I've just received my new Citroen C5 - a good car with *wacky French* suspension design... I bought the 160bhp 2 liter diesel model and had to check twice when we got it home to be sure I didn't have the gasoline model. Very smooth, very refined and no indication (other than the filler cap) that the engine needs no spark plugs.
I get approx. 40mpg (US gal.) on mixed highway and suburban driving and am loving the 20,000 mile range between oil changes/services.
It's not about monitoring everyone. Just the leaders of the people who disagree with you.
You bulk collect the data - and then you pick on the people you don't like for intensive review.
It's an old quote, but still true: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." — Cardinal Richelieu.
Come on everyone, this is just pre-paid franking. Nearly all european mail services (I have no idea about the rest of the world, sorry) offer this in various guises, usually only requiring an account with the company.
Royal Mail in the UK offer their "SmartStamp" service allowing you to purchase your postage online. You don't have to be a company, and you use your home printer to print out the codes/franks on the letter.
You can see it here:
https://www.royalmail.com/portal/sme/content1?catId=62300709&mediaId=99400762
Try the UK. I can buy my electricity from the gas company, I can buy my phone service from the same people who operate Virgin airlines and I can buy my gas from the same people who sell me water.
I'm limiting myself to talking about abstract property - distinguished from mating rites or hunting ranges (which actually overlap a lot in the real world so you are right there...)
In the sense of taking something a dog is eating, yes you are right - but have you watched a group of animals pick a carcass apart? A dog/cat/lion/hyena/whatever with low status will give up the meat to a high status animal. I'm talking about the equivalent of the poodle holding on to the meat in the face of the enraged lion - that's property rights.
Your analogy with women's rights is close but there is a caveat - look at the countries that have an increasing number of independant women. Now look at how many work on the land. Notice how as agriculture becomes less and less important (as the economy grows) you also end up with female independance? That was my point about economic growth diminishing the importance of the property concept.
I feel compelled to respond on this as I feel it could be the most important issue of the 21st century - especially if the X Prize boys get their mojo on.
Property rights essentially appeared at the same time as the Agricultural Revolution about twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. For the first time, you really couldn't move down the valley a bit if someone you didn't like lived near you. You had a field, and that was the only way your (suddenly) large family could live through the winter. If you let him take or use what you'd literally broken yourself to create - you would die. Harsh stuff, and the reason the core of every successful legal system in the world enshrines property rights over all others. Even the U.S. constitution has property rights so mixed in, so tightly bound, that it mentions them again and again - they were as natural and obvious to the founding fathers as breathing.
So we move on to an age where agriculture is no longer quite as central to our lives. Suddenly we are coming up against the limits of property rights. "Intellectual Property" seems to be an obvious idea to an industrial economy - a simple extension of the concept that's allowed the human population to take over the world. As the discussions on/. have shown, this is no longer quite so obvious, so compelling.
Already you can see where I'm leading. If we take the idea of ownership as we normally see it and then apply it to the stars we come into some severe problems.
No consortium of insurance companies in the world, not even the whole of the Lloyds of London market could insure against a mis-directed asteroid impacting with the Pacific. So how could any mining corporation ever hope to start liberating resources from our solar system? Remember that the Lloyds market is the clearing-house for all insurance and re-insurance in the world, and even they struggled to swallow the risk from the Space Shuttle. Even then it took the intervention of the U.S. Government as insurer-of-last-resort to placate the market-makers.
So don't take responsibility: Let anyone get on with doing what they want? No claim means no liability? Right?
What happens when two mining companies lay claim to the same stretch of asteroids? If they are in the same orbit, and therefore easier to get at, both companies are going to want to protect their investment. Do we want to return to the days when warring villages were continuously slaughtering each other? When simply travelling outside the palisade meant risking death?
Here's another example. What if settlers arrive, and then someone else causes problems - e.g. their solar arrays are rendered useless by the cloud of particulates raised by a "nearby" extraction operation. They could go to court for help. It is a clear tort. After all, they can file electronically and it's only a twenty-four hour round trip to the central courthouse computers. There's just a small problem: They are dying for lack of air right now.
Here's the solution: There isn't one. Not with our current expectations and society.
As with all problems where human beings are involved, this is going to have to evolve. The societal structures that have worked so well for us down here are going to have to change. That isn't to say that there won't be governments, charities and corporations.
More likely, we'll have to have a long and drawn out struggle between the varying imperatives: "It's mine!" "You can't do that to me!" "If you try to stop me I'll defend my rights!" "You must leave that alone!"
Hopefully not too many will die. Some will.
Who knows what will emerge? The governing-corporation? The feudal charity? Maybe the gift economy shown so beautifully in the Open Source Movement will be the governing paradigm? All I know is that our system isn't going to stay the same - because it cannot work when celestial mechanics becomes a part of your insurance quote.
It works like this. Caller pays is a simple way to reduce complexity in a bill for someone who is unsure about whether they need a mobile or not.
Market making is about moving the wavering mass to change their habits and get onto the "new" whatever it is.
Caller pays is a market making move that then gives every person the ability to say "I want a mobile, but I want to retain "control" of my spend. (remember this is a reduction in percieved complexity - having free minutes or free connections doesn't reduce complexity on your bill) Paying to receive calls isn't perceived as control - simple politeness means you stay on the line when someone wants to chat for just a bit longer than you want. That costs - and you (as a typical person, not a careful bill-watcher) feel like you are being ripped off because you didn't even want the call.
Yes, it's nice to have the choice (and in good old communist the-rest-of-the-world, we do). You don't.
Caller pays has to be imposed originally by the regulatory body - because no telco wants to see it (they love complexity on your monthly bill!)
But once it's there - they can offer all kinds of options - including receiver pays.
I'll give you one more example. How do you think the countries that are a decade or more ahead of the USA have gained those 80% or more market penetrations?
In the UK even people on welfare have mobile phones. Because if they don't make a call, they don't pay for the call. That's where the regulator forced all calling plans to put that in as the default - because otherwise someone else gets ripped off to pay for their plan. That means they can job hunt and only pay for the calls they want to. They can be "called in" immediately. They never miss calls (and can call straight back if they do).
Compelling stuff - and all for people who would never have a mobile in a system where they have to pay to be told they aren't wanted at the factory today.
This is a major reason why the US is backward and will stay that way until the regulatory regime stops giving the telcos more importance than the voters. You are the ones losing out because of "choice" that really means "whatever the telco paid your representative for".
Thanks for the rational response - as opposed to squarooticus' rant.
Area codes exist in other countries too - but they are bogus wherever they are. The only directly attributable cost to a phone call is the ink on the bill. Seriously.
Think about it. There's a set of pipes to shove the data about, and a big fat backbone to move it long distance. Unless it's going to your local exchange and back, it could move a couple of thousand miles in transmission just to go to the next town. Where is your local telco backbone? Do you care? If the phone system works - only the engineers need to!
Charging for area codes was originally a simple way to increase revenues in a way that the average Joe would be able to "understand". Even in the day it didn't match the geographic spread of a single exchange. It also historically allowed the extra costs inherent in manually connecting bits of wires and paying for more operators to put the call together
That died with digital exchanges and integrated networks
Nearly all mobiile telcos in other countries are given a set of "area" codes to do with as they wish. In the UK they start with different numbers to show they are a different price - but there's enough to have 0708 (mobile) match up with 0208 (outer London).
To begin with the major telcos did exactly as the US companies have done, and mapped them 1to1 with physical locations - because that way there were local and long distance calls - and that way you could confuse the customer into higher revenues.
That simply died with competition. It only took one provider to offer "All calls are local calls!" and all of them took out the extra code in their exchanges that calculated the "local" area for billing. Since then, nearly all GSM providers just don't bother. In fact in the UK it's now getting to the point where you can't find a "local" call for any call - land or mobile. They are simply split between landline and mobile.
If a call terminates in a single backbone there's no way to distinguish between local and national - even in the USA - unless the billing system is explicitly set-up to look for origination and termination data. It doesn't cost any more or less for a local, national (or in fact international) call anymore. Even satellite time is simply bulk purchased by the data rate it carries.
Oh, and I think you are right about landlines slowing adoption - although I think it's more the "free" local calls making it hard to justify a mobile bill. I'll add another thing to the list though - cars.
I think the fact that so many Americans practically live in their cars makes it a higher barrier than in the rest of the world. My day starts with a few calls to friends as I stand on the railway platform - it's not so easy if you are trying to change lanes...
Just on more thing - Caller Pays is a principle that makes having a mobile much easier if you are poor. You don't get to 80% of the population in penetration (e.g. UK, Finland etc.) without selling mobiles to people with a small amount of disposable income. If you pay to receive and you don't have much pre-pay credit (because of your poor credit history) you aren't going to have your phone on. Hence the network effect of having a mobile and being instantly contactable is reduced. But if you know you never have to pay to pick up - you'll do it gladly.
I feel I should reply to this as there are a few inaccuracies here:
GSM wasn't "mandated". In summary most of Western Europe agreed that there should be a single, interoperable standard to replace the early analogue phone networks (i.e. "2G" replacing "1G"). The hardware and software vendors built their own common reference and then it was put out into a single standard. This is no different to everyone agreeing to Internet Protocol rather than a soup of protocols and interconnects. Remember that wasn't a free market choice either. Every vendor licences from the GSM group so it isn't "open" in the more modern sense but if you are a telco the licences are freely available for low fees.
Remember in Europe there is a much greater sense that we, the voters, own the commons (such as radio spectrum or fishing rights) so that corporations have to be good citizens or we'll withdraw their franchise (i.e. the citizens will regulate them out of existence). We are often much more bemused by the adherence to free market principles that don't make sense - such as the Californian Electricity Regulation (it is not de-regulation, just a different regime) that is based almost exactly on the UK's original privatisation model. Note that the UK changed the model rapidly once we realised the problems inherent in the risks and rewards of such a setup - but California ignored the issues until recently. Your politicians really don't act in your interests!
You are right, CDMA is better - but that's simply due to the relative ages of the designs. So much more is known now that CDMA looks poor compared to the much-later 3G designs - and I'm sure that future schemes will produce even better connectivity.
Which needless restrictions are you mentioning? Such as the interoperability requirements, transparent interconnection and billing? Number portability (you've finally caught up with that only 20 years later...:-)
There are several, competing reasons why the US falls behind at technologies it should be leading the world in... (especially when you consider the discrepancies in R&D spends).
The US regulatory regime hinders mobile uptake. Mobiles aren't easily identifiable as such - most GSM-using countries push their phones onto a separate area code for ease-of-identification (e.g. UK has 01... for all landline area codes and 07... for all cellular). "Caller-Pays" isn't evenly implemented in the US - so not only do you not know if you are calling a mobile, you aren't sure if you'll pay to receive calls too! This principle makes phone service in many countries much more transparent - and hence more likely to be used. I know if I call a landline I'll pay 3-7 cents and a mobile will cost 20-50 U.S. cents per minute, but to receive I'll pay nothing - ever. As a mobile user that makes me much more likely to leave the phone on compared to my American friends. In every GSM country all providers must interoperate with each other. This is true for voice in the US, but not for all the extras such as SMS texting. Please note that this is responsible for up to 50% of the profits of GSM providers! Also, one number finds me anywhere in the world. No other system offers that.
The proliferation of wireless technologies has stopped you buying one phone and using it with any provider - increasing your costs.
It has also stopped you from having an open market in more modern phones - only "approved" phones are available from your telco - so they maximise profits by providing you with older-generation phones with crappy features for high prices - hence the US/rest-of-world split when it comes to deciding that Bluetooth is dead. We see the benefits with our newer generation handsets, but you struggle to get a limited range. Try Nokia.co.uk and see the number of phones you can buy!
Vendor lock-in has really reduced your choice and increased your prices. It's only a free market for the Telco - certainly not you.
I think the parent is very accurate and observant. I also think this is missing a vital point. Manned flight for the U.S. is extremely expensive. (I'm sure we can all think of the $20m toilet and other items.)
Even though it takes three hours to get that second's worth of observation, those three hours are so much cheaper that it's still a better idea to send a fleet of probes. That's for the same price as the single low-orbit shuttle launch.
NASA was always best as a R&D organisation. It's just that the R&D was focussed on a clear, linear goal. It achieved the goal, and did put several men on our moon. Everyone understood that, but didn't see the underlying strength of the organisation.
That early direction has been lost. We focus on manned space flight because that was what it seems we were doing. We forget that the race to the moon was always about the expected benefits of a clear goal being achieved. JFK always saw it as a way to put the soviets noses out of joint while pushing money into the economy through R&D.
Please don't misunderstand me. I really want to be able to achieve orbit one day, but realistically I know it won't happen.
So what should happen?
IMHO, simply that NASA should refocus on the R&D aspects of aerospace. The clear analogy is the DARPA-led research and testing that led to an internetwork of networks. Funny how that took off...
It's called "Pump Priming" and NASA hasn't been doing anywhere near enough of it in the last few decades. Where is the materials research into esoteric uses for thermal or radiation proof materials? They're all focused on manned spaceflight. Just as Teflon was never developed for use in the kitchen, materials technology leaps forward when inventions are developed in different and unexpected ways.
So much money is spent on the orbiter fleet that nearly every other programme is run on a shoe-string (by "Big Science" standards). This harms the free-thinking research that could be done by any number of research groups able to bid for a larger pot of cash.
Let's give NASA the mission that government departments do best: spending a big pot of cash on a variety of things that private money would never fund. As we've seen in the past, all of a sudden, a tipping-point will appear and the private sector will suddenly see why we should be in space - so we will be. Who knows what it's going to be for? (after all, what hippie could have predicted the internet?)
Until then NASA will be wasting time, effort and money with expeditions to 100 miles above my head, literally boring a hole in the sky.
If you live in the UK you already do. This is why there isn't an outcry over the introduction of Oystercard.
I have the right to my data, and more importantly I have the right to restrict how the Oyster consortium use that data. I will not be getting junk mail or spam from their database.
I am unsure about the obsession with the blaster worm in this thread.
From a fairly careful read of the.pdf it seems that the outage was a simple cascade failure.
A few issues that happened on the same area of the grid forced a change in the whole grid. Add to that, a lack of central (or coherent) control and you have an inability to rebalance the network. That's how (I believe) the system failed.
This is plain and simple a failure of the regulatory regime (a.k.a. deregulation that is anything but). Nowhere near enough reserve capacity and interconnection is available, and more importantly, too many people are in charge of planning. This means there is no thought applied to the wide area effects of implementation decisions. A clear example of this is interconnects that try to re-join the grid automatically - rather than waiting for intelligent or coherent systems control to allow reconnection.
Grids in the rest of the world know this, and so retain central control even when the implementation is through the private sector. The central control is often private, although it is in charge of overall planning and provisioning.
Perhaps the US regulators and legislators could actually learn something here?
I realise this will gain the hate of the majority of Slashdot's posters, but I have to make the point that my company (i.e. the R&D dept - i.e. me and a couple of other geeks) has done a fairly in-depth study into moving our internal apps to Linux. Or rather to start developing onto Linux rather than continuing on the MS treadmill.
The fact is that at the moment costs for obtaining Linux skills so far outweigh the licencing costs of using MS that it is still worth using MS. This INCLUDES all the licencing costs of both the new servers and the cost of the commercial closed-source app when applied to an open-source app...
The important point here is that just about all of our IT function is outsourced - so we see costs directly rather than by using internal staff (who are "free" ).
I realise you are probably spluttering by now, but just think... You can hire a low-IQ MCSE to follow the wizards and work through the install routines for a heck of a lot less time than an expert is required to configure and set up a Linux server and add an open source platform, and then configure and sort it out.
Please remember that outside of IT firms, the driving attitude is to get the system working now, rather than working right. Apart from financial systems (e.g. payroll) you can always backfill later to fix issues - so the up-front costs really do become meaningful.
MS really do know this - and know just how far they can push us. Linux will get better - and the skilled staff required will get cheaper. That will simply drive down MS's prices. At the moment - it is cheaper to have a wizard-driver and pay the licence fees. Linux-skilled staff just cost too much and take too long.
Try konfabulator which does the same for Apples. I've bought it and love the way I have so much eye candy on the screen that I end up only using about two thirds for productive work!
Damn. That's it! I am off to the store this afternoon (half hour before it shuts).... I am going to drop 'em as I grab some blades - then when they challenge me, I'll say - "but I wanted to check they would fit in my crack?!"
Aurora is the mythical project that explains the "Thursday afternoon sonic booms" heard over the California coast for over a decade, as well as numerous sightings over the oilrigs in the North Sea as diamond shaped craft get in air refueling...
It sounds to me like this is the first step in opening it up to a production-level system where they can publically use the craft without fear of identification/national security concerns.
This is just what happened with the early stealth and B2 prototypes. A lot of skunkworks development was turned into a nearly-ready plane for purchase by Congress.
I wonder just how far advanced the prototypes have become?
Simply not true. I own my own data but still have public data made public. You can (and European democracies do) have more transparency, with less intrusions and identity theft.
Just because You don't know how the rest of the world works - doesn't mean it works the way America does.
Whenever I see yet another technical "fix" for spam I just wish that the USA would give it's citizens the right to own their data. EU citizens do - so we see spam coming from the USA and only a trickle from inside our own borders.
We could then push to close the rest of the world out - and really drop the volume of spam...
When are people going to stop offering me mortgages - in Dollars?
It looks like the latest information shows a hydraulic telemetry failure just before everything else ceased transmission.
At that stage in re-entry, the shuttle is entirely automated. No human control is needed, the RCS thrusters are used by the on-board software to ensure a correct attitude. If a failure occurred in the stability and control systems - the airflow turbulence would have forced a turn in a couple of seconds - and the pressure of the airflow would have shattered the frame in an instant. Perhaps the tank insulation that fell off during launch had a major effect after all.
This isn't quite true. Up to the end of the cold war there was an entire squadron of SS20s, each carrying a 50MT device. The idea was to turn Cheyenne Mountain in to Cheyenne Lake in short order (while the US were rapidly dismantling the Russians command and control systems with MIRVs). Smaller devices were simply not capable of wrecking the granite that NORAD is encased in fast enough to have an effect during the 30 minutes or so it would be needed.
Russia tacitly accepted they couldn't keep a fight going long enough to "plan" or "manage" a total nuclear war after the first orders were sent - so they knew they had to reduce the US to a level playing field in one or two hits. (After all, even they knew half of their missiles wouldn't make it off the ground...)
Early on in the use of SMS in Europe, I remember reading that this kind of thing was happening - basically the servers involved were being overloaded at peak times and were discarding messages in a random fashion to get the loading down.
I remember there was a bit of a scandal about it, and the phone firms promised to clean up their act. Since then I've never lost a message...
I can't find anything in Google to corroborate this - anyone?
Europeans have been paying tax on internet purchases since the beginning. It hasn't hurt the growth in eBusiness (both b2b and b2c).
If you live in the UK, you pay 17.5% on just about everything anyway, so the internet scores on cost cutting, not tax-avoidance.
Been there, seen it, but no girls want it...
on
Girls not Going into CS
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It strikes me that it's precisely what we enjoy so much about messing about with technology that drives girls away from the whole scene.
Never mind the fact that a guy over 30 with a tech job is a total (marriage-minded) babe magnet, a fifteen year old student is where the attitudes are formed.
People who have no idea about computing and who are dragged into our department for some cross-concept work (e.g. SMS marketing initiatives) are more than a little surprised by the decent cars, good haircuts and sharp cufflinks we're building a rep for...(just joking - but the point is valid - there are deliberately no visible geeks in the team - but we are there...)
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A fifteen year old sees the "spods, geeks and wierdos with alternate lifestyles" that dominate the only computers in the school. Forget about seeing the career, most people pick their degree for a mix of reasons - social life being at least in the top ten. Take a look at civil engineering degrees as an corroborating example.
Until the initial salaries rise far enough that women/girls want it even though the image is bad (e.g. lawyers), then there'll be no change in the situation. Then you'll see an avalanche.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever used a diesel from outside the US?
I've just received my new Citroen C5 - a good car with *wacky French* suspension design... I bought the 160bhp 2 liter diesel model and had to check twice when we got it home to be sure I didn't have the gasoline model. Very smooth, very refined and no indication (other than the filler cap) that the engine needs no spark plugs.
I get approx. 40mpg (US gal.) on mixed highway and suburban driving and am loving the 20,000 mile range between oil changes/services.
Take a look at diesels, you'll be surprised.
I just love picturing the traffic jam as thousands of modified pick-ups and SUVs all try to take the same trails.
Nope - he's not *American*
It's not about monitoring everyone. Just the leaders of the people who disagree with you.
You bulk collect the data - and then you pick on the people you don't like for intensive review.
It's an old quote, but still true: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." — Cardinal Richelieu.
Come on everyone, this is just pre-paid franking. Nearly all european mail services (I have no idea about the rest of the world, sorry) offer this in various guises, usually only requiring an account with the company. Royal Mail in the UK offer their "SmartStamp" service allowing you to purchase your postage online. You don't have to be a company, and you use your home printer to print out the codes/franks on the letter. You can see it here: https://www.royalmail.com/portal/sme/content1?catId=62300709&mediaId=99400762
Try the UK. I can buy my electricity from the gas company, I can buy my phone service from the same people who operate Virgin airlines and I can buy my gas from the same people who sell me water.
I'm limiting myself to talking about abstract property - distinguished from mating rites or hunting ranges (which actually overlap a lot in the real world so you are right there...)
In the sense of taking something a dog is eating, yes you are right - but have you watched a group of animals pick a carcass apart? A dog/cat/lion/hyena/whatever with low status will give up the meat to a high status animal. I'm talking about the equivalent of the poodle holding on to the meat in the face of the enraged lion - that's property rights.
Your analogy with women's rights is close but there is a caveat - look at the countries that have an increasing number of independant women. Now look at how many work on the land. Notice how as agriculture becomes less and less important (as the economy grows) you also end up with female independance? That was my point about economic growth diminishing the importance of the property concept.
Thanks for posting a reply Thomas.
I feel compelled to respond on this as I feel it could be the most important issue of the 21st century - especially if the X Prize boys get their mojo on.
Property rights essentially appeared at the same time as the Agricultural Revolution about twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. For the first time, you really couldn't move down the valley a bit if someone you didn't like lived near you. You had a field, and that was the only way your (suddenly) large family could live through the winter. If you let him take or use what you'd literally broken yourself to create - you would die. Harsh stuff, and the reason the core of every successful legal system in the world enshrines property rights over all others. Even the U.S. constitution has property rights so mixed in, so tightly bound, that it mentions them again and again - they were as natural and obvious to the founding fathers as breathing.
So we move on to an age where agriculture is no longer quite as central to our lives. Suddenly we are coming up against the limits of property rights. "Intellectual Property" seems to be an obvious idea to an industrial economy - a simple extension of the concept that's allowed the human population to take over the world. As the discussions on /. have shown, this is no longer quite so obvious, so compelling.
Already you can see where I'm leading. If we take the idea of ownership as we normally see it and then apply it to the stars we come into some severe problems.
No consortium of insurance companies in the world, not even the whole of the Lloyds of London market could insure against a mis-directed asteroid impacting with the Pacific. So how could any mining corporation ever hope to start liberating resources from our solar system? Remember that the Lloyds market is the clearing-house for all insurance and re-insurance in the world, and even they struggled to swallow the risk from the Space Shuttle. Even then it took the intervention of the U.S. Government as insurer-of-last-resort to placate the market-makers.
So don't take responsibility: Let anyone get on with doing what they want? No claim means no liability? Right?
What happens when two mining companies lay claim to the same stretch of asteroids? If they are in the same orbit, and therefore easier to get at, both companies are going to want to protect their investment. Do we want to return to the days when warring villages were continuously slaughtering each other? When simply travelling outside the palisade meant risking death?
Here's another example. What if settlers arrive, and then someone else causes problems - e.g. their solar arrays are rendered useless by the cloud of particulates raised by a "nearby" extraction operation. They could go to court for help. It is a clear tort. After all, they can file electronically and it's only a twenty-four hour round trip to the central courthouse computers. There's just a small problem: They are dying for lack of air right now.
Here's the solution: There isn't one. Not with our current expectations and society.
As with all problems where human beings are involved, this is going to have to evolve. The societal structures that have worked so well for us down here are going to have to change. That isn't to say that there won't be governments, charities and corporations.
More likely, we'll have to have a long and drawn out struggle between the varying imperatives: "It's mine!" "You can't do that to me!" "If you try to stop me I'll defend my rights!" "You must leave that alone!"
Hopefully not too many will die. Some will.
Who knows what will emerge? The governing-corporation? The feudal charity? Maybe the gift economy shown so beautifully in the Open Source Movement will be the governing paradigm? All I know is that our system isn't going to stay the same - because it cannot work when celestial mechanics becomes a part of your insurance quote.
I feel I have to respond to this.
It works like this. Caller pays is a simple way to reduce complexity in a bill for someone who is unsure about whether they need a mobile or not.
Market making is about moving the wavering mass to change their habits and get onto the "new" whatever it is.
Caller pays is a market making move that then gives every person the ability to say "I want a mobile, but I want to retain "control" of my spend. (remember this is a reduction in percieved complexity - having free minutes or free connections doesn't reduce complexity on your bill) Paying to receive calls isn't perceived as control - simple politeness means you stay on the line when someone wants to chat for just a bit longer than you want. That costs - and you (as a typical person, not a careful bill-watcher) feel like you are being ripped off because you didn't even want the call.
Yes, it's nice to have the choice (and in good old communist the-rest-of-the-world, we do). You don't.
Caller pays has to be imposed originally by the regulatory body - because no telco wants to see it (they love complexity on your monthly bill!)
But once it's there - they can offer all kinds of options - including receiver pays.
I'll give you one more example. How do you think the countries that are a decade or more ahead of the USA have gained those 80% or more market penetrations?
In the UK even people on welfare have mobile phones. Because if they don't make a call, they don't pay for the call. That's where the regulator forced all calling plans to put that in as the default - because otherwise someone else gets ripped off to pay for their plan. That means they can job hunt and only pay for the calls they want to. They can be "called in" immediately. They never miss calls (and can call straight back if they do).
Compelling stuff - and all for people who would never have a mobile in a system where they have to pay to be told they aren't wanted at the factory today.
This is a major reason why the US is backward and will stay that way until the regulatory regime stops giving the telcos more importance than the voters. You are the ones losing out because of "choice" that really means "whatever the telco paid your representative for".
Thanks for the rational response - as opposed to squarooticus' rant.
Area codes exist in other countries too - but they are bogus wherever they are. The only directly attributable cost to a phone call is the ink on the bill. Seriously.
Think about it. There's a set of pipes to shove the data about, and a big fat backbone to move it long distance. Unless it's going to your local exchange and back, it could move a couple of thousand miles in transmission just to go to the next town. Where is your local telco backbone? Do you care? If the phone system works - only the engineers need to!
Charging for area codes was originally a simple way to increase revenues in a way that the average Joe would be able to "understand". Even in the day it didn't match the geographic spread of a single exchange. It also historically allowed the extra costs inherent in manually connecting bits of wires and paying for more operators to put the call together
That died with digital exchanges and integrated networks
Nearly all mobiile telcos in other countries are given a set of "area" codes to do with as they wish. In the UK they start with different numbers to show they are a different price - but there's enough to have 0708 (mobile) match up with 0208 (outer London).
To begin with the major telcos did exactly as the US companies have done, and mapped them 1to1 with physical locations - because that way there were local and long distance calls - and that way you could confuse the customer into higher revenues.
That simply died with competition. It only took one provider to offer "All calls are local calls!" and all of them took out the extra code in their exchanges that calculated the "local" area for billing. Since then, nearly all GSM providers just don't bother. In fact in the UK it's now getting to the point where you can't find a "local" call for any call - land or mobile. They are simply split between landline and mobile.
If a call terminates in a single backbone there's no way to distinguish between local and national - even in the USA - unless the billing system is explicitly set-up to look for origination and termination data. It doesn't cost any more or less for a local, national (or in fact international) call anymore. Even satellite time is simply bulk purchased by the data rate it carries.
Oh, and I think you are right about landlines slowing adoption - although I think it's more the "free" local calls making it hard to justify a mobile bill. I'll add another thing to the list though - cars.
I think the fact that so many Americans practically live in their cars makes it a higher barrier than in the rest of the world. My day starts with a few calls to friends as I stand on the railway platform - it's not so easy if you are trying to change lanes...
Just on more thing - Caller Pays is a principle that makes having a mobile much easier if you are poor. You don't get to 80% of the population in penetration (e.g. UK, Finland etc.) without selling mobiles to people with a small amount of disposable income. If you pay to receive and you don't have much pre-pay credit (because of your poor credit history) you aren't going to have your phone on. Hence the network effect of having a mobile and being instantly contactable is reduced. But if you know you never have to pay to pick up - you'll do it gladly.
I feel I should reply to this as there are a few inaccuracies here:
GSM wasn't "mandated". In summary most of Western Europe agreed that there should be a single, interoperable standard to replace the early analogue phone networks (i.e. "2G" replacing "1G"). The hardware and software vendors built their own common reference and then it was put out into a single standard. This is no different to everyone agreeing to Internet Protocol rather than a soup of protocols and interconnects. Remember that wasn't a free market choice either. Every vendor licences from the GSM group so it isn't "open" in the more modern sense but if you are a telco the licences are freely available for low fees.
Remember in Europe there is a much greater sense that we, the voters, own the commons (such as radio spectrum or fishing rights) so that corporations have to be good citizens or we'll withdraw their franchise (i.e. the citizens will regulate them out of existence). We are often much more bemused by the adherence to free market principles that don't make sense - such as the Californian Electricity Regulation (it is not de-regulation, just a different regime) that is based almost exactly on the UK's original privatisation model. Note that the UK changed the model rapidly once we realised the problems inherent in the risks and rewards of such a setup - but California ignored the issues until recently. Your politicians really don't act in your interests!
You are right, CDMA is better - but that's simply due to the relative ages of the designs. So much more is known now that CDMA looks poor compared to the much-later 3G designs - and I'm sure that future schemes will produce even better connectivity.
Which needless restrictions are you mentioning? Such as the interoperability requirements, transparent interconnection and billing? Number portability (you've finally caught up with that only 20 years later...:-)
There are several, competing reasons why the US falls behind at technologies it should be leading the world in... (especially when you consider the discrepancies in R&D spends).
The US regulatory regime hinders mobile uptake. Mobiles aren't easily identifiable as such - most GSM-using countries push their phones onto a separate area code for ease-of-identification (e.g. UK has 01... for all landline area codes and 07... for all cellular). "Caller-Pays" isn't evenly implemented in the US - so not only do you not know if you are calling a mobile, you aren't sure if you'll pay to receive calls too! This principle makes phone service in many countries much more transparent - and hence more likely to be used. I know if I call a landline I'll pay 3-7 cents and a mobile will cost 20-50 U.S. cents per minute, but to receive I'll pay nothing - ever. As a mobile user that makes me much more likely to leave the phone on compared to my American friends. In every GSM country all providers must interoperate with each other. This is true for voice in the US, but not for all the extras such as SMS texting. Please note that this is responsible for up to 50% of the profits of GSM providers! Also, one number finds me anywhere in the world. No other system offers that.
The proliferation of wireless technologies has stopped you buying one phone and using it with any provider - increasing your costs.
It has also stopped you from having an open market in more modern phones - only "approved" phones are available from your telco - so they maximise profits by providing you with older-generation phones with crappy features for high prices - hence the US/rest-of-world split when it comes to deciding that Bluetooth is dead. We see the benefits with our newer generation handsets, but you struggle to get a limited range. Try Nokia.co.uk and see the number of phones you can buy!
Vendor lock-in has really reduced your choice and increased your prices. It's only a free market for the Telco - certainly not you.
Finally, you are comparing apples to oranges.
I think the parent is very accurate and observant. I also think this is missing a vital point. Manned flight for the U.S. is extremely expensive. (I'm sure we can all think of the $20m toilet and other items.)
Even though it takes three hours to get that second's worth of observation, those three hours are so much cheaper that it's still a better idea to send a fleet of probes. That's for the same price as the single low-orbit shuttle launch.
NASA was always best as a R&D organisation. It's just that the R&D was focussed on a clear, linear goal. It achieved the goal, and did put several men on our moon. Everyone understood that, but didn't see the underlying strength of the organisation.
That early direction has been lost. We focus on manned space flight because that was what it seems we were doing. We forget that the race to the moon was always about the expected benefits of a clear goal being achieved. JFK always saw it as a way to put the soviets noses out of joint while pushing money into the economy through R&D.
Please don't misunderstand me. I really want to be able to achieve orbit one day, but realistically I know it won't happen.
So what should happen?
IMHO, simply that NASA should refocus on the R&D aspects of aerospace. The clear analogy is the DARPA-led research and testing that led to an internetwork of networks. Funny how that took off...
It's called "Pump Priming" and NASA hasn't been doing anywhere near enough of it in the last few decades. Where is the materials research into esoteric uses for thermal or radiation proof materials? They're all focused on manned spaceflight. Just as Teflon was never developed for use in the kitchen, materials technology leaps forward when inventions are developed in different and unexpected ways.
So much money is spent on the orbiter fleet that nearly every other programme is run on a shoe-string (by "Big Science" standards). This harms the free-thinking research that could be done by any number of research groups able to bid for a larger pot of cash.
Let's give NASA the mission that government departments do best: spending a big pot of cash on a variety of things that private money would never fund. As we've seen in the past, all of a sudden, a tipping-point will appear and the private sector will suddenly see why we should be in space - so we will be. Who knows what it's going to be for? (after all, what hippie could have predicted the internet?)
Until then NASA will be wasting time, effort and money with expeditions to 100 miles above my head, literally boring a hole in the sky.
If you live in the UK you already do. This is why there isn't an outcry over the introduction of Oystercard. I have the right to my data, and more importantly I have the right to restrict how the Oyster consortium use that data. I will not be getting junk mail or spam from their database.
I am unsure about the obsession with the blaster worm in this thread.
From a fairly careful read of the .pdf it seems that the outage was a simple cascade failure.
A few issues that happened on the same area of the grid forced a change in the whole grid. Add to that, a lack of central (or coherent) control and you have an inability to rebalance the network. That's how (I believe) the system failed.
This is plain and simple a failure of the regulatory regime (a.k.a. deregulation that is anything but). Nowhere near enough reserve capacity and interconnection is available, and more importantly, too many people are in charge of planning. This means there is no thought applied to the wide area effects of implementation decisions. A clear example of this is interconnects that try to re-join the grid automatically - rather than waiting for intelligent or coherent systems control to allow reconnection.
Grids in the rest of the world know this, and so retain central control even when the implementation is through the private sector. The central control is often private, although it is in charge of overall planning and provisioning.
Perhaps the US regulators and legislators could actually learn something here?
I realise this will gain the hate of the majority of Slashdot's posters, but I have to make the point that my company (i.e. the R&D dept - i.e. me and a couple of other geeks) has done a fairly in-depth study into moving our internal apps to Linux. Or rather to start developing onto Linux rather than continuing on the MS treadmill.
The fact is that at the moment costs for obtaining Linux skills so far outweigh the licencing costs of using MS that it is still worth using MS. This INCLUDES all the licencing costs of both the new servers and the cost of the commercial closed-source app when applied to an open-source app...
The important point here is that just about all of our IT function is outsourced - so we see costs directly rather than by using internal staff (who are "free" ).
I realise you are probably spluttering by now, but just think... You can hire a low-IQ MCSE to follow the wizards and work through the install routines for a heck of a lot less time than an expert is required to configure and set up a Linux server and add an open source platform, and then configure and sort it out.
Please remember that outside of IT firms, the driving attitude is to get the system working now, rather than working right. Apart from financial systems (e.g. payroll) you can always backfill later to fix issues - so the up-front costs really do become meaningful.
MS really do know this - and know just how far they can push us. Linux will get better - and the skilled staff required will get cheaper. That will simply drive down MS's prices. At the moment - it is cheaper to have a wizard-driver and pay the licence fees. Linux-skilled staff just cost too much and take too long.
Try konfabulator which does the same for Apples. I've bought it and love the way I have so much eye candy on the screen that I end up only using about two thirds for productive work!
Damn. That's it! I am off to the store this afternoon (half hour before it shuts).... I am going to drop 'em as I grab some blades - then when they challenge me, I'll say - "but I wanted to check they would fit in my crack?!"
Aurora is the mythical project that explains the "Thursday afternoon sonic booms" heard over the California coast for over a decade, as well as numerous sightings over the oilrigs in the North Sea as diamond shaped craft get in air refueling...
It sounds to me like this is the first step in opening it up to a production-level system where they can publically use the craft without fear of identification/national security concerns.
This is just what happened with the early stealth and B2 prototypes. A lot of skunkworks development was turned into a nearly-ready plane for purchase by Congress.
I wonder just how far advanced the prototypes have become?
Simply not true. I own my own data but still have public data made public. You can (and European democracies do) have more transparency, with less intrusions and identity theft. Just because You don't know how the rest of the world works - doesn't mean it works the way America does.
Mod the parent up!
Whenever I see yet another technical "fix" for spam I just wish that the USA would give it's citizens the right to own their data. EU citizens do - so we see spam coming from the USA and only a trickle from inside our own borders.
We could then push to close the rest of the world out - and really drop the volume of spam...
When are people going to stop offering me mortgages - in Dollars?
It looks like the latest information shows a hydraulic telemetry failure just before everything else ceased transmission.
At that stage in re-entry, the shuttle is entirely automated. No human control is needed, the RCS thrusters are used by the on-board software to ensure a correct attitude. If a failure occurred in the stability and control systems - the airflow turbulence would have forced a turn in a couple of seconds - and the pressure of the airflow would have shattered the frame in an instant. Perhaps the tank insulation that fell off during launch had a major effect after all.
I just hope they didn't feel anything.
God rest their souls
This isn't quite true. Up to the end of the cold war there was an entire squadron of SS20s, each carrying a 50MT device. The idea was to turn Cheyenne Mountain in to Cheyenne Lake in short order (while the US were rapidly dismantling the Russians command and control systems with MIRVs). Smaller devices were simply not capable of wrecking the granite that NORAD is encased in fast enough to have an effect during the 30 minutes or so it would be needed. Russia tacitly accepted they couldn't keep a fight going long enough to "plan" or "manage" a total nuclear war after the first orders were sent - so they knew they had to reduce the US to a level playing field in one or two hits. (After all, even they knew half of their missiles wouldn't make it off the ground...)
Early on in the use of SMS in Europe, I remember reading that this kind of thing was happening - basically the servers involved were being overloaded at peak times and were discarding messages in a random fashion to get the loading down.
I remember there was a bit of a scandal about it, and the phone firms promised to clean up their act. Since then I've never lost a message...
I can't find anything in Google to corroborate this - anyone?
Europeans have been paying tax on internet purchases since the beginning. It hasn't hurt the growth in eBusiness (both b2b and b2c).
If you live in the UK, you pay 17.5% on just about everything anyway, so the internet scores on cost cutting, not tax-avoidance.
It strikes me that it's precisely what we enjoy so much about messing about with technology that drives girls away from the whole scene.
Never mind the fact that a guy over 30 with a tech job is a total (marriage-minded) babe magnet, a fifteen year old student is where the attitudes are formed.
People who have no idea about computing and who are dragged into our department for some cross-concept work (e.g. SMS marketing initiatives) are more than a little surprised by the decent cars, good haircuts and sharp cufflinks we're building a rep for...(just joking - but the point is valid - there are deliberately no visible geeks in the team - but we are there...)
.A fifteen year old sees the "spods, geeks and wierdos with alternate lifestyles" that dominate the only computers in the school. Forget about seeing the career, most people pick their degree for a mix of reasons - social life being at least in the top ten. Take a look at civil engineering degrees as an corroborating example.
Until the initial salaries rise far enough that women/girls want it even though the image is bad (e.g. lawyers), then there'll be no change in the situation. Then you'll see an avalanche.