Your use of the word crippled is odd. I'd just say specialized. Most people don't switch operating systems on their computer, unless you count upgrades. So OSX is an option, until they make a decision that precludes it, like buying a generic PC. Same goes for those newfangled PCI-E video cards. I bought a PC with no PCI-E slots, so it's not an option for me (in that system). I don't consider them crippled, just specialized.
Good point about slippery slope arguments often being fallacious. I had in my head, but did not express sufficiently, the idea that it would be difficult to define "making available" in a sensible way. If you get too specific about p2p networks, they might easily evolve into something that isn't covered. If you're too broad, it may cover things you didn't intend. Intent plays a part in our own judgments of hypothetical cases, but it might be difficult to prove in court - certainly more than the minimal evidence collected in the case in question.
Yeah...and I haven't heard a specific definition of "making available" yet. Is an inadvertantly shared Windows folder making its contents available? Is leaving my iPod unattended making available the music on it? Is not patching the latest remote security hole in my system fast enough making available everything on my hard drive?
No, EDGE is a standard and it'll work wherever EDGE is available if implemented properly. Get an account from T-Mobile, they'll give you a SIM and your phone will use their EDGE network. Or keep your AT&T SIM and if the operators have a roaming agreement, it will also work (but cost you). Go check out a small mobile shop sometime and you'll find lots of phones from Europe and Asia and you can pop your AT&T or T-Mobile SIM in and it'll work.
So something just occurred to me - since it's their first phone, maybe Apple didn't feel confident of implementing the standards without the IOT (inter-operability testing) labs of a big operator. That peace of mind would be worth something.
But that's my point - Apple does not need the operator's involvement for any of their announced features except visual voicemail. I've taken my current phone to 3 continents and everything just works - voice and data. That's what worldwide standards like GSM, GPRS and UMTS are for. Have a data connection and lots of things are possible without any further involvement from the operator (like one of my favorites, Google Maps). Same thing at home - you don't need your ISP to "enable" each new application you want to use. Mobile operators are trying to keep control of all that to maximize their revenues, but as far as I know have used mostly marketing tactics so far (control over the phones they themselves sell), as opposed technical restrictions.
You're right, I don't. A simple missed call indicator is all that's needed most of the time. SMS is more common than VM and email will overtake them both.
Still nice, but far from a killer feature. To be clear, I meant it to mean a prime motivator for a significant number of buyers. I wonder if anyone took a survey of people asking if they were excited about the iPhone and if so, what about it excited them. I doubt more than a few percent would have said visual voicemail.
If AT&T is giving away a data plan in addition to sending money to Apple monthly, that's news to me. I didn't see it in the article and it doesn't seem like that would be necessary for it to sell. But anyway, my point remains that it's a GSM phone and will work on other GSM networks without the operator's involvement.
My point is that the operator is not needed to sell the devices. Apple has the marketing and retail power to do it on their own. Motorola, Nokia and Samsung do not.
What is it you think won't work on another GSM network? I know of one thing - the visual voicemail feature, which requires the operator's involvement. Maybe that'll catch on, but it's a fairly small thing. Got anything else?
I'd been wondering exactly what Apple got out of the deal. The only previous item I'd heard was the visual voicemail. And I don't consider the marketing and retail channel to be big gains for Apple against the exclusivity limitation they're giving AT&T. But monthly revenue sharing could make sense for Apple. I would guess that Jobs made it clear they could go operator-less if they didn't get a good deal.
If you have no choice, go talk to your local city council about laying municipal fiber and you'll have plenty of choices when that is done.
So if the monopoly internet providers don't play fair, have your local government build a level playing field? There's already a playing field...why not require the monopoly to keep it level (as it is today)? Why dig up the streets again?
Re:Paper trails are worse than useless
on
Who won?
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· Score: 1
Secondary paper trails on electronic voting machines are not worthless if done well. Have a machine with a roll of paper, get poll workers to sign the start of it as they install it and at the end when they remove it. Have a glass window so you can see what it's printing when it's printing it. The machine can keep tally electronically and you only go to the paper if there's a discrepency, it's close or it was selected at random for checking (do that with a few percent each time). Keep a chain of custody just as is done with paper ballots. Should be pretty close to paper ballot reliability this way.
And paper trails should not be a Democratic vs. Republican issue, it should be a Democracy vs. Totalitarianism issue. Same goes for publicly financed elections - it's a Democracy vs. Fascism issue.
Sure, I could be a head in a jar imagining all this, or something even weirder. And the earth could have been made by an omnipotent bearded dude 14k years ago. He could have played a bunch of little pranks - like messing with carbon half lives, layers of sedimentation and snow/ice pack and planting all sorts of fossils. Maybe he did all this yesterday and also planted some memories as well.
But just about everyone plays along and accepts things they see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Helps you get through the day. In fact, I think posting on Slashdot shows a fairly high level of playing along with this "reality" thing, whatever it *actually* is. We also branch out and conditionally accept things we don't see, hear, feel, taste and smell directly. Greater credence is given to things similar to our own experiences and/or experiences that trusted sources claim happened. Also, the more serious the consequences of a belief, the more skepticism should be employed.
Some people disregard the above rules sometimes, believing things very much unlike any of their own experiences. Things that are not 1st-person, 2nd-person or 3rd-person, but related through a long chain of unknown people and thousands of years. Things that have serious consequences in the way they will live their lives. These people seem to give the greatest credence to things that (A) many others believe, (B) they hear repeated often and (C) they first heard before they had developed the capabilities needed to make reasonable judgments.
2 - sounds like you want to break copyright law and are therefore against DRM on principle
3 - "too many politicians bowing to people in power" - you (and everyone!) should be supporting publicly financed elections of some kind (see e.g. Public Campaign)
Would you oppose a dictatorship, even if it's a benevolent one?
Well, my answer is I wouldn't trust it to be entirely benevolent, and even if the dictator is ruling exactly as I'd like, I don't trust that it'll stay that way (power corrupting, succession, etc).
No, it's complicated, but code division allows multiple simultaneous signals with the ability to pick out each signal at the receiving end. See the Wikipedia article for some details.
Oh, and to the grandparent - in GSM everyone does NOT get timeslices whether they're using them or not. Your phone in idle state monitors a paging channel, just like everyone else's. If you're called, you'll receive a message on that channel and arrangements for a dedicated timeslice are made. That dedicated resource is released at the end of the call.
Also note that a CDMA network (e.g. Verizon or Sprint) is not referring just to the radio interface, it's a whole system with many parts between those radio towers. A GSM network has similar pieces. UMTS (aka Wideband CDMA) uses code division instead of time division and has been rolled out to major cities by the GSM operators (T-Mo, Cing). Most operators in the world chose GSM and UMTS instead of CDMA.
In the interest of finding common ground, I like to point out to my Christian friends that of all the thousands of gods out there, we only disagree about the existence of one of them!
Well, from the demo, it's an amazingly slick interface. But really, on basic features, I don't see a big gap.
I have a Nokia E61 at the moment. It's also quad-band GSM, with 3G (Euro though) and has WiFi. The web browser is the best I've seen on a mobile device until the iPhone flash demo. I run the native Symbian Gmail client and the Google Maps app that is very usable. It doesn't have the great finger gesture zooming that the iPhone will have though. It supports lots of push email and calendar syncing options. The screen is a very nice 2.75". It can do document editing, display pictures, play games and play music. In fact even without earphones it makes a good music player - the speaker is even twice as loud as my macbook (with its annoyingly quiet speakers). I put a 2Gig Mini-SD card in it, so I can carry a fair amount. No iTunes integration though. Mine's unlocked too, so I can use it anywhere (actually you can't get the E61 from an operator in the U.S. - only the E62 from Cingular, which doesn't have WiFi or 3G).
Anyway, I guess my point is that there's not a lot the iPhone offers that is revolutionary besides the interface. The visual voice mail would be nice but I don't think I'd pay much monthly for that. I think Apple would have a monster hit with an unlocked version at that $500-600 price point, but it sounds like they'd have had to charge $800+ for it without an operator subsidizing.
So after all that, I still think that if the corner shop was offering the 8gb iPhone today for $599 with a 2 year Cingular contract and the interface was as slick as the flash demo, I'd think about it for 2 seconds and pull out that credit card. Motorola and Nokia have a lot of catching up to do in the interface, assuming the touch screen works as well as I'm imagining.
He even repeated the most common misconception about network neutrality - that prioritizing one type of traffic above others (e.g. VoIP over email) violates net neutrality. False. I've never heard anyone argue against that. From the article:
There are a couple ways that a network operator could choose to deviate from network neutrality. The first is to give a higher priority to time-sensitive applications.
Well, I've been around a while too. I think this sort of thing fits in as well as the YRO stuff does. Most of us are big fans of the scientific method and care about attacks on such from special interests. I suspect you do too. Yes, this story was a little light on scientific details. I think it would have fit better if it had some clear examples of scientific consensus (or better yet, actual data) paired with clearly misleading statements coming from the funded organizations.
As for attack-on-science stories seeming to come from the left...well, maybe it's just reality's liberal bias showing (hat tip - Stephen Colbert). Seriously...I can think of several right/conservative attacks on science, but none from the mainstream left. Help me out with a couple examples if you can.
Lots of people care, and those that don't give a shit would not have risen up against them. A few easy decisions could have made a huge difference. Say, instead of funneling billions in subsidies to oil companies, use it for alternative energy research. Or stop paying subsidies for fuel-inefficient vehicles. Why not a tax/subsidy sliding scale based on the efficiency of a vehicle?
The public may not have risen up against those measures, but special interests would have. That's why lobbying reform is needed (and apparently started yesterday). Also, publically financed elections would help.
Some have the libertarian view that the government shouldn't be paying for anything not involved in national security. Some of us are painfully aware that energy is a prime national security issue.
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Your use of the word crippled is odd. I'd just say specialized. Most people don't switch operating systems on their computer, unless you count upgrades. So OSX is an option, until they make a decision that precludes it, like buying a generic PC. Same goes for those newfangled PCI-E video cards. I bought a PC with no PCI-E slots, so it's not an option for me (in that system). I don't consider them crippled, just specialized.
Good point about slippery slope arguments often being fallacious. I had in my head, but did not express sufficiently, the idea that it would be difficult to define "making available" in a sensible way. If you get too specific about p2p networks, they might easily evolve into something that isn't covered. If you're too broad, it may cover things you didn't intend. Intent plays a part in our own judgments of hypothetical cases, but it might be difficult to prove in court - certainly more than the minimal evidence collected in the case in question.
Yeah...and I haven't heard a specific definition of "making available" yet. Is an inadvertantly shared Windows folder making its contents available? Is leaving my iPod unattended making available the music on it? Is not patching the latest remote security hole in my system fast enough making available everything on my hard drive?
Yes, but maybe it's possible but not easy.
No, EDGE is a standard and it'll work wherever EDGE is available if implemented properly. Get an account from T-Mobile, they'll give you a SIM and your phone will use their EDGE network. Or keep your AT&T SIM and if the operators have a roaming agreement, it will also work (but cost you). Go check out a small mobile shop sometime and you'll find lots of phones from Europe and Asia and you can pop your AT&T or T-Mobile SIM in and it'll work.
So something just occurred to me - since it's their first phone, maybe Apple didn't feel confident of implementing the standards without the IOT (inter-operability testing) labs of a big operator. That peace of mind would be worth something.
But that's my point - Apple does not need the operator's involvement for any of their announced features except visual voicemail. I've taken my current phone to 3 continents and everything just works - voice and data. That's what worldwide standards like GSM, GPRS and UMTS are for. Have a data connection and lots of things are possible without any further involvement from the operator (like one of my favorites, Google Maps). Same thing at home - you don't need your ISP to "enable" each new application you want to use. Mobile operators are trying to keep control of all that to maximize their revenues, but as far as I know have used mostly marketing tactics so far (control over the phones they themselves sell), as opposed technical restrictions.
You're right, I don't. A simple missed call indicator is all that's needed most of the time. SMS is more common than VM and email will overtake them both.
Still nice, but far from a killer feature. To be clear, I meant it to mean a prime motivator for a significant number of buyers. I wonder if anyone took a survey of people asking if they were excited about the iPhone and if so, what about it excited them. I doubt more than a few percent would have said visual voicemail.
If AT&T is giving away a data plan in addition to sending money to Apple monthly, that's news to me. I didn't see it in the article and it doesn't seem like that would be necessary for it to sell. But anyway, my point remains that it's a GSM phone and will work on other GSM networks without the operator's involvement.
My point is that the operator is not needed to sell the devices. Apple has the marketing and retail power to do it on their own. Motorola, Nokia and Samsung do not.
Visual voicemail a killer feature? You're the first person I've seen get excited about it.
Getting a cut of monthly revenues...now that's the kind of thing that makes a guy a billionaire.
(And in reference to your sig, most atheists I know don't get angry about religion until it's used against them.)
What is it you think won't work on another GSM network? I know of one thing - the visual voicemail feature, which requires the operator's involvement. Maybe that'll catch on, but it's a fairly small thing. Got anything else?
I'd been wondering exactly what Apple got out of the deal. The only previous item I'd heard was the visual voicemail. And I don't consider the marketing and retail channel to be big gains for Apple against the exclusivity limitation they're giving AT&T. But monthly revenue sharing could make sense for Apple. I would guess that Jobs made it clear they could go operator-less if they didn't get a good deal.
If they're not allowed to sell above MSRP, then it's more than a suggestion, it's an upper limit.
I wonder if the guy that has problems with percentages had anything to do with their failed game business.
Secondary paper trails on electronic voting machines are not worthless if done well. Have a machine with a roll of paper, get poll workers to sign the start of it as they install it and at the end when they remove it. Have a glass window so you can see what it's printing when it's printing it. The machine can keep tally electronically and you only go to the paper if there's a discrepency, it's close or it was selected at random for checking (do that with a few percent each time). Keep a chain of custody just as is done with paper ballots. Should be pretty close to paper ballot reliability this way.
And paper trails should not be a Democratic vs. Republican issue, it should be a Democracy vs. Totalitarianism issue. Same goes for publicly financed elections - it's a Democracy vs. Fascism issue.
Bah.
Sure, I could be a head in a jar imagining all this, or something even weirder. And the earth could have been made by an omnipotent bearded dude 14k years ago. He could have played a bunch of little pranks - like messing with carbon half lives, layers of sedimentation and snow/ice pack and planting all sorts of fossils. Maybe he did all this yesterday and also planted some memories as well.
But just about everyone plays along and accepts things they see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Helps you get through the day. In fact, I think posting on Slashdot shows a fairly high level of playing along with this "reality" thing, whatever it *actually* is. We also branch out and conditionally accept things we don't see, hear, feel, taste and smell directly. Greater credence is given to things similar to our own experiences and/or experiences that trusted sources claim happened. Also, the more serious the consequences of a belief, the more skepticism should be employed.
Some people disregard the above rules sometimes, believing things very much unlike any of their own experiences. Things that are not 1st-person, 2nd-person or 3rd-person, but related through a long chain of unknown people and thousands of years. Things that have serious consequences in the way they will live their lives. These people seem to give the greatest credence to things that (A) many others believe, (B) they hear repeated often and (C) they first heard before they had developed the capabilities needed to make reasonable judgments.
1 - short year so far, stick around!
2 - sounds like you want to break copyright law and are therefore against DRM on principle
3 - "too many politicians bowing to people in power" - you (and everyone!) should be supporting publicly financed elections of some kind (see e.g. Public Campaign)
The question is a bit like:
Would you oppose a dictatorship, even if it's a benevolent one?
Well, my answer is I wouldn't trust it to be entirely benevolent, and even if the dictator is ruling exactly as I'd like, I don't trust that it'll stay that way (power corrupting, succession, etc).
No, it's complicated, but code division allows multiple simultaneous signals with the ability to pick out each signal at the receiving end. See the Wikipedia article for some details.
Oh, and to the grandparent - in GSM everyone does NOT get timeslices whether they're using them or not. Your phone in idle state monitors a paging channel, just like everyone else's. If you're called, you'll receive a message on that channel and arrangements for a dedicated timeslice are made. That dedicated resource is released at the end of the call.
Also note that a CDMA network (e.g. Verizon or Sprint) is not referring just to the radio interface, it's a whole system with many parts between those radio towers. A GSM network has similar pieces. UMTS (aka Wideband CDMA) uses code division instead of time division and has been rolled out to major cities by the GSM operators (T-Mo, Cing). Most operators in the world chose GSM and UMTS instead of CDMA.
Nice one.
In the interest of finding common ground, I like to point out to my Christian friends that of all the thousands of gods out there, we only disagree about the existence of one of them!
Well, from the demo, it's an amazingly slick interface. But really, on basic features, I don't see a big gap.
I have a Nokia E61 at the moment. It's also quad-band GSM, with 3G (Euro though) and has WiFi. The web browser is the best I've seen on a mobile device until the iPhone flash demo. I run the native Symbian Gmail client and the Google Maps app that is very usable. It doesn't have the great finger gesture zooming that the iPhone will have though. It supports lots of push email and calendar syncing options. The screen is a very nice 2.75". It can do document editing, display pictures, play games and play music. In fact even without earphones it makes a good music player - the speaker is even twice as loud as my macbook (with its annoyingly quiet speakers). I put a 2Gig Mini-SD card in it, so I can carry a fair amount. No iTunes integration though. Mine's unlocked too, so I can use it anywhere (actually you can't get the E61 from an operator in the U.S. - only the E62 from Cingular, which doesn't have WiFi or 3G).
Anyway, I guess my point is that there's not a lot the iPhone offers that is revolutionary besides the interface. The visual voice mail would be nice but I don't think I'd pay much monthly for that. I think Apple would have a monster hit with an unlocked version at that $500-600 price point, but it sounds like they'd have had to charge $800+ for it without an operator subsidizing.
So after all that, I still think that if the corner shop was offering the 8gb iPhone today for $599 with a 2 year Cingular contract and the interface was as slick as the flash demo, I'd think about it for 2 seconds and pull out that credit card. Motorola and Nokia have a lot of catching up to do in the interface, assuming the touch screen works as well as I'm imagining.
Well, I've been around a while too. I think this sort of thing fits in as well as the YRO stuff does. Most of us are big fans of the scientific method and care about attacks on such from special interests. I suspect you do too. Yes, this story was a little light on scientific details. I think it would have fit better if it had some clear examples of scientific consensus (or better yet, actual data) paired with clearly misleading statements coming from the funded organizations.
As for attack-on-science stories seeming to come from the left...well, maybe it's just reality's liberal bias showing (hat tip - Stephen Colbert). Seriously...I can think of several right/conservative attacks on science, but none from the mainstream left. Help me out with a couple examples if you can.
Lots of people care, and those that don't give a shit would not have risen up against them. A few easy decisions could have made a huge difference. Say, instead of funneling billions in subsidies to oil companies, use it for alternative energy research. Or stop paying subsidies for fuel-inefficient vehicles. Why not a tax/subsidy sliding scale based on the efficiency of a vehicle?
The public may not have risen up against those measures, but special interests would have. That's why lobbying reform is needed (and apparently started yesterday). Also, publically financed elections would help.
Some have the libertarian view that the government shouldn't be paying for anything not involved in national security. Some of us are painfully aware that energy is a prime national security issue.
I think you replied to the wrong post, misread mine or....something...