Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.
The US government is the one preventing the networks from surcharging callers that want to call a cell phone. This move has prevented the lower end of the market from taking hold. The marketplace is anything but free.
Or, better yet, why not just phone the person you want to talk to and say "Call me back now" and hang up?
The person calling you back will have to pay an outrageous surcharge to reach you. That's the difference. In the US, carriers are not allowed to surcharge the people calling someone on a cell phone, so they charge the person receiving the phone call instead.
and it's 40 hours in north america, 44 tops, then it's overtime.
It's overtime unless you're exempt, and lots of people are exempt. But still 60 hours is a bit of an exageration. Only young professionals and small business owners might work this much.
You do know that the average work week in the United States is the highest in the world, even longer than the Japanese, don't you?
And since we're on the topic of breaking stupid stereotypes. I do hope that the original poster realizes that contrary to popular media belief; we as, Americans, have a much higher rate of suicides than our Japanese counterparts.
(I would like to buy one of those disposable ones just for that reason...
Don't hold your breath yet, the company that was promising us disposable phones for less than $30 was a complete scam. They were using the inwards of $200 Nokya phones for their so-called prototypes. Their management had no technical expertise whatsoever and they were already wanted for stealing million of dollars from investors who invested in their previous venture (an online casino).
It kind of makes me wonder how many other investment scams have received free publicity from Times magazine.
If you want to fault the land line systems of Europe as helping the cellphone markets, you'd better try the marketing.
I wouldn't blame marketing. I'd blame US laws. If our US government gave cell carriers and landline carriers as much freedom as it has given our credit card companies; I'm pretty sure that our phone market would start looking more like Europe's.
I won't repeat some of the good comments already made, so here are two additional reasons that might explain the cell usage difference between the US and the rest of the world.
In most European countries. You can get cell phones with special area codes that will charge the person more money for calling you. I don't know if this is the case in Japan, but in the US, this is simply not allowed and this policy has effectively barred the US from moving into the lower end of the market.
Houses in Japan are very hard to find. I am not kidding. Streets in Tokyo are adhoc. House numbers are not assigned according to geographical locations, they are assigned sequentially according to the time they were built. This reason alone was credited for the early ubiquitous adoption of the fax machine for giving out directions and I wouldn't be surprised if it also helped for the early adoption of the cell phone.
Two years ago, I was offered an health insurance package by a temp agency. I don't have the exact numbers on me, but I remember doing the calculations and the maximum reimbursement allowed during the year, minus the deductible, amounted to less than the total of my twelve monthly paiments. In other words, even if I had become very sick, I still would have been better off financially without my agency's insurance.
In the end, I suspect my agency was taking a hefty commision on my premiums, and I ended up finding a better deal on my own.
...speaking as a consumer who will never own a PDA and who doesn't buy gadgets generally, I think a picture-phone might actually be pretty handy on some occasions. For instance, if I had one of those when I witnessed a hit-and-run accident, that would have been nice. It could also serve as a good deterrent. Assuming the picture can be uploaded quickly, who would mug/kill a person that had just taken a picture of them?
ZIP drives faced this. They had greater capacity than floppy disks, but with CD's taking hold, they seemed like a waste to many people.
The ZIP drive is a superior technology tightly controled and solely distributed by one company. That's why it failed and that's why it will continue to fail.
Re:oh no... more global warming (...not...??)
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
Nope. Not really. Enviromental problems and the pollution that cuases them are more or less entirely the result of big buisness and thier blatant disregard for all that is good and decent. I'd like to see you try and be Right-wing AND be anti-corporate at the same time.
Spoken like a person who hasn't traveled much. Just visit a former communist country and take a look, will you? In the US, go find the nearest polluted wasteland, and take another good look. I'll bet that whatever kind of wasteland you'll find, it will public property. Granted there may have been a corporation doing the damage there, but a corporation will almost never destroy its own private property, they only destroy public property and they usually do that with the permission and the complicity of the government.
Re:oh no... more global warming (...not...??)
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
I agree, all those theories are not connected. I only brought this up because someone implied there was a connection between the theory of Evolution and the theory of Man-made Global Warming.
Interesting. You only wrote a rebuttal for my post, and you conveniently forgot to write a rebuttal for the more ridiculous original post.
The majority of their money comes from contributions and the "funded-by" bites.
I can't believe this troll got modded up. Here is the real story, right from the horse's mouth.
"NPR is funded primarily by a single source: fees paid to NPR by public radio stations (almost 700 of them) for the right to broadcast particular NPR programs. These program fees account for slightly more than 50 percent of the annual budget, which for 2000, was just over $100 million. This is the largest single source of money for NPR and it comes overwhelmingly from the stations and their listeners."
Jeffrey Dvorkin -- ombudsman@npr.org http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/011228.html
Just doesn't sound like something a hacker would say.
Just doesn't sound like something a programmer would say.
Re:oh no... more global warming (...not...??)
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
Now, Global Warming has never been proven. It is merely a theory. It sounds good, but so does the Theory of Evolution.
If anything, the theory of Man-made Global Warming is more like the Malthusian population theory. They're both doomsdays scenarios and they are both suppose to result from our sins.
I appreciate the need for information to be turned over to government agencies as part of criminal investigations. However, I am troubled by the proposed new powers because they will not require a court order. Combined with the sheer number of people employed by the government and local authorities, the potential for abuse of the system is worrying.
(if I was a British citizen, this is what I'd write)
When Tanya Hardings* checked in to a clinic for a sprained wrist, there were 360 computer requests for her medical records.
Mr.MP, the last time you were in an hospital, out of all the employees who recognized you, how many employees took a peek at your private medical records?
If this RIPA amendment were to pass? How many people would have access to your email archives and web logs? How would you feel if any bureaucrat without a warrant could simply do a keyword search on all the emails you'd ever written? And how would you feel if they could also search your wife's emails and study your children's web browsing habits?
Stephan
Note. *If anybody needs the source on the Tanya Hardings story, I saw a reference to it in the Consumer Reports, one or two years ago, here in the United States. The same article also cited abuses made by IRS employees to track down their ex-wives.
Problem was nobody would were the badges after they got through the front door because they didn't want to be tracked. Duh.
Why is this a problem? There are sensible uses for being tracked, but being tracked for no reason by your employer is obviously not one of those.
Please make the device, but let the people, wearing it, assign permissions to the people who have the ability to track them. The permission system would be like an instant messanger's radar and it could only work if people could disappear from the radar whenever they wanted and if they could withhold the permission to be tracked from whomever they wanted.
Slashdot Mirror
The US government is the one preventing the networks from surcharging callers that want to call a cell phone. This move has prevented the lower end of the market from taking hold. The marketplace is anything but free.
The person calling you back will have to pay an outrageous surcharge to reach you. That's the difference. In the US, carriers are not allowed to surcharge the people calling someone on a cell phone, so they charge the person receiving the phone call instead.
It's overtime unless you're exempt, and lots of people are exempt. But still 60 hours is a bit of an exageration. Only young professionals and small business owners might work this much.
Please specify the duration of your paid maternal/paternal vacation. Here in the US, it's four weeks for the mother, although I am not sure it's paid.
And since we're on the topic of breaking stupid stereotypes. I do hope that the original poster realizes that contrary to popular media belief; we as, Americans, have a much higher rate of suicides than our Japanese counterparts.
Don't hold your breath yet, the company that was promising us disposable phones for less than $30 was a complete scam. They were using the inwards of $200 Nokya phones for their so-called prototypes. Their management had no technical expertise whatsoever and they were already wanted for stealing million of dollars from investors who invested in their previous venture (an online casino).
It kind of makes me wonder how many other investment scams have received free publicity from Times magazine.
I wouldn't blame marketing. I'd blame US laws. If our US government gave cell carriers and landline carriers as much freedom as it has given our credit card companies; I'm pretty sure that our phone market would start looking more like Europe's.
I can't wait for the Russians to go to the moon.
In most European countries. You can get cell phones with special area codes that will charge the person more money for calling you. I don't know if this is the case in Japan, but in the US, this is simply not allowed and this policy has effectively barred the US from moving into the lower end of the market.
Houses in Japan are very hard to find. I am not kidding. Streets in Tokyo are adhoc. House numbers are not assigned according to geographical locations, they are assigned sequentially according to the time they were built. This reason alone was credited for the early ubiquitous adoption of the fax machine for giving out directions and I wouldn't be surprised if it also helped for the early adoption of the cell phone.
Stephan
Somehow, I don't think so.
AskJeeves (Teoma) sucks.
I'm sorry, but changing one's company name is not going to make a service any better.
In the end, I suspect my agency was taking a hefty commision on my premiums, and I ended up finding a better deal on my own.
...speaking as a consumer who will never own a PDA and who doesn't buy gadgets generally, I think a picture-phone might actually be pretty handy on some occasions. For instance, if I had one of those when I witnessed a hit-and-run accident, that would have been nice. It could also serve as a good deterrent. Assuming the picture can be uploaded quickly, who would mug/kill a person that had just taken a picture of them?
The ZIP drive is a superior technology tightly controled and solely distributed by one company. That's why it failed and that's why it will continue to fail.
Spoken like a person who hasn't traveled much. Just visit a former communist country and take a look, will you? In the US, go find the nearest polluted wasteland, and take another good look. I'll bet that whatever kind of wasteland you'll find, it will public property. Granted there may have been a corporation doing the damage there, but a corporation will almost never destroy its own private property, they only destroy public property and they usually do that with the permission and the complicity of the government.
Interesting. You only wrote a rebuttal for my post, and you conveniently forgot to write a rebuttal for the more ridiculous original post.
I can't believe this troll got modded up. Here is the real story, right from the horse's mouth.
"NPR is funded primarily by a single source: fees paid to NPR by public radio stations (almost 700 of them) for the right to broadcast particular NPR programs. These program fees account for slightly more than 50 percent of the annual budget, which for 2000, was just over $100 million. This is the largest single source of money for NPR and it comes overwhelmingly from the stations and their listeners."
Jeffrey Dvorkin -- ombudsman@npr.org
http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/011228.html
Just doesn't sound like something a programmer would say.
If anything, the theory of Man-made Global Warming is more like the Malthusian population theory. They're both doomsdays scenarios and they are both suppose to result from our sins.
Loading the gun...
CORRECTION: http://www.eclipse.ORG/
(continued..)
Celebrities and politicians have the most to lose here. If we focus on their needs and their fears, we'll be halfway there.
(if I was a British citizen, this is what I'd write)
When Tanya Hardings* checked in to a clinic for a sprained wrist, there were 360 computer requests for her medical records.
Mr.MP, the last time you were in an hospital, out of all the employees who recognized you, how many employees took a peek at your private medical records?
If this RIPA amendment were to pass? How many people would have access to your email archives and web logs? How would you feel if any bureaucrat without a warrant could simply do a keyword search on all the emails you'd ever written? And how would you feel if they could also search your wife's emails and study your children's web browsing habits?
Stephan
Note. *If anybody needs the source on the Tanya Hardings story, I saw a reference to it in the Consumer Reports, one or two years ago, here in the United States. The same article also cited abuses made by IRS employees to track down their ex-wives.
Actually, I just read the UCSD article and found out this is exactly what they had in mind.
Why is this a problem? There are sensible uses for being tracked, but being tracked for no reason by your employer is obviously not one of those.
Please make the device, but let the people, wearing it, assign permissions to the people who have the ability to track them. The permission system would be like an instant messanger's radar and it could only work if people could disappear from the radar whenever they wanted and if they could withhold the permission to be tracked from whomever they wanted.