I suspect some of these things have come through law and regulations enforced on the carriers - I'm sure they would love to charge crazy fees as well. As an example, EU is constantly putting lower limits on how much they can charge for roaming abroad - and these limits are hard limits in €/minute and MB.
But I'm sure such laws & regulations would be considered communism in the US:/
Well, such deals where heavily advertized ~10 years ago, but I don't think they where very common. Typically the "cheap" subsidized price was written in big letters, and the unlocked prize which non-stupid people paid in small letters at the bottom of the poster. If you got the subsidized deal, you got a phone cheaper but paid more per phonecall etc. for the first 1-2 years, after which you could switch contract. There was also a law that the original operator was obliged to unlock your phone when this period ran out, so that you could use it on any network. We (Norway) also have a law saying that you are entitled to keep your phone number when switching operators.
Getting a locked phone was almost always just an option - and everyone was aware that an unlocked phone was usually less expensive (and less annoying) in the long run. One exception was Apple, which in the beginning had an exclusive deal to only be sold through and locked to one operator. Thus people starting importing unlocked iPhones from abroad, and that operator got angry with Apple, which I think tried to prevent the imported phones from working here. In the end, it didn't work out, and now they're just sold as normal unlocked phones like everything else (with the exception of using a strange SIM physical format, making switching between apple and non-apple a bit of a hassle).
Ouch! I only pay 15 CHF (approximately 15 $) for 500 MB it Switzerland, and I think 1 GB would be ~20 CHF. There is no charge to keep the subscription (but then data is pay-as-you go, which is OK for a dumbphone or if you just don't use mobile data), calls inside the same network are for free, and calls to landlines abroad is cheap. Switzerland being outside EU, roaming in the EU is horribly expensive:/
It's also interesting that cellphones are so much more expensive in the USA than in Switzerland, given that mostly everything else is cheaper in the US (including wages) - and there seems to be some competition going on...
Random question: Are there any US operators offering a prepaid SIM with no subscription fee / prepaid? I'm travelling there from time to time, and it would be nice to have a SIM which I could stick into my phone when I land, not having to bother finding something new + new number etc.. So far I've just been roaming with my EU phone, but that's a bit expensive..
The title of the article is: "Really, Why Are Smartphones Still Tied To Contracts?"
However, this is really an American phenomenon - in most of the world the most common is to buy the phone you want "cash", then get a SIM card from the provider you want (or just move over your old SIM).
This also means that it's common to get a prepaid SIM if one goes abroad for more than a few days, in order to call/receive calls for cheap, and use data without being fleeced. It also means that the phones are not branded the same as the network, but branded as Samsung / HTC / Apple / etc.
And that's probably one of the types of criminals which are most likely to weigh the consequences and probabilities of getting caught against the gained benefits from the crime. The type where harsh punishments actually can make a difference on the probability of a person going through with said crime.
Unfortunately, I would be suprised if not this type is a minority compared to crimes caused by badly planned robberies, crimes of passion, intoxication, and just general stupidity.
Executions is a very small market afterall, and for anything else importing works fine. There may also be patent issues, and I believe the drug is quite complicated to make.
I'm against death penalty, but I also never understood why the states still doing it make it so convuluted. I thought the "raving revenge rightwingers" you're talking of are quite aware of the invention of firearms, why not use that? As far as I understand, it should even be pretty humane to the prisoner...
Yeah, agree - that clip is pretty neat:) Link to another project, which was where I heard of it first (google translated Norwegian -> English, translation seems to be reasonable): http://translate.google.no/tra...
Hehe, I could imagine she wouldn't be to happy - especially taking into account the extra plumbing that usually goes with it + it probably won't work too well with the guarantee:P
Yeah, and jet fuel is apparently also commonly used at military airfields, but apparently not so good for the engine due to worse lubricating properties. About the sulpur, I thought most fuel has been quite low on sulphur since at least the 90s - something like 3-5 ppm being the normal grade at the pump. Maybe there are differences between EU and US fuels.
Cool clip by the way, but I've rarely seen Mythbusters do any real statistics or larger samples - I personally count them as very nice anecdotes:)
I'm a bit unsure if I would do that to my own car tough, which runs on dieselas it's of the newer, fuel-injected variety. Diesel cars are *extremely* common in France and Norway, as the fuel is cheaper and the milage is better + more low-end torque is smoother for when driving a manual, which most people do over here. As far as I've understood, you're fine as long as the fuel is warm, but once it gets cold, it turns to "butter" in the pipes, meaning you have to remember to switch to normal fuel a bit before shutdown to "flush" the pipes. And I know from experience that fuel injectors are pretty delicate things, with lots of tiny chambers where the "butter" could hide away:/ But meh, I can get ~800 km for 50€ => I won't bother doing it, even if it's cool:)
The first one is pretty good - and I think I've read the report they're quoting. If I remember correctly, the basic conclusion was that unless you're so close that you're anyway dead from blast effects and radiation, you're probably fine. Maybe the instrument cluster will be a bit wonky, but it will most likely run fine.
That being said, I remember working on a small marine diesel engine, pulling something like ~30 horsepowers. That machine was compeletely mechanical - the only electronics on it was the battery charging alternator, starter engine (but it was supplied with a detachable crank just-in-case), and some instrumentation and monitoring like RPM counter, oil pressure sensor, and temperature sensor - all of which it would run just fine without. And being a diesel, you could probably run it on almost anything that burned slowly enough for it not to detonate - as an example, I know people have ran similar engines on used & filtered frying oil, claiming the exhaust smelled like french fries:P In other word - an EMP blast would do exacly nothing to such machines. And it was quite easy getting a good understanding of how it worked.
About the EMP: Outside of movies, I suspect a car won't care, as it isn't connected to any long transmission lines which amplifies the "area" part of V=A*dB/dt.
You mean Ogre? I don't think that can actually physically destroy a plate: http://wiw.org/~meta/vsum/view... If you mean something else, I would be interested in hearing how it actually manages to change the head flying altitude...
I'm also in Europe, but probably not exactly the same place as you. But having been to the US many times, I agree that there are a lot of cultural differences, and I suspect most Europeans are much more aware of these differences than most Americans.
At least in Norway, which is my home country, debit cards are the norm when paying for things - the only places I generally pay cash is when I get a beer from the beer-fridge at the room of the student orchestra I'm sometimes hanging out with in the basement of my university. Basically everything else is plastic. These cards are *not* expensive to use. They are also the main form of ID for people without a driver's license - which includes *a lot* of young people in the cities, as cars are (due to taxes) very expensive to buy, own and run, but public transport is quite good.
France, where I currently live, debit cards are also very common. You use cash when buying a coffee at a café or a beer at the pub or a bread at the bakery, but not when getting groceries etc. Public transport isn't so good tough, but cars are cheap, so people drive almost everywhere.
Switzerland, which happens to be 1-2 km from where I live - I cross this border multiple times per day, often on a pedal bike if the weather is nice as it takes less time than going by car + a nice free exercise to get me going in the morning - is a bit different. Here a lot of places don't accept cards, so you need to carry a lot more cash. Public transport is, again, quite good. Speaking of ID, I've only once been asked for it at the border (having crossed it probably thousands of times).
And since you mention it: Neither places are armed robberies considered a big problem. The whole "needing a gun to protect yourself" culture is extremely alien to us. It's not that guns are rare - both Norway and Switzerland is quite high on the statistics of gun ownership - but they are used for hunting, by the military, and for target shooting. Thus pistols and similar "concealable" weapons are rare, while hunting rifles, shotguns, and often full-auto military rifles (now usually without some small but hard to manufacture and vital piece) are common.
But in all those cases, having some clue of how things work is quite useful, even if you don't fix it yourself.
Car won't stop when pushing the breaks? Probably something wrong with the breaks or the hydraulics. Emergency break flooping around? Probably something with the cable. Oil light came on? Stop the car and switch of the engine.
No light in a room? Check the fuse. Fuse burns out immediately? Disconnect the slighty burnt-looking appliance on that circuit. Still tripping fuse? Time to call an electrician.
Suddenly unaware of how to do basic tasks, like reading or opening a door? Time to go to the hospital. Friend complaining about stiff neck and red dots on the skin which doesn't go a way with pressure? Might be meningitis, which is very dangerous. Hospital. No energy, weighing over 100 kg, can't walk up a stair? Don't live of coca-cola and McDonalds, get a better diet (and know what that means) and start using your legs.
Computer not producing the results you need? Did you give it the input data it needs to produce that result? Can't connect to Facebook? Can you connect to anything else? Can you get to that web page through your tablet, which is connected to the same network?
Having the tools to think logically about something, even if you're not an expert, is very useful.
Yup. And the cheap ballpoints have a habbit of making it hard to change the direction of the stroke, making my handwriting look like runes (mostly straight angles).
My native language is Norwegian, but I also speak English (which is also my working language), learned a bit of German in school (which is usefull from time to time as I'm working in Switzerland + tons of German colleagues), and I'm currently living in France so I'm trying to learn enough of that to get through daily life. Us Scandinavians are probably somewhat over-represented on english-language internet forums, which I believe is due to being a small and somewhat fractured language group, meaning that we have relatively few forums in our own languages, and a generally high proficciency in English. I think it's quite hard to find someone in Scandinavia who isn't comfortable communicating in English. Unfortunately, that isn't true for France...
I realized just after hitting "post" that "digged" was probably a strange choice of words - it was a borked translation of "digget" which is slang for something like "really liked". But I never found any edit button on./, so I just let it be, figuring that people would understand what I meant.
Yeah, I agree. However, as you say, how stable a 777 would as a glider without a pilot in the loop, we don't know. Also, I've always heard that the autopilot disconnects if the engines go out (as it doesn't get power from the ram air generator).
Also, the AF crash wasn't exacly 1 or 2 big pieces - google and you'll find the images.
If this plane was flying without human intervention, it may very well have taken a nosedive once the fuel ran out and the autopilot disconnected. If so, it would probably be crushed in a lot of quite small (~meter size) pieces, like the Air France flight that went down in the Atlantic.
I think that crash you've seen on video was made much worse by one of the hijackers deciding to start a wrestling fight with the pilot just before touchdown.
I came here to say the same - the homepage of GeoResonance is *extremely* light on the technology they use, which mostly sounds like some kind of remote NMR. But how do they excite a signal, and how do they detect it? Also, most of the images they show seems to be super-coarse spatial resolution, useful for finding oil and minerals, but not so much a plane on the oceanfloor.
Finally, even if they had the data, how would they find a tiny signal in their apparently huge dataset which just accidentally happened to cover the area of interest?
Other than that, I think it's a really cool project. Also, as far as I understand, they plan to bring students into this, which is great - I don't think there are very many other opportunities for students to work hands-on with interplanetary probes such as this, and that alone is probably more than worth the effort even if it fails.
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I suspect some of these things have come through law and regulations enforced on the carriers - I'm sure they would love to charge crazy fees as well. As an example, EU is constantly putting lower limits on how much they can charge for roaming abroad - and these limits are hard limits in €/minute and MB.
But I'm sure such laws & regulations would be considered communism in the US :/
Well, such deals where heavily advertized ~10 years ago, but I don't think they where very common. Typically the "cheap" subsidized price was written in big letters, and the unlocked prize which non-stupid people paid in small letters at the bottom of the poster. If you got the subsidized deal, you got a phone cheaper but paid more per phonecall etc. for the first 1-2 years, after which you could switch contract. There was also a law that the original operator was obliged to unlock your phone when this period ran out, so that you could use it on any network. We (Norway) also have a law saying that you are entitled to keep your phone number when switching operators.
Getting a locked phone was almost always just an option - and everyone was aware that an unlocked phone was usually less expensive (and less annoying) in the long run. One exception was Apple, which in the beginning had an exclusive deal to only be sold through and locked to one operator. Thus people starting importing unlocked iPhones from abroad, and that operator got angry with Apple, which I think tried to prevent the imported phones from working here. In the end, it didn't work out, and now they're just sold as normal unlocked phones like everything else (with the exception of using a strange SIM physical format, making switching between apple and non-apple a bit of a hassle).
Ouch! I only pay 15 CHF (approximately 15 $) for 500 MB it Switzerland, and I think 1 GB would be ~20 CHF. There is no charge to keep the subscription (but then data is pay-as-you go, which is OK for a dumbphone or if you just don't use mobile data), calls inside the same network are for free, and calls to landlines abroad is cheap. Switzerland being outside EU, roaming in the EU is horribly expensive :/
It's also interesting that cellphones are so much more expensive in the USA than in Switzerland, given that mostly everything else is cheaper in the US (including wages) - and there seems to be some competition going on...
Random question: Are there any US operators offering a prepaid SIM with no subscription fee / prepaid? I'm travelling there from time to time, and it would be nice to have a SIM which I could stick into my phone when I land, not having to bother finding something new + new number etc.. So far I've just been roaming with my EU phone, but that's a bit expensive..
Yeah, that's strange - we only get charged for incoming if we're roaming. Even then incoming SMS's are often free.
The title of the article is:
"Really, Why Are Smartphones Still Tied To Contracts?"
However, this is really an American phenomenon - in most of the world the most common is to buy the phone you want "cash", then get a SIM card from the provider you want (or just move over your old SIM).
This also means that it's common to get a prepaid SIM if one goes abroad for more than a few days, in order to call/receive calls for cheap, and use data without being fleeced. It also means that the phones are not branded the same as the network, but branded as Samsung / HTC / Apple / etc.
And that's probably one of the types of criminals which are most likely to weigh the consequences and probabilities of getting caught against the gained benefits from the crime. The type where harsh punishments actually can make a difference on the probability of a person going through with said crime.
Unfortunately, I would be suprised if not this type is a minority compared to crimes caused by badly planned robberies, crimes of passion, intoxication, and just general stupidity.
But do you weight the two equally? Do you think the killing of a murderer makes up for the murder of an innocent?
I do not.
Not all societies have "life in prison" on the menu.
Executions is a very small market afterall, and for anything else importing works fine. There may also be patent issues, and I believe the drug is quite complicated to make.
I'm against death penalty, but I also never understood why the states still doing it make it so convuluted. I thought the "raving revenge rightwingers" you're talking of are quite aware of the invention of firearms, why not use that? As far as I understand, it should even be pretty humane to the prisoner...
Yeah, agree - that clip is pretty neat :) Link to another project, which was where I heard of it first (google translated Norwegian -> English, translation seems to be reasonable):
http://translate.google.no/tra...
Hehe, I could imagine she wouldn't be to happy - especially taking into account the extra plumbing that usually goes with it + it probably won't work too well with the guarantee :P
Yeah, and jet fuel is apparently also commonly used at military airfields, but apparently not so good for the engine due to worse lubricating properties. About the sulpur, I thought most fuel has been quite low on sulphur since at least the 90s - something like 3-5 ppm being the normal grade at the pump. Maybe there are differences between EU and US fuels.
Cool clip by the way, but I've rarely seen Mythbusters do any real statistics or larger samples - I personally count them as very nice anecdotes :)
I'm a bit unsure if I would do that to my own car tough, which runs on dieselas it's of the newer, fuel-injected variety. Diesel cars are *extremely* common in France and Norway, as the fuel is cheaper and the milage is better + more low-end torque is smoother for when driving a manual, which most people do over here. As far as I've understood, you're fine as long as the fuel is warm, but once it gets cold, it turns to "butter" in the pipes, meaning you have to remember to switch to normal fuel a bit before shutdown to "flush" the pipes. And I know from experience that fuel injectors are pretty delicate things, with lots of tiny chambers where the "butter" could hide away :/ But meh, I can get ~800 km for 50€ => I won't bother doing it, even if it's cool :)
The first one is pretty good - and I think I've read the report they're quoting. If I remember correctly, the basic conclusion was that unless you're so close that you're anyway dead from blast effects and radiation, you're probably fine. Maybe the instrument cluster will be a bit wonky, but it will most likely run fine.
That being said, I remember working on a small marine diesel engine, pulling something like ~30 horsepowers. That machine was compeletely mechanical - the only electronics on it was the battery charging alternator, starter engine (but it was supplied with a detachable crank just-in-case), and some instrumentation and monitoring like RPM counter, oil pressure sensor, and temperature sensor - all of which it would run just fine without. And being a diesel, you could probably run it on almost anything that burned slowly enough for it not to detonate - as an example, I know people have ran similar engines on used & filtered frying oil, claiming the exhaust smelled like french fries :P In other word - an EMP blast would do exacly nothing to such machines. And it was quite easy getting a good understanding of how it worked.
About the EMP: Outside of movies, I suspect a car won't care, as it isn't connected to any long transmission lines which amplifies the "area" part of V=A*dB/dt.
You mean Ogre? I don't think that can actually physically destroy a plate:
http://wiw.org/~meta/vsum/view...
If you mean something else, I would be interested in hearing how it actually manages to change the head flying altitude...
I'm also in Europe, but probably not exactly the same place as you. But having been to the US many times, I agree that there are a lot of cultural differences, and I suspect most Europeans are much more aware of these differences than most Americans.
At least in Norway, which is my home country, debit cards are the norm when paying for things - the only places I generally pay cash is when I get a beer from the beer-fridge at the room of the student orchestra I'm sometimes hanging out with in the basement of my university. Basically everything else is plastic. These cards are *not* expensive to use. They are also the main form of ID for people without a driver's license - which includes *a lot* of young people in the cities, as cars are (due to taxes) very expensive to buy, own and run, but public transport is quite good.
France, where I currently live, debit cards are also very common. You use cash when buying a coffee at a café or a beer at the pub or a bread at the bakery, but not when getting groceries etc. Public transport isn't so good tough, but cars are cheap, so people drive almost everywhere.
Switzerland, which happens to be 1-2 km from where I live - I cross this border multiple times per day, often on a pedal bike if the weather is nice as it takes less time than going by car + a nice free exercise to get me going in the morning - is a bit different. Here a lot of places don't accept cards, so you need to carry a lot more cash. Public transport is, again, quite good. Speaking of ID, I've only once been asked for it at the border (having crossed it probably thousands of times).
And since you mention it: Neither places are armed robberies considered a big problem. The whole "needing a gun to protect yourself" culture is extremely alien to us. It's not that guns are rare - both Norway and Switzerland is quite high on the statistics of gun ownership - but they are used for hunting, by the military, and for target shooting. Thus pistols and similar "concealable" weapons are rare, while hunting rifles, shotguns, and often full-auto military rifles (now usually without some small but hard to manufacture and vital piece) are common.
But in all those cases, having some clue of how things work is quite useful, even if you don't fix it yourself.
Car won't stop when pushing the breaks? Probably something wrong with the breaks or the hydraulics. Emergency break flooping around? Probably something with the cable. Oil light came on? Stop the car and switch of the engine.
No light in a room? Check the fuse. Fuse burns out immediately? Disconnect the slighty burnt-looking appliance on that circuit. Still tripping fuse? Time to call an electrician.
Suddenly unaware of how to do basic tasks, like reading or opening a door? Time to go to the hospital. Friend complaining about stiff neck and red dots on the skin which doesn't go a way with pressure? Might be meningitis, which is very dangerous. Hospital. No energy, weighing over 100 kg, can't walk up a stair? Don't live of coca-cola and McDonalds, get a better diet (and know what that means) and start using your legs.
Computer not producing the results you need? Did you give it the input data it needs to produce that result?
Can't connect to Facebook? Can you connect to anything else? Can you get to that web page through your tablet, which is connected to the same network?
Having the tools to think logically about something, even if you're not an expert, is very useful.
Yup. And the cheap ballpoints have a habbit of making it hard to change the direction of the stroke, making my handwriting look like runes (mostly straight angles).
My native language is Norwegian, but I also speak English (which is also my working language), learned a bit of German in school (which is usefull from time to time as I'm working in Switzerland + tons of German colleagues), and I'm currently living in France so I'm trying to learn enough of that to get through daily life. Us Scandinavians are probably somewhat over-represented on english-language internet forums, which I believe is due to being a small and somewhat fractured language group, meaning that we have relatively few forums in our own languages, and a generally high proficciency in English. I think it's quite hard to find someone in Scandinavia who isn't comfortable communicating in English. Unfortunately, that isn't true for France...
I realized just after hitting "post" that "digged" was probably a strange choice of words - it was a borked translation of "digget" which is slang for something like "really liked". But I never found any edit button on ./, so I just let it be, figuring that people would understand what I meant.
Yeah, I agree. However, as you say, how stable a 777 would as a glider without a pilot in the loop, we don't know. Also, I've always heard that the autopilot disconnects if the engines go out (as it doesn't get power from the ram air generator).
Also, the AF crash wasn't exacly 1 or 2 big pieces - google and you'll find the images.
If this plane was flying without human intervention, it may very well have taken a nosedive once the fuel ran out and the autopilot disconnected. If so, it would probably be crushed in a lot of quite small (~meter size) pieces, like the Air France flight that went down in the Atlantic.
I think that crash you've seen on video was made much worse by one of the hijackers deciding to start a wrestling fight with the pilot just before touchdown.
I came here to say the same - the homepage of GeoResonance is *extremely* light on the technology they use, which mostly sounds like some kind of remote NMR. But how do they excite a signal, and how do they detect it? Also, most of the images they show seems to be super-coarse spatial resolution, useful for finding oil and minerals, but not so much a plane on the oceanfloor.
Finally, even if they had the data, how would they find a tiny signal in their apparently huge dataset which just accidentally happened to cover the area of interest?
I also found this thread:
https://www.metabunk.org/threa...
I also think this smells like pseudoscience.
I think they Jeff may have meant the "propaganda" property of both those channels.
Other than that, I think it's a really cool project. Also, as far as I understand, they plan to bring students into this, which is great - I don't think there are very many other opportunities for students to work hands-on with interplanetary probes such as this, and that alone is probably more than worth the effort even if it fails.