I don't know what the problem of the CPUC is. I recently moved to California, and I have to say that they have the most messed up dialing scheme I've encountered. Because of their obsession against 10 digit dialling and overlays, they have a mess of geographically tiny area codes. Calls to different area codes, whether local or toll require 1+area code. Calls in the same area code can be dialled with just seven digits regardless of whether they are toll or not. I am quite surprised that they think that 10 digit dialing would confuse people as to what is local and what isn't, since there is no way of knowing right now, short of waiting for the bill to arrive or looking up which exchanges are local from where you are calling.
Ideally, I would like to see this dialing scheme:
Require 10 digits on local calls
Require 1+10 digits on toll calls
Allow 1+10 digits for local calls. This way people who don't care about local/toll can call all their calls this way and have them go through, but no one can accidentantly make a toll call unless they dial 1.
Unfortunatelly, the CPUC seems to think that taking away 7 digit dialing is the greatest evil. There were four area code overlays planned in the bay area, for 408, 415, 650 and 510, and they were all cancelled. At least 408 is now in serious trouble of running out of phone numbers. They are conserving numbers now, but I fear that at some point they will resort to another split... btw, under the original overlay plan all calls would be 1+10 digits, so there still wouldn't be local/toll distinction.
I have no data to support this, but I suspect that there are such exchanges as 408-650 and 650-408 in use, which would prevent a switch to 10 digit dialing with a transition period. I think the only way for California to switch to 10 digit dialing is to
Set a date after which 7 digit dialing won't be allowed. In other words, everyone has to dial 11 digits for all calls.
After everyone is used to 11 digits for all calls, no one is dialling 7 digits anymore, so there is no ambiguity and 10 digit dialing can now be allowed.
One thing to be aware of is that the plan requires a Tri-Mode phone, and they can be quite pricey.
I've seen the term "tri-mode" used a lot in this discussion, but there is no such thing as a tri-mode phone. What is usually referred to as "tri-mode" is really dual-band/dual-mode (CDMA-800/1900 and AMPS, or TDMA-800/1900 and AMPS as the case may be).
I know that it's the cellular carriers that are using this term, but that doesn't make it right.
How do you turn off caller id suppression (turn on caller id) when you're calling from a cel phone.
*67 blocks your caller id, *82 enables it. These are both prefixes to the number you are calling, and are only good for the current call. These code are standard and should work on any landline and cellular phone in the US and Canada.
their power MUST be limited to some upper range, I wonder what it is
It depends on the technology and frequency used: GSM 900 goes up to 2W. GSM 1800 (and 1900, I think) goes up to 1W. AMPS (analog cellular in US/Canada) goes up to 600mW (and doesn't have as good power control as most digital standards). IS-136 (also known as TDMA or D-AMPS) at 800 is limited to 600mW, and at 1900 at 300mW (not 100% sure about this). IS-95 (CDMA) at 800 is limited to, I think, 250mW. All these numbers refer to handheld phones, car mount phones can put out significantly more, but it's not practical to do so on handheld phones (battery, size/weight etc). Also, you need to consider if the phone is transmiting continuously or not. GSM and IS-136 transmit 1/8th and 1/3rd of the time respectivelly, so the average power is lower. If a GSM phone is transmitting at its full 2W, the average power will be 250mW. IS-95 and analog transmit continuously. I don't know how this affects any health effects that there might be, but I suspect that it's more complicated than looking at the average power and frequency only (ie the peak power probably needs to be factored in as well somehow).
Another thing is that analog phones degrade in quality as the signal goes down. Digital phones will just start cutting out. In some sense, I prefer the degraded signal, you can still communicate and you know that your signal is getting worse rather than having to watch the little signal bars as you travel (and how the heck are you supposed to do that when the thing is up against your ear).
Well, but a digital phone can give you a clear conversation even when the signal is not too good. It takes quite a bit of noise to make a "1" look like a "0" and vice versa, whereas any little noise is noticeable on an analog signal. Plus, there is some error correction, so low bit error rates are handled gracefully. Overall, digital is better for not-so-perfect signal conditions. Of course, after some point the cutoffs become too much, but under the same conditions analog would have enough noise to probably make the voice unintelligible. Sometimes it's just better to hang up and wait until the signal improves to make your call:)
Which doesn't, for the record, make my monitor shake
The shake on the monitor (or the interference with speakers) is not caused by the signal sent out by the phone, but by low frequency radiation that is generated because some digital cellular phones use TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) technology. This essentially means that more than one phones (how many depends on the specific technology, 8 for GSM or 3 for IS-136) share the same channel over time, by transmitting/receiving for a short timeslot and then giving up the channel to the other phone until it's their turn again. This rapid switching on/off of the transmitter (it happens several times a second, but I don't have specific numbers) is what is causing the low frequency radiation that leaks from the phone in a small radius. Phones that don't use TDMA don't have the same problem since they transmit all the time. I'm sure you have a CDMA (such as sold by Sprint, Verizon and others) phone, which is why you don't experience the interference.
Has anyone looked at the use of non-latin alphabets for domain names and TLDs?
I don't know if anyone has, but I think it's a terrible idea. Everyone should be able to read/write domain names, and whether you like it or not, latin is the lowest common denominator, computers around the world can handle it. Allowing domains in different character sets is asking for trouble. The same goes, for example, for email headers, but sadly I often see mail clients that generate a date header with the date in the local representation.
using taxes on people with poor math skills to pay for education?
Well, this explains why schools don't do a better job at teaching math. If the number of people with poor math skills decreased, schools would lose part of their funding;-)
Yeah, I suppose -- "wireless" is as much a misnomer because there are wires in it. I suppose we'll never get rid of inaccurate/outdated terms like that and "DSL modem".
Okay, but I still don't understand why you feel that cell(ular) is an inaccurate term.
come on folks, lots of them aren't technically CELL anymore
Why? Unless you are referring to cordless phones that people connect to their landlines, then yes, they very much are cellular. It doesn't make any sense not to be, it would be a huge step backwards.
I do agree about the various "music" rings though. They are irritating... Even worse, some GSM phones let you send your own ringtones to the phone, and the alt.cellular.* newsgroups are full of people requesting ringtones of a particular song or movie/tv show theme...
I happen to live 22 miles from my dial-up server and I get 49333 bps every day no matter what... Awhile ago I lived elsewhere & because I was only 1 mile from my server I managed 53333 bps (which back then I worked ISP tech support and no one could believe I could tweak my modem enough to conenct that high all the time)...
Only thing is, the distance from the dialup server is irrelevant. The only distance that matters is between your phone jack and the switch, or the loop concentrator if that's how your line is connected. From there on your line is digitized, and the quality doesn't degrade (not before latency becomes relevant anyway). There are obviously many other parameters. For example, if robbed bit signalling is used anywhere between you and the dialup server, your speed suffers. And if you are server from a loop concentrator, there are two possible configurations, one of which is very good for modem and the other is very bad. If it's configured in universal mode, your line is digitized, carried to the switch, converted back to analog, and then back to digital in the switch. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). On the other hand, if it's in integrated mode, your line is digitized and carried to the switch, and it's not converted back to analog there. This is good for modems, especially if you're really close to the concentrator, but on the other hand AFAIK current concentrators can't handle xDSL, at least yet, so if you're server by one you're out of luck for the time being. But I digress, my main point is that it's only important how long your line is analog, and if there are any extra analog to digital conversions.
I hate to nitpick (ok, I don't really hate it), but are you sure it's your CLEC? I'm asking because CLEC is Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, while the Baby Bells that used to be monopolies are ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier)...
Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!
They would be relying on 1/3600th of the bandwidth only if all 3600 students were sending/receiving data continuously. In reality, not everyone is using the network all the time, and when they are, much of the traffic consists mostly of bursts, rather than sustained data transfers... So it's actually quite feasible for 3600 people to share 2 T1s, and much of the time the troughput is very good...
When my friend and I spent a whole weekend downloading the disksets one by one over a 2400bps modem from the AOL filebases (of all places) back in '93 ('94? can't remember..), slackware was slackware (unless i'm having a major brainfart).
Yep, Slackware did exist in 1993... I also remember downloading it with my 2400 modem:). I don't remember much from these days, but I do remember that I did see SLS somewhere when I was searching for my first Linux distro, but I rejected it for some reason... Maybe it wasn't being maintained anymore. Wasn't there a Yggdrasil (spelling probably very wrong) distribution back then?
Now, I'm reaching the point where I can tell the difference between 160k and 192K on some songs. Add to that what I've learned about encoding (and the fact that it's constantly evolviong) and the questions of what to do arises. Should I re-rip my CD's with LAME? (I did that once to go from 128K to 160K and MusicMatch). Should I Wait? Should I just go on?
This is just my personal opinion, so take it for what it's worth... I've been using Xing myself (on Linux) for some time now. I was quite satisfied by the quality, and I'm encoding using VBR (at 75-85). I'm not an audiophile, but I'm not one of the people who can't notice a difference between mp3 and CD either. Before Xing, I was using bladeenc (which as I understand is quite poor), and I was suffering when listening to music encoded at 160kbps. I read the comparison at r3mix.net carefully, and I tried LAME right away to see what I was missing. What I found out was that, for me, there wasn't much noticeable difference. I don't have a reason to doubt the results on r3mix.net, but maybe Xing is just good enough for casual use, but not for archival. I encode my CDs for convenience, so archival quality is not important for me. I just want to be able to listen to my music with my headphones and not notice obvious artifacts.
Of course this has to do with my ears, equipment and the kind of music I listen to. LAME was considerably slower than Xing on my machine (K6-2/450), so I decided against using it. Xing gives me half or better of real time, and LAME was considerably more than real time. I don't know if this is true generally, or maybe LAME is not optimized for K6-2s at all. In any case, I say that if you encode the same music with both encoders and you prefer the sound of one to the other, and you don't have a problem with the speed, go with the one you prefer... Ultimately, you are the only one to decide which sound you find better. Whichever one you choose, I suggest that you use VBR, which uses a different bit rate for each frame depending on the complexity of the music at that point... This way you get a lot of data on complex music, and less data on simple music... Good quality and small file size.
I know that cellphones broadcast unusually powerful signals in the UK (3 or 5 times greater than the rest of Europe)
Unless you have a pre-GSM analog phone, which I know nothing about, then no, cellular phones in the UK don't transmit a 3-5 times the power used in the rest of Europe. Handheld units for GSM 900 output up to 2 watts, and GSM 1800 up to 1 watt. In reality the power is usually less than that, and it's determined by the network based on the strength of your signal when it's received at the tower (ie it's going to be really low if you're really close to the tower, and much higher if you're far from the tower and/or there is something blocking your signal).
Digital phones send bursts of high power signal so audio electronics picks it up a lot easier.
It's important to note that this is actually limited to digital phones based on TDMA (like GSM and IS-136), where the transmitter is switched on and off rapidly several times a second, since there are many phones (8 for GSM, 3 for IS-136) on the same channel, time multiplexed. Each phone is allocated a timeslot during which it transmits, and remains silent the rest of the time. CDMA based digital phones don't exhibit the same behavior... Put a CDMA phone next to a speaker and you won't get any interference, because the transmition is continuous (and it's also spread over a wider channel, this might have something to do with it too).
This may be true in relatively simple areas, geographically speaking, but I'll present 3 examples here that show it isn't that simple:
No argument there, the original poster stated that 2-3 towers are the norm, and I was trying to demonstrate that this isn't the case. There is a lot of variability, sometimes you can only see two towers due to geography, and other time you'll be able to see more than that, especially if you're in a high usage area, with lots of microcells etc.
30k feet is roughly 5 miles, right? My cell phone can't throw signal that far, in fact, all I have to do is be two miles or so from the nearest tower, and I drop service - much closer for the unfortunates with PCS service.
Sure it can! It depends a lot on the terrain and if you have line of sight, and when you're in the sky there's nothing between you and the tower. In flat rural areas it's not uncommon for one tower to cover (although not always very well) a much larger radius... In Australia, they had to come up with a hack that enabled them to exceed the 35km limitation of GSM (which doesn't have to do with RF propagation, but with timing. With GSM you might get a strong signal if you're 40km from the tower, but you won't be able to use the service.)
A cell phone on the ground has line of sight to maybe 2 cell towers at a time. Maybe 3 if you're downtown.
My phone is seeing quite clearly three tower where I am right now, and I'm in a small town. In high density urban areas, you quite often have more than that.
Just immagine the cell tower selection algorithim with an input size of 4000 possible towers.
You are correct that using a cellular phone in a plane causes all kinds of trouble, but this isn't the reason. Remember that cellular systems rely on channel reuse to achieve high capacity. In other words, if channel x is used on tower A, it can't be used on any of the neighboring towers, but it can be used on towers that are further away. The assumption is that with the right power tuning etc, the two towers won't interfere with each other since they are not next to each other (of course sometimes if the network is too dense there are trouble spots where this isn't the case, hence crosstalk). This assumption is based on the fact that users are close to the ground. As you said, when you are in an airplane your cellular phone can see many towers, some of them using the same channels. I'm not sure how a network would respond if one of its channels was used from a phone in a plane, but I imagine that after all the users of the channel suffered from crosstalk for a while, they would either lose their calls or handed off to another channel, rendering one channel useless in a large area. Just a few people using their phones in a plane would have a devastating effect on the capacity of the system underneath, especially if flying over a large city. Not to mention that if your provider has any fraud detection system in place you would probably trigger an alarm by appearing to be in more than one place at the same time.
Re:This effectively only applies to intangible goo
on
EU Web Tax Proposed
·
· Score: 1
This stuff is changing *where* the tax is paid - so on tangibles would have the advantage for EU people that they wouldn't be additionally hit for for the tax collecting charge. However it would mean that software delivered over the internet (look, no customs), would also be taxed.
This can be very convenient, but it shouldn't be mandatory. Barnes & Noble does this for orders from Canada. They charge you for Canadian federal sales tax (GST), and your book arrives quickly, since it doesn't need to clear customs. Plus, you save the brokerage fee ($5, I think), that you would pay otherwise on top of the sales tax. This is great, and because of this I always prefer Barnes & Noble to Amazon (that doesn't offer such a service).
Of course, trying to tax imported intangibles sounds absurd to me, and I'd like to see them enforcing it (if this is what they're trying to do).
So the telco there was privatized without opening the market to competition? If this is the case, this is not what I'm advocating... A private monopoly might or might not be a bit better from a public monopoly, but it's still a monopoly. What you need is competition, and effective regulation from the government so that the telcos can make money but can't screw the consumer. I admit it's not easy to maintain this balance, but it has been done with varying degrees of success in various places in the world. I'm most familiar with telecom in Canada, and it's a perfect example where there is really affordable communications of very high quality for every taste (from landlines to high speed internet access), through competition and generally good regulation.
Public network infrastructure, power, phone, net, everything should be nationalized. End of story.
You might want to say this to the people in all the countries that used to have government owned monopolies running all telecom. I'm sure they'll inform you that they were paying a lot more than you are for phone service, and that in many cases it wasn't as good. They'll also tell you that after the market was opened up in their country, and the national telcos privatized, cost has gone down and quality has gone up. Strange, eh? I guess that national telecom monopolies are indeed a superior idea, but we just haven't seen any proper implementations to date. Kind of like communism, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Ideally, I would like to see this dialing scheme:
Unfortunatelly, the CPUC seems to think that taking away 7 digit dialing is the greatest evil. There were four area code overlays planned in the bay area, for 408, 415, 650 and 510, and they were all cancelled. At least 408 is now in serious trouble of running out of phone numbers. They are conserving numbers now, but I fear that at some point they will resort to another split... btw, under the original overlay plan all calls would be 1+10 digits, so there still wouldn't be local/toll distinction.
I have no data to support this, but I suspect that there are such exchanges as 408-650 and 650-408 in use, which would prevent a switch to 10 digit dialing with a transition period. I think the only way for California to switch to 10 digit dialing is to
I've seen the term "tri-mode" used a lot in this discussion, but there is no such thing as a tri-mode phone. What is usually referred to as "tri-mode" is really dual-band/dual-mode (CDMA-800/1900 and AMPS, or TDMA-800/1900 and AMPS as the case may be).
I know that it's the cellular carriers that are using this term, but that doesn't make it right.
*67 blocks your caller id, *82 enables it. These are both prefixes to the number you are calling, and are only good for the current call. These code are standard and should work on any landline and cellular phone in the US and Canada.
It depends on the technology and frequency used: GSM 900 goes up to 2W. GSM 1800 (and 1900, I think) goes up to 1W. AMPS (analog cellular in US/Canada) goes up to 600mW (and doesn't have as good power control as most digital standards). IS-136 (also known as TDMA or D-AMPS) at 800 is limited to 600mW, and at 1900 at 300mW (not 100% sure about this). IS-95 (CDMA) at 800 is limited to, I think, 250mW. All these numbers refer to handheld phones, car mount phones can put out significantly more, but it's not practical to do so on handheld phones (battery, size/weight etc). Also, you need to consider if the phone is transmiting continuously or not. GSM and IS-136 transmit 1/8th and 1/3rd of the time respectivelly, so the average power is lower. If a GSM phone is transmitting at its full 2W, the average power will be 250mW. IS-95 and analog transmit continuously. I don't know how this affects any health effects that there might be, but I suspect that it's more complicated than looking at the average power and frequency only (ie the peak power probably needs to be factored in as well somehow).
Well, but a digital phone can give you a clear conversation even when the signal is not too good. It takes quite a bit of noise to make a "1" look like a "0" and vice versa, whereas any little noise is noticeable on an analog signal. Plus, there is some error correction, so low bit error rates are handled gracefully. Overall, digital is better for not-so-perfect signal conditions. Of course, after some point the cutoffs become too much, but under the same conditions analog would have enough noise to probably make the voice unintelligible. Sometimes it's just better to hang up and wait until the signal improves to make your call :)
The shake on the monitor (or the interference with speakers) is not caused by the signal sent out by the phone, but by low frequency radiation that is generated because some digital cellular phones use TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) technology. This essentially means that more than one phones (how many depends on the specific technology, 8 for GSM or 3 for IS-136) share the same channel over time, by transmitting/receiving for a short timeslot and then giving up the channel to the other phone until it's their turn again. This rapid switching on/off of the transmitter (it happens several times a second, but I don't have specific numbers) is what is causing the low frequency radiation that leaks from the phone in a small radius. Phones that don't use TDMA don't have the same problem since they transmit all the time. I'm sure you have a CDMA (such as sold by Sprint, Verizon and others) phone, which is why you don't experience the interference.
I don't know if anyone has, but I think it's a terrible idea. Everyone should be able to read/write domain names, and whether you like it or not, latin is the lowest common denominator, computers around the world can handle it. Allowing domains in different character sets is asking for trouble. The same goes, for example, for email headers, but sadly I often see mail clients that generate a date header with the date in the local representation.
Well, this explains why schools don't do a better job at teaching math. If the number of people with poor math skills decreased, schools would lose part of their funding ;-)
Okay, but I still don't understand why you feel that cell(ular) is an inaccurate term.
Why? Unless you are referring to cordless phones that people connect to their landlines, then yes, they very much are cellular. It doesn't make any sense not to be, it would be a huge step backwards.
I do agree about the various "music" rings though. They are irritating... Even worse, some GSM phones let you send your own ringtones to the phone, and the alt.cellular.* newsgroups are full of people requesting ringtones of a particular song or movie/tv show theme...
Only thing is, the distance from the dialup server is irrelevant. The only distance that matters is between your phone jack and the switch, or the loop concentrator if that's how your line is connected. From there on your line is digitized, and the quality doesn't degrade (not before latency becomes relevant anyway). There are obviously many other parameters. For example, if robbed bit signalling is used anywhere between you and the dialup server, your speed suffers. And if you are server from a loop concentrator, there are two possible configurations, one of which is very good for modem and the other is very bad. If it's configured in universal mode, your line is digitized, carried to the switch, converted back to analog, and then back to digital in the switch. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). On the other hand, if it's in integrated mode, your line is digitized and carried to the switch, and it's not converted back to analog there. This is good for modems, especially if you're really close to the concentrator, but on the other hand AFAIK current concentrators can't handle xDSL, at least yet, so if you're server by one you're out of luck for the time being. But I digress, my main point is that it's only important how long your line is analog, and if there are any extra analog to digital conversions.
I hate to nitpick (ok, I don't really hate it), but are you sure it's your CLEC? I'm asking because CLEC is Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, while the Baby Bells that used to be monopolies are ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier)...
They would be relying on 1/3600th of the bandwidth only if all 3600 students were sending/receiving data continuously. In reality, not everyone is using the network all the time, and when they are, much of the traffic consists mostly of bursts, rather than sustained data transfers... So it's actually quite feasible for 3600 people to share 2 T1s, and much of the time the troughput is very good...
Yep, Slackware did exist in 1993... I also remember downloading it with my 2400 modem :). I don't remember much from these days, but I do remember that I did see SLS somewhere when I was searching for my first Linux distro, but I rejected it for some reason... Maybe it wasn't being maintained anymore. Wasn't there a Yggdrasil (spelling probably very wrong) distribution back then?
This is just my personal opinion, so take it for what it's worth... I've been using Xing myself (on Linux) for some time now. I was quite satisfied by the quality, and I'm encoding using VBR (at 75-85). I'm not an audiophile, but I'm not one of the people who can't notice a difference between mp3 and CD either. Before Xing, I was using bladeenc (which as I understand is quite poor), and I was suffering when listening to music encoded at 160kbps. I read the comparison at r3mix.net carefully, and I tried LAME right away to see what I was missing. What I found out was that, for me, there wasn't much noticeable difference. I don't have a reason to doubt the results on r3mix.net, but maybe Xing is just good enough for casual use, but not for archival. I encode my CDs for convenience, so archival quality is not important for me. I just want to be able to listen to my music with my headphones and not notice obvious artifacts.
Of course this has to do with my ears, equipment and the kind of music I listen to. LAME was considerably slower than Xing on my machine (K6-2/450), so I decided against using it. Xing gives me half or better of real time, and LAME was considerably more than real time. I don't know if this is true generally, or maybe LAME is not optimized for K6-2s at all. In any case, I say that if you encode the same music with both encoders and you prefer the sound of one to the other, and you don't have a problem with the speed, go with the one you prefer... Ultimately, you are the only one to decide which sound you find better. Whichever one you choose, I suggest that you use VBR, which uses a different bit rate for each frame depending on the complexity of the music at that point... This way you get a lot of data on complex music, and less data on simple music... Good quality and small file size.
Why worry? It's not like there are any dinosaurs around anyway...
Unless you have a pre-GSM analog phone, which I know nothing about, then no, cellular phones in the UK don't transmit a 3-5 times the power used in the rest of Europe. Handheld units for GSM 900 output up to 2 watts, and GSM 1800 up to 1 watt. In reality the power is usually less than that, and it's determined by the network based on the strength of your signal when it's received at the tower (ie it's going to be really low if you're really close to the tower, and much higher if you're far from the tower and/or there is something blocking your signal).
It's important to note that this is actually limited to digital phones based on TDMA (like GSM and IS-136), where the transmitter is switched on and off rapidly several times a second, since there are many phones (8 for GSM, 3 for IS-136) on the same channel, time multiplexed. Each phone is allocated a timeslot during which it transmits, and remains silent the rest of the time. CDMA based digital phones don't exhibit the same behavior... Put a CDMA phone next to a speaker and you won't get any interference, because the transmition is continuous (and it's also spread over a wider channel, this might have something to do with it too).
No argument there, the original poster stated that 2-3 towers are the norm, and I was trying to demonstrate that this isn't the case. There is a lot of variability, sometimes you can only see two towers due to geography, and other time you'll be able to see more than that, especially if you're in a high usage area, with lots of microcells etc.
Sure it can! It depends a lot on the terrain and if you have line of sight, and when you're in the sky there's nothing between you and the tower. In flat rural areas it's not uncommon for one tower to cover (although not always very well) a much larger radius... In Australia, they had to come up with a hack that enabled them to exceed the 35km limitation of GSM (which doesn't have to do with RF propagation, but with timing. With GSM you might get a strong signal if you're 40km from the tower, but you won't be able to use the service.)
My phone is seeing quite clearly three tower where I am right now, and I'm in a small town. In high density urban areas, you quite often have more than that.
Just immagine the cell tower selection algorithim with an input size of 4000 possible towers.
You are correct that using a cellular phone in a plane causes all kinds of trouble, but this isn't the reason. Remember that cellular systems rely on channel reuse to achieve high capacity. In other words, if channel x is used on tower A, it can't be used on any of the neighboring towers, but it can be used on towers that are further away. The assumption is that with the right power tuning etc, the two towers won't interfere with each other since they are not next to each other (of course sometimes if the network is too dense there are trouble spots where this isn't the case, hence crosstalk). This assumption is based on the fact that users are close to the ground. As you said, when you are in an airplane your cellular phone can see many towers, some of them using the same channels. I'm not sure how a network would respond if one of its channels was used from a phone in a plane, but I imagine that after all the users of the channel suffered from crosstalk for a while, they would either lose their calls or handed off to another channel, rendering one channel useless in a large area. Just a few people using their phones in a plane would have a devastating effect on the capacity of the system underneath, especially if flying over a large city. Not to mention that if your provider has any fraud detection system in place you would probably trigger an alarm by appearing to be in more than one place at the same time.
This can be very convenient, but it shouldn't be mandatory. Barnes & Noble does this for orders from Canada. They charge you for Canadian federal sales tax (GST), and your book arrives quickly, since it doesn't need to clear customs. Plus, you save the brokerage fee ($5, I think), that you would pay otherwise on top of the sales tax. This is great, and because of this I always prefer Barnes & Noble to Amazon (that doesn't offer such a service).
Of course, trying to tax imported intangibles sounds absurd to me, and I'd like to see them enforcing it (if this is what they're trying to do).
That should be no problem, you should be able to choose language for subtitles and audio track independently...
So the telco there was privatized without opening the market to competition? If this is the case, this is not what I'm advocating... A private monopoly might or might not be a bit better from a public monopoly, but it's still a monopoly. What you need is competition, and effective regulation from the government so that the telcos can make money but can't screw the consumer. I admit it's not easy to maintain this balance, but it has been done with varying degrees of success in various places in the world. I'm most familiar with telecom in Canada, and it's a perfect example where there is really affordable communications of very high quality for every taste (from landlines to high speed internet access), through competition and generally good regulation.
You might want to say this to the people in all the countries that used to have government owned monopolies running all telecom. I'm sure they'll inform you that they were paying a lot more than you are for phone service, and that in many cases it wasn't as good. They'll also tell you that after the market was opened up in their country, and the national telcos privatized, cost has gone down and quality has gone up. Strange, eh? I guess that national telecom monopolies are indeed a superior idea, but we just haven't seen any proper implementations to date. Kind of like communism, I guess.