I get 1.5Mb/s from my Sprint EVDO RevA card, uploads in the neighborhood of 200-300kbps.
It may not be 8-10Mb you can get from cable or FiOS, but it's certainly comparable to many ADSL offerings.
The price is certainly higher at about $65/mo, probably about $20/mo higher then I pay for a 10Mb/s cable modem connection from my local provider (not comcast)... then again I can take that 1.5Mb connection with me just about anywhere I go, that's worth the extra $20.
I'm also engaged right now with a wedding date set for November, and I have a rather nice full time job that pays the bills. Saying or implying anyone over the age of 24 that plays video games has something wrong with them is rather narrow minded Defensive much?:^)/29//plays video games daily///with 10's of other friends same age who also play
You'll never get speeds comparable to cable internet from BB over Power
The reason cable companies are so hot n' heavy to restrict users is not so much the usage at the head end, but the usage on specific nodes.
You can only pack so much data into a piece of coax... in order to sell 8Mbs, 12Mbs, 20Mbs, etc speeds they need to put a lot more infrastructure in place to keep nodes smaller so that people can actually get these speeds.
When you have a user who is saturating their connection on a very regular basis they mess up the loads for that node--as a cable company your choice is either to potentially get pockets of users on the same node who are NOT power users complaining about slow speeds, upgrade infrastructure to put that power user into a smaller node where they can go nuts ($$$), or you can cap the power user and/or offset your infrastructure upgrade costs on them.
It really is very reasonable!
And to the people who say that DSL is not real competition: That's because of the infrastructure required! It COSTS TOO MUCH to provide service at super high speeds, so it just isn't done... in the case of cable they have done an acceptable job of balancing higher speed offers vs. keeping their costs reasonable. Particularly given the suburban sprawl that so many of these providers are dealing with. Next time you see someone from Japan or the Ukraine bragging about how fast and cheap their internet is, find out if they are in the middle of a city or not, because chances are that even ~15-miles outside of a city you won't see speeds like that.
Keep this shit up. Those "50% who use 5%" of the network will stop advising your idiot clients. When that happens, you'll see the same demise as "AOL" did. How many idiotic AOL dial-up users still exist? AOL failed because they were effectively offering dial-up internet service for about 2-3X the price of other dial-up providers at the time, and to polish them off, many ad-supported dial-up providers began popping up offering "free" service.
In addition, most of AOL's big draw features went from being AOL-exclusive to being available on the public internet, so very little reason to continue with AOL after that.
Comcast & Time Warner do not face this same pressure from DSL and FIOS as even where all of these services are simultaneously available they are effectively equal for the 95% of network users who are not saturating the connection day/night with either legitimate or (supposedly) illegitimate uses.
It's completely reasonable for these ISPs to develop usage caps (which presumably don't affect the vast majority of users) to limit a small percentage of users who are monopolizing using their network. They started off offering "unlimited" service--some people CORRECTLY take that to mean it's OK to saturate the connection 24/7, they are "paying for it"... now it is equally reasonable for the ISPs to re-define their service (when new contracts are entered into) to say, Nope saturating the connection is not acceptable, you have a cap unless you pay more. As a consumer you are free to find an alternative if there is one, if there isn't one, exercise your voice somehow--congress, mayor, whatever. In my town there are TWO cable providers--comcast and RCN... I got sick of comcast, so I went w/ RCN, much happier. If I start to hate them I could always get DSL from one of the MANY providers available... or I could get FIOS... within a year or so there will even be pay-for Wi-Fi available for most of my town.
Is that I'm "lucky" that this happened, or do I live in an area where competition can actually exist! In other areas the same level of competition might ultimately result in the companies going under because people simply aren't willing to pay, or not enough people will sign up, etc, etc... if you want forced competition and/or service that is beyond the minimum the average consumer demands, but for the same price, then you need to get the government involved.
* The minimum speed that I am guaranteed to get.
* The maximum speed I will get under optimal conditions.
* The percentage of the time I can expect to be within n% of the maximum speed.
* The maximum amount of downtime allowed before I am compensated.
* The maximum transfer I am allowed per month and the cost per GB of going over.
Ideally, each ISP would provide a grid with different levels / prices for each of these categories and I would be able to put together a plan that met my needs. They could even unify their consumer and business pricing structures, so businesses picked from the same grid but, if they were doing anything important with their connection, chose the higher level options.
As long as there's competition, and the customer is well-informed about the service they are buying, then a free market works. If either of these conditions fails then you might need some regulation. In regards to your list of benchmarks--minimum speed, downtime, etc... The trouble here is that what you're asking for amounts to disclosure of limits on the service, and guarantees that the provider does not want to have to live up to in a consumer contract. As such, no provider is going to want to voluntarily issue out an obvious list of limits unless every other provider is doing it and/or it's required, as it serves only to potentially detract from business.
As consumers we should ask for government or industrial regulation that requires providers to provide reasonable estimates (based on accepted benchmarks) for this information in consumer level contracts--again, as you infer, not asking for better service here, just a better definition of the existing service!
I know that many DSL companies make no bones about their "guaranteed" minimum speeds--Verizon DSL when I signed up ~3 years ago for one location was quite clear that regardless of what speed level you enter into a contact for they will only guarantee 90kbps. In my case I signed up for 1.5Mb/s, found that I was only receiving ~600kbps. After a few technical visits it was determined that this was just the max I could get given the infrastructure in my area. I still had to fight w/ them to drop my monthly bill to their 768kb/s tier. On the top of Verizon, they are also the ones who have now published that their EVDO service is not truly unlimited, but rather is potentially limited to approx 5GB/mo--note potentially limited, as they do not guarantee to cut you off, only that they have the option to do so.
This is akin to something like a warning on the side of a food product, or cigarette pack... no product provider is going to voluntarily tell you that their product is not the magical thing they promise.
Then we get into policing... what are the consequences of promising 99% uptime but only actually giving 90% uptime in a given month? Is it a pro-rating? What sort of data will the consumer need to provide to show lack of uptime? What about speed guarantees--say I get 6kb/s from a website, how do I prove that this is an ISP issue and not an issue somewhere else? Provider would need to have a site that they use to benchmark your connection to their first router (since presumably that is all they guarantee in a minimum speed contract). If this isn't executed properly (read: made as user friendly as possible to make up for the lowest common denominator) then it could end up being a nightmare that just pushes wait times for technical support into the stratosphere.
In regards to everyone who claims that backward former Soviet countries are providing such wonderful service... I have my doubts as to how well that operates on a long term basis. It may also be that the services are largely subsidized by the governments in an attempt to bring things up to speed.
When I was in dial-up tech support in the late 90s, we would occasionally get customers who were furious because "my business depends on the internet". This.
I worked from a dial up ISP in the late-late 90s and it was amazing to me how many people, who were signed up for home user accounts (i.e. no SLA), and would be screeching into their phones about how they were "losing money by the minute" because they couldn't get online and they had no access to email, or whatever... Anecdotally I'd say that the vast majority of the issues were typically with the customer's own equipment, and had nothing to do with our end.
Riiiiiight, and you chose this $9.99/mo dial-up ISP because you've got such a mission critical application where you lose all this money when not connected???
If you have the potential to lose actual money on a regular basis you owe it to yourself to have two sources of connections. I work from home a handful of days per week... and I've got a Sprint EVDO card and a cable modem... chances are good that if one is down, the other will be working... same thing applies to cell phones, I've got Cingular and I've got Verizon... typically if both are not working it's the result of a major public problem.
Doubling up in my case does not add huge costs... it's under $100/mo for my 2nd set of providers.
appealed to the public's common sense Never heard of this what is it? Why are Americans so parochial? Just because the public in the US has no common sense doesn't mean it's the the same in the rest of the world. Yeeeaaahh... let me know how that works out for you... particularly in the middle east, an area that is just chock full 'o common sense and rational ideas.
Please don't let the OP speak for all New England or Boston people!:(
I'm in Boston and I drive a VW Jetta that gets >35MPG and I agree that a 4x4 is not required 99% of the time unless you plan to drive down completely unplowed roads, snow tires get me everywhere I need to go, even in the 1' of snow we've received in the last couple of days.
Makes me crazy to see all the morons driving huge SUVs around... the worst is when you look at how crowded our expressways are with SUVs in the morning/evenings, we have an HOV lane, all you need is 2 people in the car to use it, so just about every SUV crowding the regular lanes is carrying just a single person... disgusting. Take the train it doesn't get stuck in the snow.
Well, there are people that are having sex with inanimate dolls (real dolls plug here), It would not be far fetched that someone would be amenable to the idea and even build a business out of having sex with robots. There are more advantages than using the regular purveyors. It's more sanitary, there are more control on the looks of the service provider and you only have to perform maintenance every so often.
The thing is, that we already have the technology to make sex robots happen... I bet a machine given the proper instruments and reservoirs would give a great hummer... the simple fact is that 1) Most guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine with moving parts 2) Most Guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine that has serviced other Little Guys, even if the machines are sanitized between uses and even if using an actual female is far more dangerous.
There would have to be a huge change in sentiment before this type of thing (intimate relationships & sex w/ robots) became acceptable and not a taboo that is hidden away--How many people do you know that actually admit to owning and using one of those Real Dolls?
Though I do see people falling in "love" with robots, much in the same way that people fall in love with a car, a favorite chair, an appliance. I "love" my car right now, it keeps me safe, keeps me warm, takes me places... sure any make or model car could do those same things, even another one of the same model I have, but mine has the seat adjusted just right, I know where all the nicks and scratches are, and I know all the weird littles noises it makes, just like I do with my girlfriend... where was I going with this?
They probably forgot to drain the gas... that's what killed my 92 Honda.
Re:Get your financial house in order!
on
Resolutions for 2007?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
AVOID CREDIT CARDS. You will pay 3x the cost of something just for the privilege of being able to buy it today rather than earn it. CREDIT CARDS are a PENALTY for people that don't have PATIENCE Another way to look at this--It's not that you want to avoid credit cards... it's that you want to avoid paying interest and fees.
I use my credit cards for everything. As a result I'm able to get the benefit of using different types of "rewards" cards available. In particular I split between an airline card and an amex-cash card. Over the course of last year I "earned" about 10k miles for doing nothing but paying bills I would have paid anyway, and on Jan 1st I received a $210 credit from american express as part of their tiered cash back reward from my spending last year.
I don't pay attention to interest rates because I never carry a balance, so it doesn't phase me that my amex may have a high double digit rate, because it never comes into play.
Similarly having a car that is completely paid off isn't necessarily the most wonderful thing either. I bought a certified used car a couple of years ago and took advantage of the then available 1.9% APR for 48 months, the price was right and the financing was attractive... as a result even though I am making payments on the car, and will be for another year or so, I'm happy and better off because I earn approx. 5% (so that's 3% net to me) on the savings that I might otherwise have used to pay for the car (or pay it off early)./hasn't paid CC interest in several years, but still wears the stripes off the cards ^_^
This sounds very familiar to the first company that interned for in college... they had a custom application that displayed hi-res medical video, as part of the roll out for a new clinic (or something) they ordered a large number of Dell PC's w/ a $150 add-on video card option to ensure best video performance... but ultimately they were fretting over the fact the new systems w/ the upgrade cards were not performing as well as they expected...
I show up one afternoon after class eating a donut and poke my head inside one of the cases--"Hey, you guys know they gave you PCI graphics cards?"... solution: pull out all the $150 add-on cards because the integrated Intel i810 video was superior despite have less (and shared) video memory
I can't remember if they send the cards back or not, but I know it modified future orders...
The wires had a small gap, and the electricity was simply arcing over I'm sorry dude, but out of all the BS flowing thru this thread I MUST call shenanigans on this one...
If there were any type of "gap" between the buses in the breaker box and the wiring headed out to the circuit the power would simply be off at the outlets.
Arcing requires a huge amount of current and that would have quickly blown breakers somewhere along the line or caused a fire/meltdown after any appreciable amount of time.
"Why the hell do you insist on turning your email SERVER off?" So let's assume that the author has the same problem that I have, which is that your workplace IT dept restricts your ability to connect to POP3 or IMAP services within their network.
I setup IMAP at home and use SquirrelMail w/ an SSL plug-in thingie... while I'm at home w/ the desktop or laptop I use a mail client to connect to IMAP... while I'm at work (or anywhere else) I use Squirrel... either way I end up working w/ the same email account/folders/etc...
Apparently these letters aren't from the BBC anymore, it's from a form of collections/enforcement agency that the BBC contracts... hired goons--
"As a result of The Broadcast Act 1990, the BBC were made responsible for licence administration. TV Licensing is a trading name used by entities contracted by the Licensing Authority (the BBC) to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system. The majority of the administration of TV Licensing is contracted to Capita Business Services Ltd, with the administration of cash easy payment schemes contracted to Revenue Management Services Ltd, and marketing and public relations activities contracted to the AMV Consortium." http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/aboutus/index.jsp
Today, it almost seems that voice calls are the least-used function of most phones
Maybe in your tiny view... But the vast number of other people in this world are still using it as a phone, probably many more people use it as JUST a phone rather then for the other features it has--So to say that voice calls seem to be the "least-used" function is completely idiotic.
But I agree that the term "cell phone" could easily go away... "wireless communications device" yeah, that has a much nicer ring to it. I'm sure my 61 year old mom will be keen to switch over to the new more accurate description... after all, 30 years later she's still calling the remote control for the TV a "clicker" and any day now she'll stop.
on the one hand you have a new layout for the keypad that matches qwerty--qwerty works because you have 4 fingers and two thumbs available... for a keypad it might be a bit better, but what does it really gain?
the other is speach to text... which completely stupid as a 100% replacement for a keypad because 100% of what I type in SMS' I don't want to say out loud, that's why I'm not calling.
His writers had McCoy give Kirk a pair of reading glasses in Star Trek IV
I'm pretty sure those were supposed to be considered "antique" even in the future... sort of like giving someone today a pocket watch or an old fashioned compass... they weren't supposed to represent the best that the 23rd century had to offer in terms of vision improvement.
Otherwise I agree w/ you, it's just my Trek-OCD kicking in ^_^
She's a rep? Ask her why they make their service options so difficult to coordinate via the website for idiots like me:)
There's MEdia Basics, MEdia Works, MEdia NET... it's just too much. They need to make it simple, or at least attempt to explain things a little better, you know, say something like "Hey, dummy, don't pick a TXT service if you get MEdia Works, it's already included!"
For example, why would I want to buy MEdia Works, and ALSO select a TXT and/or MMS package? It makes no sense, yet their site allows you to do all that. They also nickel and dime you... I mean, $2/mo for VM? who charges extra for that these days?
A well worded (much better then this rant) email to their webmaster was answered w/ a generic form letter thanking me for my interesting and encouring me to call their 800 number.
ignore my dumbass math at the end there... it's retarded...
but still... if it costs you $300 to make it my numbers above make more sense... 1,000 units @ $700 profit = $700,000 10,000 units @ $100 profit = $1,000,000
point is, you make it up in volume or something...
The article is junk. MS did exactly the right thing by pricing it where they did, any higher and they'll lose customers due to the fact that they reduce prices on a schedule and people will wait, which potentially cripples the market.
They need instant demand, and the best way to do that is to release something at a reasonable price.
1,000 units @ $1000 = $1m 10,000 units @ $400 = $4m and 9,000 more people seeing your products and buying your games.
We have each other by the balls... they need us just as much as we need them.
Them slowing/shutting off shipments will hurt them as much as it hurts us because as everyone on/. likes to remind us of, America is a massive consumer of the worlds products.
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I get 1.5Mb/s from my Sprint EVDO RevA card, uploads in the neighborhood of 200-300kbps.
... then again I can take that 1.5Mb connection with me just about anywhere I go, that's worth the extra $20.
It may not be 8-10Mb you can get from cable or FiOS, but it's certainly comparable to many ADSL offerings.
The price is certainly higher at about $65/mo, probably about $20/mo higher then I pay for a 10Mb/s cable modem connection from my local provider (not comcast)
You'll never get speeds comparable to cable internet from BB over Power
The reason cable companies are so hot n' heavy to restrict users is not so much the usage at the head end, but the usage on specific nodes.
You can only pack so much data into a piece of coax... in order to sell 8Mbs, 12Mbs, 20Mbs, etc speeds they need to put a lot more infrastructure in place to keep nodes smaller so that people can actually get these speeds.
When you have a user who is saturating their connection on a very regular basis they mess up the loads for that node--as a cable company your choice is either to potentially get pockets of users on the same node who are NOT power users complaining about slow speeds, upgrade infrastructure to put that power user into a smaller node where they can go nuts ($$$), or you can cap the power user and/or offset your infrastructure upgrade costs on them.
It really is very reasonable!
And to the people who say that DSL is not real competition: That's because of the infrastructure required! It COSTS TOO MUCH to provide service at super high speeds, so it just isn't done... in the case of cable they have done an acceptable job of balancing higher speed offers vs. keeping their costs reasonable. Particularly given the suburban sprawl that so many of these providers are dealing with. Next time you see someone from Japan or the Ukraine bragging about how fast and cheap their internet is, find out if they are in the middle of a city or not, because chances are that even ~15-miles outside of a city you won't see speeds like that.
In addition, most of AOL's big draw features went from being AOL-exclusive to being available on the public internet, so very little reason to continue with AOL after that.
Comcast & Time Warner do not face this same pressure from DSL and FIOS as even where all of these services are simultaneously available they are effectively equal for the 95% of network users who are not saturating the connection day/night with either legitimate or (supposedly) illegitimate uses.
It's completely reasonable for these ISPs to develop usage caps (which presumably don't affect the vast majority of users) to limit a small percentage of users who are monopolizing using their network. They started off offering "unlimited" service--some people CORRECTLY take that to mean it's OK to saturate the connection 24/7, they are "paying for it"... now it is equally reasonable for the ISPs to re-define their service (when new contracts are entered into) to say, Nope saturating the connection is not acceptable, you have a cap unless you pay more. As a consumer you are free to find an alternative if there is one, if there isn't one, exercise your voice somehow--congress, mayor, whatever. In my town there are TWO cable providers--comcast and RCN... I got sick of comcast, so I went w/ RCN, much happier. If I start to hate them I could always get DSL from one of the MANY providers available... or I could get FIOS... within a year or so there will even be pay-for Wi-Fi available for most of my town.
Is that I'm "lucky" that this happened, or do I live in an area where competition can actually exist! In other areas the same level of competition might ultimately result in the companies going under because people simply aren't willing to pay, or not enough people will sign up, etc, etc... if you want forced competition and/or service that is beyond the minimum the average consumer demands, but for the same price, then you need to get the government involved.
* The maximum speed I will get under optimal conditions.
* The percentage of the time I can expect to be within n% of the maximum speed.
* The maximum amount of downtime allowed before I am compensated.
* The maximum transfer I am allowed per month and the cost per GB of going over.
Ideally, each ISP would provide a grid with different levels / prices for each of these categories and I would be able to put together a plan that met my needs. They could even unify their consumer and business pricing structures, so businesses picked from the same grid but, if they were doing anything important with their connection, chose the higher level options.
As long as there's competition, and the customer is well-informed about the service they are buying, then a free market works. If either of these conditions fails then you might need some regulation. In regards to your list of benchmarks--minimum speed, downtime, etc...
The trouble here is that what you're asking for amounts to disclosure of limits on the service, and guarantees that the provider does not want to have to live up to in a consumer contract. As such, no provider is going to want to voluntarily issue out an obvious list of limits unless every other provider is doing it and/or it's required, as it serves only to potentially detract from business.
As consumers we should ask for government or industrial regulation that requires providers to provide reasonable estimates (based on accepted benchmarks) for this information in consumer level contracts--again, as you infer, not asking for better service here, just a better definition of the existing service!
I know that many DSL companies make no bones about their "guaranteed" minimum speeds--Verizon DSL when I signed up ~3 years ago for one location was quite clear that regardless of what speed level you enter into a contact for they will only guarantee 90kbps. In my case I signed up for 1.5Mb/s, found that I was only receiving ~600kbps. After a few technical visits it was determined that this was just the max I could get given the infrastructure in my area. I still had to fight w/ them to drop my monthly bill to their 768kb/s tier. On the top of Verizon, they are also the ones who have now published that their EVDO service is not truly unlimited, but rather is potentially limited to approx 5GB/mo--note potentially limited, as they do not guarantee to cut you off, only that they have the option to do so.
This is akin to something like a warning on the side of a food product, or cigarette pack... no product provider is going to voluntarily tell you that their product is not the magical thing they promise.
Then we get into policing... what are the consequences of promising 99% uptime but only actually giving 90% uptime in a given month? Is it a pro-rating? What sort of data will the consumer need to provide to show lack of uptime? What about speed guarantees--say I get 6kb/s from a website, how do I prove that this is an ISP issue and not an issue somewhere else? Provider would need to have a site that they use to benchmark your connection to their first router (since presumably that is all they guarantee in a minimum speed contract). If this isn't executed properly (read: made as user friendly as possible to make up for the lowest common denominator) then it could end up being a nightmare that just pushes wait times for technical support into the stratosphere.
In regards to everyone who claims that backward former Soviet countries are providing such wonderful service... I have my doubts as to how well that operates on a long term basis. It may also be that the services are largely subsidized by the governments in an attempt to bring things up to speed.
I worked from a dial up ISP in the late-late 90s and it was amazing to me how many people, who were signed up for home user accounts (i.e. no SLA), and would be screeching into their phones about how they were "losing money by the minute" because they couldn't get online and they had no access to email, or whatever... Anecdotally I'd say that the vast majority of the issues were typically with the customer's own equipment, and had nothing to do with our end.
Riiiiiight, and you chose this $9.99/mo dial-up ISP because you've got such a mission critical application where you lose all this money when not connected???
If you have the potential to lose actual money on a regular basis you owe it to yourself to have two sources of connections. I work from home a handful of days per week... and I've got a Sprint EVDO card and a cable modem... chances are good that if one is down, the other will be working... same thing applies to cell phones, I've got Cingular and I've got Verizon... typically if both are not working it's the result of a major public problem.
Doubling up in my case does not add huge costs... it's under $100/mo for my 2nd set of providers.
Please don't let the OP speak for all New England or Boston people! :(
I'm in Boston and I drive a VW Jetta that gets >35MPG and I agree that a 4x4 is not required 99% of the time unless you plan to drive down completely unplowed roads, snow tires get me everywhere I need to go, even in the 1' of snow we've received in the last couple of days.
Makes me crazy to see all the morons driving huge SUVs around... the worst is when you look at how crowded our expressways are with SUVs in the morning/evenings, we have an HOV lane, all you need is 2 people in the car to use it, so just about every SUV crowding the regular lanes is carrying just a single person... disgusting. Take the train it doesn't get stuck in the snow.
Well, there are people that are having sex with inanimate dolls (real dolls plug here), It would not be far fetched that someone would be amenable to the idea and even build a business out of having sex with robots. There are more advantages than using the regular purveyors. It's more sanitary, there are more control on the looks of the service provider and you only have to perform maintenance every so often.
The thing is, that we already have the technology to make sex robots happen... I bet a machine given the proper instruments and reservoirs would give a great hummer... the simple fact is that 1) Most guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine with moving parts 2) Most Guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine that has serviced other Little Guys, even if the machines are sanitized between uses and even if using an actual female is far more dangerous.
There would have to be a huge change in sentiment before this type of thing (intimate relationships & sex w/ robots) became acceptable and not a taboo that is hidden away--How many people do you know that actually admit to owning and using one of those Real Dolls?
Though I do see people falling in "love" with robots, much in the same way that people fall in love with a car, a favorite chair, an appliance. I "love" my car right now, it keeps me safe, keeps me warm, takes me places... sure any make or model car could do those same things, even another one of the same model I have, but mine has the seat adjusted just right, I know where all the nicks and scratches are, and I know all the weird littles noises it makes, just like I do with my girlfriend... where was I going with this?
They probably forgot to drain the gas... that's what killed my 92 Honda.
I use my credit cards for everything. As a result I'm able to get the benefit of using different types of "rewards" cards available. In particular I split between an airline card and an amex-cash card. Over the course of last year I "earned" about 10k miles for doing nothing but paying bills I would have paid anyway, and on Jan 1st I received a $210 credit from american express as part of their tiered cash back reward from my spending last year.
I don't pay attention to interest rates because I never carry a balance, so it doesn't phase me that my amex may have a high double digit rate, because it never comes into play.
Similarly having a car that is completely paid off isn't necessarily the most wonderful thing either. I bought a certified used car a couple of years ago and took advantage of the then available 1.9% APR for 48 months, the price was right and the financing was attractive... as a result even though I am making payments on the car, and will be for another year or so, I'm happy and better off because I earn approx. 5% (so that's 3% net to me) on the savings that I might otherwise have used to pay for the car (or pay it off early).
This sounds very familiar to the first company that interned for in college... they had a custom application that displayed hi-res medical video, as part of the roll out for a new clinic (or something) they ordered a large number of Dell PC's w/ a $150 add-on video card option to ensure best video performance... but ultimately they were fretting over the fact the new systems w/ the upgrade cards were not performing as well as they expected...
I show up one afternoon after class eating a donut and poke my head inside one of the cases--"Hey, you guys know they gave you PCI graphics cards?"... solution: pull out all the $150 add-on cards because the integrated Intel i810 video was superior despite have less (and shared) video memory
I can't remember if they send the cards back or not, but I know it modified future orders...
If there were any type of "gap" between the buses in the breaker box and the wiring headed out to the circuit the power would simply be off at the outlets.
Arcing requires a huge amount of current and that would have quickly blown breakers somewhere along the line or caused a fire/meltdown after any appreciable amount of time.
I setup IMAP at home and use SquirrelMail w/ an SSL plug-in thingie... while I'm at home w/ the desktop or laptop I use a mail client to connect to IMAP... while I'm at work (or anywhere else) I use Squirrel... either way I end up working w/ the same email account/folders/etc...
http://www.taith.org.uk/tv/newapproach.htm (an interesting letter w/ commentary)
http://www.marmalade.net/lime/#people (personal accounts of dealing w/ the licensing)
Apparently these letters aren't from the BBC anymore, it's from a form of collections/enforcement agency that the BBC contracts... hired goons-- "As a result of The Broadcast Act 1990, the BBC were made responsible for licence administration. TV Licensing is a trading name used by entities contracted by the Licensing Authority (the BBC) to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system. The majority of the administration of TV Licensing is contracted to Capita Business Services Ltd, with the administration of cash easy payment schemes contracted to Revenue Management Services Ltd, and marketing and public relations activities contracted to the AMV Consortium." http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/aboutus/index.jsp
Today, it almost seems that voice calls are the least-used function of most phones
Maybe in your tiny view... But the vast number of other people in this world are still using it as a phone, probably many more people use it as JUST a phone rather then for the other features it has--So to say that voice calls seem to be the "least-used" function is completely idiotic.
But I agree that the term "cell phone" could easily go away... "wireless communications device" yeah, that has a much nicer ring to it. I'm sure my 61 year old mom will be keen to switch over to the new more accurate description... after all, 30 years later she's still calling the remote control for the TV a "clicker" and any day now she'll stop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_(TNG_episode)/
They all had implants that would light-up when rival gang members were near-by...
Maybe Boost will roll that feature out next year...
me brains not work good... another reason speech to text will suck.
as insightful... I agree...
on the one hand you have a new layout for the keypad that matches qwerty--qwerty works because you have 4 fingers and two thumbs available... for a keypad it might be a bit better, but what does it really gain?
the other is speach to text... which completely stupid as a 100% replacement for a keypad because 100% of what I type in SMS' I don't want to say out loud, that's why I'm not calling.
His writers had McCoy give Kirk a pair of reading glasses in Star Trek IV
I'm pretty sure those were supposed to be considered "antique" even in the future... sort of like giving someone today a pocket watch or an old fashioned compass... they weren't supposed to represent the best that the 23rd century had to offer in terms of vision improvement.
Otherwise I agree w/ you, it's just my Trek-OCD kicking in ^_^
She's a rep? Ask her why they make their service options so difficult to coordinate via the website for idiots like me :)
There's MEdia Basics, MEdia Works, MEdia NET... it's just too much. They need to make it simple, or at least attempt to explain things a little better, you know, say something like "Hey, dummy, don't pick a TXT service if you get MEdia Works, it's already included!"
For example, why would I want to buy MEdia Works, and ALSO select a TXT and/or MMS package? It makes no sense, yet their site allows you to do all that. They also nickel and dime you... I mean, $2/mo for VM? who charges extra for that these days?
A well worded (much better then this rant) email to their webmaster was answered w/ a generic form letter thanking me for my interesting and encouring me to call their 800 number.
...and 0-60mph in... in... wait... this can't be right... 10.2 seconds?!!?
ignore my dumbass math at the end there... it's retarded...
but still... if it costs you $300 to make it my numbers above make more sense...
1,000 units @ $700 profit = $700,000
10,000 units @ $100 profit = $1,000,000
point is, you make it up in volume or something...
Not only funny, but insightful.
The article is junk. MS did exactly the right thing by pricing it where they did, any higher and they'll lose customers due to the fact that they reduce prices on a schedule and people will wait, which potentially cripples the market.
They need instant demand, and the best way to do that is to release something at a reasonable price.
1,000 units @ $1000 = $1m
10,000 units @ $400 = $4m and 9,000 more people seeing your products and buying your games.
Yeah, only China has us by the economic balls.
/. likes to remind us of, America is a massive consumer of the worlds products.
We have each other by the balls... they need us just as much as we need them.
Them slowing/shutting off shipments will hurt them as much as it hurts us because as everyone on