Agreed, a Thesaurus (4mb) and Avant Go (2MB) eat up the main chunk of RAM available on my device, but there is also a Japanese Dictionary (5 MB), a Spanish Dictionary (3 MB), a Perl developer's guide (3MB), an HTML with Style Sheets guide (4MB) that need to be swapped on and off quite frequently. 128MB of ram could easily be filled with the reference material available online, and would be a compelling reason to upgrade.
Are you looking to network all of the televisions so that they all display the same signal, or are you looking to network them so that each television is displaying a specific stream from another user (chat-like)?
The only way to _really_ be sure that something looks exactly right in two places is to use PDF.
An artist friend beginning his road through computer purgatory has been trying to send out his resume for several weeks now, to no luck. First it was the OpenOffice -> Word conversion ("But they're the same format!"), then it was the Mac Word -> PC Word conversion ("But it's the same company!"), then Word 97 -> Word XP bugs ("But it's the same program!"). Now that he's finally got an XP machine running Word XP, the job has been given to another person.
The only way to be _really_ sure that something looks exactly right is to use GIF or JPEG. If you are bringing a presentation in on a CD, converting all of your slides to GIF shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
BTW, this person claimed he was using OpenOffice, not StarOffice. StarOffice has far, far better conversions to and from MSOffice than OpenOffice does.
Sadly, you don't always get to choose two... There are relatively fixed size^3 to capacity ratios at any given time, because the technology develops in parallel. 3.5" drives go up to 240 GB, 2.5" to 80GB, 1.8 to 30GB, and 1.0 to 4... a rough size^3 to maximum capacity ratio of.25.
No matter what you do, you won't be able to get a 1" drive to 30 GB until the 1.8" drives hit 180 GB, and the 2.4" drives hit 400 GB. Sadly, I don't see these going into high-capacity MP3 players any time soon.
My wall of dead PDA's can attest to the durability of the modern device. Several were dropped only once. I don't think adding a hard drive will limit the machine's lifespan. Battery span, yes. Lifespan... doubtful.
Just pointing out that what Fox was complaining of was not violation of copyright per-se, but the violation of author's rights. If Disney re-makes the Jungle Book after the copyright has expired, they are engaging in happy capitalism. If Disney re-brands the Jungle book with their name as the author, they are engaging in deceptive practices to mislead the public into thinking that they are the author. They are committing plagiarism.
What Fox is upset about, is that this documentary is 88% Fox material, with Dastar plucking out one of seven hours and adding 1/2 hour, without providing due credit. How much material must be different or re-ordered for a change in authorship? The article doesn't mention the scope of the violation... If Dastar provided no credit at all to anyone at the end of the video, they are in clear violation of accepted practices for artistic products. If they simply did not cite Fox as the main "producer," Fox has no leg to stand on.
Either way, The case is a bit more complicated than many people here seem to think. Copyrights may expire, but authorship does not. And authorship in this society provides very few limited rights, but those rights are upheld by courts time and time again.
Agreed. I've just built a Samba MP3 file server for the apartment using 100 dollars worth of the slowest parts available today... a television connectable DVD drive with a great graphics card would be a very, very sweet deal.
If you find a crack in the bank's wall, chances are someone else has found that crack too... or someone will. Despite the most American notion that we are special, knowledge of that nature is not exclusive to one person if all that person had access to was public knowledge. A contractor who finds a flaw in a safe that makes it possible to crack through in a specific location by shooting a hole in the wall should tell the bank but otherwise keep quiet... If you are demonstratably the only person who can know about a vulnerability, that greatly reduces the chances that somebody likely to use the exploit will find it.
However, if you stumble across public knowledge that the bank is a demonstratably unsafe place to put your money, it would be immoral to not spread that knowledge to other people who may lose out due to the bank's incompetence. If you stumble across a security hole that a sensitive organization refuses to fix, chances are this is a policy decision on their part and there are other insecurities they are simply hoping will go away. The only way to prove there is a problem is to explain how to do it... this is also perhaps the only thing that gets some companies to move on problems. You have now increased the number of people who are confirmed to know about the problem from one to thousands, which negates the possibility that the institution can continue to bury their head in the sand.
The same is as true for your network as your bank. If you are sending sensitive information through an insecure network, you want to know about it, don't you?
I strongly recommend that as a compensatory measure, non-AOL MTAs be configured to deny all incoming mail from AOL's domain.
Done. Now what's this about AOL blocking DSL users?
Joking aside, AOL has been responsible for more spam to AOL users than anyone else. If they really wanted to cut down on spam to their users, they would use proxy names in their chat rooms and members listings, and only serve up real names by 4bit gifs.
While what they are doing is not unreasonable, it is rather distressing that they would make such a change without any announcement. Such a large change should start with an announcement to the larger community, so that non-spammers have a chance to setup relays for those they want to, well, get mail to. I know several small companies using residential DSL and who will be rather surprised today that their mail servers no longer work for AOL customers.
Spam is a sufficiently ugly issue to warrant a slightly heavy-handed response... Perhaps because nobody I would know personally uses AOL, or perhaps because many people have access to several outgoing SMTP servers, but blocking residential DSL doesn't sound like too bad of an idea.
So if you want to prevent anyone from knowing you have something to hide, you broadcast it over the most insecure protocols known to man in a computer with no other plausable use "hidden" in open space? Did he used to work for a Savings and Loan?
The cycle is a sign of a healthy market... Manufacturers one-up eachother, making improvements and capturing marketshare. It is a wonderful thing that 3Dfx fell, that Nintendo fell, that all empires fall, because they are surpassed by better empires. Personally, I would find it great if Linux becomes the dominant desktop, then falls and is surpassed by something better. It is exactly this lack of cycling that has hurt the desktop arena, and computing in general.
Imagine, if you will, a personalized avatar or something that can interact with you and perhaps assist you in your daily endevours (with a touch of attitude?).."
If I punch the touchscreen will the avatar take damage for being such a worthless piece of s***?
Incidentally, what does it mean, "kill the white knight"?
It is an unrelated sig. It is a call to liberate one's self from relying upon the romantic hope that a chivalrous white knight will rescue you and to get out and do it yourself. Originally a feminist slogan from the west coast, it has become equally applicable to men waiting for that job offer they never applied for, children waiting for that college offer they hope will substitute for a place in life, and housewives waiting for life to fall into their laps.
The white knight is dangerous, because many have wasted their lives waiting for him.
Re:Use MAC address filtering and Limited IP leases
on
How Stable is WEP?
·
· Score: 1
I was planning on doing MAC address filtering as a security measure on a new network... then I discovered as one of the first options my wireless router offered to spoof the MAC address of my computer. So much for that plan.
ATT charges 3/kb Addt'l Data Charge 45/min Addt'l Airtime 20/min Long Distance 20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance 69/min National Roaming Rate $36.00 Activation Fee $19.95 Monthly Fee
for the basic local plan, with 45 included minutes, up to
3/kb Addt'l Data Charge 25/min Addt'l Airtime 00/min Long Distance 20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance 69/min National Roaming Rate $36.00 Activation Fee $299.00 Monthly Fee for the advanced local plan, with 4,800 minutes.
AT&T has 10 tracks, Next-Gen, Multi-Band, and Digital plans for Local (roaming out of state), National(roaming off network), Digital One Rate (no roaming, no Next-Gen option yet), plus the mLife shared plans and prepaid plans. T-mobile has National, Regional, Family, and Sidekick rate plans, some with unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile minutes and most without. National plans feature unlimited weekend but unlimited night minutes for a fee, regoinal plans feature no additional weekend minutes. The T-mobile bandwidth starts at unlimited, but becomes 15MB per month with $3.50 each additional MB. Verizon features nine National, Local, and Express network tracks, some with long distance included and some without. The Promotional Choice(tm) Family SharePlan(tm) has 300 shared, 250 mobile-to-mobile minutes with 45c overcost and unlimited night and weekend, plus 4.99 monthly for 1000 additional mobile to mobile and 100 shared bonus minutes for 34.99 (39.98 after additionals). Sprint thankfully only has two tracks, "free and clear with vision" and "free and clear without vision." The base plans do not include pcs to pcs minutes, but the advanced plans do. There is no state-to-state roaming, but all off-network roaming calls are 50c per minute with a 25c per minute long-distance charge.
The cost of subsidizing my Nokia phone was 150.00, but that was 3 years ago. Considering my minimum monthly bill is $50, over the span of 3 years the cost of the phone is trivial. Still, the subsidizing of a phone is no excuse to create an artificial billing system that feels more like a vegas crapshoot or russian roulette than a satisfying business relationship. I'm sure even you have gotten screwed at one point or another... Why put up with that? Why defend that? The perks they give us (like mobile-to-mobile minutes)to counterbalance the way they exploit us should be a sign of just how much they exploit us.
All I want is a billing system that charges me Xc per minute anytime to anyone, with X/2c per minute nights / weekends. Is straight billing so hard or so wrong?
I would like to point out the smallest laptop formfactor available is the Sony Picturebook. Not only is it a tiny 1.14" X 9.8" X 6.0" and a svelite 2.2 pounds, but it also has a cheezy built-in camera (which you will come to love) and all the ports you would realistically need.
In those cramped Japanese apartments, she will want everything to be as small as possible.
Sony recently ended the line, but you can still find them around... Chicago computer sells one for 1500.
I doubt we will be able to ditch phone numbers entirely... not only do US telcos move at the speed of gold bullion resting at the bottom of the caribbean, but the rest of the world interacts with the US through our numbering system. Plus there is too much overlap in names in the US to be considered a unique identifier... and good luck convincing congress that all parents must provide a unique and un-duplicated name for their children. Furthermore, "George Herbert Walker Bush" is a hell of a lot of typing for a little phone.
What I expect will be the solution is number transmission phone to phone... whereby you can directly beam your number to another person's phone or selectively broadcast your name over a connection (* button?), who then references you by name without ever having to look at your number. That's basically how it works now, but without the hassle of punching in the number yourself.
Still, if you want to look toward the house of the future, why not have location-sensitive lines, where a wireless localized beacon carried upon the person tells phones to tell the phone company to route calls for that person to the nearby phones? People's names could lead to a search engine for the proper person, who would normally be indexed user@carrier style, or stored locally by name. The recieving address could even be an IPv6 number, tying together the major communication industries in a grand unified network theory.
Of course, such a dream will happen in Japan or Europe first, as the major US carriers will fight and bicker to dominate the standard until there is no standard left and no profit to be made (cough *SMS* cough).
Just pointing out, in the US there are no cross network charges. People pay a per-minute outgoing charge defined by the carrier they signed up with irrespective of whom they are calling. Cellphone owners pay the same to send or recieve calls as defined by their carrier. This leads to a small degree of double-billing, but when comparing 5c per minute landline long distance vs 60c per minute cell times, the billing is academic.
But the cell phone industry in the US is a scam. Here's how it works. First off, you estimate your usage... be it 100 minutes, 400 minutes, or 1,000 minutes. If you are too high you are charged every month for minutes you don't use. If you are too low... and you really don't want to be too low... you spend about 75c per minute. 300 and 500 minutes at the beginning of the month might be 20 and 30 dollars, but at the end of the month a 300 minute plan going to 500 minutes will cost you 170 dollars.
That's not all. Going from local to state-wide to nation-wide roaming might cost 5 - 10 dollars per month in advance, but if you take a trip outside your calling area, and give a loved one two 30 minute update calls, expect to pay an extra 40 dollars. Larger calling areas don't necessarily mean no roaming as companies have implemented plans with off-network roaming in your home calling area... that dead zone at your favorite resturant now costs 40-60c per minute.
They also charge for long-distance, which is an example of the aformentioned double-dipping. If a person is calling you, they are paying long distance to reach you (5-15c per minute), but you are paying long distance charges to recieve the call too (15-25c per minute). Thankfully many cellular companies have plans that include this "service" for a small fee, though the fact of the matter is that they just want your money.
To lure people into using their cellphones more frequently, all carriers offer promotional night and weekend minutes. The night time has slowly crept from 6PM to 9PM, and the morning from 9AM to 6AM, but the offer is valid... usually for a limited time. AT&T is famous for cutting off promotional night and weekend minutes when a contract expires without telling the customer, which generally leads to one multi-hundred dollar bill per customer.
The upsetting thing is that of course this is all a paper exercise. There is no resource that is allocated at the beginning of the month, no bandwidth that your carrier has to purchase at truly tremendous rates if you use more than your allotted space. They don't have to send a lackey from New York to Boston to buy emergency extra air time from a carrier there. It's just a form of billing, and nobody would put up with it in any other industry.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation. The article cites the %25 turnover rate as a sign of healthy competition, but numbers that high are a sign of very unhappy customers. I don't know anyone who owns a cellular phone and who hasn't been hit with at least one ludicrously high bill... $100 dollar bills are common. And while friendly, support always refuses to do anything about it except bump you up to a more expensive plan for the coming months so that you can hope it doesn't happen again... of course when you move up a plan you automatically make another one-year contract so that you can't join that ticked-off %25 churn without paying the hefty "cancelation" fees to pay for services not rendered.
Cellular companies don't want anything that would allow people to leave because they know they treat us badly, plain and simple.
If Watson has evidence that Sword Forum International tried to extort money from him, let him bring it forward now or forever hold his peace.
"In a lawsuit pending in federal court in Austin, Watson accuses Sword Forum International of driving away customers by ridiculing his work. "I was presented as a charlatan," said Watson, 51. "
At the heart of the lawsuit are posted messages such as one by a Sword Forum moderator titled "Muffinhead Alert." Watson said the message refers to Angel Swords and tells readers to "steer clear of them." Another posting by a Sword Forum staff member said some of Angel Sword's advertising is "just insulting to anyone with even the most basic science background."
If all Watson has are postings on a review site whose reviewers decided his "Techno-Wootz" was not up to snuff, then this lawsuit is frivilous. If he has actual evidence of an extortion scheme, then Sword Forum International is liable for civil or criminal penalties. But either way the outcome is very clear, and not at all specific to the internet. It does not "speak to questions of freedom of speech on the internet" (reporter shorthand for "it's about talking on that newfangled internet thingie"), it is a very clear case of either abuse of media outlets by people looking for advertising money or a frivilous lawsuit from a craftsman upset over a review, both old-media problems.
I'd personally like to stay on and find out who is right and who is full of bullshit, but I have a gripping George Bush vs. Saddam Hussein debate to return to on Fox.
I'd like to point out for those moderators out there who may not be familiar with the Slashdot code of community conduct, parent was jokingly playing the role of karma whore police, because grandparent was jokingly playing the role of slashdotted story reposter while actually playing the role of that-guy-who-points-out-the-slashdot-summary-has-n othing-to-do-with-the-story. Grandparent was "Funny," but absolutely not "Insightful," unless one means insightful into the shortcomings of slashdot which are traditionally modded either "Funny" or "Offtopic." Parent is not a troll, but a prankster playing along with grandparent posing as a troll, and doing so just a little too subtly it would seem. Grandparent should be Score 3 or 4:Funny, and parent should be score 1:Funny.
Thank you for your attention. You may now return to modding down RIAA appologists.
(Repost from another board, discussing the National Security Advisor's terrorism threat forcast of "high" for the week with early morning fog of fear burning off by the evening into a patchy haze of mistrust)
So... we have a generalized threat warning that someone, somewhere may do something to hurt somebody? And this is supposed to inpact my life how?
Seriously, living in Boston I'm far more likely to be shot by a Hong Kong gang, disappeared by the Moffia, mugged by the homeless, run over by the crazy drivers, accidently blown up by a kid from MIT, get clubbed by falling ice, poisoned by the atrocious water supply, or get carbon monoxide poisioning from these 1890's era heaters in this aesbostos-laden apartment than I am to get killed by an Iranian for being an American. The total Us population in 2000 was two hundred eighty one million, four hundred twenty one thousand, nine hundred six people. If a terrorist attack an order of magnitude worse than the original estimates for the world-trade center massacre were to occur, there is still only two hundredths of a percent chance that I would be effected. One thousand deaths happen every single day due to smoking in the US. In my age group the death rate by congestive heart failure is 90.3 in 100,000. Motor vehicle accidents cause 29.3 deaths per 100,000. Suicides will cause 4,300 deaths this year (extrapolated) in the 18 to 24 year old age group alone, which is significantly higher than the amount of 18 to 24 year olds killed in terrorist attacks in 2001. Hypertensive heart disorder killed twenty-five thousand, three hundred twenty-seven people last year. two hundred fifty thousand people die every year from accidental medical mistreatment. Lung cancer killed one hundred fifty-four thousand people last year in the US. Blood poisioning caused thirty-thousand, six hundred seventy deaths last year. Eighty-nine die every year in the US by lightning strikes.
Even if one could acquire antibodies for Smallpox, Ricin, Botulism, VX, Sarin, Cyanide, Anthrax, and Radiological Emergencies, the series of injections is far more likely to kill you than the chances of a terrorist attack utilizing one of the above. Get some perspective, and get some sun. Actually, better avoid the sun: skin cancer killed 9,600 Americans last year.
Didn't we say this when the GIF debacle happened? Or Amazon's still standing one-click patent? The patent on hyperlinking? ActiveBuddy's patented IRC Bots?
Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses: that's why they're called "apathetic."
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, a Thesaurus (4mb) and Avant Go (2MB) eat up the main chunk of RAM available on my device, but there is also a Japanese Dictionary (5 MB), a Spanish Dictionary (3 MB), a Perl developer's guide (3MB), an HTML with Style Sheets guide (4MB) that need to be swapped on and off quite frequently. 128MB of ram could easily be filled with the reference material available online, and would be a compelling reason to upgrade.
Are you looking to network all of the televisions so that they all display the same signal, or are you looking to network them so that each television is displaying a specific stream from another user (chat-like)?
The only way to _really_ be sure that something looks exactly right in two places is to use PDF.
An artist friend beginning his road through computer purgatory has been trying to send out his resume for several weeks now, to no luck. First it was the OpenOffice -> Word conversion ("But they're the same format!"), then it was the Mac Word -> PC Word conversion ("But it's the same company!"), then Word 97 -> Word XP bugs ("But it's the same program!"). Now that he's finally got an XP machine running Word XP, the job has been given to another person.
The only way to be _really_ sure that something looks exactly right is to use GIF or JPEG. If you are bringing a presentation in on a CD, converting all of your slides to GIF shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
BTW, this person claimed he was using OpenOffice, not StarOffice. StarOffice has far, far better conversions to and from MSOffice than OpenOffice does.
The screen is blue....
Sadly, you don't always get to choose two... There are relatively fixed size^3 to capacity ratios at any given time, because the technology develops in parallel. 3.5" drives go up to 240 GB, 2.5" to 80GB, 1.8 to 30GB, and 1.0 to 4... a rough size^3 to maximum capacity ratio of .25.
No matter what you do, you won't be able to get a 1" drive to 30 GB until the 1.8" drives hit 180 GB, and the 2.4" drives hit 400 GB. Sadly, I don't see these going into high-capacity MP3 players any time soon.
My wall of dead PDA's can attest to the durability of the modern device. Several were dropped only once. I don't think adding a hard drive will limit the machine's lifespan. Battery span, yes. Lifespan... doubtful.
Just pointing out that what Fox was complaining of was not violation of copyright per-se, but the violation of author's rights. If Disney re-makes the Jungle Book after the copyright has expired, they are engaging in happy capitalism. If Disney re-brands the Jungle book with their name as the author, they are engaging in deceptive practices to mislead the public into thinking that they are the author. They are committing plagiarism.
What Fox is upset about, is that this documentary is 88% Fox material, with Dastar plucking out one of seven hours and adding 1/2 hour, without providing due credit. How much material must be different or re-ordered for a change in authorship? The article doesn't mention the scope of the violation... If Dastar provided no credit at all to anyone at the end of the video, they are in clear violation of accepted practices for artistic products. If they simply did not cite Fox as the main "producer," Fox has no leg to stand on.
Either way, The case is a bit more complicated than many people here seem to think. Copyrights may expire, but authorship does not. And authorship in this society provides very few limited rights, but those rights are upheld by courts time and time again.
Agreed. I've just built a Samba MP3 file server for the apartment using 100 dollars worth of the slowest parts available today... a television connectable DVD drive with a great graphics card would be a very, very sweet deal.
If you find a crack in the bank's wall, chances are someone else has found that crack too... or someone will. Despite the most American notion that we are special, knowledge of that nature is not exclusive to one person if all that person had access to was public knowledge. A contractor who finds a flaw in a safe that makes it possible to crack through in a specific location by shooting a hole in the wall should tell the bank but otherwise keep quiet... If you are demonstratably the only person who can know about a vulnerability, that greatly reduces the chances that somebody likely to use the exploit will find it.
However, if you stumble across public knowledge that the bank is a demonstratably unsafe place to put your money, it would be immoral to not spread that knowledge to other people who may lose out due to the bank's incompetence. If you stumble across a security hole that a sensitive organization refuses to fix, chances are this is a policy decision on their part and there are other insecurities they are simply hoping will go away. The only way to prove there is a problem is to explain how to do it... this is also perhaps the only thing that gets some companies to move on problems. You have now increased the number of people who are confirmed to know about the problem from one to thousands, which negates the possibility that the institution can continue to bury their head in the sand.
The same is as true for your network as your bank. If you are sending sensitive information through an insecure network, you want to know about it, don't you?
I strongly recommend that as a compensatory measure, non-AOL MTAs be configured to deny all incoming mail from AOL's domain.
Done. Now what's this about AOL blocking DSL users?
Joking aside, AOL has been responsible for more spam to AOL users than anyone else. If they really wanted to cut down on spam to their users, they would use proxy names in their chat rooms and members listings, and only serve up real names by 4bit gifs.
While what they are doing is not unreasonable, it is rather distressing that they would make such a change without any announcement. Such a large change should start with an announcement to the larger community, so that non-spammers have a chance to setup relays for those they want to, well, get mail to. I know several small companies using residential DSL and who will be rather surprised today that their mail servers no longer work for AOL customers.
Spam is a sufficiently ugly issue to warrant a slightly heavy-handed response... Perhaps because nobody I would know personally uses AOL, or perhaps because many people have access to several outgoing SMTP servers, but blocking residential DSL doesn't sound like too bad of an idea.
-C
So if you want to prevent anyone from knowing you have something to hide, you broadcast it over the most insecure protocols known to man in a computer with no other plausable use "hidden" in open space? Did he used to work for a Savings and Loan?
I hope you mean "the unauthorized copying of encrypted material," as otherwise it would make encrypted material kind of undistributable.
On second thought, I hope it is the way you said it.
The cycle is a sign of a healthy market... Manufacturers one-up eachother, making improvements and capturing marketshare. It is a wonderful thing that 3Dfx fell, that Nintendo fell, that all empires fall, because they are surpassed by better empires. Personally, I would find it great if Linux becomes the dominant desktop, then falls and is surpassed by something better. It is exactly this lack of cycling that has hurt the desktop arena, and computing in general.
-C
Imagine, if you will, a personalized avatar or something that can interact with you and perhaps assist you in your daily endevours (with a touch of attitude?).."
If I punch the touchscreen will the avatar take damage for being such a worthless piece of s***?
Add that feature, and you can bring clippy back.
Incidentally, what does it mean, "kill the white knight"?
It is an unrelated sig. It is a call to liberate one's self from relying upon the romantic hope that a chivalrous white knight will rescue you and to get out and do it yourself. Originally a feminist slogan from the west coast, it has become equally applicable to men waiting for that job offer they never applied for, children waiting for that college offer they hope will substitute for a place in life, and housewives waiting for life to fall into their laps.
The white knight is dangerous, because many have wasted their lives waiting for him.
I was planning on doing MAC address filtering as a security measure on a new network... then I discovered as one of the first options my wireless router offered to spoof the MAC address of my computer. So much for that plan.
Which part of what I said is incorrect?
ATT charges
3/kb Addt'l Data Charge
45/min Addt'l Airtime
20/min Long Distance
20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance
69/min National Roaming Rate
$36.00 Activation Fee
$19.95 Monthly Fee
for the basic local plan, with 45 included minutes, up to
3/kb Addt'l Data Charge
25/min Addt'l Airtime
00/min Long Distance
20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance
69/min National Roaming Rate
$36.00 Activation Fee
$299.00 Monthly Fee
for the advanced local plan, with 4,800 minutes.
AT&T has 10 tracks, Next-Gen, Multi-Band, and Digital plans for Local (roaming out of state), National(roaming off network), Digital One Rate (no roaming, no Next-Gen option yet), plus the mLife shared plans and prepaid plans. T-mobile has National, Regional, Family, and Sidekick rate plans, some with unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile minutes and most without. National plans feature unlimited weekend but unlimited night minutes for a fee, regoinal plans feature no additional weekend minutes. The T-mobile bandwidth starts at unlimited, but becomes 15MB per month with $3.50 each additional MB. Verizon features nine National, Local, and Express network tracks, some with long distance included and some without. The Promotional Choice(tm) Family SharePlan(tm) has 300 shared, 250 mobile-to-mobile minutes with 45c overcost and unlimited night and weekend, plus 4.99 monthly for 1000 additional mobile to mobile and 100 shared bonus minutes for 34.99 (39.98 after additionals). Sprint thankfully only has two tracks, "free and clear with vision" and "free and clear without vision." The base plans do not include pcs to pcs minutes, but the advanced plans do. There is no state-to-state roaming, but all off-network roaming calls are 50c per minute with a 25c per minute long-distance charge.
The cost of subsidizing my Nokia phone was 150.00, but that was 3 years ago. Considering my minimum monthly bill is $50, over the span of 3 years the cost of the phone is trivial. Still, the subsidizing of a phone is no excuse to create an artificial billing system that feels more like a vegas crapshoot or russian roulette than a satisfying business relationship. I'm sure even you have gotten screwed at one point or another... Why put up with that? Why defend that? The perks they give us (like mobile-to-mobile minutes)to counterbalance the way they exploit us should be a sign of just how much they exploit us.
All I want is a billing system that charges me Xc per minute anytime to anyone, with X/2c per minute nights / weekends. Is straight billing so hard or so wrong?
I would like to point out the smallest laptop formfactor available is the Sony Picturebook. Not only is it a tiny 1.14" X 9.8" X 6.0" and a svelite 2.2 pounds, but it also has a cheezy built-in camera (which you will come to love) and all the ports you would realistically need.
In those cramped Japanese apartments, she will want everything to be as small as possible.
Sony recently ended the line, but you can still find them around... Chicago computer sells one for 1500.
Very, very cool machine.
I doubt we will be able to ditch phone numbers entirely... not only do US telcos move at the speed of gold bullion resting at the bottom of the caribbean, but the rest of the world interacts with the US through our numbering system. Plus there is too much overlap in names in the US to be considered a unique identifier... and good luck convincing congress that all parents must provide a unique and un-duplicated name for their children. Furthermore, "George Herbert Walker Bush" is a hell of a lot of typing for a little phone.
What I expect will be the solution is number transmission phone to phone... whereby you can directly beam your number to another person's phone or selectively broadcast your name over a connection (* button?), who then references you by name without ever having to look at your number. That's basically how it works now, but without the hassle of punching in the number yourself.
Still, if you want to look toward the house of the future, why not have location-sensitive lines, where a wireless localized beacon carried upon the person tells phones to tell the phone company to route calls for that person to the nearby phones? People's names could lead to a search engine for the proper person, who would normally be indexed user@carrier style, or stored locally by name. The recieving address could even be an IPv6 number, tying together the major communication industries in a grand unified network theory.
Of course, such a dream will happen in Japan or Europe first, as the major US carriers will fight and bicker to dominate the standard until there is no standard left and no profit to be made (cough *SMS* cough).
Just pointing out, in the US there are no cross network charges. People pay a per-minute outgoing charge defined by the carrier they signed up with irrespective of whom they are calling. Cellphone owners pay the same to send or recieve calls as defined by their carrier. This leads to a small degree of double-billing, but when comparing 5c per minute landline long distance vs 60c per minute cell times, the billing is academic.
But the cell phone industry in the US is a scam. Here's how it works. First off, you estimate your usage... be it 100 minutes, 400 minutes, or 1,000 minutes. If you are too high you are charged every month for minutes you don't use. If you are too low... and you really don't want to be too low... you spend about 75c per minute. 300 and 500 minutes at the beginning of the month might be 20 and 30 dollars, but at the end of the month a 300 minute plan going to 500 minutes will cost you 170 dollars.
That's not all. Going from local to state-wide to nation-wide roaming might cost 5 - 10 dollars per month in advance, but if you take a trip outside your calling area, and give a loved one two 30 minute update calls, expect to pay an extra 40 dollars. Larger calling areas don't necessarily mean no roaming as companies have implemented plans with off-network roaming in your home calling area... that dead zone at your favorite resturant now costs 40-60c per minute.
They also charge for long-distance, which is an example of the aformentioned double-dipping. If a person is calling you, they are paying long distance to reach you (5-15c per minute), but you are paying long distance charges to recieve the call too (15-25c per minute). Thankfully many cellular companies have plans that include this "service" for a small fee, though the fact of the matter is that they just want your money.
To lure people into using their cellphones more frequently, all carriers offer promotional night and weekend minutes. The night time has slowly crept from 6PM to 9PM, and the morning from 9AM to 6AM, but the offer is valid... usually for a limited time. AT&T is famous for cutting off promotional night and weekend minutes when a contract expires without telling the customer, which generally leads to one multi-hundred dollar bill per customer.
The upsetting thing is that of course this is all a paper exercise. There is no resource that is allocated at the beginning of the month, no bandwidth that your carrier has to purchase at truly tremendous rates if you use more than your allotted space. They don't have to send a lackey from New York to Boston to buy emergency extra air time from a carrier there. It's just a form of billing, and nobody would put up with it in any other industry.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation. The article cites the %25 turnover rate as a sign of healthy competition, but numbers that high are a sign of very unhappy customers. I don't know anyone who owns a cellular phone and who hasn't been hit with at least one ludicrously high bill... $100 dollar bills are common. And while friendly, support always refuses to do anything about it except bump you up to a more expensive plan for the coming months so that you can hope it doesn't happen again... of course when you move up a plan you automatically make another one-year contract so that you can't join that ticked-off %25 churn without paying the hefty "cancelation" fees to pay for services not rendered.
Cellular companies don't want anything that would allow people to leave because they know they treat us badly, plain and simple.
School is already too easy, and if you skip any of it you'll be the only one at McDonald's who can't make change!
This wouldn't have anything to do with your sig, would it?
If Watson has evidence that Sword Forum International tried to extort money from him, let him bring it forward now or forever hold his peace.
"In a lawsuit pending in federal court in Austin, Watson accuses Sword Forum International of driving away customers by ridiculing his work. "I was presented as a charlatan," said Watson, 51. "
At the heart of the lawsuit are posted messages such as one by a Sword Forum moderator titled "Muffinhead Alert." Watson said the message refers to Angel Swords and tells readers to "steer clear of them." Another posting by a Sword Forum staff member said some of Angel Sword's advertising is "just insulting to anyone with even the most basic science background."
If all Watson has are postings on a review site whose reviewers decided his "Techno-Wootz" was not up to snuff, then this lawsuit is frivilous. If he has actual evidence of an extortion scheme, then Sword Forum International is liable for civil or criminal penalties. But either way the outcome is very clear, and not at all specific to the internet. It does not "speak to questions of freedom of speech on the internet" (reporter shorthand for "it's about talking on that newfangled internet thingie"), it is a very clear case of either abuse of media outlets by people looking for advertising money or a frivilous lawsuit from a craftsman upset over a review, both old-media problems.
I'd personally like to stay on and find out who is right and who is full of bullshit, but I have a gripping George Bush vs. Saddam Hussein debate to return to on Fox.
I'd like to point out for those moderators out there who may not be familiar with the Slashdot code of community conduct, parent was jokingly playing the role of karma whore police, because grandparent was jokingly playing the role of slashdotted story reposter while actually playing the role of that-guy-who-points-out-the-slashdot-summary-has-n othing-to-do-with-the-story. Grandparent was "Funny," but absolutely not "Insightful," unless one means insightful into the shortcomings of slashdot which are traditionally modded either "Funny" or "Offtopic." Parent is not a troll, but a prankster playing along with grandparent posing as a troll, and doing so just a little too subtly it would seem. Grandparent should be Score 3 or 4:Funny, and parent should be score 1:Funny.
Thank you for your attention. You may now return to modding down RIAA appologists.
(Repost from another board, discussing the National Security Advisor's terrorism threat forcast of "high" for the week with early morning fog of fear burning off by the evening into a patchy haze of mistrust)
So... we have a generalized threat warning that someone, somewhere may do something to hurt somebody? And this is supposed to inpact my life how?
Seriously, living in Boston I'm far more likely to be shot by a Hong Kong gang, disappeared by the Moffia, mugged by the homeless, run over by the crazy drivers, accidently blown up by a kid from MIT, get clubbed by falling ice, poisoned by the atrocious water supply, or get carbon monoxide poisioning from these 1890's era heaters in this aesbostos-laden apartment than I am to get killed by an Iranian for being an American. The total Us population in 2000 was two hundred eighty one million, four hundred twenty one thousand, nine hundred six people. If a terrorist attack an order of magnitude worse than the original estimates for the world-trade center massacre were to occur, there is still only two hundredths of a percent chance that I would be effected. One thousand deaths happen every single day due to smoking in the US. In my age group the death rate by congestive heart failure is 90.3 in 100,000. Motor vehicle accidents cause 29.3 deaths per 100,000. Suicides will cause 4,300 deaths this year (extrapolated) in the 18 to 24 year old age group alone, which is significantly higher than the amount of 18 to 24 year olds killed in terrorist attacks in 2001. Hypertensive heart disorder killed twenty-five thousand, three hundred twenty-seven people last year. two hundred fifty thousand people die every year from accidental medical mistreatment. Lung cancer killed one hundred fifty-four thousand people last year in the US. Blood poisioning caused thirty-thousand, six hundred seventy deaths last year. Eighty-nine die every year in the US by lightning strikes.
Even if one could acquire antibodies for Smallpox, Ricin, Botulism, VX, Sarin, Cyanide, Anthrax, and Radiological Emergencies, the series of injections is far more likely to kill you than the chances of a terrorist attack utilizing one of the above. Get some perspective, and get some sun. Actually, better avoid the sun: skin cancer killed 9,600 Americans last year.
Didn't we say this when the GIF debacle happened? Or Amazon's still standing one-click patent? The patent on hyperlinking? ActiveBuddy's patented IRC Bots?
Nothing wakes up the apathetic masses: that's why they're called "apathetic."