Also, an 11.1 year cycle is a little shorter than the period in which global warming is measured.
Furthermore, the increase of soot and particulate pollution since the industrial revolution also diminishes the amount of sun light reaching the Earth significantly, yet the Earth is heating faster than any time in its history. Ironically, increased pollution controls could exacerbate the damage done by "greenhouse" gases.
Of course you need to figure out the size and center of the twirl and its angle, but I'm guessing the twirl function didn't just relocate pixels but overlapped them and averaged them. In a way, the overlapped areas would be like a one-way hash function: there would be no direct way to calculate/decrypt what the original data was, but a program could be written to guess-and-check all the possible inputs to find ones that match the output (like a hash collision) and then determine which was the most likely input.
Just from the blurb quoted, it sounds like this paper was randomly generated from a list of buzzwords. Did someone write the astrophysics version of the Rooter paper?
I live in this tiny town that only recent entered the list of the ten largest cities in America, San Antonio, and with sprint MAYBE half the time someone called me my phone would ring, and while at work it would ring 3/4 +/- of the time. And it wasn't my phone, that went for all sprint phones, old and new, company and private. But it worked pretty well if I stood in my backyard, but even upstairs it would drop calls every 5-10 minutes.
So, I got cingular, which works perfectly, as long as you don't go into a very shallow valley/dip or get too close to the south side.
"Ron Paul is the candidate that has made the most sense to me so far, and most consider him FAR right..."
Is that because he's the ONLY Republican candidate to not endorse preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran?
But seriously, I also wonder what they, or anyone, mean by conservative. Maybe if you have a big enough survey it washes out?
Take Ron Paul. He wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, Dept. of Education, etc. so clearly he is fiscally conservative. Bush and Reagan were liberals in that dept and we'll be paying for that for 50-100 years. All the Republican candidates are socially conservative, even on the Democratic side only one had the guts to support equality for gays (Kucinich). So, who is liberal or conservative and which issue proves it?
Then we have civil rights. Ron Paul seems to be the only Republican candidate who cares what the Constitution says about issues like torture and privacy. Is he a liberal? Or is not wanting to ignore/liberally-interpret the Constitution make you conservative? The ACLU likes to claim it's the most conservative group in the country...
Should I put gay marriage under civil right? What about anti-abortion vs anti-nationalizing-the-uterus?
The more you look at polarized politics the less sense it makes.
They ravage the Treo for it's craptacular "Blazer" browser, and they should. It is useless and worthless, it hides menus (forcing me to email my login and pw to my brother so he could enable POP on gmail for me so I could use the POP client on my phone) and wont let me press buttons like "submit" or "reply" in myspace.
But once you install JVM and Opera, everything changes.
Sure, I can't really expect them to hack each phone before reviewing it, and I guess I should blame Palm for not including a real browser, but this wouldn't be/. if I didn't complain.
And as for the guy complaining about all-in-one devices: try traveling some time and then tell me you want 5 separate devices (plus chargers and sync cables and cradles) instead of one. I just got back from Vegas where AT&T decided my Treo 680 did not have a voice or text plan, yet my web access kept working, so I for one was quite happy to have a web device. I also enjoyed taking pictures of some guy in a ghostbusters outfit with my phone without bringing my large SLR with me.
"The Crowd Farm is not intended for home use. According to Graham and Jusczy, a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second."
So if everyone took one step a second, 40 people walking would generate 2,400W which is probably enough to power my whole house. 1000 people would generate 60,000W. 28,527 people would generate 1,711,620W...
I find those numbers a little hard to believe. I also didn't know one train uses 1.7 megawatts of power... Can any *real* engineers tell me how much juice a train takes?
Ok, seriously, how fucking stupid are you? Did you even read the post, or do you just kinda wing it on what you think people might write? I really can't think of what more to say other than cut and paste what I said in the last post.
"Perhaps you need reminded that the iPhone is more than a phone. What if I have it connected to my car stereo and want to skip to the next song? Are people who operate CD players/iPods also assholes?"
If you want to release a kick-ass phone in Japan, or Europe, or Asia, or Australia, or South America, or ALL OF THEM, how many different hardware designs to you need to create? ONE. They all use GSM. BILLIONS of potential customers for that one design.
If you want to release a kick-ass phone for everyone in JUST the USA to use, how many different hardware designs do you need to create? Many. Maybe a dozen. At least four just to cover the major players, each with a few MILLLION users as potential customers, most of them locked into their service for two years and no way to bring their phone to another service provider. Some American networks use some GSM, but they are mostly comprised of other America-only proprietary standards of PCS, TDMA, CDMA, etc.
And why is it like this? The free market! Other countries decided it would be smart to use team work to help their people, drive down costs, increase competition, make service more reliable with less masts, and foster innovation. In America it's every man for himself, or at least every company for itself. Each company made their own incompatible standard in order to lock in customers and make it expensive or impossible to leave and go to a competitor, thus reducing or eliminating the threat of competition. Less competition, less of a need to come out with snazzy phones. Of course, each company has to build their own masts, so you often have 3 to 6 competing antennas where in the rest of the world there would be one. This is expensive so they cut corners with service where ever they can. But your phone works if you stand in the yard, right? In Europe they work indoors, on trains, even in basements.
"Good. You are not supposed to make phone calls while driving. Assholes that make phone calls while driving have the same diminished reaction times as someone who is intoxicated over the legal limit."
Ah, name calling, how mature. Perhaps you need reminded that the iPhone is more than a phone. What if I have it connected to my car stereo and want to skip to the next song? Are people who operate CD players/iPods also assholes?
"If you want to skip a song, press down on the button on the headphone cord. If you want to look like a perv playing pocket pool go right ahead and use a player with a lot of buttons. BTW. the iPhone has a physical volume control on the phone IIRC."
Awwww, more name calling. Cute!
"You waste time and power fumbling through menus on other phones and fumbling with the volume control on all phones."
I don't need to fumble through menus on my phone. There is a button for every major feature. And why would pressing a physical volume button waste energy? You seem to be confusing the insignificant amount of energy required to operate a real button with the significant amount of energy it requires to run and back-light an LCD screen.
"HFCS is not the problem. The problem is simple, too many calories in, too few calories out."
Yes, some people are too quick to blame external reasons, and others are too quick to reject all of them. As with most simple black-or-white arguments, the truth is complicated and in-between.
We now know that two genetically identical mice, fed identical food while living in identical environments, can result in one thin mouse and one obese mouse. The only difference between the two is epigenetic damage caused by environmental toxins while in the womb, and those epigenetic changes can be passed on for several generations. Maybe it wasn't something you ate, but what your grandmother ate...
We also know that in mice the variety of stomach bacteria can mean the difference between fat and thin. Supposedly, people who eat yogurt lose more weight than non yogurt eaters. There are already yogurts sold with bacteria to help other... problems, it's probably only a matter of time before we see yogurts with yeasts to make you thinner.
So, diet, exercise, portions, and lifestyle changes are all very important, but don't be so quick to place all the blame on the overweight person.
The iPhone has no buttons... except that it does. Every screen has buttons that need to be pressed. The only differences between those "soft" buttons and real buttons are: 1) You need to look directly at the screen to press them, like while driving. 2) You have to take the phone/mp3 player out of your pocket, activate the screen, and sometimes navigate menus if you want to adjust the volume, skip a song, etc. 3) You waste power every time you need to find and press these buttons.
I'm all for reducing clutter and making interfaces intuitive, but there's a point when ideology surpasses practicality.
Who writes a more useful and detailed article about a tech product: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
Who loves tech so much they write a blog about it: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
Who gets a job a cnet when they can't get a job at a real publisher: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
But if I can turn the snark off for a minute, let me make a deeper point. People generally do things for one of two reasons: love or money. Something done for the love of it is generally going to be of far higher quality than something done for money. Generally, the blogger writes for love of the subject, the journalist writes for money.
I never understood why shooting an unarmed animal too dumb to run from a guy with a gun was considered a sport, and that's not even taking into account things like timed deer feeders, blinds, camo, etc. Heck, at least children would know to run...
Bow hunting: at least that takes some skill, but a hunter told me that most animals get away wounded, so it's probably crueler.
Now if you were to hunt with just daggers, THAT would be a sport. You with two 6" daggers versus a havalena (huge boar) with two 6" tusks, mano y swine-o. Not only would it be a sport, but I would so watch a reality TV program about it. Maybe we could build a Colosseum to house the set...
PS: please remember it is illegal to hunt bears with a.22 in NH. Thank you.
People often say "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide" when what they mean is "I'm not doing anything THAT THE GOVERNMENT CONSIDERS WRONG, THAT I KNOW OF, AT THIS TIME, so I have nothing to hide."
Did you marry someone of the wrong color? That would have landed you in jail 40 years ago. What would your employer do if he knew that little secret of yours? Did you change lanes without signaling, you erratic dangerous driver? Did you just litter that cigarette butt?
What if they start arresting people who worship the wrong God, or, God forbid, none at all? "But the 1st Amendment says they can't" Buzzz, sorry, wrong again. The Bill of Rights doesn't mean jack shit if they don't ever have to officially press charges, which they don't thanks to the Republicans suspending Habeus Corpus. You can sit in Gitmo for eternity now, and they can even torture and execute you without trial. Don't believe me? Google the Patriot act and the Military Commission act.
"Speaking of which -- I wonder if they could use their many many container ships for that? Container ships probably need a port to unload... but ports can be captured."
I'm picturing thousands of men standing patiently in containers for days waiting for the crane to unload them all...
US policy an invasion of Taiwan by China is "strategic non denial" (minus one obligatory Bush gaff). Basically, the world knows what the US would do but there's no need to rub it in China's face. It was never really a threat that China would invade due to the state of their navy -- one nickname for a potential invasion was "the million man swim." Well, China has been beefing up their military at a high speed and now it seems they are raising the stakes.
How about how intrusive it was and put garbage all over the place and tried to take over from other apps? How about the horrible rip quality (no error detection/correction like EAC) and the terribly outdated and flawed MP3 conversion algorithms and no Ogg support, at least in the version I tried.
I was paying them $66 a month for phone service that would cut in and out all night, drop calls over and over and often not give me a dial tone. Yes, this was a land line. AT&T insisted I had bad wires in the house, even though I plugged my phone into the junction box outside and still heard all the static.
Then they told me they were going to put a conduit under my patio and put in a new wire. I came home to find that they had tore up my lawn and not bother to fix it, sprayed orange spray paint all over my patio, tore out and broke pavers on my patio, bent the thick steel edging around the patio, and damaged my cable TV cable and made that all staticy. And my phone service was not improved at all.
After roughly 20 calls and 20 lines tests that found nothing wrong and 15 promises to send a tech and 10 messages that my gate was locked and they couldn't work (my gate can't lock) they finally decided there was a problem with the trunk, and as long as it was hot it worked, but when it cooled down at night something came loose. I asked when they would fix it and they told me the problem could only be identified at nights and they don't work nights, so never.
When I called to cancel my phone the rep kept me on the line for 20 minutes trying to sell me, among other things, DSL! When I reminded her that I couldn't even get voice down my line she was sure they could make it work with DSL. When I finally got her to disconnect me she asks "is there anything else I can do to make you a satisfied AT&T customer?" I was speechless.
With Cingular you are forced to buy a highly limited $40 data plan with no text messages and just a few megs of data, but apparently you can cancel the plan after 3-6 months. Probably wont get the rebates, though.
Personally, I got my Cingular Treo through a military discount and was able to get the MediaNet plan which is $20 with unlimited data and 200 messages. I didn't get a rebate and had to pay over $300 for the phone, but between plan discounts and not buying that plan I save $1200-$1800 over 24 months to get the same service.
I was planning on buying the iPhone the day it came out and sticking my SIM in it and maybe selling my Treo 680, but if I need to buy a new plan or add $40+ a month to my $600 phone, f that.
This is an even bigger disappointment than AppleTV, which I was also planning on buying on day 1 until I found out it had less storage than my 3-year-old MP3 player, couldn't play any of my videos (DIVX), and wouldn't even work on my TV.
Wrong again. She said "almost 70%" which means it was really 69% but she didn't want to say "69." It's sad that someone would do so much high-minded work and then get hung up on the juvenile interpretations of a number.
Slashdot Mirror
The Daily Show has been around since 1996, but 8 years does cover all the Jon Stewart years.
Also, full shows are not available, just clips, though supposedly you can piece together most episodes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071018/wr_nm/dailyshow_dc_2
Less sunspots = less solar energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot
Also, an 11.1 year cycle is a little shorter than the period in which global warming is measured.
Furthermore, the increase of soot and particulate pollution since the industrial revolution also diminishes the amount of sun light reaching the Earth significantly, yet the Earth is heating faster than any time in its history. Ironically, increased pollution controls could exacerbate the damage done by "greenhouse" gases.
Of course you need to figure out the size and center of the twirl and its angle, but I'm guessing the twirl function didn't just relocate pixels but overlapped them and averaged them. In a way, the overlapped areas would be like a one-way hash function: there would be no direct way to calculate/decrypt what the original data was, but a program could be written to guess-and-check all the possible inputs to find ones that match the output (like a hash collision) and then determine which was the most likely input.
It actually sounds like a fun program to write...
Just from the blurb quoted, it sounds like this paper was randomly generated from a list of buzzwords. Did someone write the astrophysics version of the Rooter paper?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/15/hoax_paper_accepted/
You must be a sprint customer.
I live in this tiny town that only recent entered the list of the ten largest cities in America, San Antonio, and with sprint MAYBE half the time someone called me my phone would ring, and while at work it would ring 3/4 +/- of the time. And it wasn't my phone, that went for all sprint phones, old and new, company and private. But it worked pretty well if I stood in my backyard, but even upstairs it would drop calls every 5-10 minutes.
So, I got cingular, which works perfectly, as long as you don't go into a very shallow valley/dip or get too close to the south side.
I highly doubt they want to insert the most annoying ads known into at the worst possible time and ruin the user experience.
They probably patented it so that adware companies cannot legally create such software.
"Ron Paul is the candidate that has made the most sense to me so far, and most consider him FAR right..."
Is that because he's the ONLY Republican candidate to not endorse preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran?
But seriously, I also wonder what they, or anyone, mean by conservative. Maybe if you have a big enough survey it washes out?
Take Ron Paul. He wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, Dept. of Education, etc. so clearly he is fiscally conservative. Bush and Reagan were liberals in that dept and we'll be paying for that for 50-100 years. All the Republican candidates are socially conservative, even on the Democratic side only one had the guts to support equality for gays (Kucinich). So, who is liberal or conservative and which issue proves it?
Then we have civil rights. Ron Paul seems to be the only Republican candidate who cares what the Constitution says about issues like torture and privacy. Is he a liberal? Or is not wanting to ignore/liberally-interpret the Constitution make you conservative? The ACLU likes to claim it's the most conservative group in the country...
Should I put gay marriage under civil right? What about anti-abortion vs anti-nationalizing-the-uterus?
The more you look at polarized politics the less sense it makes.
They ravage the Treo for it's craptacular "Blazer" browser, and they should. It is useless and worthless, it hides menus (forcing me to email my login and pw to my brother so he could enable POP on gmail for me so I could use the POP client on my phone) and wont let me press buttons like "submit" or "reply" in myspace.
/. if I didn't complain.
But once you install JVM and Opera, everything changes.
Sure, I can't really expect them to hack each phone before reviewing it, and I guess I should blame Palm for not including a real browser, but this wouldn't be
And as for the guy complaining about all-in-one devices: try traveling some time and then tell me you want 5 separate devices (plus chargers and sync cables and cradles) instead of one. I just got back from Vegas where AT&T decided my Treo 680 did not have a voice or text plan, yet my web access kept working, so I for one was quite happy to have a web device. I also enjoyed taking pictures of some guy in a ghostbusters outfit with my phone without bringing my large SLR with me.
Oops... "two 60W light bulbs"
So double all my numbers. 3.4MW train. 20 people could power my house.
Figures I would make a math error after pointing out a math error. Karma's a bitch.
1000 / 200 = 2?
"The Crowd Farm is not intended for home use. According to Graham and Jusczy, a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second."
So if everyone took one step a second, 40 people walking would generate 2,400W which is probably enough to power my whole house. 1000 people would generate 60,000W. 28,527 people would generate 1,711,620W...
I find those numbers a little hard to believe. I also didn't know one train uses 1.7 megawatts of power... Can any *real* engineers tell me how much juice a train takes?
Ok, seriously, how fucking stupid are you? Did you even read the post, or do you just kinda wing it on what you think people might write? I really can't think of what more to say other than cut and paste what I said in the last post.
"Perhaps you need reminded that the iPhone is more than a phone. What if I have it connected to my car stereo and want to skip to the next song? Are people who operate CD players/iPods also assholes?"
If you want to release a kick-ass phone in Japan, or Europe, or Asia, or Australia, or South America, or ALL OF THEM, how many different hardware designs to you need to create? ONE. They all use GSM. BILLIONS of potential customers for that one design.
If you want to release a kick-ass phone for everyone in JUST the USA to use, how many different hardware designs do you need to create? Many. Maybe a dozen. At least four just to cover the major players, each with a few MILLLION users as potential customers, most of them locked into their service for two years and no way to bring their phone to another service provider. Some American networks use some GSM, but they are mostly comprised of other America-only proprietary standards of PCS, TDMA, CDMA, etc.
And why is it like this? The free market! Other countries decided it would be smart to use team work to help their people, drive down costs, increase competition, make service more reliable with less masts, and foster innovation. In America it's every man for himself, or at least every company for itself. Each company made their own incompatible standard in order to lock in customers and make it expensive or impossible to leave and go to a competitor, thus reducing or eliminating the threat of competition. Less competition, less of a need to come out with snazzy phones. Of course, each company has to build their own masts, so you often have 3 to 6 competing antennas where in the rest of the world there would be one. This is expensive so they cut corners with service where ever they can. But your phone works if you stand in the yard, right? In Europe they work indoors, on trains, even in basements.
"Good. You are not supposed to make phone calls while driving. Assholes that make phone calls while driving have the same diminished reaction times as someone who is intoxicated over the legal limit."
Ah, name calling, how mature. Perhaps you need reminded that the iPhone is more than a phone. What if I have it connected to my car stereo and want to skip to the next song? Are people who operate CD players/iPods also assholes?
"If you want to skip a song, press down on the button on the headphone cord. If you want to look like a perv playing pocket pool go right ahead and use a player with a lot of buttons. BTW. the iPhone has a physical volume control on the phone IIRC."
Awwww, more name calling. Cute!
"You waste time and power fumbling through menus on other phones and fumbling with the volume control on all phones."
I don't need to fumble through menus on my phone. There is a button for every major feature. And why would pressing a physical volume button waste energy? You seem to be confusing the insignificant amount of energy required to operate a real button with the significant amount of energy it requires to run and back-light an LCD screen.
"What's your point? I'm not seeing it."
Obviously.
"HFCS is not the problem. The problem is simple, too many calories in, too few calories out."
Yes, some people are too quick to blame external reasons, and others are too quick to reject all of them. As with most simple black-or-white arguments, the truth is complicated and in-between.
We now know that two genetically identical mice, fed identical food while living in identical environments, can result in one thin mouse and one obese mouse. The only difference between the two is epigenetic damage caused by environmental toxins while in the womb, and those epigenetic changes can be passed on for several generations. Maybe it wasn't something you ate, but what your grandmother ate...
We also know that in mice the variety of stomach bacteria can mean the difference between fat and thin. Supposedly, people who eat yogurt lose more weight than non yogurt eaters. There are already yogurts sold with bacteria to help other... problems, it's probably only a matter of time before we see yogurts with yeasts to make you thinner.
So, diet, exercise, portions, and lifestyle changes are all very important, but don't be so quick to place all the blame on the overweight person.
The iPhone has no buttons... except that it does. Every screen has buttons that need to be pressed. The only differences between those "soft" buttons and real buttons are:
1) You need to look directly at the screen to press them, like while driving.
2) You have to take the phone/mp3 player out of your pocket, activate the screen, and sometimes navigate menus if you want to adjust the volume, skip a song, etc.
3) You waste power every time you need to find and press these buttons.
I'm all for reducing clutter and making interfaces intuitive, but there's a point when ideology surpasses practicality.
Who writes a more useful and detailed article about a tech product: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
Who loves tech so much they write a blog about it: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
Who gets a job a cnet when they can't get a job at a real publisher: a journalism/English major or an engineering major?
But if I can turn the snark off for a minute, let me make a deeper point. People generally do things for one of two reasons: love or money. Something done for the love of it is generally going to be of far higher quality than something done for money. Generally, the blogger writes for love of the subject, the journalist writes for money.
I never understood why shooting an unarmed animal too dumb to run from a guy with a gun was considered a sport, and that's not even taking into account things like timed deer feeders, blinds, camo, etc. Heck, at least children would know to run...
.22 in NH. Thank you.
Bow hunting: at least that takes some skill, but a hunter told me that most animals get away wounded, so it's probably crueler.
Now if you were to hunt with just daggers, THAT would be a sport. You with two 6" daggers versus a havalena (huge boar) with two 6" tusks, mano y swine-o. Not only would it be a sport, but I would so watch a reality TV program about it. Maybe we could build a Colosseum to house the set...
PS: please remember it is illegal to hunt bears with a
People often say "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide" when what they mean is "I'm not doing anything THAT THE GOVERNMENT CONSIDERS WRONG, THAT I KNOW OF, AT THIS TIME, so I have nothing to hide."
Did you marry someone of the wrong color? That would have landed you in jail 40 years ago. What would your employer do if he knew that little secret of yours? Did you change lanes without signaling, you erratic dangerous driver? Did you just litter that cigarette butt?
What if they start arresting people who worship the wrong God, or, God forbid, none at all? "But the 1st Amendment says they can't" Buzzz, sorry, wrong again. The Bill of Rights doesn't mean jack shit if they don't ever have to officially press charges, which they don't thanks to the Republicans suspending Habeus Corpus. You can sit in Gitmo for eternity now, and they can even torture and execute you without trial. Don't believe me? Google the Patriot act and the Military Commission act.
"Speaking of which -- I wonder if they could use their many many container ships for that? Container ships probably need a port to unload... but ports can be captured."
I'm picturing thousands of men standing patiently in containers for days waiting for the crane to unload them all...
It could even be saber rattling...
US policy an invasion of Taiwan by China is "strategic non denial" (minus one obligatory Bush gaff). Basically, the world knows what the US would do but there's no need to rub it in China's face. It was never really a threat that China would invade due to the state of their navy -- one nickname for a potential invasion was "the million man swim." Well, China has been beefing up their military at a high speed and now it seems they are raising the stakes.
How about how intrusive it was and put garbage all over the place and tried to take over from other apps? How about the horrible rip quality (no error detection/correction like EAC) and the terribly outdated and flawed MP3 conversion algorithms and no Ogg support, at least in the version I tried.
I was paying them $66 a month for phone service that would cut in and out all night, drop calls over and over and often not give me a dial tone. Yes, this was a land line. AT&T insisted I had bad wires in the house, even though I plugged my phone into the junction box outside and still heard all the static.
Then they told me they were going to put a conduit under my patio and put in a new wire. I came home to find that they had tore up my lawn and not bother to fix it, sprayed orange spray paint all over my patio, tore out and broke pavers on my patio, bent the thick steel edging around the patio, and damaged my cable TV cable and made that all staticy. And my phone service was not improved at all.
After roughly 20 calls and 20 lines tests that found nothing wrong and 15 promises to send a tech and 10 messages that my gate was locked and they couldn't work (my gate can't lock) they finally decided there was a problem with the trunk, and as long as it was hot it worked, but when it cooled down at night something came loose. I asked when they would fix it and they told me the problem could only be identified at nights and they don't work nights, so never.
When I called to cancel my phone the rep kept me on the line for 20 minutes trying to sell me, among other things, DSL! When I reminded her that I couldn't even get voice down my line she was sure they could make it work with DSL. When I finally got her to disconnect me she asks "is there anything else I can do to make you a satisfied AT&T customer?" I was speechless.
Yes.
With Cingular you are forced to buy a highly limited $40 data plan with no text messages and just a few megs of data, but apparently you can cancel the plan after 3-6 months. Probably wont get the rebates, though.
Personally, I got my Cingular Treo through a military discount and was able to get the MediaNet plan which is $20 with unlimited data and 200 messages. I didn't get a rebate and had to pay over $300 for the phone, but between plan discounts and not buying that plan I save $1200-$1800 over 24 months to get the same service.
I was planning on buying the iPhone the day it came out and sticking my SIM in it and maybe selling my Treo 680, but if I need to buy a new plan or add $40+ a month to my $600 phone, f that.
This is an even bigger disappointment than AppleTV, which I was also planning on buying on day 1 until I found out it had less storage than my 3-year-old MP3 player, couldn't play any of my videos (DIVX), and wouldn't even work on my TV.
Wrong again. She said "almost 70%" which means it was really 69% but she didn't want to say "69." It's sad that someone would do so much high-minded work and then get hung up on the juvenile interpretations of a number.
Hhhhhhhuh huh huh 69...
Wirelessly wiretapping? Doesn't wiretapping generally require a, whatchacallit, a wire, and that wire to be, you know, tapped or something?
If this holds up in court, does that mean anyone who has working ears and memory is guilt of wiretapping?
Since when does someone in public have an expectation of privacy, anyway?