As from the article: '"I didn't know what to do, I was completely flabbergasted. So I sent the money in," says Sosa. "I have a livelihood, and I have a family, and there are a lot of things that I`d rather be than right." '
So, this guy, who had done NOTHING wrong, and could easily prove why he'd bought the device, just caved in... God the whole suing thing is making me sick... the US are the kings of it, but by no means alone... here in Australia we're heading down the same stupid, slippery slope... suiing for everything... and the suer keeps getting money because people cave in and pay 'because fighting it would be too expensive'
It's ridiculous that completely innocent people are starting to just give up and pay up for no good reason because of the way the legal system is perceived to be. (Rightly or wrongly)
Yes, you can. In fact, a skilled and experienced driver is far more qualified to judge a safe speed at a given location and under given conditions than any beaurocrat who doesn't drive the road himself.
But who's to say who is a skilled and experienced driver? There are so many people who think they're the greatest driver ever, but when you're in the car with them, or see them on the road, their actual handling of the vehicle in traffic is terrible. Plus there's a number of different areas of being a good driver... it's not just the ability to drive close to the limit of the car's ability, or have spent some time on a skid pan... it's the reading of the traffic, the consideration to other drivers, not being in such a damn hurry to get everwhere. etc... I don't know whether we can ever leave drivers to use their perceived skill behind a wheel to decide on how fast they can drive... in some cases this is fine, with drivers who really are excellent drivers, but there are a LOT who aren't.
the posted limits in some countries (including the US and UK) are way below the safety mark
This is another point though... the fact that speed limits are not always well set is pretty much undisputable (Well, I won't argue it, as I agree), but that's a different battle. Sure, set the speed limit correctly, but there'll still be those people who think they have to drive just that bit faster than the rest of the traffic... will they still have a grey area of speed to play in?
That's a very good question. Whether we'd be better without speed limits at all, and diverting the money saved into better driver education so they can judge a safe speed for themselves, better signing to warn of real hazards, and better policing of motorists who are actually causing a danger to themselves or others, is an interesting debate.
It is an interesting debate indeed... however I'm not sure how driving can then be classed as dangerous or not when it's going to come down to a subjective call:
"You were driving recklessly back there"
"No I wasn't, I was completely in control"
"I don't think you were... you were going really fast"
"I have excellent reflexes... trust me, I was in control"
"Well... I can't really prove you weren't... so I'll let you off this once."
So exactly where do you draw the line? Why bother having a speed limit if you're going to say... well, it's kinda fuzzy really... up until about 20 over it doesn't matter...
Why not just change the speed limit to the higher limit then, and make that the hard limit, 1 mile over is heavily penalised?
The whole point of having the speed limit is to set the MAXIMUM speed you can go... you can't arbitarily decide that you know better and really 70 is just as safe as 60 on this piece of road.
"Use it for serious cases, fine. But don't ticket me!"
So, because it's you who's speeding it's not serious? Why should you be able to speed as long as you don't get in an accident? It's this sort of 'The other guy's the bad person here, not me... oh sure, I break the law, but when I do so it's different' crap that causes the problems in the first place.
Those above list other options as unlimited access plans... but then say that after 3Gig the downloads are throttled... well, this is just the same as Optus cable... Optus is very fast, and I have been very happy with the level of service... I think I've only noticed one downtime for a few minutes in the months I've had it now... but that 3Gig limit is a bitch... while you don't get charged for any more (Which is why I steered away from Telstra, no way did I want to get huge bills), the 28 speed (I think it's usually even lower) throttling is painful... painful... worse than dialup.
But if others are advertising their services as 'unlimited' when really they're just doing this same thing... well that's a little misleading really.
Indeed... reading this exact same thing on How Stuff works made me make sure that if I did happen to have a coffee while out at dinner or the like, I'd make sure it was a decaf... (And a water filtered one at that, as the chemicals they use to get the caffeine out the other way is worse for you than the caffeine itself.)
I only have about 1 cup a day, but I know that if I'm having a headache I can have a cup of coffee which'll remove the headache just as effectively as a panadol.
"Star Wars Trilogy DVD
$31.99 Only. Ready for delivery One shipping rate for any quantity"
which linked through to http://www.dvdoriginal.com/product/viewprod.asp?pi d=1235
Which have such wonderful nuggest such as:
"Due to the fragility and bulkiness of standard DVD case, all of our DVD titles will come in a specially designed light-weight DVD sleeve pack. This shall hold and protect the disc better than the normal case." Riiiight...
or
"Q5: Does your DVD come with inserts or booklets that normally contained within the DVD case?
A: No. Our DVD consists of Disc and Cover Art only. There are no inserts of booklets. " Uuuh huh.
Erm... slightly illegal copies of the Star Wars movies... how is it legal for Slashdot (by way of OSDN) to promote such illegal products on the website?
No, it's lower than Beavis and Butthead... they are depicted as loosers for their views on the world... whereas Mr Max is portrayed as a successful ladies man... who just happens to like calling women whores and sluts...
And you're wrong because it's not individual information! It's anonymous data! It's saying: "People in area X of age Z like Y shows".
The Advertisers don't even care what one person watches. How is that going to benifit them financially? It's only of use in a rolled up sense.
I used to work for a free ISP in Australia which collected surfing behaviour of users... but it was always anonymous... we couldn't say "Hey Fred, we notice you've been viewing a lot of porn lately... we might tell your wife"...
This was because:
a) Who cares
&
b) It only made sense for us to use general demographic/geographical information about people and target groups of people with certain characteristics/surfing habits. We never knew anything about individual people, but it meant that rather than people receiving blanket spam, they would receive marketing more relevent to their 'segment' (NOT them specifically, but rather to the group of people that they shared characteristics with). What happened? Well the response rates of those offers went up, the satisfaction went right up, people LIKED getting offers that were relevent (Think those Think Geek ads you see up there)...
Stop being so damn paranoid. They don't care, it's not YOUR information about YOU that's being sent, it's anonymous statistics about trends and usage amongst GROUPS of people... get over yourself.
Hell, I bought a secondhand Compaq Armada M700... for $500US That's a PIII, with 256Meg of RAM, a DVD drive and a 20Gig Hard Drive, with all the ports you could want (Except Firewire)...
So, cheaper, probably as good battery life, and a FAR better screen for watching movies (14.4"), and it's got TV out just like this...
Sorry, I'm really dragging this out, and I won't write much... you pose some interesting points, and I did give a rather over simplified view of the state of play... but I don't reneg on what I said... the US is pushing one set of propoganda, and I'm just amazed that it's being so happily accepted by the majority of the populous.
The thing that makes me saddest though is the whole 'Threat Level' stuff that is being pushed at the moment, with 'Elevated' being your current state. It's scarily reminiscent of the afraid mindset that it was in back during the cold war days... I was just watching a copy I have of the 'duck and cover' propaganda campaign that was out at the time... and it's scary, would have made me scared as a kid, and I can see the current campaign doing the same.
If you haven't seen it (Which you probably have, you see well versed with political movements etc.), you can download it from here
Trying to keep the threat of imminent attack at the forefronts of people's minds is a great way to have a populous who's thoughts are diverted from the more 'mundane' things of homelessness, unemployment, education etc. It makes me sad that the government is pushing this so hard.
Pardon my spelling mistakes etc... I have just had coffee, but I still stuff them up.:)
Awwww Crap... I wrote a long thing about how I didn't mention China because they don't trump themselves as the bastion of all that's good in the world... but for some reason it didn't post...
Grumble.
I'm not typing all that again... I'm supposed to be working.:(
Sorry, I'm not trying to lash back at you or anything... but watching the US government try and say that Iraq is due to 9/11 is laughable to say the least... It's purely in the interest of the government trying to deflect important local social issue by focussing everyone's attention on an external war effort.
Afghanistan? Ok... directly because of 9/11, yes... but what did they go in there to do? Get Bin Laden... did they get him? Well... umm... maybe... or maybe not... could've, but not sure... let's divert attention elsewhere... how about... hey, Saddam's a pretty nasty guy, let's go and bomb him.
First they said "We're going in there because there's direct links to Al-Qida(spelling off, but I pay little attention to the 'terrorist' news articles now). Saddam is directly linked to them, so this is to stop further 9/11s." Then, when they couldn't adequately show logical links there, they said... "He's... um... got weapons of mass destruction and is a threat to the world... so we, um, are going to do the right thing and get rid of him before he does."
So in went the US, and the UK, and us silly Australians, and killed thousands of civilians with 'collatoral damage', thousands more than 9/11 ever did... then they hunted around for anything to suggest 'weapons of mass destruction'(tm) and found a couple of barrels of what was probably hair dye or something, and someone's campervan which they said was a 'mobile chemical weapon's lab' and that's all we've seen.
So after all of that they're still in there, there's still firefights going on (But they've done their best to say it's all over now, cause a long war is a bad war publicity wise) and what have they really done? Not a great deal besides great a whole lot of money for American contractors who got the jobs to give the Iraqis things like mobile phones... weeee.
OK, yes, Saddam was(is? Who knows) a bad man, he ruled the country in a truely dictatorial way... I don't think anyone can say he isn't a cruel man who has killed thousands. BUT, what were the motives for the American/Allied attack? A non-UN sanctioned attack on a country in that way really does open up the gates for rogue countries to attack others and say "Well, we thought it was the right thing to do... you Americans did it... everyone said don't, but you did... so we can do"
Oh, and do you really believe that your safety and freedom are greatly enhanced by having an enormous military force? What about looking at the reasons why America thinks (Rightly or Wrongly) why everyone else wants to attack it... maybe if some of those things were changed there wouldn't be the need for such a HUGE force of armed men/women.
Ok... you say that defence budget is but a fraction of the budget (even though I was talking about Defence exependiture exclusively).
Let's see what kind of percentage of the USA's total budget is spent on defence...
Budget:
revenues: $1.828 trillion
expenditures: $1.703 trillion, including capital expenditures of $NA (1999) (source)
So, taking the previously mentioned $379 Billion... that's 22% of the State's total budget, including capital expenditures, spent on the defence force!
So how is throwing so much money at Defence supposed to be a good idea then?
I was only using the 'feeding' people as an example... I'm actually more for educating people moreso than feeding them really... as a more highly educated populous is more able to improve their own standard of living and are less likely to be violent to themselves or others.
Plus, you also forget that this kind of expenditure isn't a 'one off' thing... the US spends this EVERY year on their defence... now the US isn't the only country that is overboard on this count... there are plenty of others, it just happens to be the biggest spender, and stages wars on the global arena to justify further increasing its budget... it's a scary thing to watch the US effectively 'create' a war, increase its budget... 'create' another one, increase the budget again... all the while this Defence budget is being deducted from the Social Security and education of the nation...
Scary, scary stuff... take money away from educating and feeding your own people to build more weapons... urgh.
They spend half of their Defence budget on Social Security and Medicare? I think not... the figures I was quoting are Defense budget figures, not Overall Budget figures.
Ahhh, but I didn't say completely get rid of defence did I? Nup. What saddens me is that so much money is spent on it... Now what are the main reasons for the need for defence? Leaders deciding they should invade other countries, impoverished nations being taken advantage of by the rich and violent, Holy crusades against those not of the same beliefs...
How about, let's say... 1/2 of their current budget is spent on some worthwhile things, like... feeding those who are starving, educating those who have no schools, giving people the information and the ability to stand up to these types of things...
Now if you're thinking "That money won't make a difference", think about this...
The current US defence budget is $US359 billion, with it possible reaching $US480 billion in the next decade (source). Now, the World Food Programme fed 77 million people in 82 countries at a cost of $1.74 billion in 2001 (source)... so... let's see... if we have HALF of the current US defence budget to spend on feeding people... we could feed... let's see... 4.056 BILLION people... and seeing as though the entire world population is around 6.3 Billion (source)... and not all of them are starving.
So, we could feed 2/3rds of the world's population using just HALF of the current US defence budget.
Now, surely, that's got to make a difference to the amount of anger and suffering in the world, and conversly reduce the amount of violence? Surely.
That so many technological improvements are pushed by the 'defence' industry to come up with new and exciting ways to kill people... Oh to live in a world where the prime driving force for innovation is a desire to improve living conditions, feed more people, educate the masses rather than killing them.
All the major players now cap home usage at 500M-3G or 5G depending on what you pay... no real options... as any smaller provider has to use the larger telco's lines/bandwidth so is tied into their pricing stratagies...
Exactly... cost is the issue... it will be for a very long time... the first time a user of one of the 3G phones gets their monthly bill and it's $500 (or 500 pounds, whatever)... they'll pretty soon drop back to using their phone as a phone and not some streaming media server... why anyone would want to pay oodles of money to watch jerky video playback on a pissweak little screen on a phone that'll run out of batteries inside of a couple of hours of that kind of use is beyond me.
Slashdot Mirror
As from the article: '"I didn't know what to do, I was completely flabbergasted. So I sent the money in," says Sosa. "I have a livelihood, and I have a family, and there are a lot of things that I`d rather be than right." '
So, this guy, who had done NOTHING wrong, and could easily prove why he'd bought the device, just caved in... God the whole suing thing is making me sick... the US are the kings of it, but by no means alone... here in Australia we're heading down the same stupid, slippery slope... suiing for everything... and the suer keeps getting money because people cave in and pay 'because fighting it would be too expensive'
It's ridiculous that completely innocent people are starting to just give up and pay up for no good reason because of the way the legal system is perceived to be. (Rightly or wrongly)
$75 for the hard drive
$70 for the chassis
$200 for the computery bits
$50 for the keyboard and remote
Coming up with a cruddy name and lackluster website to sell the system to the masses... priceless.
Bingo... I completely agree
But who's to say who is a skilled and experienced driver? There are so many people who think they're the greatest driver ever, but when you're in the car with them, or see them on the road, their actual handling of the vehicle in traffic is terrible. Plus there's a number of different areas of being a good driver... it's not just the ability to drive close to the limit of the car's ability, or have spent some time on a skid pan... it's the reading of the traffic, the consideration to other drivers, not being in such a damn hurry to get everwhere. etc... I don't know whether we can ever leave drivers to use their perceived skill behind a wheel to decide on how fast they can drive... in some cases this is fine, with drivers who really are excellent drivers, but there are a LOT who aren't.
the posted limits in some countries (including the US and UK) are way below the safety mark
This is another point though... the fact that speed limits are not always well set is pretty much undisputable (Well, I won't argue it, as I agree), but that's a different battle. Sure, set the speed limit correctly, but there'll still be those people who think they have to drive just that bit faster than the rest of the traffic... will they still have a grey area of speed to play in?
That's a very good question. Whether we'd be better without speed limits at all, and diverting the money saved into better driver education so they can judge a safe speed for themselves, better signing to warn of real hazards, and better policing of motorists who are actually causing a danger to themselves or others, is an interesting debate.
It is an interesting debate indeed... however I'm not sure how driving can then be classed as dangerous or not when it's going to come down to a subjective call:
"You were driving recklessly back there"
"No I wasn't, I was completely in control"
"I don't think you were... you were going really fast"
"I have excellent reflexes... trust me, I was in control"
"Well... I can't really prove you weren't... so I'll let you off this once."
So exactly where do you draw the line? Why bother having a speed limit if you're going to say... well, it's kinda fuzzy really... up until about 20 over it doesn't matter...
Why not just change the speed limit to the higher limit then, and make that the hard limit, 1 mile over is heavily penalised?
The whole point of having the speed limit is to set the MAXIMUM speed you can go... you can't arbitarily decide that you know better and really 70 is just as safe as 60 on this piece of road.
"Use it for serious cases, fine. But don't ticket me!"
So, because it's you who's speeding it's not serious? Why should you be able to speed as long as you don't get in an accident? It's this sort of 'The other guy's the bad person here, not me... oh sure, I break the law, but when I do so it's different' crap that causes the problems in the first place.
Those above list other options as unlimited access plans... but then say that after 3Gig the downloads are throttled... well, this is just the same as Optus cable... Optus is very fast, and I have been very happy with the level of service... I think I've only noticed one downtime for a few minutes in the months I've had it now... but that 3Gig limit is a bitch... while you don't get charged for any more (Which is why I steered away from Telstra, no way did I want to get huge bills), the 28 speed (I think it's usually even lower) throttling is painful... painful... worse than dialup.
But if others are advertising their services as 'unlimited' when really they're just doing this same thing... well that's a little misleading really.
Indeed... reading this exact same thing on How Stuff works made me make sure that if I did happen to have a coffee while out at dinner or the like, I'd make sure it was a decaf... (And a water filtered one at that, as the chemicals they use to get the caffeine out the other way is worse for you than the caffeine itself.)
I only have about 1 cup a day, but I know that if I'm having a headache I can have a cup of coffee which'll remove the headache just as effectively as a panadol.
The Camera is an extra add on... you have to pay more for that over the $570 asking price of the unit.
Thanks for that, I didn't know that at all... I did indeed complain... because I'm bitter and twisted. :)
While reading this story I got an ad:
i d=1235
"Star Wars Trilogy DVD $31.99 Only. Ready for delivery One shipping rate for any quantity"
which linked through to http://www.dvdoriginal.com/product/viewprod.asp?p
Which have such wonderful nuggest such as:
"Due to the fragility and bulkiness of standard DVD case, all of our DVD titles will come in a specially designed light-weight DVD sleeve pack. This shall hold and protect the disc better than the normal case." Riiiight...
or
"Q5: Does your DVD come with inserts or booklets that normally contained within the DVD case? A: No. Our DVD consists of Disc and Cover Art only. There are no inserts of booklets. " Uuuh huh.
Erm... slightly illegal copies of the Star Wars movies... how is it legal for Slashdot (by way of OSDN) to promote such illegal products on the website?
Ok... say a peadophile says that he is a '12 year old boy who likes sports' or similar... bingo... there's his list of boys in his area...
Bad, bad idea.
No, it's lower than Beavis and Butthead... they are depicted as loosers for their views on the world... whereas Mr Max is portrayed as a successful ladies man... who just happens to like calling women whores and sluts...
It's lovely... really lovely.
And you're wrong because it's not individual information! It's anonymous data! It's saying: "People in area X of age Z like Y shows".
The Advertisers don't even care what one person watches. How is that going to benifit them financially? It's only of use in a rolled up sense.
I used to work for a free ISP in Australia which collected surfing behaviour of users... but it was always anonymous... we couldn't say "Hey Fred, we notice you've been viewing a lot of porn lately... we might tell your wife"...
This was because:
a) Who cares
&
b) It only made sense for us to use general demographic/geographical information about people and target groups of people with certain characteristics/surfing habits. We never knew anything about individual people, but it meant that rather than people receiving blanket spam, they would receive marketing more relevent to their 'segment' (NOT them specifically, but rather to the group of people that they shared characteristics with). What happened? Well the response rates of those offers went up, the satisfaction went right up, people LIKED getting offers that were relevent (Think those Think Geek ads you see up there)...
Stop being so damn paranoid. They don't care, it's not YOUR information about YOU that's being sent, it's anonymous statistics about trends and usage amongst GROUPS of people... get over yourself.
Hell, I bought a secondhand Compaq Armada M700... for $500US That's a PIII, with 256Meg of RAM, a DVD drive and a 20Gig Hard Drive, with all the ports you could want (Except Firewire)...
So, cheaper, probably as good battery life, and a FAR better screen for watching movies (14.4"), and it's got TV out just like this...
Just doesn't appeal at this pricepoint.
The thing that makes me saddest though is the whole 'Threat Level' stuff that is being pushed at the moment, with 'Elevated' being your current state. It's scarily reminiscent of the afraid mindset that it was in back during the cold war days... I was just watching a copy I have of the 'duck and cover' propaganda campaign that was out at the time... and it's scary, would have made me scared as a kid, and I can see the current campaign doing the same.
If you haven't seen it (Which you probably have, you see well versed with political movements etc.), you can download it from here
Trying to keep the threat of imminent attack at the forefronts of people's minds is a great way to have a populous who's thoughts are diverted from the more 'mundane' things of homelessness, unemployment, education etc. It makes me sad that the government is pushing this so hard.
Pardon my spelling mistakes etc... I have just had coffee, but I still stuff them up. :)
Awwww Crap... I wrote a long thing about how I didn't mention China because they don't trump themselves as the bastion of all that's good in the world... but for some reason it didn't post...
:(
Grumble.
I'm not typing all that again... I'm supposed to be working.
Sorry, I'm not trying to lash back at you or anything... but watching the US government try and say that Iraq is due to 9/11 is laughable to say the least... It's purely in the interest of the government trying to deflect important local social issue by focussing everyone's attention on an external war effort.
Afghanistan? Ok... directly because of 9/11, yes... but what did they go in there to do? Get Bin Laden... did they get him? Well... umm... maybe... or maybe not... could've, but not sure... let's divert attention elsewhere... how about... hey, Saddam's a pretty nasty guy, let's go and bomb him.
First they said "We're going in there because there's direct links to Al-Qida(spelling off, but I pay little attention to the 'terrorist' news articles now). Saddam is directly linked to them, so this is to stop further 9/11s." Then, when they couldn't adequately show logical links there, they said... "He's... um... got weapons of mass destruction and is a threat to the world... so we, um, are going to do the right thing and get rid of him before he does."
So in went the US, and the UK, and us silly Australians, and killed thousands of civilians with 'collatoral damage', thousands more than 9/11 ever did... then they hunted around for anything to suggest 'weapons of mass destruction'(tm) and found a couple of barrels of what was probably hair dye or something, and someone's campervan which they said was a 'mobile chemical weapon's lab' and that's all we've seen.
So after all of that they're still in there, there's still firefights going on (But they've done their best to say it's all over now, cause a long war is a bad war publicity wise) and what have they really done? Not a great deal besides great a whole lot of money for American contractors who got the jobs to give the Iraqis things like mobile phones... weeee.
OK, yes, Saddam was(is? Who knows) a bad man, he ruled the country in a truely dictatorial way... I don't think anyone can say he isn't a cruel man who has killed thousands. BUT, what were the motives for the American/Allied attack? A non-UN sanctioned attack on a country in that way really does open up the gates for rogue countries to attack others and say "Well, we thought it was the right thing to do... you Americans did it... everyone said don't, but you did... so we can do"
Oh, and do you really believe that your safety and freedom are greatly enhanced by having an enormous military force? What about looking at the reasons why America thinks (Rightly or Wrongly) why everyone else wants to attack it... maybe if some of those things were changed there wouldn't be the need for such a HUGE force of armed men/women.
Let's see what kind of percentage of the USA's total budget is spent on defence...
Budget:
revenues: $1.828 trillion
expenditures: $1.703 trillion, including capital expenditures of $NA (1999) (source)
So, taking the previously mentioned $379 Billion... that's 22% of the State's total budget, including capital expenditures, spent on the defence force!
That's ridiculous!
So how is throwing so much money at Defence supposed to be a good idea then?
I was only using the 'feeding' people as an example... I'm actually more for educating people moreso than feeding them really... as a more highly educated populous is more able to improve their own standard of living and are less likely to be violent to themselves or others.
Plus, you also forget that this kind of expenditure isn't a 'one off' thing... the US spends this EVERY year on their defence... now the US isn't the only country that is overboard on this count... there are plenty of others, it just happens to be the biggest spender, and stages wars on the global arena to justify further increasing its budget... it's a scary thing to watch the US effectively 'create' a war, increase its budget... 'create' another one, increase the budget again... all the while this Defence budget is being deducted from the Social Security and education of the nation...
Scary, scary stuff... take money away from educating and feeding your own people to build more weapons... urgh.
They spend half of their Defence budget on Social Security and Medicare? I think not... the figures I was quoting are Defense budget figures, not Overall Budget figures.
Ahhh, but I didn't say completely get rid of defence did I? Nup. What saddens me is that so much money is spent on it... Now what are the main reasons for the need for defence? Leaders deciding they should invade other countries, impoverished nations being taken advantage of by the rich and violent, Holy crusades against those not of the same beliefs...
... so... let's see... if we have HALF of the current US defence budget to spend on feeding people... we could feed... let's see... 4.056 BILLION people... and seeing as though the entire world population is around 6.3 Billion (source)... and not all of them are starving.
How about, let's say... 1/2 of their current budget is spent on some worthwhile things, like... feeding those who are starving, educating those who have no schools, giving people the information and the ability to stand up to these types of things...
Now if you're thinking "That money won't make a difference", think about this...
The current US defence budget is $US359 billion, with it possible reaching $US480 billion in the next decade (source). Now, the World Food Programme fed 77 million people in 82 countries at a cost of $1.74 billion in 2001 (source)
So, we could feed 2/3rds of the world's population using just HALF of the current US defence budget.
Now, surely, that's got to make a difference to the amount of anger and suffering in the world, and conversly reduce the amount of violence? Surely.
That so many technological improvements are pushed by the 'defence' industry to come up with new and exciting ways to kill people...
Oh to live in a world where the prime driving force for innovation is a desire to improve living conditions, feed more people, educate the masses rather than killing them.
*sigh*
All the major players now cap home usage at 500M-3G or 5G depending on what you pay... no real options... as any smaller provider has to use the larger telco's lines/bandwidth so is tied into their pricing stratagies...
Exactly... cost is the issue... it will be for a very long time... the first time a user of one of the 3G phones gets their monthly bill and it's $500 (or 500 pounds, whatever)... they'll pretty soon drop back to using their phone as a phone and not some streaming media server... why anyone would want to pay oodles of money to watch jerky video playback on a pissweak little screen on a phone that'll run out of batteries inside of a couple of hours of that kind of use is beyond me.