap of dictatorial control most of us steer away from.
Apple's strength is its ability to package together interesting new products that inspire much of the industry. That's it. It's not a charity, indeed it makes IBM look warm and cuddly.
If you're defining peaceful as "threatening violence but not doing it (yet)" then, yes, RICO can be used against "peaceful" protesters. I think it's fairly obvious from the article that you link to that RICO is not being used against people from whom no perceived threat of violence exists.
Perhaps you "pro-Life" people should recognize that it's not just the "unborn" (if indeed they count at all) who constitute "life".
It would have been cool, but you and I and the rest of the world knows full well that Verizon would only have supported Verizon R-UIM cards in an iPhone. ie you'd have been able to swap between iPhones, but beyond that...
Interestingly enough, something similar used to be true for iDEN (NEXTEL) phones (it may still be, I'm not sure.) iDEN phones used a SIM-like card (I believe current models actually use real GSM SIM cards today) which could be swapped between phones of the same model, but not of different models. I never quite understood the confusion of understanding that would result in someone thinking that was a good idea. If you're going to do that, why bother having SIMs in the first place? Geez.
I agree it would significantly make CDMA2000 suck less if the operators capitulated and let users choose their own devices and use R-UIMs. Maybe T-Mobile rolling out UMTS nationwide, and Cingular's roll-out becoming more available (now they also have AWS spectrum) will put some pressure on them. On the other hand, with UMTS over HSDPA, and with LTE around the corner (that's UMTS over IP over OFDMA/SC-FDMA, with the ability to also run over WiMAX), I'm seriously wondering if there's ever going to be a serious advantage to what amounts to being the last death cry of the AMPS system. Perhaps the UWB people can mandate R-UIM cards, and at least keep up the pressure on the UMTS people.
As I've said before, you pay for calls to mobiles whether it's "mobile party pays" or "calling party pays". Unless, of course, you never make calls, but that's hardly a rational moral argument in terms of who should pay. "I'm a cheap bastard, so I expect everyone else to pay for my mobile phone". Right.
Assuming you're like most people and accept roughly the same number of calls to mobiles as you make, you're no worse off with one system over the other, except in that US carriers have tried to make the tariffs more user friendly because of the perception of "being charged for making an incoming call", and typically offer a huge number of bundled minutes with each tariff, plus unmetered off-peak calls and unmetered in-network calling (ie a Cingular customer usually doesn't use up any minutes calling another Cingular customer.)
The end result actually is that the MPP regime has worked out pretty well. It's perfectly legitimate to replace your landline with a cellphone - you're not being unfair on your friends and family if you do so. The huge amount of unmetered airtime removes a great deal of the worry from using mobile phones. Operators are not gaming the market by advertising low outgoing call rates knowing full well that the prices for incoming calls are so extreme they'll make up the difference, and that the customer will ignore that aspect because, hey, that's not under their control anyway.
The disadvantage of MPP is that it raises the cost of entry. Typically most pre-paid plans require a substantial minimum of around $10 a month top-up to keep going. The exception is T-Mobile, which offers a flat 10c/minute rate and one yearly top-up as long as you've put at least $100 into the account in the account's history. But, again, that's a significant cost of entry compared to prepaid in most countries.
Cingular's owners, SBC (now called at&t after buying the AT&T long distance company) and BellSouth have merged after SBC bought BellSouth.
SBC wants to rebrand everything as at&t, so will is in the process of a slow rebranding of Cingular.
In an entirely unrelated fact which tends to confuse everyone, there used to be a company called McCaw Wireless, which was bought by AT&T (the long distance company, then also expanding into other areas), rebranded to AT&T Wireless Services, and then sold off (at the same time as a bunch of other operations) under that name. Shortly afterwards, Cingular bought McCaw, and integrated the two networks.
(Technically I'm using the wrong terminology and should be refering to AT&T instead of McCaw and at&t instead of SBC, but the point is I'm trying to undo some of the confusion, and it becomes infinitely easier to see what's happening if I use their "original" names.)
So: In 1984, Bell System is split out into AT&T, BellSouth, the companies that became SBC, and a bunch of other operations. SBC and BellSouth have their own cellular networks.
In the mid nineties, AT&T buys a cellular operator called McCaw.
In the late nineties, SBC and BellSouth merge their cellular operations into a single company called Cingular Wireless.
In the early 2000s, AT&T breaks itself up again. McCaw (as AT&T Wireless) becomes a seperate company again. AT&T Long Distance is what's left of the original AT&T company.
In the mid 2000s, Cingular buys McCaw
A year ago, SBC buys AT&T Long Distance, and renames itself to at&t. Rumour has it that edward e. whitacre Jr is a k.d.lang fan.
A month ago, SBC buys BellSouth. Cingular is now controlled completely by SBC. SBC starts the process of rebranding it too.
The solution there is probably to bid half the amount on the auction next time. Keep halving your bid with successive auctions and you'll make the seller pay a lot of money in eBay fees if they're truly shilling.
The real thing to know with eBay is never take it too seriously. Never make last minute important purchases with it. And be prepared for the fact that people may try to game you, so get your retaliation in first.
If, on the other hand, they merely read the Wikipedia article, look at the links, the calculations, and finally end up with "Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 (Source: "The Iron Lady Rusts", Lord Rees Mogg The Times, 29th November, 1990"), then they'll get a pass (or at least that part will be considered acceptable.)
The issue here is that an Encyclopedia is generally third hand knowledge.
is not true. You pay for incoming calls, it's just you pay for them when you initiate the call, not when you receive it. (If that's confusing, understand what the words "incoming calls" are in this context - they're all calls received by a cellphone. If you initiate a call that will be received by a cellphone, then you're paying for that type of call... in Europe.) You are just as like to make a call to a cellphone as receive one, therefore you are no better off with one system as against the other.
All that's different in the US is that it's the cellphone user who pays for incoming calls. To the person who initiates the call, unless they're on a cellphone themselves (in which case they'll pay their share, or frequently nothing), they pay nothing.
Understanding this is key to understanding two things:
1. Why Americans aren't rioting in the streets about this. There was talk of introducing "caller pays", at one point, which the FCC created a rather hamfisted "solution" to that nobody used, but it's turned out to be largely unnecessary.
2. Why Americans are able to legitimately replace their landlines with cellphones in a way Europeans generally aren't. (I can't imagine forcing my friends to pay 25-75c a minute to talk to me, and if everyone did that, we'd certainly be all worse off for it.)
The system is undoubtledly less underfriendly, but US carriers have generally gotten around this by bundling huge amounts of air time with each plan, usually making off-peak calls free of airtime charges completely and even making same-network mobile-to-mobile calls free.
In the long term, with 4G around the corner, I suspect everything will end up going completely unmetered.
The real problems with US mobile phones right now are:
1. The high cost of entry (a typical plan is $40 and up. That's a good plan though, think 500ish minutes plus free nights and weekends)
2. The poor technology chosen largely to help lock customers in than to provide services. Even when GSM is implemented, it's done poorly, and UMTS has sufferred through an until recent starvation of spectrum.
3. A reluctance to encourage (or at least reward) customers for buying unsubsidized equipment. The one glimmer of hope now is that there might be some truth to the Apple story.
You make it sound like cellphones have only legal locks and can be listened to in the clear, or just with the help of a particularly powerful computer.
CDMA (both CDMA2000 and W-CDMA based systems like FOMA and UMTS) conversations are practically impossible to evesdrop upon. Even if you have the key (close to impossible), the timings and need for location information make evesdropping unbelievably hard.
On a technical level, the GSM system is easier to tap, but on a practical level it isn't. Early GSM networks used relatively breakable algorithms (at the behest, believe it or not, of British Intelligence who clearly hadn't heard of phone taps...), but after this was cracked most networks were upgraded to much more secure algorithsm. And just to identify a specific handset you need information only exchanged when the phone is turned on. These algorithms are publicly known, and there are as many people who want to break it as, say, SSL.
For all practical purposes, the only time your (post-analog/post-D-AMPS) mobile phone is going to be intercepted is if someone is working at the telco and has a tap on your line. Casual evesdropping is probably non-existant.
You HAM based system on the other hand can, and probably is given the frequencies, intercepted by casual evesdroppers all the time.
In the US, only if you're declared as having some kind of monopoly power. For example, organizations representing publishers of music and books have gotten into trouble for setting price floors (usually in order to prop up independent sellers against companies like Wal*Mart) because by roping in all their members, they're effectively creating a cartel that's setting prices.
This obviously doesn't apply to Apple, though it would if Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, et al, joined together and all (as a group) told Cingular where to stick its subsidies.
Now, in Europe, the law is (generally - the EU is a collection of jurisdictions after all) stricter. Nobody can force a retailer to sell their products at a particular price, because doing so constitutes a "Restraint of Trade". This is regardless of whether they do so as a single manufacturer, or as a group.
The DMCA covers a wide range of copyright issues, only one of which is the circumvention of Access Control Mechanisms.
As one example, it establishes a procedure by which third parties (ISPs, etc) whose services are used to distribute pirated content can escape liability if they immediately take down infringing content on being notified. That's what's going on here.
Given the one-sidedness of the submitter's version of the story, and given the fact he invited her to this dinner, I wouldn't be so quick as to assume she really was as unfair as he appears to be implying.
If I invited someone to a dinner, then unless I specifically stated at the time of the invitation that I was expecting her to pay her way, I certainly wouldn't demand repayment of my expenses at a later date. That's the way it works, and this sounds more like a socially inept geek doing what socially inept geeks do, than a morality tale about getting your comeuppance for being "popular" and taking advantage of it.
Indeed, the implication that she was a freeloading slut is another reason to doubt the submitter's sincerity.
There are certain things this country stands for that from time to time people, like our friend Alberto, fight against. Unless this country stands for them, it is not the same country we consider America.
I don't think he's using semantic tricks. I think you're not understanding what the GP is talking about. I certainly don't blame him for considering it treason.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called 4G and that's exactly what they're planning to do, except they will offer a bundled telephony service because nobody really wants to have to deal with three different companies to get phone service. That doesn't mean you have to use it, obviously.
The UMTS system is being upgraded via something called the Long Term Evolution project. You'll get a 100Mbps (shared, obviously) internet connection, and the high level protocols will essentially be an evolved IMS. CDMA2000's equivalent is something called UMB. In UMTS's case, if you roam onto Wifi or WiMax, and you're using IMS, the roaming will be seamless,
So, yes, they "get it". They just need time to standardize the technology, make it good enough, and roll it out.
There is a use for WiFi on your phone, which is to support the new UMA (also known as GAN) system for GSM. This is "GSM over the Internet" and effectively turns any AP into a pseudo-GSM tower. Walk out of range of the AP, and the GSM network picks up, even if you're mid-call (so no call drops.)
What's the advantage? Well, aside from the fact some operators, notably T-Mobile in certain parts of the US, are promoting flat rate (as in $20/month, no airtime charges for Wifi calls) service with UMA, there's also the fact that you no longer have to care about whether the kitchen, bathroom, closet, or whereever else you plan to use the phone, has coverage from your favourite (ha) GSM carrier. Calls are always high quality (GSM operators with capacity problems frequenty use something called "half rate", HR or AMR-HR, to double their capacity, at the expense of call quality - but if you're on UMA, there's no need), you can build coverage where your operator can't, so in general you're a lot better off.
The problem, right now, is that most phones with Wifi don't support UMA yet, and most networks are in the process of evaluating UMA rather than implementing it. But I expect this situation to change within the year.
There's been cellphones for decades that are programmable in an unrestricted fashion. I bought my Nokia 9000 back in 1997, well after it came out, and that ran GEOS and came with a full SDK. A significant number of modern Nokias run Symbian and every few months there's an announcement of something that runs Linux, Windows CE (or whatever they call it these days), PalmOS, and others.
The key thing is, stay out of the markets where "proprietary" is considered a feature by the operator (IS-95/CDMA2000 in particular) and stick with open systems like GSM (and UMTS.) You'll find that there are huge numbers of phones out there for pretty much every type of user, and yes, geeks are a market. It may be too small for the operators to care, but the manufacturers produce phones for 'em anyway, and all you have to do is buy the phone and insert the SIM card to get running.
Always check with people in the area who use a particular carrier what their experiences are before signing up. You can't really go on "I heard bad things about...", "I heard good things about..." because if you go by that logic, they all suck.
All carriers are strong in some areas and weak in others. (Worse still, this situation changes over time, as carriers gain subscribers (bad) and expand their network (good.))
BitKeeper wasn't Free Software, and Larry McVoy proved in the Linux fiasco to be every bit cranky and kooky, so no, I don't think a company is going to avoid kookery/crankery by avoiding Free Software.
I can't believe the majority of the responses act as if that is what the FSF is objecting to. The FSF (together with most of the developers in the GNU/Linux community) is objecting to a part where Microsoft provides Novell customers with a patent indemnity, which does not apply to non Novell customers.
In other news: Tensions rise with Iran, which is a country that has 28 television stations.
Geez. Why the hell would you be concerned that Iran has 28 TV stations? What a stupid thing to threaten war over!
Seeing as some mods appear to believe this is flamebait, I'd just like to back you up on this.
"Mike" first of all offered to restore the mail, but for a $20 fee, which as the original writer pointed out, came across as extortion:
Customer complained, pointing out how this felt and also making it clear that the "30 day login requirement" was not that clear, so it was an easy mistake to make. After a few exchanges on this subject, none of which amounted to an outright rejection of the above, this comes from Lycos:
So in the middle of discussions, Lycos decided to delete the mail anyway. Just in case there was any doubt, Mike took this one step further and wrote the following snide response:
So, yes, Lycos deleted the mail for no apparent reason beyond being cruel for personal amusement. Clearly the account holder did want to hold on to them. Clearly there was no necessity to delete the mail. Mike felt that he should punish the account holder for daring to question the legitimacy of his $20 "offer". Did he need to? Nope.
Did Lycos have a legal right to? DOES IT FUCKING MATTER? The issue here is are Lycos being assholes (answer: YES!) and does Mike deserve some criticism for his personal, rude, unhelpful and unsympathetic response? Answer: Hell yes. The fact someone has a legal right to be an asshole is not reason to believe the person is beyond criticism, that the organization is not behaving attrociously, that complaining about it is somehow "wrong", or even that the victim has not been poorly treated.
No, actually, the two aren't remotely comparable, unless you're suggesting the IPCC people were paid to produce a biased report. In which case, I'd like evidence of that. One group, those who worked on the IPCC report, is being paid to tell the truth, whatever that turns out to be, the other is being paid to state something as fact regardless of the truth. Can you seriously tell me there's no difference there?
Quite honestly, this is utterly dishonorable, and I hope no genuine scientists, whatever their views on Global Warming, took the money.
I'd also like to know whether you're just stupid, or part of the shill campaign by the global warming denial movement. Because I'm fed up with this. Every time there's an article on global warming on Slashdot, there's always someone promoting the mistruths and utterly intellectually dishonest leaps of logic as you have just done. There is no way in which someone can equate the two groups that you just did (at least, not without further explanation, such as pointing to evidence that the IPCC scientists were actually told the conclusions they had to come up with) without either being utterly, utterly, foolish beyond words, or having some external motivation to do so.
And there's always, mysteriously, enough moderators who'll mod the parent's obvious bullshit up.
What the hell is going on?
I'll calling you out on this. It's time we all did.
There's a third option, which is to create a non-revokable Class License applying to software licensed under open source licenses. That way, should the company be bought, anyone using the technology covered by the license under an open source environment will remain protected.
Personally though I'd rather just see the patent revoked. Supposedly there's another attempt brewing to get SCOTUS to look at software patents.
Me too. And I thought Madagascar was great too. Which apparently puts me and every adult I know in an even bigger minority.
On the other hand, this is Slashdot, where nobody thinks Family Guy is funny because, like, it's just pop-culture references, I mean, dude, how unoriginal and unfunny can you get? (Continue in "I don't have a television, actually" smug voice for a few hours.)
Yes, yes, yes, but why does that make you like jandrese? Or do you think that something you wrote above in some way implies the article writer makes a living increasing people's Pagerank?
They've never been "the good guy". They've gone through periods of being "the innovative guy" without doing too much evil for people to dislike them, but they're also the pioneers of the "look and feel" lawsuits that caused immense damage in the 1980s, and, especially concerning the Macintosh, have always had an absurdly controlling and proprietary attitude towards it. Even their attempts at open source have either been forced (Objective C was originally closed, and NeXT were forced to open it by the FSF, likewise WebKit et al are open because they're required to be by licensing), or with legal catches and a less than forthright approach (such as Darwin, and the evil APSL.)
They're the (mythical) Mussolini of the computer world, revered by many for making the trains run on time, but with a slap of dictatorial control most of us steer away from.
Apple's strength is its ability to package together interesting new products that inspire much of the industry. That's it. It's not a charity, indeed it makes IBM look warm and cuddly.
If you're defining peaceful as "threatening violence but not doing it (yet)" then, yes, RICO can be used against "peaceful" protesters. I think it's fairly obvious from the article that you link to that RICO is not being used against people from whom no perceived threat of violence exists.
Perhaps you "pro-Life" people should recognize that it's not just the "unborn" (if indeed they count at all) who constitute "life".
It would have been cool, but you and I and the rest of the world knows full well that Verizon would only have supported Verizon R-UIM cards in an iPhone. ie you'd have been able to swap between iPhones, but beyond that...
Interestingly enough, something similar used to be true for iDEN (NEXTEL) phones (it may still be, I'm not sure.) iDEN phones used a SIM-like card (I believe current models actually use real GSM SIM cards today) which could be swapped between phones of the same model, but not of different models. I never quite understood the confusion of understanding that would result in someone thinking that was a good idea. If you're going to do that, why bother having SIMs in the first place? Geez.
I agree it would significantly make CDMA2000 suck less if the operators capitulated and let users choose their own devices and use R-UIMs. Maybe T-Mobile rolling out UMTS nationwide, and Cingular's roll-out becoming more available (now they also have AWS spectrum) will put some pressure on them. On the other hand, with UMTS over HSDPA, and with LTE around the corner (that's UMTS over IP over OFDMA/SC-FDMA, with the ability to also run over WiMAX), I'm seriously wondering if there's ever going to be a serious advantage to what amounts to being the last death cry of the AMPS system. Perhaps the UWB people can mandate R-UIM cards, and at least keep up the pressure on the UMTS people.
As I've said before, you pay for calls to mobiles whether it's "mobile party pays" or "calling party pays". Unless, of course, you never make calls, but that's hardly a rational moral argument in terms of who should pay. "I'm a cheap bastard, so I expect everyone else to pay for my mobile phone". Right.
Assuming you're like most people and accept roughly the same number of calls to mobiles as you make, you're no worse off with one system over the other, except in that US carriers have tried to make the tariffs more user friendly because of the perception of "being charged for making an incoming call", and typically offer a huge number of bundled minutes with each tariff, plus unmetered off-peak calls and unmetered in-network calling (ie a Cingular customer usually doesn't use up any minutes calling another Cingular customer.)
The end result actually is that the MPP regime has worked out pretty well. It's perfectly legitimate to replace your landline with a cellphone - you're not being unfair on your friends and family if you do so. The huge amount of unmetered airtime removes a great deal of the worry from using mobile phones. Operators are not gaming the market by advertising low outgoing call rates knowing full well that the prices for incoming calls are so extreme they'll make up the difference, and that the customer will ignore that aspect because, hey, that's not under their control anyway.
The disadvantage of MPP is that it raises the cost of entry. Typically most pre-paid plans require a substantial minimum of around $10 a month top-up to keep going. The exception is T-Mobile, which offers a flat 10c/minute rate and one yearly top-up as long as you've put at least $100 into the account in the account's history. But, again, that's a significant cost of entry compared to prepaid in most countries.
Cingular's owners, SBC (now called at&t after buying the AT&T long distance company) and BellSouth have merged after SBC bought BellSouth.
SBC wants to rebrand everything as at&t, so will is in the process of a slow rebranding of Cingular.
In an entirely unrelated fact which tends to confuse everyone, there used to be a company called McCaw Wireless, which was bought by AT&T (the long distance company, then also expanding into other areas), rebranded to AT&T Wireless Services, and then sold off (at the same time as a bunch of other operations) under that name. Shortly afterwards, Cingular bought McCaw, and integrated the two networks.
(Technically I'm using the wrong terminology and should be refering to AT&T instead of McCaw and at&t instead of SBC, but the point is I'm trying to undo some of the confusion, and it becomes infinitely easier to see what's happening if I use their "original" names.)
So: In 1984, Bell System is split out into AT&T, BellSouth, the companies that became SBC, and a bunch of other operations. SBC and BellSouth have their own cellular networks.
In the mid nineties, AT&T buys a cellular operator called McCaw.
In the late nineties, SBC and BellSouth merge their cellular operations into a single company called Cingular Wireless.
In the early 2000s, AT&T breaks itself up again. McCaw (as AT&T Wireless) becomes a seperate company again. AT&T Long Distance is what's left of the original AT&T company.
In the mid 2000s, Cingular buys McCaw
A year ago, SBC buys AT&T Long Distance, and renames itself to at&t. Rumour has it that edward e. whitacre Jr is a k.d.lang fan.
A month ago, SBC buys BellSouth. Cingular is now controlled completely by SBC. SBC starts the process of rebranding it too.
The solution there is probably to bid half the amount on the auction next time. Keep halving your bid with successive auctions and you'll make the seller pay a lot of money in eBay fees if they're truly shilling.
The real thing to know with eBay is never take it too seriously. Never make last minute important purchases with it. And be prepared for the fact that people may try to game you, so get your retaliation in first.
They're banning citing Wikipedia, not using Wikipedia.
If a student turns in a paper where they say "Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disasterous_leaders_o f_Britain)", then the professor is going to fail them.
If, on the other hand, they merely read the Wikipedia article, look at the links, the calculations, and finally end up with "Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 (Source: "The Iron Lady Rusts", Lord Rees Mogg The Times, 29th November, 1990"), then they'll get a pass (or at least that part will be considered acceptable.)
The issue here is that an Encyclopedia is generally third hand knowledge.
I agree with some of your points but:
is not true. You pay for incoming calls, it's just you pay for them when you initiate the call, not when you receive it. (If that's confusing, understand what the words "incoming calls" are in this context - they're all calls received by a cellphone. If you initiate a call that will be received by a cellphone, then you're paying for that type of call... in Europe.) You are just as like to make a call to a cellphone as receive one, therefore you are no better off with one system as against the other.All that's different in the US is that it's the cellphone user who pays for incoming calls. To the person who initiates the call, unless they're on a cellphone themselves (in which case they'll pay their share, or frequently nothing), they pay nothing.
Understanding this is key to understanding two things:
1. Why Americans aren't rioting in the streets about this. There was talk of introducing "caller pays", at one point, which the FCC created a rather hamfisted "solution" to that nobody used, but it's turned out to be largely unnecessary.
2. Why Americans are able to legitimately replace their landlines with cellphones in a way Europeans generally aren't. (I can't imagine forcing my friends to pay 25-75c a minute to talk to me, and if everyone did that, we'd certainly be all worse off for it.)
The system is undoubtledly less underfriendly, but US carriers have generally gotten around this by bundling huge amounts of air time with each plan, usually making off-peak calls free of airtime charges completely and even making same-network mobile-to-mobile calls free.
In the long term, with 4G around the corner, I suspect everything will end up going completely unmetered.
The real problems with US mobile phones right now are:
1. The high cost of entry (a typical plan is $40 and up. That's a good plan though, think 500ish minutes plus free nights and weekends)
2. The poor technology chosen largely to help lock customers in than to provide services. Even when GSM is implemented, it's done poorly, and UMTS has sufferred through an until recent starvation of spectrum.
3. A reluctance to encourage (or at least reward) customers for buying unsubsidized equipment. The one glimmer of hope now is that there might be some truth to the Apple story.
No they're not, if they were, it'd have Exchange support.
Bizarre as it might sound, this is aimed squarely at the iPod crowd.
You make it sound like cellphones have only legal locks and can be listened to in the clear, or just with the help of a particularly powerful computer.
CDMA (both CDMA2000 and W-CDMA based systems like FOMA and UMTS) conversations are practically impossible to evesdrop upon. Even if you have the key (close to impossible), the timings and need for location information make evesdropping unbelievably hard.
On a technical level, the GSM system is easier to tap, but on a practical level it isn't. Early GSM networks used relatively breakable algorithms (at the behest, believe it or not, of British Intelligence who clearly hadn't heard of phone taps...), but after this was cracked most networks were upgraded to much more secure algorithsm. And just to identify a specific handset you need information only exchanged when the phone is turned on. These algorithms are publicly known, and there are as many people who want to break it as, say, SSL.
For all practical purposes, the only time your (post-analog/post-D-AMPS) mobile phone is going to be intercepted is if someone is working at the telco and has a tap on your line. Casual evesdropping is probably non-existant.
You HAM based system on the other hand can, and probably is given the frequencies, intercepted by casual evesdroppers all the time.
I know which I consider more secure.
In the US, only if you're declared as having some kind of monopoly power. For example, organizations representing publishers of music and books have gotten into trouble for setting price floors (usually in order to prop up independent sellers against companies like Wal*Mart) because by roping in all their members, they're effectively creating a cartel that's setting prices.
This obviously doesn't apply to Apple, though it would if Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, et al, joined together and all (as a group) told Cingular where to stick its subsidies.
Now, in Europe, the law is (generally - the EU is a collection of jurisdictions after all) stricter. Nobody can force a retailer to sell their products at a particular price, because doing so constitutes a "Restraint of Trade". This is regardless of whether they do so as a single manufacturer, or as a group.
The DMCA covers a wide range of copyright issues, only one of which is the circumvention of Access Control Mechanisms.
As one example, it establishes a procedure by which third parties (ISPs, etc) whose services are used to distribute pirated content can escape liability if they immediately take down infringing content on being notified. That's what's going on here.
Given the one-sidedness of the submitter's version of the story, and given the fact he invited her to this dinner, I wouldn't be so quick as to assume she really was as unfair as he appears to be implying.
If I invited someone to a dinner, then unless I specifically stated at the time of the invitation that I was expecting her to pay her way, I certainly wouldn't demand repayment of my expenses at a later date. That's the way it works, and this sounds more like a socially inept geek doing what socially inept geeks do, than a morality tale about getting your comeuppance for being "popular" and taking advantage of it.
Indeed, the implication that she was a freeloading slut is another reason to doubt the submitter's sincerity.
There are certain things this country stands for that from time to time people, like our friend Alberto, fight against. Unless this country stands for them, it is not the same country we consider America.
I don't think he's using semantic tricks. I think you're not understanding what the GP is talking about. I certainly don't blame him for considering it treason.