This of it this way. How many cell phone users are there. Well lets see. A billion+? Those people have terrestrial cell phone networks, and it works fine. Now even if there are 100,000 people all over the world who need a Sat phone, its still 10,000 times less than cell phone users. So this is where economy of scale comes in. You can invest 1 billion dollars in cell phone network upgradation, and still make money, but 100 million spent in satellite phone tech and satellites will need prohibitingly expensive plans and pricing to just get it to work.
Coupled with the fact that many remote regions of the world now get cellular coverage(eg MT. Everest), the number of people who need a sat phone will go down from probably 100,000 to 20,000, pushing up costs even further. I recokon, after around 5 years, maybe 1000-2000 people will need sat phone coverage.
Let me tell you the telecom success story of India.I have listed cents as USD cents Back in the day(5-6 years or slightly more), call rates were around 10rs/min (20c/min) for outgoing and Long distance was even more. Some carriers charged for incoming too Then came the first shakedown around 2003, when call rates dropped to 2rs/minute for all calls. and even on roaming.
In the recent shakedown, the latest fad is per second billing So its 1p/second 100p = 1rs = 2cents So basically you pay per second. It comes to around 60p (1.2 cents/min) Incoming is free. When you roam, you pay 1p/sec incoming, and outgoing remains the same.
However, international roaming is still expensive. Due to this reason smartphone owners go to WIFI and use SKYPE etc., Now there is a push in India among mobile operators to offer international roaming at rs 2/minute or even less.
With calling cards and "third party services" getting a major long distance revenue, the mobile companies are waking up. And wait... there was no regulation, just competition, lots of competition.
1000 INR or 22$ approx will get you a basic barebones nokia phone with text messaging, some games, alarm clock/calendar but no java/multimedia thing. If you are okay with no name unbranded chinese phones, you will get one with camera and color screen for around 1400 INR(30$) Considering electronics are more expensive in India than US for almost everything, I wonder why such phones are not there in the US!
The type of religion also matters. In Asia, religious theories are not really at loggleheads with science, and are not part of fundamental battle. In the west, religion and science have always fought. First it was during the end of dark ages when the debate was about position of Earth. Now it the evolution debate. However, if you look at the third world(south asia in particular), many scientifyuc discoveries coexist with religion. Moreover, religious funding and religious bodies do not concern themselves with stuff like stem cell, biotech etc., They worry more about enforcing certain rituals etc., which have no impact on scientific research. Heck, new projects in cutting edge tech companies are often started after a religious ceremony. go figure:D
And India is not even mentioned. China has even more. I guess the number quoted by GP for Asia is way too understated.
That said, the trend of locked phones exits mostly in CDMA networks in India(less than 30% of subscriber base), and that too only for the ultra cheap phones which cost around 20$ unlocked.
On most networks, people buy phones of their choice according to their budget, and then chose the network.
Many of us have work Linux PCs running RHEL. It would be good to have a simple tar.gz package which does not require root to install. Firefox does that, I wonder why not chrome?
In India, any govt project implementation is chosen based on money laundering opportunity. for example Common Wealth Games scoring software(medals tally thingy) cost 26 million USD). Previous games had similar software for around 7-8 million dollars. And guess what, the current implementation of this solution is buggy and crashes frequently.
So now lets come to the new OS. Imaging taking Linux or FreeBSD, and then looking at the code, this would result in much less money spending which would result in less siphoning. However, majority(99%+) of the public in India are moronic, and if you say the 3 code words "Patriotism" "National Security" "Terrorism", their idiot mode gets activated, which does not understand that if you are running an application which is malicious, the secure operating system(supposedly) will make no different.
So do not argue on the technicalities, because the decision is not technical. The decision is monetary, and I am sure nobody here can give a counter argument that a more efficient solution will lead to more kickbacks and money laundering.
The later Moghul rulers were the murderous ones. Akbar was among the first, and is generally considered as a very good monarch. The last one (Aurgangzeb) was pretty murderous, and also imposed taxes on non muslims to get them to convert.
Hmm, so you are basically saying, before blackberry came, there was no terrorism in India? Or blocking blackberry will somehow close all aveues of encryption(ssh etc.,?) Its due to idiots like you that we hardly have any privacy left in India, and the corrupt govt officials snoop on anybody at will.
Specificaly, Ashram Chowk. It sees long jams, lasting few hours when it rains, and slow moving traffic when it does not rain. A week ago, when heavy rains hit Delhi, this picture was flashed over the news channels(which do not have nothing much to report anyway).
Since I live very close to himalayas, I can say with confidence, that things have changed quite a bit. Is it global warming/regional warming or no warming, I dunno. But over the past 6-7 years these changes have forced farmers to change crop cycles, modified travel plans of seasonal roads, etc., etc.,
Basically, in the Western himalayas, around November, snowfalls would start, seasonal roads would close by december, and jan feb were heavy snowfall months, with some in April and may.
Now from past few years, there is hardly any snow during December and even January, which leads to lousy apple crop. Then in feb, it snows some, and in April may and june, well heavy snowfall in higher reaches. This kills the standing crop. The entire north India reels under heat wave as there is hardly any winter rain. We start getting summer in feb instead of April. The mountains start getting snow.
So is it warming or cooling. No idea, but its a big change from what has been happening since 1900 or so(when record keeping started).
Winter rain, at the correct time, and winter snow at correct time is very important for healthy crops. all this cycle change has led to big problems. To add to that, monsoon summer rain has also reduced. Thankfully, this year, though a bit late, monsoon is mostly adequate, but then here also instead of sustained rain over few days, most places get a cloudburst like havoc creating spell, and then its humid and dry. The dams will get filled up, but areas depending only on rain will suffer. Such rains also lead to big landslides.
Part of the blame is on local deforestation, and micro climate change in the Himalayan region due to rapid commercialization and deforestation. Since protecting the environment is not yet a major election issue, its just a lip service on world environment day, when we switch of lights for an hour(and then get the routine 10 hour power cut due to overload of AC).
So all in all, pics or no pics, the local weather in western himalayas has changed. Hopefully, this weather pattern will stabilize, and farmers will switch there crop sowing times. But since its still too erratic, its a big problem.
As for global warming, when I see the temperature records for the region since 1900, the average temp has been rising steadily in most places, but whether this warming is caused by humans or not, I dunno. I am not a climatologist and like many people here, I will refrain from posting my theories on the changes. All that matters to many, is that its getting hotter and drier, and rainfall patterns are shifting alarmingly. Many glaciers in central himalayas are indeed receding, and its a fact. Not that they are warmer now, but because from past few years, there has been little winter snow in these areas. The ski slopes of Auli, which used to be snowed out in winters, now are devoid of snow many times. Last year Auli did not get a snow season. This year in June higher reaches of himachal got a few feet of snow. Not unusual, but definitely unusual in the peak of summer!
So the weather is changing, but who is changing it I dunno. I hope it can be fixed, because it causing a lot of food supply problems. Fruits are out of reach of many, and if this continues, even cereals will become precious.
If you decided to use horses, you would have to make a setup to move horses on treadmill. Horses which sit all day, will eat extra food. Now with cows, all this poo is anyways going to be there. Cows give milk, thats the main product. Its just that the waste also is being put to use.
you actually have no idea about the level of corruption in "developing countries". There may be lot of sh!t going at top level, but at grassroots level the level of corruption in US is not even a small % of what goes on in countries like India. I live there, so I know. Heck, to repair my phone line I was asked for a bribe directly, ad if you want a new electricity connection, be prepared to pay big. And guess what, in the west you have to bribe to get something "Wrong" done, in India you have to bribe for the right thing too!
Well if I had a problem, I won't be able to see any of the 3-D scenes in Avatar and Clash of the Titans. But I could see a few scenes, which were 3-D. The entire movie was not. Infact hollywood is putting in 2-3 3-D scenes so that they can get more money out of ticket price. Case in point. I watched that shrek (4-D) in universal studios, and it was fully 3-D, and I had no problem. But the current crop of movies, well hollywood is taking people for a ride, and now trying to blame the audience.
Its not really being designed as a chemical weapon on the battlefield, but more of an anti terrorist weapon where there can be hostage crisis etc., For example, to flush out people holed up in caves etc., Traditionally, you would lob a grenade and kill everyone, hostages included. with a pepper grenade, you would just get everyone on their knees with eyes and lungs burning. So without loss of life, lots of hostage situations can be defused. Its being though of an alternative to tear gas, which is not really very effective in many cases.
For example, in the latest budget, there was no increase in spending, w.r.t increase in the GDP etc., For an economy that grows more than 7% every year, the defense spending does not follow this curver
The efficiency of a theoretical engine is dependent to T1-T2 as well as the compression ratio. Diesel engines run at high compression ratios, and this is a contributing factor for the high mileage as compared to petrol cars
The number of CDMA phones is more in Asia than NA, but the number of GSM phones is even great. For example, total number of mobile connections in India is 0.5 Billion Number of mobile connections in china is close to a billion. In India, GSM forms a sizable chunk, and traditionally CDMA operators like Reliance (86 million subscribers), Tata(50 million) have started offering GSM services, because most of the market is flooded with windows mobile running cheap chinese GSM phones. Even the nokia high end phones are mostly GSM only. Till about a couple of years back, when GSM users were dabbling with fully functional mini computer like phones, CDMA was limited to Nokia 6265 at top end. Since advanced CDMA phones are still not in vogue, these carriers are going GSM
They show more speed because they want you to drive slower?? I don't think such weird explanations are needed. The fact is that its impossible to design a speedometer(conventional) which will show you exact speed. So you are always going to have some error based on tire inflation etc., Now its your Speedo showed less speed than actual, and you got ticketed, it would mean lawsuits, so its safer for the mfrs to show more speed than actual, Imagine you are in a 65 zone, and you are at 70 and speedo shows 65, you get ticketed. Big lawsuit problem. So they go the other way, err on the side of caution. 2-5% is there in almost all cars.
Slashdot Mirror
This of it this way. How many cell phone users are there. Well lets see. A billion+? Those people have terrestrial cell phone networks, and it works fine.
Now even if there are 100,000 people all over the world who need a Sat phone, its still 10,000 times less than cell phone users.
So this is where economy of scale comes in.
You can invest 1 billion dollars in cell phone network upgradation, and still make money, but 100 million spent in satellite phone tech and satellites will need prohibitingly expensive plans and pricing to just get it to work.
Coupled with the fact that many remote regions of the world now get cellular coverage(eg MT. Everest), the number of people who need a sat phone will go down from probably 100,000 to 20,000, pushing up costs even further. I recokon, after around 5 years, maybe 1000-2000 people will need sat phone coverage.
Let me tell you the telecom success story of India.I have listed cents as USD cents
Back in the day(5-6 years or slightly more), call rates were around 10rs/min (20c/min) for outgoing and Long distance was even more. Some carriers charged for incoming too
Then came the first shakedown around 2003, when call rates dropped to 2rs/minute for all calls. and even on roaming.
In the recent shakedown, the latest fad is per second billing
So its 1p/second 100p = 1rs = 2cents
So basically you pay per second. It comes to around 60p (1.2 cents/min)
Incoming is free. When you roam, you pay 1p/sec incoming, and outgoing remains the same.
However, international roaming is still expensive. Due to this reason smartphone owners go to WIFI and use SKYPE etc.,
Now there is a push in India among mobile operators to offer international roaming at rs 2/minute or even less.
With calling cards and "third party services" getting a major long distance revenue, the mobile companies are waking up.
And wait... there was no regulation, just competition, lots of competition.
1000 INR or 22$ approx will get you a basic barebones nokia phone with text messaging, some games, alarm clock/calendar but no java/multimedia thing.
If you are okay with no name unbranded chinese phones, you will get one with camera and color screen for around 1400 INR(30$)
Considering electronics are more expensive in India than US for almost everything, I wonder why such phones are not there in the US!
The type of religion also matters. In Asia, religious theories are not really at loggleheads with science, and are not part of fundamental battle. :D
In the west, religion and science have always fought.
First it was during the end of dark ages when the debate was about position of Earth. Now it the evolution debate.
However, if you look at the third world(south asia in particular), many scientifyuc discoveries coexist with religion.
Moreover, religious funding and religious bodies do not concern themselves with stuff like stem cell, biotech etc., They worry more about enforcing certain rituals etc., which have no impact on scientific research.
Heck, new projects in cutting edge tech companies are often started after a religious ceremony.
go figure
Sheep are valuable for wool, and are rarely killed for meat(lamb) when goats are available.
And India is not even mentioned. China has even more.
I guess the number quoted by GP for Asia is way too understated.
That said, the trend of locked phones exits mostly in CDMA networks in India(less than 30% of subscriber base), and that too only for the ultra cheap phones which cost around 20$ unlocked.
On most networks, people buy phones of their choice according to their budget, and then chose the network.
Many of us have work Linux PCs running RHEL. It would be good to have a simple tar.gz package which does not require root to install. Firefox does that, I wonder why not chrome?
In India, any govt project implementation is chosen based on money laundering opportunity. for example Common Wealth Games scoring software(medals tally thingy) cost 26 million USD). Previous games had similar software for around 7-8 million dollars. And guess what, the current implementation of this solution is buggy and crashes frequently.
So now lets come to the new OS. Imaging taking Linux or FreeBSD, and then looking at the code, this would result in much less money spending which would result in less siphoning.
However, majority(99%+) of the public in India are moronic, and if you say the 3 code words "Patriotism" "National Security" "Terrorism", their idiot mode gets activated, which does not understand that if you are running an application which is malicious, the secure operating system(supposedly) will make no different.
So do not argue on the technicalities, because the decision is not technical. The decision is monetary, and I am sure nobody here can give a counter argument that a more efficient solution will lead to more kickbacks and money laundering.
The later Moghul rulers were the murderous ones.
Akbar was among the first, and is generally considered as a very good monarch.
The last one (Aurgangzeb) was pretty murderous, and also imposed taxes on non muslims to get them to convert.
Hmm, so you are basically saying, before blackberry came, there was no terrorism in India? Or blocking blackberry will somehow close all aveues of encryption(ssh etc.,?)
Its due to idiots like you that we hardly have any privacy left in India, and the corrupt govt officials snoop on anybody at will.
Specificaly, Ashram Chowk. It sees long jams, lasting few hours when it rains, and slow moving traffic when it does not rain. A week ago, when heavy rains hit Delhi, this picture was flashed over the news channels(which do not have nothing much to report anyway).
Joe Sixpack does the bootlegging not, John Doe and Jane doe, is he allowed?
Since I live very close to himalayas, I can say with confidence, that things have changed quite a bit.
Is it global warming/regional warming or no warming, I dunno.
But over the past 6-7 years these changes have forced farmers to change crop cycles, modified travel plans of seasonal roads, etc., etc.,
Basically, in the Western himalayas, around November, snowfalls would start, seasonal roads would close by december, and jan feb were heavy snowfall months, with some in April and may.
Now from past few years, there is hardly any snow during December and even January, which leads to lousy apple crop.
Then in feb, it snows some, and in April may and june, well heavy snowfall in higher reaches.
This kills the standing crop.
The entire north India reels under heat wave as there is hardly any winter rain. We start getting summer in feb instead of April.
The mountains start getting snow.
So is it warming or cooling. No idea, but its a big change from what has been happening since 1900 or so(when record keeping started).
Winter rain, at the correct time, and winter snow at correct time is very important for healthy crops. all this cycle change has led to big problems.
To add to that, monsoon summer rain has also reduced. Thankfully, this year, though a bit late, monsoon is mostly adequate, but then here also instead of sustained rain over few days, most places get a cloudburst like havoc creating spell, and then its humid and dry. The dams will get filled up, but areas depending only on rain will suffer.
Such rains also lead to big landslides.
Part of the blame is on local deforestation, and micro climate change in the Himalayan region due to rapid commercialization and deforestation. Since protecting the environment is not yet a major election issue, its just a lip service on world environment day, when we switch of lights for an hour(and then get the routine 10 hour power cut due to overload of AC).
So all in all, pics or no pics, the local weather in western himalayas has changed. Hopefully, this weather pattern will stabilize, and farmers will switch there crop sowing times. But since its still too erratic, its a big problem.
As for global warming, when I see the temperature records for the region since 1900, the average temp has been rising steadily in most places, but whether this warming is caused by humans or not, I dunno. I am not a climatologist and like many people here, I will refrain from posting my theories on the changes.
All that matters to many, is that its getting hotter and drier, and rainfall patterns are shifting alarmingly.
Many glaciers in central himalayas are indeed receding, and its a fact. Not that they are warmer now, but because from past few years, there has been little winter snow in these areas.
The ski slopes of Auli, which used to be snowed out in winters, now are devoid of snow many times. Last year Auli did not get a snow season.
This year in June higher reaches of himachal got a few feet of snow. Not unusual, but definitely unusual in the peak of summer!
So the weather is changing, but who is changing it I dunno. I hope it can be fixed, because it causing a lot of food supply problems. Fruits are out of reach of many, and if this continues, even cereals will become precious.
If you decided to use horses, you would have to make a setup to move horses on treadmill. Horses which sit all day, will eat extra food.
Now with cows, all this poo is anyways going to be there. Cows give milk, thats the main product. Its just that the waste also is being put to use.
Well its not matrix, its moo-trix
you actually have no idea about the level of corruption in "developing countries". There may be lot of sh!t going at top level, but at grassroots level the level of corruption in US is not even a small % of what goes on in countries like India. I live there, so I know.
Heck, to repair my phone line I was asked for a bribe directly, ad if you want a new electricity connection, be prepared to pay big.
And guess what, in the west you have to bribe to get something "Wrong" done, in India you have to bribe for the right thing too!
Well if I had a problem, I won't be able to see any of the 3-D scenes in Avatar and Clash of the Titans.
But I could see a few scenes, which were 3-D. The entire movie was not.
Infact hollywood is putting in 2-3 3-D scenes so that they can get more money out of ticket price.
Case in point. I watched that shrek (4-D) in universal studios, and it was fully 3-D, and I had no problem.
But the current crop of movies, well hollywood is taking people for a ride, and now trying to blame the audience.
Its not really being designed as a chemical weapon on the battlefield, but more of an anti terrorist weapon where there can be hostage crisis etc.,
For example, to flush out people holed up in caves etc.,
Traditionally, you would lob a grenade and kill everyone, hostages included.
with a pepper grenade, you would just get everyone on their knees with eyes and lungs burning. So without loss of life, lots of hostage situations can be defused.
Its being though of an alternative to tear gas, which is not really very effective in many cases.
For example, in the latest budget, there was no increase in spending, w.r.t increase in the GDP etc., For an economy that grows more than 7% every year, the defense spending does not follow this curver
The efficiency of a theoretical engine is dependent to T1-T2 as well as the compression ratio. Diesel engines run at high compression ratios, and this is a contributing factor for the high mileage as compared to petrol cars
After his statements on backward compatibility, users will anyways kill him
The number of CDMA phones is more in Asia than NA, but the number of GSM phones is even great. For example, total number of mobile connections in India is 0.5 Billion
Number of mobile connections in china is close to a billion.
In India, GSM forms a sizable chunk, and traditionally CDMA operators like Reliance (86 million subscribers), Tata(50 million) have started offering GSM services, because most of the market is flooded with windows mobile running cheap chinese GSM phones. Even the nokia high end phones are mostly GSM only.
Till about a couple of years back, when GSM users were dabbling with fully functional mini computer like phones, CDMA was limited to Nokia 6265 at top end.
Since advanced CDMA phones are still not in vogue, these carriers are going GSM
Many in car GPS systems cost 200$+
This device could be an all in 1, wifi, GPS, phone etc., with an AV player.
They show more speed because they want you to drive slower??
I don't think such weird explanations are needed.
The fact is that its impossible to design a speedometer(conventional) which will show you exact speed. So you are always going to have some error based on tire inflation etc.,
Now its your Speedo showed less speed than actual, and you got ticketed, it would mean lawsuits, so its safer for the mfrs to show more speed than actual,
Imagine you are in a 65 zone, and you are at 70 and speedo shows 65, you get ticketed. Big lawsuit problem. So they go the other way, err on the side of caution. 2-5% is there in almost all cars.
There is something called T20 now, which ends in a few hours, and never ever results in a draw, unless it rains, and even then a draw is not certain :)