Cingular T-Mobile (Yes, the same company as in Germany) AT&T Wireless (Migrating their network to GSM)
All of these companies use SIM cards, so switching between them should be as simple as swapping SIMs and (if necessary) unlocking your phone.
Now, switching between Sprint (CDMA) and Verizon (CDMA) may be possible. I don't know if the radios in the phones are compatible, although I'd imagine that they are. Switching between Sprint and Verizon could be as simple as a over-the-air reflash.
Switching between a CDMA provider and a GSM provider would, of course, require a new phone.
"If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go."
I can travel in a country of 300 million people that is three times the size of Western Europe and never pay roaming fees or need to switch my phone. Not to mention coverage in Canada.
"slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has"
2x more people per cell, as well as much larger cell sizes is not "slight". It's massive. That's why I have unlimited calling to anyone else on the same CDMA network. That's why I get unlimited off peak minutes and 500 free peak minutes. That's why I get unlimited 144kbps data service.
GSM doesn't work in the US. The cell size is simply too small. If you look at the carriers who have adopted GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular) vs. the carriers who have adopted CDMA (Sprint, Verizon), the CDMA services have far better coverage.
17km cells may be fine when your country is the size of California. The US has fewer people than Western Europe, yet it is nearly three times larger. Much of that area is sparsely populated. Covering Wyoming using GSM cells is sinply not feasable.
"The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers."
Nope. Having a diverse set of technologies is good for consumers. Being locked into a fast-aging standard is bad. What's good for consumers is having both standards available and letting the free market choose the best option.
Most people in the US will rarely need to leave the country. Europeans may travel from country to country often, but Americans do not. Interoperability with other systems is not a criteria most Americans care about.
So far, people in the US have chosen CDMA over GSM technologies. CDMA does more and costs less.
"Crappy battery life, poor reception, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't support data packets. Pluses: CDMA covers almost everywhere you would want to use your cell phone."
That's bullshit. I have a Kyocera Smartphone. It's a Palm and a CDMA phone. It may not have data (it has an internal modem, but that doesn't really count), but it gets great reception and it goes for 6 hours of talk time on one charge.
Sprint also offers nationwide (well, close enough) 2.5G data service.
TWC varies its prices greatly based on geographic region.
I actually live in a Comcast (former AT&T) area. My 2.5M (320K upstream) cable internet is $45/month; digital cable starts at $49 (but you don't get any digital channels - the only benefit is the pay per view and the program guide).
If you have a good deal on cable, stick with it. I wish cable were that cheap here, too.
BTW: I probably have more shopping channels;) DirecTV carries more than ten of them... lol.
Yet another European/Asian/Other citizen bashing the US.
Look, the system over here works the way it does. One of the problems with the system is that corporations have been given too much political control.
Many European countries are already enacting their own versions of the DMCA and other rediculous laws. Europeans, don't think you're immunne.
"India... largest economic superpower on Earth"
Wrong. China will likely be the largest economic superpower on the planet.
"Once again, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know deep in my heart that no matter how you look at it, I don't live or work in the USA:)"
It will make you feel sad and afraid when you realize that what happens in the US will eventually happen elsewhere. We were ignorent while they passed the DMCA. People of other countries are now laughing at the US while their own versions of the DMCA are beeing silently made into law.
Countries are largely becoming irrelivent. Multinational corporations cross the former country lines. The world economy has become increasingly linked over the past fifty years.
The US is at the top of the food chain right now. It may not be forever. To be honest, it really doesn't matter. It should be the responsibility of every person to fight repressive laws. If you ignore your own government, only bad can come from it.
"the rest of the world isn't drowning itself in stupid laws quite like the USA is at the moment"
You said it best yourself... "at the moment". Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it won't happen. There needs to be world opposition to the repressive laws.
Insulting the US is like insulting China. I hate the Chinese government and many of the things that it stands for. I do not hate China. Instead of attacking the "US", you should attack the bad laws, lobbying, and polititians who created those laws.
" I don't live or work in the USA:)"
Oh, where do you live? China? India? Africa? You can do a lot worse than the US. This is the country where even the "poor" have TVs and food. Well, at least most of them. There are a lot of problems here - crime is one of them, corruption in politics is another.
But none of the policies that the US has put forward have truly surpressed invnovation or free speech.
The PATRIOT act has a lot of nasty things it it, but it is not so different from laws in Europe or other countries.
Patent stupidity is another issue - but this has more to do with incompetence than with poor laws.
Laugh, smile, whatever. We'll see the expression on your face when they come for you.
"You seem to forget that the US doesn't even have a reliable way of getting men into orbit right now, let alone anything more ambitious."
Rockets are inherently dangerous. The Shuttle, although not perfect, has a damn good record for a manned spacecraft.
Catastrophic failures have happened more on the Shuttle than any other manned spacecraft because it has performed far more missions than any other manned spacecraft.
"before the Shuttle design is fixed"
Who said that there was anything wrong? Challenger was a failure to hold to operational safety margins, not a design flaw. The same may be true this time.
The Time Warner box, as I understand it, is a piece of garbage.
It does not offer the advanced scheduling capabilities of a TiVo, nor does it offer the advanced search capabilities.
I would recommend sticking with TiVo and using an IR blaster to get Digital Cable.
Better yet altogether, switch to DirecTV. For $40 per month, I get 140 channels, including my local channels. To get those same channels with Time Warner would likely be $55.
Switch to DirecTV/TiVo. My transition from stand-alone to DirecTV/TiVo was almost as dramatic as the transition from a VCR to a PVR. 2 tuners, more recording time, $5/month fee (instead of $13), unlimited DVRs under a single fee, better quality recording, etc.
Asparatame may cause brain cell death and other adverse side effects - there are studies both ways - but it is most certainly not a poison. It is a drug.
This is cool, but it's not new. There has been a HP 48/49G emulator for Windows CE for some time now. It even runs at an acceptable speed on the newer Pocket PCs. There has also been a Psion version.
"They need to just drop the old code base, rethink their architecture and start from scratch."... and somehow retain compatability with legacy drivers and code?
Microsoft is popular, in part, because they have always been comitted to backwards compatability.
They did scrap their codebase and start over. It's called Windows 2000, and it was a complete rewrite of the kernel and related subsystems.
Microsoft software is veulnerable in part because it is so flexible. Outlook macro viruses happen because Outlook has a fully-featured object-oriented programming IDE built in. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't so good at locking down all of their functionality. In fact, until NT4 they weren't really interested in security.
Since 2.11 (the first version I developed for), Windows CE has been fully Unicode, UI and all. It doesn't include multi-language fonts (size constraints), but you can just load regular TrueType fonts.
Now, to be fair, many of the embedded Linux distros are also fully Unicode.
Actually, no. Legally, it's copyright infringment, and it is not handled like traditional theft. In many cases the punishment can be more for copyright infringement than for theft.
And for you PC users, there's Vegas 4 from Sonic Foundry. Great product, almost as good as Final Cut (in some ways better), standard and easy to use Windows UI (no funky controls), and only $400.
They also make a great audio editing package called Sound Forge.
Downloading MP3s is not theft. Shoplifting a CD is. When you steal a CD, no one else can buy it. When you download a track, you're just making an unauthorized copy of a copywritten work.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider TiVo - for those moments when you wish you had a time machine for your television. Now you do.
Sidenote; For us Windows users who like Lucida Grande, I've found that Lucida Sans Unicode (ships with Windows) is almost identical.
Well, it is that simple on GSM networks.
That's why there are three of them in the US.
Cingular
T-Mobile (Yes, the same company as in Germany)
AT&T Wireless (Migrating their network to GSM)
All of these companies use SIM cards, so switching between them should be as simple as swapping SIMs and (if necessary) unlocking your phone.
Now, switching between Sprint (CDMA) and Verizon (CDMA) may be possible. I don't know if the radios in the phones are compatible, although I'd imagine that they are. Switching between Sprint and Verizon could be as simple as a over-the-air reflash.
Switching between a CDMA provider and a GSM provider would, of course, require a new phone.
"If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go."
I can travel in a country of 300 million people that is three times the size of Western Europe and never pay roaming fees or need to switch my phone. Not to mention coverage in Canada.
"slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has"
2x more people per cell, as well as much larger cell sizes is not "slight". It's massive. That's why I have unlimited calling to anyone else on the same CDMA network. That's why I get unlimited off peak minutes and 500 free peak minutes. That's why I get unlimited 144kbps data service.
GSM doesn't work in the US. The cell size is simply too small. If you look at the carriers who have adopted GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular) vs. the carriers who have adopted CDMA (Sprint, Verizon), the CDMA services have far better coverage.
17km cells may be fine when your country is the size of California. The US has fewer people than Western Europe, yet it is nearly three times larger. Much of that area is sparsely populated. Covering Wyoming using GSM cells is sinply not feasable.
"The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers."
Nope. Having a diverse set of technologies is good for consumers. Being locked into a fast-aging standard is bad. What's good for consumers is having both standards available and letting the free market choose the best option.
Most people in the US will rarely need to leave the country. Europeans may travel from country to country often, but Americans do not. Interoperability with other systems is not a criteria most Americans care about.
So far, people in the US have chosen CDMA over GSM technologies. CDMA does more and costs less.
"Crappy battery life, poor reception, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't support data packets. Pluses: CDMA covers almost everywhere you would want to use your cell phone."
That's bullshit. I have a Kyocera Smartphone. It's a Palm and a CDMA phone. It may not have data (it has an internal modem, but that doesn't really count), but it gets great reception and it goes for 6 hours of talk time on one charge.
Sprint also offers nationwide (well, close enough) 2.5G data service.
Yes, but a series of documents doesn't form in a geometric line. A group of individuals waiting for something will (well, at least in the US they do).
TWC varies its prices greatly based on geographic region.
;)
I actually live in a Comcast (former AT&T) area. My 2.5M (320K upstream) cable internet is $45/month; digital cable starts at $49 (but you don't get any digital channels - the only benefit is the pay per view and the program guide).
If you have a good deal on cable, stick with it. I wish cable were that cheap here, too.
BTW: I probably have more shopping channels
DirecTV carries more than ten of them... lol.
I just write my dates this way:
16 Apr 2003
The only problem is having a month name in English.
Sigh...
:)"
:)"
Yet another European/Asian/Other citizen bashing the US.
Look, the system over here works the way it does. One of the problems with the system is that corporations have been given too much political control.
Many European countries are already enacting their own versions of the DMCA and other rediculous laws. Europeans, don't think you're immunne.
"India... largest economic superpower on Earth"
Wrong. China will likely be the largest economic superpower on the planet.
"Once again, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know deep in my heart that no matter how you look at it, I don't live or work in the USA
It will make you feel sad and afraid when you realize that what happens in the US will eventually happen elsewhere. We were ignorent while they passed the DMCA. People of other countries are now laughing at the US while their own versions of the DMCA are beeing silently made into law.
Countries are largely becoming irrelivent. Multinational corporations cross the former country lines. The world economy has become increasingly linked over the past fifty years.
The US is at the top of the food chain right now. It may not be forever. To be honest, it really doesn't matter. It should be the responsibility of every person to fight repressive laws. If you ignore your own government, only bad can come from it.
"the rest of the world isn't drowning itself in stupid laws quite like the USA is at the moment"
You said it best yourself... "at the moment". Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it won't happen. There needs to be world opposition to the repressive laws.
Insulting the US is like insulting China. I hate the Chinese government and many of the things that it stands for. I do not hate China. Instead of attacking the "US", you should attack the bad laws, lobbying, and polititians who created those laws.
" I don't live or work in the USA
Oh, where do you live? China? India? Africa?
You can do a lot worse than the US. This is the country where even the "poor" have TVs and food. Well, at least most of them. There are a lot of problems here - crime is one of them, corruption in politics is another.
But none of the policies that the US has put forward have truly surpressed invnovation or free speech.
The PATRIOT act has a lot of nasty things it it, but it is not so different from laws in Europe or other countries.
Patent stupidity is another issue - but this has more to do with incompetence than with poor laws.
Laugh, smile, whatever. We'll see the expression on your face when they come for you.
"You seem to forget that the US doesn't even have a reliable way of getting men into orbit right now, let alone anything more ambitious."
Rockets are inherently dangerous. The Shuttle, although not perfect, has a damn good record for a manned spacecraft.
Catastrophic failures have happened more on the Shuttle than any other manned spacecraft because it has performed far more missions than any other manned spacecraft.
"before the Shuttle design is fixed"
Who said that there was anything wrong? Challenger was a failure to hold to operational safety margins, not a design flaw. The same may be true this time.
Internet Explorer has done this for years.
So has Mozilla.
Season Pass (record every episode of a show, even if it moves)
TiVo = Yes
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes
TWC Box = No
Suggustions (programs you may like - like it or hate it)
TiVo = Yes (optional)
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes (optional)
TWC Box = No
Advanced conflict managment (prioritize season passes or equiv.)
TiVo = Yes
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes
TWC Box = No
Two tuners (record two programs at once/record a program while watching a 2nd live program)
TiVo = No
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes
TWC Box = No
Picture-In Picture
TiVo = No
DirecTV/Tivo = No
TWC Box = No
Guide Style
TiVo = Two column, translucent
DirecTV/TiVo = Two column or grid, translucent
TWC Box = Grid, picture in corner
Delete Date/Time (tells you when programs will be deleted to make space)
TiVo = Yes
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes
TWC Box = No
God-Awful Remote
TiVo = No
DirecTV/TiVo = No
TWC Box = Yes
Half-Decent User Interface
TiVo = Yes
DirecTV/TiVo = Yes
TWC Box = No
The Time Warner box, as I understand it, is a piece of garbage.
It does not offer the advanced scheduling capabilities of a TiVo, nor does it offer the advanced search capabilities.
I would recommend sticking with TiVo and using an IR blaster to get Digital Cable.
Better yet altogether, switch to DirecTV. For $40 per month, I get 140 channels, including my local channels. To get those same channels with Time Warner would likely be $55.
Switch to DirecTV/TiVo. My transition from stand-alone to DirecTV/TiVo was almost as dramatic as the transition from a VCR to a PVR. 2 tuners, more recording time, $5/month fee (instead of $13), unlimited DVRs under a single fee, better quality recording, etc.
Asparatame may cause brain cell death and other adverse side effects - there are studies both ways - but it is most certainly not a poison. It is a drug.
Who needs to see it in an alternate universe when we can see it again in this universe in a few hours.
This is cool, but it's not new. There has been a HP 48/49G emulator for Windows CE for some time now. It even runs at an acceptable speed on the newer Pocket PCs. There has also been a Psion version.
t tp://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/pc/emulators/</a>
h
"They need to just drop the old code base, rethink their architecture and start from scratch." ... and somehow retain compatability with legacy drivers and code?
Microsoft is popular, in part, because they have always been comitted to backwards compatability.
They did scrap their codebase and start over. It's called Windows 2000, and it was a complete rewrite of the kernel and related subsystems.
Microsoft software is veulnerable in part because it is so flexible. Outlook macro viruses happen because Outlook has a fully-featured object-oriented programming IDE built in. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't so good at locking down all of their functionality. In fact, until NT4 they weren't really interested in security.
Now they are. Things will change, slowly.
"What the US needs first is a publicly funded broadcasting corporation that is at an arms length of government"
It's called PBS and NPR.
Look at BSoftPlayer. It's kind of in a transition period, but it will have a web interface in the next version.
;)
It's SQLite based and has a pretty good interface.
bsoftplayer.sf.net
I would know, I programmed it.
Hmmm... what version did you use?
Since 2.11 (the first version I developed for), Windows CE has been fully Unicode, UI and all. It doesn't include multi-language fonts (size constraints), but you can just load regular TrueType fonts.
Now, to be fair, many of the embedded Linux distros are also fully Unicode.
Good post, but just an addon:
"While it is true that LEGALLY, this is theft"
Actually, no. Legally, it's copyright infringment, and it is not handled like traditional theft. In many cases the punishment can be more for copyright infringement than for theft.
And for you PC users, there's Vegas 4 from Sonic Foundry. Great product, almost as good as Final Cut (in some ways better), standard and easy to use Windows UI (no funky controls), and only $400.
They also make a great audio editing package called Sound Forge.
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement.
Downloading MP3s is not theft. Shoplifting a CD is. When you steal a CD, no one else can buy it. When you download a track, you're just making an unauthorized copy of a copywritten work.
It's different.
Windows CE (PocketPC is a version of Windows CE 3.0) has been fully Unicode since version 2.0.
"The PalmOS is still demolishing the PocketPC."
Not really. They now command a repsectable portion of the market, and the Palm OS marketshare is declining every year.