Jim Cramer on Mad Money has been saying that Vonage is one of the worst IPO's ever. It's just too easy for the big companies to throw in VoIP as a free extra to the rest of their bundled services. When you can get VoIP free as part of your cable TV/internet package and have it on one bill, why sign up for another provider?
No, there is a difference between DSL service and phone service. It used to be, or maybe you can still get DSL service without phone service. I did notice that my cable bill started having an extra tax on it some months ago, it's only a few cents, but I'm sure they'll slowly increase it as they see fit.
A VoIP call is just another internet connection between two individuals, sending data back and forth. What makes VoIP so special that it needs taxation? Are they going to tax internet video conferencing and Netmeeting next? Instant messaging? Just another example of old people in government not understanding the differences in new technology.
Oh also that fund that is supposed to "subsidize" rural areas is such a waste. My parents have lived in a rural area for years without DSL and it wasn't made available until a couple years ago. And then, it's 128kbps and it wasn't funded by this stupid fund, but by the local telephone co-op. I'd rather the tax go away.
Re:The Size was incredible
on
Quake is 10
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· Score: 1
Naw, we'll just compress it with a 64bit version of winzip and it will be less than 5MB.
I'm pretty sure that upconverting is a bit more complicated then that. I believe they use a series of sophisticated algorithms to create detail that isn't there. Think of it as interpolation. However, there are still significant limitations and you'll never get the detail you would get from a 1080p signal. Maybe they meant that it's upconverting from 1080i to 1080p? That wouldn't be so bad.
And what is AMD doing in R&D lately? Sure, they are the favorite this year, but do they have the R&D budget Intel has to remain competative in the long term?
You can also use things like light curtains that force the machine to shut off automatically if someone tries to walk to close to it. Isaac Asimov is science fiction, the reality is robots are just machines governed by simple rules.
One thing you assume though is that house prices will always match or beat inflation. Right now, after a 200% price increase, I'm guessing they could fall for a very long time.
Properties less than one mile from work cost 600k to 700k right now. so.... yeah, renting is about a quarter of the cost at this point of any home payment. And I truly don't believe these homes are worth that much, it's just a result of the 250% increase in housing prices in the last 5 years. It will crash, and it will be BAD! Then I might consider buying.
It's a major employer, a national laboratory. Given how politics change, it could be closed down on a whim. I'd like to see how those people will pay off their $700k morgatges when they loose their job. Good luck selling if you had to move.
After all that work I spent getting linux drivers to compile on an X31 with Slackware and now Lenova won't support it in future models? It's a step backwards...
I agree with renting. I rent an apartment 1 mile away from work and it's great. I could care less about owning a home at this point in my life. I also drive a 1984 Honda Prelude. Given these choices, I'm able to save over 50% of my income in retirement and non-retirement accounts and I'm only 24.
The nice thing is, I have money leftover that I can spend $4,000/year on the latest tech toys;) Not that I'm likely to spend that much.
The cost of all those features isn't being subsidized by anyone. In case you didn't notice, you have to pay EXTRA, and disproportionately extra for data features such as text messaging, sending pictures, and data accesses. In fact, you should be thankful that people use text messages because they use thousands of times less bandwidth than a voice call.
The two problems with cellphones are still that they haven't built out enough towers enough. The other problem I don't understand is why we don't have 22Khz quality voice calls yet. The bandwidth should be there but it isn't used to increase quality, it's still used to jam as many users onto a channel as possible.
The reason that voice costs more is the same reason long distance used to cost more on a phone. It's something people highly demanded, thus they can charge more for the service. Unlike data which right now isn't necessarily something people need, so you have to charge less to offer that service. No one is losing in this equation.
I'm suprised this was marked as a troll. Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions. The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
I hate to reply to a post twice, but just out of curiosity I tested my $5/month "T-Zones" connection on my PC. You can only use T-Zones through a proxy, so you're limmited to E-mail, HTTP and HTTPS. However, I was able to get 132 kbps down and 37 kbps upload speed. That's pretty good for a $5/month plan! Granted, it's kind of hack to use T-Zones like that, and it will probably be discontinued in the future. But even the $30/month internet plan is still about three times faster than a dialup connection (typically 45kbps).
WRONG! T-Mobile currently offers edge service on their entire network. Not only that, it's only $30/month plus (with phone plan) it includes hot-spots. I haven't bought this service yet, because I don't really need it, but it is available. It's also much less than similar carries charge.
I curious why the focus is always on the PCMCIA cards? Using your cellphone as a bluetooth modem I think is the way to go because it works on both desktops, pocket PC's, and laptops.
Hey who knows, the cost of transporting goods via semi-truck might get so expensive because of fuel that they have to switch back to trains. Sure, it will take an extra week or so to receive your shipment, but I'm guessing it must be more efficient. We shouldn't be so quick to abandon "old" technology just because it isn't convient for today.
My guess is that these networks will remain slower than the wired connections internet providers will offer. Sure, you can get 300kbps out of them, but if you pay $$/month, you can get 10Mbps. And I can't imagine the reliability being any better than cellphones are right now, so there will still be room for ISP's for some time.
I'll usually spend $200-$400 on a video card depending on what's available at the time. My theory is that if I'm going to spend $200 on a new card, I might as well get one for $300 and not worry about upgrading it sooner. Sure, I might only get another %20 performance boost for the cost, but another $100 isn't that big of a deal to me, so it's worth it.
Yeah, if you're not into gaming that much it's probably not worth it.
Would any self respecting slashdotter posting at midnight on a friday admit that they needed to be taught programming by a teacher? How much formal teaching did you need to learn the Apple II's built in language?
Well it's not so much that gifted kids need a teacher to tell them how to program. They need a teacher to encourage them, and that is what's missing. When I was in school teachers didn't mind me spending my time in the computer lab during lunch. And they thought it was really neat what I was doing. Now days I think they just care to put all the kids in a neat rows of seats and bore them to death with lectures.
I doubt it. 99% of the kids with those calculators only care about how to get "games" to run on them. Maybe the 1% already know how to program on computers anyway. And you're almost guaranteed that the teacher won't be giving a lesson on even how to make basic functions to save time in calculations.
And it's a shame because pretty much any science degree you are going to be doing some programming for data analysis (MATLAB, python, etc....).
Thinking back I remember programming the Apple II's in our computer lab during lunch in 6th grade instead of playing outside. The neat thing about those computers is you had a very simple easy to use programming environment built into the computer. I'm not sure what computers are like now in schools, but my guess is they are heavily locked down and only include office applications and a web browser. That's just too bad.
Vista doesn't have HD-DVD support unless you have a HDCP monitor. I'm not spending another $800 on the exact same monitor I own now just to get DRM support to play HD-DVD discs. What the hell were they thinking?
The maximum storage is only limited by the maximum size of the SD card you can buy. And actually, thanks to Apple driving the cost of all flash memory down, you'll probably see 4 and 8 GB flash memory cards within the next year for less than $100. Heck, you can already get 1GB cards for $30. I would certainly buy this phone if I could justify the price tag (ouch!).
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Jim Cramer on Mad Money has been saying that Vonage is one of the worst IPO's ever. It's just too easy for the big companies to throw in VoIP as a free extra to the rest of their bundled services. When you can get VoIP free as part of your cable TV/internet package and have it on one bill, why sign up for another provider?
No, there is a difference between DSL service and phone service. It used to be, or maybe you can still get DSL service without phone service. I did notice that my cable bill started having an extra tax on it some months ago, it's only a few cents, but I'm sure they'll slowly increase it as they see fit.
A VoIP call is just another internet connection between two individuals, sending data back and forth. What makes VoIP so special that it needs taxation? Are they going to tax internet video conferencing and Netmeeting next? Instant messaging? Just another example of old people in government not understanding the differences in new technology.
Oh also that fund that is supposed to "subsidize" rural areas is such a waste. My parents have lived in a rural area for years without DSL and it wasn't made available until a couple years ago. And then, it's 128kbps and it wasn't funded by this stupid fund, but by the local telephone co-op. I'd rather the tax go away.
Naw, we'll just compress it with a 64bit version of winzip and it will be less than 5MB.
I'm pretty sure that upconverting is a bit more complicated then that. I believe they use a series of sophisticated algorithms to create detail that isn't there. Think of it as interpolation. However, there are still significant limitations and you'll never get the detail you would get from a 1080p signal. Maybe they meant that it's upconverting from 1080i to 1080p? That wouldn't be so bad.
And what is AMD doing in R&D lately? Sure, they are the favorite this year, but do they have the R&D budget Intel has to remain competative in the long term?
You can also use things like light curtains that force the machine to shut off automatically if someone tries to walk to close to it. Isaac Asimov is science fiction, the reality is robots are just machines governed by simple rules.
Ever through an aluminum can in a fire? Yep, it burns before it melts. I don't think a peice of steel would do that.
Then why not get a ring made out of Tungsten? It's pretty expensive too and twice as dense as gold.
One thing you assume though is that house prices will always match or beat inflation. Right now, after a 200% price increase, I'm guessing they could fall for a very long time.
Properties less than one mile from work cost 600k to 700k right now. so.... yeah, renting is about a quarter of the cost at this point of any home payment. And I truly don't believe these homes are worth that much, it's just a result of the 250% increase in housing prices in the last 5 years. It will crash, and it will be BAD! Then I might consider buying.
It's a major employer, a national laboratory. Given how politics change, it could be closed down on a whim. I'd like to see how those people will pay off their $700k morgatges when they loose their job. Good luck selling if you had to move.
After all that work I spent getting linux drivers to compile on an X31 with Slackware and now Lenova won't support it in future models? It's a step backwards...
fp?
I agree with renting. I rent an apartment 1 mile away from work and it's great. I could care less about owning a home at this point in my life. I also drive a 1984 Honda Prelude. Given these choices, I'm able to save over 50% of my income in retirement and non-retirement accounts and I'm only 24.
;) Not that I'm likely to spend that much.
The nice thing is, I have money leftover that I can spend $4,000/year on the latest tech toys
The cost of all those features isn't being subsidized by anyone. In case you didn't notice, you have to pay EXTRA, and disproportionately extra for data features such as text messaging, sending pictures, and data accesses. In fact, you should be thankful that people use text messages because they use thousands of times less bandwidth than a voice call.
The two problems with cellphones are still that they haven't built out enough towers enough. The other problem I don't understand is why we don't have 22Khz quality voice calls yet. The bandwidth should be there but it isn't used to increase quality, it's still used to jam as many users onto a channel as possible.
The reason that voice costs more is the same reason long distance used to cost more on a phone. It's something people highly demanded, thus they can charge more for the service. Unlike data which right now isn't necessarily something people need, so you have to charge less to offer that service. No one is losing in this equation.
I'm suprised this was marked as a troll. Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions. The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
I hate to reply to a post twice, but just out of curiosity I tested my $5/month "T-Zones" connection on my PC. You can only use T-Zones through a proxy, so you're limmited to E-mail, HTTP and HTTPS. However, I was able to get 132 kbps down and 37 kbps upload speed. That's pretty good for a $5/month plan! Granted, it's kind of hack to use T-Zones like that, and it will probably be discontinued in the future. But even the $30/month internet plan is still about three times faster than a dialup connection (typically 45kbps).
WRONG! T-Mobile currently offers edge service on their entire network. Not only that, it's only $30/month plus (with phone plan) it includes hot-spots. I haven't bought this service yet, because I don't really need it, but it is available. It's also much less than similar carries charge.
I curious why the focus is always on the PCMCIA cards? Using your cellphone as a bluetooth modem I think is the way to go because it works on both desktops, pocket PC's, and laptops.
Hey who knows, the cost of transporting goods via semi-truck might get so expensive because of fuel that they have to switch back to trains. Sure, it will take an extra week or so to receive your shipment, but I'm guessing it must be more efficient. We shouldn't be so quick to abandon "old" technology just because it isn't convient for today.
My guess is that these networks will remain slower than the wired connections internet providers will offer. Sure, you can get 300kbps out of them, but if you pay $$/month, you can get 10Mbps. And I can't imagine the reliability being any better than cellphones are right now, so there will still be room for ISP's for some time.
Yeah, but BBC in the UK does the same thing to us in the U.S. Oh well :(
Anyone notice the screen shot has "http://www.fema.gov" in the addres bar? I wonder what message they are trying to convey...
I'll usually spend $200-$400 on a video card depending on what's available at the time. My theory is that if I'm going to spend $200 on a new card, I might as well get one for $300 and not worry about upgrading it sooner. Sure, I might only get another %20 performance boost for the cost, but another $100 isn't that big of a deal to me, so it's worth it.
Yeah, if you're not into gaming that much it's probably not worth it.
Would any self respecting slashdotter posting at midnight on a friday admit that they needed to be taught programming by a teacher? How much formal teaching did you need to learn the Apple II's built in language?
Well it's not so much that gifted kids need a teacher to tell them how to program. They need a teacher to encourage them, and that is what's missing. When I was in school teachers didn't mind me spending my time in the computer lab during lunch. And they thought it was really neat what I was doing. Now days I think they just care to put all the kids in a neat rows of seats and bore them to death with lectures.
I doubt it. 99% of the kids with those calculators only care about how to get "games" to run on them. Maybe the 1% already know how to program on computers anyway. And you're almost guaranteed that the teacher won't be giving a lesson on even how to make basic functions to save time in calculations.
And it's a shame because pretty much any science degree you are going to be doing some programming for data analysis (MATLAB, python, etc....).
Thinking back I remember programming the Apple II's in our computer lab during lunch in 6th grade instead of playing outside. The neat thing about those computers is you had a very simple easy to use programming environment built into the computer. I'm not sure what computers are like now in schools, but my guess is they are heavily locked down and only include office applications and a web browser. That's just too bad.
Vista doesn't have HD-DVD support unless you have a HDCP monitor. I'm not spending another $800 on the exact same monitor I own now just to get DRM support to play HD-DVD discs. What the hell were they thinking?
The maximum storage is only limited by the maximum size of the SD card you can buy. And actually, thanks to Apple driving the cost of all flash memory down, you'll probably see 4 and 8 GB flash memory cards within the next year for less than $100. Heck, you can already get 1GB cards for $30. I would certainly buy this phone if I could justify the price tag (ouch!).