The Mythbusters proved that if you are forced to continue a conversation on a cell phone while driving through a test course, your driving skills would suffer. In real life, the experience would've went something like "Hey, I'm going to have to call you back. I'm going to be driving through an obstacle course. Bye."
Allow me to restate that. People who think they can talk or God forbid, text, on their phone regardless of traffic conditions, in rain or shine are ruining it for those of us who actually eliminate the distraction and put the phone away when driving conditions are less than ideal. I'm not talking about people who believe themselves to be such gifted drivers they can brew espresso, play Angry Birds and navigate a roundabout, all while driving in a blizzard.
Many vehicles include a cruise control feature, which will quite effectively plow you right into whatever happens to be in front of your car if used during inappropriate traffic and environmental conditions. There really doesn't seem to be much outcry against this feature, which both requires you to pay extra attention to what's going on around you and can only be safely used during clear weather with very light traffic.
Unfortunately, as the accident stats clearly show, the theoretical ability to just drop your phone or whatever it is you image people doing when they "enter a risky environment" is rarely observed in practice.
No, all this proves is that some people overestimate their ability to multitask and use a cell phone irresponsibly, while driving. There is little danger in answering a text message while stopped at a long red light. Plenty of people do know enough to "hang up and drive" when the weather gets nasty or the traffic becomes challenging.
You can't stop being drunk when approaching a school zone or when a torrential downpour suddenly starts. You can and should put your phone down. The shame of it is, all the stupid people who don't know better are ruining it for those of us who do.
Move to an Amish paradise
on
The eBook Backlash
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Distractions? If you don't like to read you'll find them anyway. TVs, smartphones, idle chat and daydreaming are always there when you're bored or uninterested in reading.
Even the Amish get interrupted while reading by a neighbor knocking at the door. They could realize some butter needs churning, a horse needs brushing or do some other chore that is nagging and put the book down. It seems you don't even need technology to be distracted.
This article just seems to be more lamenting about media products that aren't purchased in a tangible form. But rather than come out and say they're a bunch of "get off my lawn!" old codgers, who in their day walked uphill both ways in the snow to buy books, vinyl LPs and VHS tapes, they rant about how these newfangled e-readin' gadgets are too flashy and distractin'.
Plenty of people manage to watch on-demand movies with the lure of 100s of other channels they could be flipping to. Plenty of people manage to do their work on computers without watching YouTube all day. Likewise, it is possible to turn off WiFi and 3G on your tablet and just read your damn book. At least until your neighbor comes over and asks if they can borrow some butter...
Oh. There it is. It's just a way to get money for the breathalyzer manufacturers, as well as for the government to pat themselves on the back for a job well done in "improving public safety" with this do-nothing legislation.
Exactly. It's just like the moronic Real ID act we have here in the US that makes a ton of money for VitalChek because they pretty much have a government granted monopoly in the business of ordering certified copy birth certificates from out-of-state. The government gets to do some hand waving about how they're fighting terrorism and everyone renewing their driver's license has to cough up some extra dough in order to produce their "papers, please."
This whole concept of requiring everyone to carry a breathalyzer in their car seems to be along the same line of thought that making every kid in high school carry a condom will eliminate teenage pregnancy and STDs. Oh, and I bet if every car had some sort of device to indicate how fast you were going, people wouldn't break the speed limit, either!
The attack, called Operation Pharisee in a reference to the sect that Jesus called hypocrites, was initially organized by hackers in South America and Mexico and was designed to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Madrid in August 2011 for World Youth Day and draw attention to child sexual abuse by priests.
How exactly was crashing the website going to have any effect on the event in meatspace? I can see anon causing some damage to a dotcom company, but this isn't The Matrix. I'm sure the church doesn't have any critical infrastructure tied to their website, and last I checked most still used books. You know, that old information storage system that operates just fine without electricity.
I bet next anon will be protesting Black Friday by attacking Walmart's site, and they'll be shocked when no on even notices the increased traffic.
The timing coincided with highly-publicized teen suicides and increased focus on (cyber) bullying.
Cyber-bullying is blown way out of proportion. People lived just fine without Facebook and Twitter accounts. We're not talking kerosene lamps and butter churns here - it really wasn't that long ago. The whole aspect of why it sucks to be bullied is not being able to escape the situation. When you're a kid going to public school and there's a handful of jerks who tease you every day - yeah, it wears on you and it's frustrating when the teachers/staff ignore the problem (or worse, blame you).
We really don't need more laws treating cyber-bullying as some special problem. If you're an unpopular person and being teased really bothers you, learn to use the privacy features or stay off the social networking sites. Hell, your life might even turn out the better for it.
You're legally in the right but is it really worth your time to fight it? Just delete the video from YouTube, edit the audio on your original video with some voice annotations or something to change it up a bit and re-post.
Or, just audio-swap your video to Dreamscape by 009 sound system, like everyone else on YouTube who gets the copyrighted audio notice. Warning: May infuriate your viewers.
Okay, so from what I gather from TFA, it seems Mr. Ravi did the digital equivalent of "walking in" on his roommate. You know, the occurrence that happens so often in meatspace that it's a common TV trope for comedic effect. If he had a "whoops, forgot my wallet!" moment, it would've been roughly the same breach of privacy. It's just not a good idea to do a Russian Unicorn while your roommate is out, hiking or otherwise. And while it seems no recording or posting to the internet took place, roommates do "walk in" with a camcorder (or cell phone in video mode) from time to time, just look on YouTube. I'm sorry, but when two people have the key to the same place, you have no expectation of absolute privacy.
More importantly, what is wrong with setting up a video camera to monitor where you're living? Maybe you think your nanny might be locking your kid(s) in their room and using your place for a casual encounter. Oh right, that happened in a movie too. Perhaps Mr. Ravi thought his roommate's fling might make off with some of his stuff, or maybe he wanted to make sure the guy wasn't bringing illegal drugs. Point being, there's plenty of good reason to want to know what's going on where you live, while you're not there.
As far as I'm concerned, this story could read exactly the same way if the roommate were straight. Plenty of gays get inadvertently outed or walked in on in college and don't need an exit bag as a result. Mr. Ravi should not suffer because his roommate likely had severe unaddressed psychological issues.
First, forget about 2-year-contracts and subsidized phones. Contracts exist to benefit the carriers by reducing churn. Why do them any favors? Subsidized phones end up costing more in the long run, once you factor in the higher monthly plan costs.
These are pretty much the best deals going right now:
Boost Mobile + Runs on Sprint's network. Unlimited everything. $55/mo for smartphones, plan goes down in price by $5 every 6 months, finally stopping at $40/mo. - Must use an approved phone, Sprint's network coverage and data speeds are *meh*
Straight Talk + Runs on AT&T or T-Mobile's network (you pick when ordering). Unlimited* everything. $45/mo. Use any unlocked GSM, AT&T or T-Mobile phone. You can use an iPhone. - Outsourced tech support can be difficult to deal with if you run into a problem. *Unlimited means 2GB/mo of data, not what you think it means.
Page Plus + Runs on Verizon's network. Unlimited Talk & Text, 500MB/mo. $55. Also have several less expensive plans, including a Talk & Text only plan for $39.95 Use any clean ESN Verizon phone. Great Verizon coverage. - Expensive data overages.
If you're really hell bent on no data plan, Page Plus probably fits the bill. That being said, many of these plans are so inexpensive, you may want to reconsider if it's worth going on a no-data-diet just to save a few pennies each month.
The Japanese and the Amish use kerosene appliances quite heavily in their societies. A properly designed kerosene stove will burn just as clean as the LP/natural gas stoves that we seem to be entirely unafraid of, here in the US. Notice the incredibly clean, blue flame this stove burns with.
What it boils down to is, as you said, a problem of getting the subsidized fuel to the people who need it. It seems like that's the real issue here, not some engineering challenge to show off to some poor villagers how advanced our high tech is (again, never minding the fact many of us use electric stoves that get their power from dirty coal!).
There are actually government subsidies on kerosene in place in India specifically to prevent deforestation. The kerosene stoves are actually quite safe, efficient, clean burning and relatively inexpensive (by developed nation standards). Now before you start with the "OMG fossil fuels BAD!!!", remember that the grid-connected electric ranges that are so popular here in the USA are running on varying percentages of power derived from nasty, dirty coal - with the added bonus of generation and transmission losses. Since we're talking about a point-of-use fuel, these "third world" kerosene stoves are actually a pretty green solution. Perhaps instead of providing these people with pie-in-the-sky solar stoves that we wouldn't even use ourselves, we should offer good old kerosene stoves and maybe take a closer look at our own wastefulness.
just ban Twitter completely and call it a day? I mean honestly, I can't think of a better Internet entity where "and nothing of value was lost" applies.
This is why religion is still popular
on
Pac-Man Is NP-Hard
·
· Score: 1
Complex mathematical probability equations can make your brain hurt even if you are the person your non-techie friends and family call when their computer "got some viruses off the Internet". Personally, it helps me relate to why lesser folks can't understand simpler scientific principles (like fuckin' magnets) and prefer "that's how God made things" as their explanation.
All this is missing is James Earl Jones doing voice-over saying "Imagine a world where intellectual property laws didn't exist." Nothing really makes a better argument that if the movie studios couldn't protect their megabuck income, the future of entertainment will be nothing but reality shows and poor quality YouTube "stars" like Fred.
As a parody or "just because we can" undertaking, it's fine. Purely judged on the basis of cinematic quality, however, it makes Disaster Movie look like Gone with the Wind.
This article isn't about why offering a free service doesn't work. In fact, the author admits that his free service was actually quite successful in bringing in traffic. What failed was the author's attempt to monetize the traffic he generated. The mobile app market already figured this out: Make the free version chock full of annoying ads and you'll still be getting some income even if most people won't cough up the dough for the premium/full version.
As several people have already pointed out, the e-mails he sent out are spam. E-mail lists should be opt-in and the user shouldn't have to play a game of "Where's Waldo?" for the little opt-out check box, when signing up for a website. If the default behavior for the sign-up form was "opt-in", the author deserved every single spam complaint sent his way.
The bitching about technical support is his own fault. Don't want to offer free users technical support? Fine, don't provide contact information. Take a page out of eBay, Craigslist and Google's book - set up a user-to-user support forum and let people help each other. Or take the lazy route and just tell people if it breaks, they get to keep both parts.
The author concludes that he won't be offering the free service again next year. Well, guess what, there's a golden opportunity here for someone to offer the same service and put a coin in their pocket in the process. If you've got a bunch of people in "Christmas shopping mode" telling you exactly what their kids want for Christmas - that's gotta be worth something to somebody.
Sprint's network will literally refuse to talk to a phone that attempts to identify itself as a subscriber phone with a MEID that isn't in Sprint's official database of Sprint-branded phones.
Which is not a technical restriction, but a self-imposed whitelist. Think of it as a gentleman's agreement between Sprint and Verizon not to activate the others' phones. It's very likely that if a law was passed requiring phones to be sold "unlocked" that the government would also take a rather close look at carriers attempting to skirt around the law with ESN/MEID/IMEI whitelists. It's worth mentioning that Verizon allows their MVNOs to activate non-Verizon CDMA phones - Sprint is simply choosing to be a dick.
Verizon authenticates EVDO via firmware extensions that don't exist in Sprint phones, so Verizon's network will refuse to negotiate EVDO connections with a theoretically-unlocked Sprint phone.
Plenty of people use Sprint phones flashed over to Page Plus, a Verizon MVNO. As long as you have a means to obtain the correct M.IP profile 0 data (which consists of some IP configuration, your NAI and HA and AAA passwords), your EVDO will work. Conversely, people successfully use Verizon phones on Sprint's Boost Mobile prepaid service by means of cloning. (Which is actually rather commonplace, if you look on eBay and Craigslist.)
T-Mobile's frequency bands aren't supported by default in most GSM phones (most new chipsets can do them, but few phones have support for 1700MHz uplinks enabled, the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 sold internationally is one of the very, very few exceptions).
Yes, the biggest example of this is the iPhone - which can be purchased unlocked but will only connect at EDGE speeds on T-Mobile. Keep in mind that it might be more common to see multi-band phones if carrier locking wasn't the norm.
“What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone," he said. "Also, many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security. So we do increasingly see that the youth that wants to be on the cutting edge and try something new are turning to the Windows phone platform.”
We have a product that will sell well to parents who always buy the wrong thing for their kids. (Apologies to Seth Meyers) We're also trying to capitalize on the recent negative publicity of Carrier IQ.
“The marketplace is extremely crowded. I refer to it as the sea of sameness," he added. "When you walk up to a retail shelf at Phones4U and see the number of black mono-blocks sitting on the shelf, it is very confusing to the consumer. We want to deliver services and phones that are different.”
We deal in a *different* kind of confusion.
That “different” approach, believes Munksgaard, includes offering services like Nokia Mix Radio, which gives users music out-of-the-box without having to sign up to anything or pay costly fees each month.
We've never heard of Pandora.
“We would prefer a wireless transfer than a docking station," said Munksgaard. "A docking station has limitations because the phone has to be in a certain place. We are extremely pleased with the experience you get with the device in connection with Nokia gear. We don’t have a docking station at this point, however we are confident that as the Windows Phone ecosystem grows, third party docking station makers will support us.”
Fucking A2DP, how does it work!?
Hopefully for Nokia, for those bored with the iPhone and looking for something simpler than Android, those third party manufacturers will start knocking out Nok Docks sooner rather than later.
We don't have enough faith in our phones to design and sell our own Nokia branded accessories.
Epcot *had* an attraction called "The Living Seas". It's now a slow-moving dark ride themed to Pixar's Finding Nemo. The majority of the ride's visual effects are simply video projectors, projecting CGI scenes created for the ride. Though, the jellyfish and angler fish are animatronics. There is still a fake elevator at Disney World, however. The entrance queue room to Haunted Mansion has raising section that gives a rather convincing illusion that the floor is dropping, but it's only the ceiling and half the walls that actually move.
Now, from a geek perspective, video projectors and CGI may seem like an unimpressive way of creating visual ride effects - but in most cases the end result is rather spectacular, even though you know exactly how they did it.
Go to a theme park and see what kind of phones people are playing with while they're waiting in line for an attraction. Better yet, I'll tell you what I've noticed: A lot less iPhones. Boo hoo for Apple, I guess.
While I realize the cars Tesla are selling are supposed to be more high-end/performance cars, what the world really needs is a $20k electric car. $40,000 buys a LOT of dead dinos.
...was Mac ONLY. People seem to forget this every time they bring up Slashdot's doom and gloom assessment of the original iPod. The first iPod was a turd. It was horrendously overpriced, required FireWire (which never really caught on for PCs) and didn't hold much music.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mythbusters proved that if you are forced to continue a conversation on a cell phone while driving through a test course, your driving skills would suffer. In real life, the experience would've went something like "Hey, I'm going to have to call you back. I'm going to be driving through an obstacle course. Bye."
You might think you do. You might well be incorrect.
Allow me to restate that. People who think they can talk or God forbid, text, on their phone regardless of traffic conditions, in rain or shine are ruining it for those of us who actually eliminate the distraction and put the phone away when driving conditions are less than ideal. I'm not talking about people who believe themselves to be such gifted drivers they can brew espresso, play Angry Birds and navigate a roundabout, all while driving in a blizzard.
Many vehicles include a cruise control feature, which will quite effectively plow you right into whatever happens to be in front of your car if used during inappropriate traffic and environmental conditions. There really doesn't seem to be much outcry against this feature, which both requires you to pay extra attention to what's going on around you and can only be safely used during clear weather with very light traffic.
Slashdot should just automatically link Higgs Boson to this, every time.
There's probably some truth to this, too. A particle accelerator is the ultimate geek toy.
I can text, check my Facebook, AND drive with no problems. I think I'm one of only about 20 world-wide that can do it.
Yo dawg, I heard you like crashing into things, so I put Angry Birds on your phone so you can crash into things while you crash into things.
Unfortunately, as the accident stats clearly show, the theoretical ability to just drop your phone or whatever it is you image people doing when they "enter a risky environment" is rarely observed in practice.
No, all this proves is that some people overestimate their ability to multitask and use a cell phone irresponsibly, while driving. There is little danger in answering a text message while stopped at a long red light. Plenty of people do know enough to "hang up and drive" when the weather gets nasty or the traffic becomes challenging.
You can't stop being drunk when approaching a school zone or when a torrential downpour suddenly starts. You can and should put your phone down. The shame of it is, all the stupid people who don't know better are ruining it for those of us who do.
Distractions? If you don't like to read you'll find them anyway. TVs, smartphones, idle chat and daydreaming are always there when you're bored or uninterested in reading.
Even the Amish get interrupted while reading by a neighbor knocking at the door. They could realize some butter needs churning, a horse needs brushing or do some other chore that is nagging and put the book down. It seems you don't even need technology to be distracted.
This article just seems to be more lamenting about media products that aren't purchased in a tangible form. But rather than come out and say they're a bunch of "get off my lawn!" old codgers, who in their day walked uphill both ways in the snow to buy books, vinyl LPs and VHS tapes, they rant about how these newfangled e-readin' gadgets are too flashy and distractin'.
Plenty of people manage to watch on-demand movies with the lure of 100s of other channels they could be flipping to. Plenty of people manage to do their work on computers without watching YouTube all day. Likewise, it is possible to turn off WiFi and 3G on your tablet and just read your damn book. At least until your neighbor comes over and asks if they can borrow some butter...
Oh. There it is. It's just a way to get money for the breathalyzer manufacturers, as well as for the government to pat themselves on the back for a job well done in "improving public safety" with this do-nothing legislation.
Exactly. It's just like the moronic Real ID act we have here in the US that makes a ton of money for VitalChek because they pretty much have a government granted monopoly in the business of ordering certified copy birth certificates from out-of-state. The government gets to do some hand waving about how they're fighting terrorism and everyone renewing their driver's license has to cough up some extra dough in order to produce their "papers, please."
This whole concept of requiring everyone to carry a breathalyzer in their car seems to be along the same line of thought that making every kid in high school carry a condom will eliminate teenage pregnancy and STDs. Oh, and I bet if every car had some sort of device to indicate how fast you were going, people wouldn't break the speed limit, either!
The attack, called Operation Pharisee in a reference to the sect that Jesus called hypocrites, was initially organized by hackers in South America and Mexico and was designed to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Madrid in August 2011 for World Youth Day and draw attention to child sexual abuse by priests.
How exactly was crashing the website going to have any effect on the event in meatspace? I can see anon causing some damage to a dotcom company, but this isn't The Matrix. I'm sure the church doesn't have any critical infrastructure tied to their website, and last I checked most still used books. You know, that old information storage system that operates just fine without electricity.
I bet next anon will be protesting Black Friday by attacking Walmart's site, and they'll be shocked when no on even notices the increased traffic.
The timing coincided with highly-publicized teen suicides and increased focus on (cyber) bullying.
Cyber-bullying is blown way out of proportion. People lived just fine without Facebook and Twitter accounts. We're not talking kerosene lamps and butter churns here - it really wasn't that long ago. The whole aspect of why it sucks to be bullied is not being able to escape the situation. When you're a kid going to public school and there's a handful of jerks who tease you every day - yeah, it wears on you and it's frustrating when the teachers/staff ignore the problem (or worse, blame you).
We really don't need more laws treating cyber-bullying as some special problem. If you're an unpopular person and being teased really bothers you, learn to use the privacy features or stay off the social networking sites. Hell, your life might even turn out the better for it.
You're legally in the right but is it really worth your time to fight it? Just delete the video from YouTube, edit the audio on your original video with some voice annotations or something to change it up a bit and re-post.
Or, just audio-swap your video to Dreamscape by 009 sound system, like everyone else on YouTube who gets the copyrighted audio notice. Warning: May infuriate your viewers.
Okay, so from what I gather from TFA, it seems Mr. Ravi did the digital equivalent of "walking in" on his roommate. You know, the occurrence that happens so often in meatspace that it's a common TV trope for comedic effect. If he had a "whoops, forgot my wallet!" moment, it would've been roughly the same breach of privacy. It's just not a good idea to do a Russian Unicorn while your roommate is out, hiking or otherwise. And while it seems no recording or posting to the internet took place, roommates do "walk in" with a camcorder (or cell phone in video mode) from time to time, just look on YouTube. I'm sorry, but when two people have the key to the same place, you have no expectation of absolute privacy.
More importantly, what is wrong with setting up a video camera to monitor where you're living? Maybe you think your nanny might be locking your kid(s) in their room and using your place for a casual encounter. Oh right, that happened in a movie too. Perhaps Mr. Ravi thought his roommate's fling might make off with some of his stuff, or maybe he wanted to make sure the guy wasn't bringing illegal drugs. Point being, there's plenty of good reason to want to know what's going on where you live, while you're not there.
As far as I'm concerned, this story could read exactly the same way if the roommate were straight. Plenty of gays get inadvertently outed or walked in on in college and don't need an exit bag as a result. Mr. Ravi should not suffer because his roommate likely had severe unaddressed psychological issues.
First, forget about 2-year-contracts and subsidized phones. Contracts exist to benefit the carriers by reducing churn. Why do them any favors? Subsidized phones end up costing more in the long run, once you factor in the higher monthly plan costs.
These are pretty much the best deals going right now:
Boost Mobile
+ Runs on Sprint's network. Unlimited everything. $55/mo for smartphones, plan goes down in price by $5 every 6 months, finally stopping at $40/mo.
- Must use an approved phone, Sprint's network coverage and data speeds are *meh*
Straight Talk
+ Runs on AT&T or T-Mobile's network (you pick when ordering). Unlimited* everything. $45/mo. Use any unlocked GSM, AT&T or T-Mobile phone. You can use an iPhone.
- Outsourced tech support can be difficult to deal with if you run into a problem. *Unlimited means 2GB/mo of data, not what you think it means.
Page Plus
+ Runs on Verizon's network. Unlimited Talk & Text, 500MB/mo. $55. Also have several less expensive plans, including a Talk & Text only plan for $39.95 Use any clean ESN Verizon phone. Great Verizon coverage.
- Expensive data overages.
If you're really hell bent on no data plan, Page Plus probably fits the bill. That being said, many of these plans are so inexpensive, you may want to reconsider if it's worth going on a no-data-diet just to save a few pennies each month.
The Japanese and the Amish use kerosene appliances quite heavily in their societies. A properly designed kerosene stove will burn just as clean as the LP/natural gas stoves that we seem to be entirely unafraid of, here in the US. Notice the incredibly clean, blue flame this stove burns with.
What it boils down to is, as you said, a problem of getting the subsidized fuel to the people who need it. It seems like that's the real issue here, not some engineering challenge to show off to some poor villagers how advanced our high tech is (again, never minding the fact many of us use electric stoves that get their power from dirty coal!).
There are actually government subsidies on kerosene in place in India specifically to prevent deforestation. The kerosene stoves are actually quite safe, efficient, clean burning and relatively inexpensive (by developed nation standards). Now before you start with the "OMG fossil fuels BAD!!!", remember that the grid-connected electric ranges that are so popular here in the USA are running on varying percentages of power derived from nasty, dirty coal - with the added bonus of generation and transmission losses. Since we're talking about a point-of-use fuel, these "third world" kerosene stoves are actually a pretty green solution. Perhaps instead of providing these people with pie-in-the-sky solar stoves that we wouldn't even use ourselves, we should offer good old kerosene stoves and maybe take a closer look at our own wastefulness.
just ban Twitter completely and call it a day? I mean honestly, I can't think of a better Internet entity where "and nothing of value was lost" applies.
Complex mathematical probability equations can make your brain hurt even if you are the person your non-techie friends and family call when their computer "got some viruses off the Internet". Personally, it helps me relate to why lesser folks can't understand simpler scientific principles (like fuckin' magnets) and prefer "that's how God made things" as their explanation.
All this is missing is James Earl Jones doing voice-over saying "Imagine a world where intellectual property laws didn't exist." Nothing really makes a better argument that if the movie studios couldn't protect their megabuck income, the future of entertainment will be nothing but reality shows and poor quality YouTube "stars" like Fred.
As a parody or "just because we can" undertaking, it's fine. Purely judged on the basis of cinematic quality, however, it makes Disaster Movie look like Gone with the Wind.
This article isn't about why offering a free service doesn't work. In fact, the author admits that his free service was actually quite successful in bringing in traffic. What failed was the author's attempt to monetize the traffic he generated. The mobile app market already figured this out: Make the free version chock full of annoying ads and you'll still be getting some income even if most people won't cough up the dough for the premium/full version.
As several people have already pointed out, the e-mails he sent out are spam. E-mail lists should be opt-in and the user shouldn't have to play a game of "Where's Waldo?" for the little opt-out check box, when signing up for a website. If the default behavior for the sign-up form was "opt-in", the author deserved every single spam complaint sent his way.
The bitching about technical support is his own fault. Don't want to offer free users technical support? Fine, don't provide contact information. Take a page out of eBay, Craigslist and Google's book - set up a user-to-user support forum and let people help each other. Or take the lazy route and just tell people if it breaks, they get to keep both parts.
The author concludes that he won't be offering the free service again next year. Well, guess what, there's a golden opportunity here for someone to offer the same service and put a coin in their pocket in the process. If you've got a bunch of people in "Christmas shopping mode" telling you exactly what their kids want for Christmas - that's gotta be worth something to somebody.
Sprint's network will literally refuse to talk to a phone that attempts to identify itself as a subscriber phone with a MEID that isn't in Sprint's official database of Sprint-branded phones.
Which is not a technical restriction, but a self-imposed whitelist. Think of it as a gentleman's agreement between Sprint and Verizon not to activate the others' phones. It's very likely that if a law was passed requiring phones to be sold "unlocked" that the government would also take a rather close look at carriers attempting to skirt around the law with ESN/MEID/IMEI whitelists. It's worth mentioning that Verizon allows their MVNOs to activate non-Verizon CDMA phones - Sprint is simply choosing to be a dick.
Verizon authenticates EVDO via firmware extensions that don't exist in Sprint phones, so Verizon's network will refuse to negotiate EVDO connections with a theoretically-unlocked Sprint phone.
Plenty of people use Sprint phones flashed over to Page Plus, a Verizon MVNO. As long as you have a means to obtain the correct M.IP profile 0 data (which consists of some IP configuration, your NAI and HA and AAA passwords), your EVDO will work. Conversely, people successfully use Verizon phones on Sprint's Boost Mobile prepaid service by means of cloning. (Which is actually rather commonplace, if you look on eBay and Craigslist.)
T-Mobile's frequency bands aren't supported by default in most GSM phones (most new chipsets can do them, but few phones have support for 1700MHz uplinks enabled, the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 sold internationally is one of the very, very few exceptions).
Yes, the biggest example of this is the iPhone - which can be purchased unlocked but will only connect at EDGE speeds on T-Mobile. Keep in mind that it might be more common to see multi-band phones if carrier locking wasn't the norm.
Translated from marketingspeak to English:
“What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone," he said. "Also, many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security. So we do increasingly see that the youth that wants to be on the cutting edge and try something new are turning to the Windows phone platform.”
We have a product that will sell well to parents who always buy the wrong thing for their kids. (Apologies to Seth Meyers) We're also trying to capitalize on the recent negative publicity of Carrier IQ.
“The marketplace is extremely crowded. I refer to it as the sea of sameness," he added. "When you walk up to a retail shelf at Phones4U and see the number of black mono-blocks sitting on the shelf, it is very confusing to the consumer. We want to deliver services and phones that are different.”
We deal in a *different* kind of confusion.
That “different” approach, believes Munksgaard, includes offering services like Nokia Mix Radio, which gives users music out-of-the-box without having to sign up to anything or pay costly fees each month.
We've never heard of Pandora.
“We would prefer a wireless transfer than a docking station," said Munksgaard. "A docking station has limitations because the phone has to be in a certain place. We are extremely pleased with the experience you get with the device in connection with Nokia gear. We don’t have a docking station at this point, however we are confident that as the Windows Phone ecosystem grows, third party docking station makers will support us.”
Fucking A2DP, how does it work!?
Hopefully for Nokia, for those bored with the iPhone and looking for something simpler than Android, those third party manufacturers will start knocking out Nok Docks sooner rather than later.
We don't have enough faith in our phones to design and sell our own Nokia branded accessories.
Epcot *had* an attraction called "The Living Seas". It's now a slow-moving dark ride themed to Pixar's Finding Nemo. The majority of the ride's visual effects are simply video projectors, projecting CGI scenes created for the ride. Though, the jellyfish and angler fish are animatronics. There is still a fake elevator at Disney World, however. The entrance queue room to Haunted Mansion has raising section that gives a rather convincing illusion that the floor is dropping, but it's only the ceiling and half the walls that actually move.
Now, from a geek perspective, video projectors and CGI may seem like an unimpressive way of creating visual ride effects - but in most cases the end result is rather spectacular, even though you know exactly how they did it.
Go to a theme park and see what kind of phones people are playing with while they're waiting in line for an attraction. Better yet, I'll tell you what I've noticed: A lot less iPhones. Boo hoo for Apple, I guess.
While I realize the cars Tesla are selling are supposed to be more high-end/performance cars, what the world really needs is a $20k electric car. $40,000 buys a LOT of dead dinos.
They didn't find a Stargate? Move along, nothing to see here.
...was Mac ONLY. People seem to forget this every time they bring up Slashdot's doom and gloom assessment of the original iPod. The first iPod was a turd. It was horrendously overpriced, required FireWire (which never really caught on for PCs) and didn't hold much music.