It really depends on how you use it. If you use it to make occassional phone calls, and to check your email once in a while, then you'll easily get a full day or more out of the battery.
If you sit down and use it like a laptop, browing the web, playing games, etc - well, then it will be dead in two hours.
I had a lot of trouble with mine when it was new - but that was because I'd just tinker with it all day on a weekend. Once I settled down to real life use I haven't had any problems with it.
Sure, I'd like more battery life. It is still weaker than I'd like it to be. However, it isn't a reason not to get the phone.
I post from my Android G1 you insensitive clod. My Android G1 that I'd like to develop for but its 'developer hostile' because I have to buy an expensive PC to do it.:)
Uh, you do realize that you can install Debian on it, and install the SDK on Debian, and consequently do all the development you'd like right from your phone, right?:)
If you have an ADP you could even develop a new kernel on the phone and flash it without needing another computer. If you have a G1 you'd probably need a computer to help you get root on it (or at least an SD card formatted to FAT32). Granted, if your firmware update doesn't boot you're going to need a computer to reflash it using fastboot or to fix your update.zip file.
Sure, it isn't COMPLETELY perfect, but I'm not aware of any other phone-like device that comes close to this level of flexibility.
True. I'm stuck on EDGE as well (but I'm only a few miles from 3G land so I'm hoping that will change soon enough).
In any case, they certainly aren't exclusive to T-mobile by design. T-mobile is just the only company who has picked them up so far. Sprint is apparently working on an android-based phone (granted Sprint isn't really any better than T-mobile). I think the other companies just don't quite know how to handle a phone that isn't 100% locked into selling add-on services.
The open platform will have an impact soon enough. I can't see how companies will avoid it - a real opportunity for application standardization across providers and hardware. No royalties and politics to use the OS.
when it's not universal, the rich tend to get better care than the poor
Uh - the rich ALWAYS get better care than the poor. Everywhere.
Now, rich might not be measured in dollars everywhere. However, do you think the PM of a socialist nation gets the same care as the average guy on the street? I'm talking reality - not what is on the law books. It might be "free" for both, but it certainly isn't egalitarian.
If you have the right wealth, fame, or connections you're going to get better care than somebody who has none of those things. Period. That's just human nature for you. Legislating against that is just spending money to prevent the inevitable - at most it just makes the elite more elite as fewer people can afford to join them.
Uh, I'm not aware of any 20-year-old drugs in the US that are particularly expensive (sure, they do cost money to make, but they're sold at near-cost).
The only drugs that are expensive are ones under patent. A patent usually only lasts about 10 years after a drug is on the market (17 years from first discovery).
Even if a wonder drug costs a fortune when it comes out it will be 10 cents/pill in a decade. That's the whole model - companies make money for a few years when a drug first comes out, and then it is a commodity for the masses.
Should we re-introduce smallpox since it is clearly endangered?:)
I'm all for conservation. However, there has to be a better solution than people chasing crocodiles around town. I'd release them 100 miles away or something - how quickly could they possibly migrate? If a particular tagged croc is that tenacious go ahead and turn it into luggage, or sell it to somebody interested in starting a league for croc marathons.
Honestly, I thought T-mobile was a plus. They seem to be a little less prone to some of the anti-consumer schemes common among providers. They'll even unlock your phone after 90 days if your account remains in good standing. The G1 data plan cost was about what I otherwise saved switching over all my lines from Verizon. They also don't try to hit you with per-MB fees if you go over some cap and you don't need some expensive plan to do this.
When I think about a GATTACA like world in which gene manipulation is the norm it really makes you think how we treat people today for winning or losing the genetic lottery.
Those who are beautiful are more likely to land a successful spouse. Those who are smart are likely to dominate in business. Those who are strong might be paid to be cannon fodder or maybe they can make a career in the NFL.
Those who are none of the above basically just spend 60 years existing from paycheck to paycheck - the dregs of society as it were. In the world of genetic manipulation this could be the fate of most people who are not enhanced in some way. In the world of advanced artificial intelligence it might be the fate of most of mankind.
I'm a bit torn - it doesn't seem appropriate to me to ban people from having non-enhanced children. However, at some point society is going to resent paying to "drag along" people who just can't be competitive on their own. Perhaps one day if machines surpass humans they'll feel the same way.
In any case, those who are more and less genetically fortunate are already all around us. This isn't some hypothetical ethical question about a society of tomorrow. How do we treat those who have nothing to offer us (or just about anybody else) today?
Paying a fee to not be charged for a service that a consumer doesn't even want seems like a ripoff to me. This isn't even just about "parental control" of a child - it is about control over the account itself. If I'm not interested in anything that would give me a bill more than $20 over the typical monthly rate I should be able to state this to the phone company and they should respect my wishes.
The whole cell phone system seems to be designed to get you to accidentally spend more than you planned. That just isn't acceptable. Sure, advertise ringtones out the wazoo and try to get me to buy them - but don't sucker me into paying for something I didn't even realize I'm ordering.
Doesn't surprise me with something like that which is truly mission critical and the cost of failure is measured in first-world-national-economy units.
I've gotten requests to tweak fairly important software systems (indirect impact to human life), and found myself wading through reams of requirements and design documentation. Often these documents tell you what the system needs to do, but not why it needs to do it that way. When somebody wants to change some field in the system you need to figure out everything that writes to or reads from that field and how it is impacted. Then you need to look at every manual process that relies on the data in that field and the impact there as well (and unless you do work in the Military how well do you think those are documented?).
Otherwise you get some request from the Shuttle Navigation group to tweak some setting and they've done all the work to ensure it won't adversely impact navigation. However, they miss the fact that the life support telemetry system with a dedicated transmitter uses some navigation parameter to orient its antenna. Or, perhaps they don't relaize that some hack in the calculations was implemented because back in the 60s some group discovered that outgassing from paint will impact your navigation if you don't, and this institutional knowledge has been lost.
When a system REALLY needs to be bug-free the cost can be absolutely enormous. It can be done, but it can't be done cheap. Usually, it isn't worth trying to be truly bug-free.
Yup. It certainly wasn't brilliant military strategy or tactics that won American independence.
The Americans basically fought well enough to make the war very painful to the British. While they won almost every battle they couldn't really afford the losses - especially since imperialism was just starting to drop in popularity back home.
In the end it was the French who really won the war for the US by overcoming the British control of the sea. Up until that point the British could land forces any place desired and pick them up if for some reason they ran into trouble. When Cornwalis got caught in Yorktown without access to the navy the war was won.
This seems to be the norm for wars of independence. Usually the will of the rebellious province to be free is greater than the will of the controlling state to stifle all resistance. After enough bloodshed the empire will release its territory.
The funny thing is that you don't even need both stages. Once you vaccinate the 95% of the population than can accept the vaccine without health risks the other 5% benefit from herd immunity.
That's why I'm in favor of fixing up the smallpox vaccine and doing mass vaccinations if the risk of a terrorist attack is considered serious. That vaccine has all kinds of safety problems - it could cause major harm if you just roll it out universally.
Instead you just vaccinate the 90% of the population that can tolerate it. You do this in a very orderly manner with the primary doctor of each person involved. You don't hit every person in a city in a week - you spread it out. Then the few people with complications can go to the hospital and be cared for. The people who can't tolerate it can benefit from herd immunity and not risk the side effects, and in an actual terrorist attack they can stay indoors and let their vaccinated neighbors/friends/family care for them for a week or two until the risk is past.
The alternative is that FEMA stockpiles a boatload of doses. Then when an attack occurs it is a mad rush to distribute them where needed. Everybody just lines up while a guy with an autoinjector runs down the line jabbing people. Some people get missed. Some people get AIDS/hepatitis/whatever from bad procedures. Others get the shot when they shouldn't be dosed at all and get all kinds of complications. People with complications report to the hospital which is now dealing with a smallpox pandemic as well as vaccine side-effects and nobody gets adequate care.
Vaccines are the one form of health care that just about every expert agrees gives the biggest bang for the buck in terms of disease prevention. I'm amazed at some of the roadblocks that get tossed up against its proper use.
Point of view is contentious, after all, our point of view should take into account the knowledge of the time taken for the photons to reach us.
From whose point of view?:)
The photons? They didn't sense time pass at all the whole time.
The center of the Crab Nebula? That is either a neutron star or a black hole (too lazy to look it up). That means that either fairly little time has passed, or no time has passed.
The beauty of relativity is that it is convenient to say that an event happens once you see that it happens. Sure, you have to be smart enough to realize that not everybody else sees it that way, but what's the point in arguing over frames of references? I'm the only one with a privileged one...:)
Uh, relative to any frame of reference nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum. I could see some kind of refraction slowing the light down, but relativistic effects do not slow down light relative to any frame of reference - only matter.
Now, it is entirely possible that from the frame of reference of the cosmic ray particles that travelled from the Crab Nebula to here that the trip took less time than would be predicted by a speed-of-light limit. However, at no point would such a particle observe light rays being passed or anything like that. From their frame of reference light is still flying past them at c.
Also - gamma rays are composed entirely of photons. You're probably thinking of cosmic rays, which are often particulate.
Yup - nothing I just wrote makes sense. That's relativity for you... I can make the trip from here to Andromeda in 15 minutes, and never exceed the speed of light by anybody's measure at any point along the way. If I made it a round trip I'd see it as taking 30 minutes and if mankind is still around it would be millions of years later when I arrive. From your own point of view you can travel arbitrarily fast (though light still will seem like it is whizzing by you), but an outside observer would just see you getting closer and closer to c.
It just isn't possible for a piece of matter to overtake a photon in free space. The best you can do is refraction, and that is because the photons are interacting with matter which slows them down. If for some reason cosmic rays showed up before photons then it has something to do with the interstellar medium or some cloud of matter encountered along the way. It could not be a relativistic effect.
Yup - I had a similar problem with a child running up an SMS bill by not realizing that a friend they were sending messages to wasn't covered by their unlimited plan.
My issue is that the first notice I'd gotten of the problem was 1.5 months after the problem started - when almost two months of excessive charges had been rung up. The Verizon CSR of course wasn't willing to do anything about it (even though this wasn't even a roaming issue - it was all on their network). For what those charges cost me we could have paid for a year of an unlimited plan.
I'm fine with paying for services that are used. The problem is that the services are designed to trap people into paying more than they planned. You have x # of free minutes/messages/whatever, and then suddenly your charges shoot way up, and there is no way to set a limit so that you don't go over the cliff. Data plans are sold and there is no way to put limits on spending. It is often impossible to get realtime data on consumption of service.
Even "courtesy" SMS messages like the ones mentioned in this article seem to be designed more to cover the provider and force you to pay the bill than to help you to control your spending.
A cell phone plan isn't some kind of game. Let me decide what I want and what I don't want. Charge me for what I want, and don't charge me for what I don't want. I'm fine with having a call dropped when I pass the 700 minute mark or whatever (as long as it isn't 911 - which is just common sense and is easy to implement). If these kinds of features were available I'm sure that 99.999% of consumers would take advantage of them. They should really be the default. Any service that a consumer wants should be explicitly sold to them, with a hard limit. The consumer should be told exactly what the plan will cost them at minimum and at maximum before they sign on the line.
Yup. I'm sure that if I were to use a non-activated cell phone to make a call they would be smart enough to realize it.
If they can figure out whether or not the phone belongs to somebody they can bill, then they can figure out how much they should be allowed to bill me.
This is all just a big scam to extract revenue.
Can somebody really seriously tell me that this data transmission really cost somebody $30k to process?
Yeah, but what will they do when it turns out that a map of CO2 emissions has almost no correlation with the level of industry in an area? My concern is that all this effort is going into regulating industry, when in reality they may just be a small part of the problem.
It might be more effective to tighten zoning laws around new volcano construction.:)
In any case, for all the money global warming is going to cost the economy one way or another (regardless of who is right - either lost coastlines or hampering of industrial expansion), spending a little money on some satellites to better define the problem seems like a good investment. A little more data never hurt anyone...
This is ATT's fault. Pure and simple. Unless somebody puts it in writing that they want to be able to spend $30k in international roaming, then they shouldn't be able to charge it. That is an amazingly outrageous sum. And then bargaining it down to $6000 is even worse - at least the initial $30k bill was automated, but the $6000 bill was deliberately offered by a human being.
It seems like the cell phone company MO is to trick their consumer into amazingly high bills, and then offering them ten cents on a dollar, accepting only a 5,000% markup instead of a 50,000% markup.
By law consumers should have the right to limit their monthly bills. If a provider delivers more service than a consumer budgeted for then the bill is on them.
Agreed. As a matter of law consumers should be able to set limits on any services they contract.
My cell phone provider offers an allowance "service" for a few bucks a month. It is crazy that you should have to pay to limit your exposure.
Consumers should be asked what their maximum monthly bill should be when they sign up for service, and they should be able to change this at any time by calling the provider. Any fee in excess of this amount would not be collectable, and it couldn't be applied to subsequent months. The phone company should give you a warning and then drop service when you hit your limit. Calls to emergency numbers like 911 would be exempt (most providers already provide free 911 access even if a phone doesn't otherwise have a plan at all).
Companies that fail to comply should be fined out the wazoo and injunctions should be placed on credit reporting agencies to withold any negative reports from the provider. There is just no excuse for billing people $30k, $300, or even $3 for a service a consumer did not ask for.
Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't manage to discover this when I was messing around with it (granted, this was also a while ago). I'd certainly prefer a GPL solution - I'll have to check this out again some day.
Are you suggesting that a newspaper that charges money tends to cater to people who tend to vote Republican, and a newspaper that doesn't charge money tends to cater to people who tend to vote Democrat?
Stop the presses!:)
The next thing you'll be telling me is that the Wall Street Journal is a conservative paper and that just proves they don't know anything about money...
Clearly all three of those papers were tools of the establishment, however. None of them endorsed my cousin Fred for President, and EVERYBODY knows he was the best candidate. My neighborhood voted for him, after all! At least, my neighbors all say they voted for him when I ask them.
Yup. I run vmware-server on my linux box (free for personal use). It is the only free solution around that:
1. Doesn't require anything more than a 386 on the host (ie works on 2+year old CPUs). 2. Doesn't require anything special in the guests to make them run (at least minimally). 3. Doesn't need to be attached to a console of some kind to run (ie runs detached in the background).
I'm not aware of any other solutions that meet these criteria. I messed around with VirtualBox, which works fine except that it runs in a window and you can't run it NOT in a window and attach/detach from the console at will. You can run vmware-server on a system that doesn't even have X11 installed...
The same issues apply to the advertising world. In fact - they apply to a greater degree because of brand association issues (who wants to run their ads during a grim holocaust documentary, even though people might pay to see one).
The quest for eyeballs drives sensational news. Micropayments wouldn't change that. And people like you and me would still pay to read well-written news. Look at how many people donate to their local PBS station (if you're in the states).
That is just one idea. There are other options too. However, content simply can't be completely free - not all of it. Sure, people might dial in traffic reports for free, or you could glean that from networked GPS units. However, nobody is going to do an in-depth investigation of some government scandal for a blog. There are isolated cases where it has happened, but they're more the exception than the rule and there are limits to just how much digging they can do.
They really need some kind of working micropayment system. If they could just charge a penny to read an article (with a free abstract) they could make some revenue. That might not work for local news.
People who think that content will just exist without any payment at all are deluded. It seems to work for open source software, but that's about it - and that doesn't require realtime dedication of any kind to keep going (it can evolve at its own pace - unlike the news).
There has to be a happy medium somewhere between $25 CDs and The Pirate Bay...
Slashdot Mirror
It really depends on how you use it. If you use it to make occassional phone calls, and to check your email once in a while, then you'll easily get a full day or more out of the battery.
If you sit down and use it like a laptop, browing the web, playing games, etc - well, then it will be dead in two hours.
I had a lot of trouble with mine when it was new - but that was because I'd just tinker with it all day on a weekend. Once I settled down to real life use I haven't had any problems with it.
Sure, I'd like more battery life. It is still weaker than I'd like it to be. However, it isn't a reason not to get the phone.
I post from my Android G1 you insensitive clod. My Android G1 that I'd like to develop for but its 'developer hostile' because I have to buy an expensive PC to do it. :)
Uh, you do realize that you can install Debian on it, and install the SDK on Debian, and consequently do all the development you'd like right from your phone, right? :)
If you have an ADP you could even develop a new kernel on the phone and flash it without needing another computer. If you have a G1 you'd probably need a computer to help you get root on it (or at least an SD card formatted to FAT32). Granted, if your firmware update doesn't boot you're going to need a computer to reflash it using fastboot or to fix your update.zip file.
Sure, it isn't COMPLETELY perfect, but I'm not aware of any other phone-like device that comes close to this level of flexibility.
True. I'm stuck on EDGE as well (but I'm only a few miles from 3G land so I'm hoping that will change soon enough).
In any case, they certainly aren't exclusive to T-mobile by design. T-mobile is just the only company who has picked them up so far. Sprint is apparently working on an android-based phone (granted Sprint isn't really any better than T-mobile). I think the other companies just don't quite know how to handle a phone that isn't 100% locked into selling add-on services.
The open platform will have an impact soon enough. I can't see how companies will avoid it - a real opportunity for application standardization across providers and hardware. No royalties and politics to use the OS.
when it's not universal, the rich tend to get better care than the poor
Uh - the rich ALWAYS get better care than the poor. Everywhere.
Now, rich might not be measured in dollars everywhere. However, do you think the PM of a socialist nation gets the same care as the average guy on the street? I'm talking reality - not what is on the law books. It might be "free" for both, but it certainly isn't egalitarian.
If you have the right wealth, fame, or connections you're going to get better care than somebody who has none of those things. Period. That's just human nature for you. Legislating against that is just spending money to prevent the inevitable - at most it just makes the elite more elite as fewer people can afford to join them.
Uh, I'm not aware of any 20-year-old drugs in the US that are particularly expensive (sure, they do cost money to make, but they're sold at near-cost).
The only drugs that are expensive are ones under patent. A patent usually only lasts about 10 years after a drug is on the market (17 years from first discovery).
Even if a wonder drug costs a fortune when it comes out it will be 10 cents/pill in a decade. That's the whole model - companies make money for a few years when a drug first comes out, and then it is a commodity for the masses.
Should we re-introduce smallpox since it is clearly endangered? :)
I'm all for conservation. However, there has to be a better solution than people chasing crocodiles around town. I'd release them 100 miles away or something - how quickly could they possibly migrate? If a particular tagged croc is that tenacious go ahead and turn it into luggage, or sell it to somebody interested in starting a league for croc marathons.
Honestly, I thought T-mobile was a plus. They seem to be a little less prone to some of the anti-consumer schemes common among providers. They'll even unlock your phone after 90 days if your account remains in good standing. The G1 data plan cost was about what I otherwise saved switching over all my lines from Verizon. They also don't try to hit you with per-MB fees if you go over some cap and you don't need some expensive plan to do this.
When I think about a GATTACA like world in which gene manipulation is the norm it really makes you think how we treat people today for winning or losing the genetic lottery.
Those who are beautiful are more likely to land a successful spouse. Those who are smart are likely to dominate in business. Those who are strong might be paid to be cannon fodder or maybe they can make a career in the NFL.
Those who are none of the above basically just spend 60 years existing from paycheck to paycheck - the dregs of society as it were. In the world of genetic manipulation this could be the fate of most people who are not enhanced in some way. In the world of advanced artificial intelligence it might be the fate of most of mankind.
I'm a bit torn - it doesn't seem appropriate to me to ban people from having non-enhanced children. However, at some point society is going to resent paying to "drag along" people who just can't be competitive on their own. Perhaps one day if machines surpass humans they'll feel the same way.
In any case, those who are more and less genetically fortunate are already all around us. This isn't some hypothetical ethical question about a society of tomorrow. How do we treat those who have nothing to offer us (or just about anybody else) today?
Paying a fee to not be charged for a service that a consumer doesn't even want seems like a ripoff to me. This isn't even just about "parental control" of a child - it is about control over the account itself. If I'm not interested in anything that would give me a bill more than $20 over the typical monthly rate I should be able to state this to the phone company and they should respect my wishes.
The whole cell phone system seems to be designed to get you to accidentally spend more than you planned. That just isn't acceptable. Sure, advertise ringtones out the wazoo and try to get me to buy them - but don't sucker me into paying for something I didn't even realize I'm ordering.
Doesn't surprise me with something like that which is truly mission critical and the cost of failure is measured in first-world-national-economy units.
I've gotten requests to tweak fairly important software systems (indirect impact to human life), and found myself wading through reams of requirements and design documentation. Often these documents tell you what the system needs to do, but not why it needs to do it that way. When somebody wants to change some field in the system you need to figure out everything that writes to or reads from that field and how it is impacted. Then you need to look at every manual process that relies on the data in that field and the impact there as well (and unless you do work in the Military how well do you think those are documented?).
Otherwise you get some request from the Shuttle Navigation group to tweak some setting and they've done all the work to ensure it won't adversely impact navigation. However, they miss the fact that the life support telemetry system with a dedicated transmitter uses some navigation parameter to orient its antenna. Or, perhaps they don't relaize that some hack in the calculations was implemented because back in the 60s some group discovered that outgassing from paint will impact your navigation if you don't, and this institutional knowledge has been lost.
When a system REALLY needs to be bug-free the cost can be absolutely enormous. It can be done, but it can't be done cheap. Usually, it isn't worth trying to be truly bug-free.
Yup. It certainly wasn't brilliant military strategy or tactics that won American independence.
The Americans basically fought well enough to make the war very painful to the British. While they won almost every battle they couldn't really afford the losses - especially since imperialism was just starting to drop in popularity back home.
In the end it was the French who really won the war for the US by overcoming the British control of the sea. Up until that point the British could land forces any place desired and pick them up if for some reason they ran into trouble. When Cornwalis got caught in Yorktown without access to the navy the war was won.
This seems to be the norm for wars of independence. Usually the will of the rebellious province to be free is greater than the will of the controlling state to stifle all resistance. After enough bloodshed the empire will release its territory.
The funny thing is that you don't even need both stages. Once you vaccinate the 95% of the population than can accept the vaccine without health risks the other 5% benefit from herd immunity.
That's why I'm in favor of fixing up the smallpox vaccine and doing mass vaccinations if the risk of a terrorist attack is considered serious. That vaccine has all kinds of safety problems - it could cause major harm if you just roll it out universally.
Instead you just vaccinate the 90% of the population that can tolerate it. You do this in a very orderly manner with the primary doctor of each person involved. You don't hit every person in a city in a week - you spread it out. Then the few people with complications can go to the hospital and be cared for. The people who can't tolerate it can benefit from herd immunity and not risk the side effects, and in an actual terrorist attack they can stay indoors and let their vaccinated neighbors/friends/family care for them for a week or two until the risk is past.
The alternative is that FEMA stockpiles a boatload of doses. Then when an attack occurs it is a mad rush to distribute them where needed. Everybody just lines up while a guy with an autoinjector runs down the line jabbing people. Some people get missed. Some people get AIDS/hepatitis/whatever from bad procedures. Others get the shot when they shouldn't be dosed at all and get all kinds of complications. People with complications report to the hospital which is now dealing with a smallpox pandemic as well as vaccine side-effects and nobody gets adequate care.
Vaccines are the one form of health care that just about every expert agrees gives the biggest bang for the buck in terms of disease prevention. I'm amazed at some of the roadblocks that get tossed up against its proper use.
Point of view is contentious, after all, our point of view should take into account the knowledge of the time taken for the photons to reach us.
From whose point of view? :)
The photons? They didn't sense time pass at all the whole time.
The center of the Crab Nebula? That is either a neutron star or a black hole (too lazy to look it up). That means that either fairly little time has passed, or no time has passed.
The beauty of relativity is that it is convenient to say that an event happens once you see that it happens. Sure, you have to be smart enough to realize that not everybody else sees it that way, but what's the point in arguing over frames of references? I'm the only one with a privileged one... :)
Uh, relative to any frame of reference nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum. I could see some kind of refraction slowing the light down, but relativistic effects do not slow down light relative to any frame of reference - only matter.
Now, it is entirely possible that from the frame of reference of the cosmic ray particles that travelled from the Crab Nebula to here that the trip took less time than would be predicted by a speed-of-light limit. However, at no point would such a particle observe light rays being passed or anything like that. From their frame of reference light is still flying past them at c.
Also - gamma rays are composed entirely of photons. You're probably thinking of cosmic rays, which are often particulate.
Yup - nothing I just wrote makes sense. That's relativity for you... I can make the trip from here to Andromeda in 15 minutes, and never exceed the speed of light by anybody's measure at any point along the way. If I made it a round trip I'd see it as taking 30 minutes and if mankind is still around it would be millions of years later when I arrive. From your own point of view you can travel arbitrarily fast (though light still will seem like it is whizzing by you), but an outside observer would just see you getting closer and closer to c.
It just isn't possible for a piece of matter to overtake a photon in free space. The best you can do is refraction, and that is because the photons are interacting with matter which slows them down. If for some reason cosmic rays showed up before photons then it has something to do with the interstellar medium or some cloud of matter encountered along the way. It could not be a relativistic effect.
Yup - I had a similar problem with a child running up an SMS bill by not realizing that a friend they were sending messages to wasn't covered by their unlimited plan.
My issue is that the first notice I'd gotten of the problem was 1.5 months after the problem started - when almost two months of excessive charges had been rung up. The Verizon CSR of course wasn't willing to do anything about it (even though this wasn't even a roaming issue - it was all on their network). For what those charges cost me we could have paid for a year of an unlimited plan.
I'm fine with paying for services that are used. The problem is that the services are designed to trap people into paying more than they planned. You have x # of free minutes/messages/whatever, and then suddenly your charges shoot way up, and there is no way to set a limit so that you don't go over the cliff. Data plans are sold and there is no way to put limits on spending. It is often impossible to get realtime data on consumption of service.
Even "courtesy" SMS messages like the ones mentioned in this article seem to be designed more to cover the provider and force you to pay the bill than to help you to control your spending.
A cell phone plan isn't some kind of game. Let me decide what I want and what I don't want. Charge me for what I want, and don't charge me for what I don't want. I'm fine with having a call dropped when I pass the 700 minute mark or whatever (as long as it isn't 911 - which is just common sense and is easy to implement). If these kinds of features were available I'm sure that 99.999% of consumers would take advantage of them. They should really be the default. Any service that a consumer wants should be explicitly sold to them, with a hard limit. The consumer should be told exactly what the plan will cost them at minimum and at maximum before they sign on the line.
Kind of like the poor sucker who registered the license plate "NONE" and got a bill for a million dollars in unpaid parking fines mailed to him.
Yup. I'm sure that if I were to use a non-activated cell phone to make a call they would be smart enough to realize it.
If they can figure out whether or not the phone belongs to somebody they can bill, then they can figure out how much they should be allowed to bill me.
This is all just a big scam to extract revenue.
Can somebody really seriously tell me that this data transmission really cost somebody $30k to process?
Yeah, but what will they do when it turns out that a map of CO2 emissions has almost no correlation with the level of industry in an area? My concern is that all this effort is going into regulating industry, when in reality they may just be a small part of the problem.
It might be more effective to tighten zoning laws around new volcano construction. :)
In any case, for all the money global warming is going to cost the economy one way or another (regardless of who is right - either lost coastlines or hampering of industrial expansion), spending a little money on some satellites to better define the problem seems like a good investment. A little more data never hurt anyone...
This is ATT's fault. Pure and simple. Unless somebody puts it in writing that they want to be able to spend $30k in international roaming, then they shouldn't be able to charge it. That is an amazingly outrageous sum. And then bargaining it down to $6000 is even worse - at least the initial $30k bill was automated, but the $6000 bill was deliberately offered by a human being.
It seems like the cell phone company MO is to trick their consumer into amazingly high bills, and then offering them ten cents on a dollar, accepting only a 5,000% markup instead of a 50,000% markup.
By law consumers should have the right to limit their monthly bills. If a provider delivers more service than a consumer budgeted for then the bill is on them.
Agreed. As a matter of law consumers should be able to set limits on any services they contract.
My cell phone provider offers an allowance "service" for a few bucks a month. It is crazy that you should have to pay to limit your exposure.
Consumers should be asked what their maximum monthly bill should be when they sign up for service, and they should be able to change this at any time by calling the provider. Any fee in excess of this amount would not be collectable, and it couldn't be applied to subsequent months. The phone company should give you a warning and then drop service when you hit your limit. Calls to emergency numbers like 911 would be exempt (most providers already provide free 911 access even if a phone doesn't otherwise have a plan at all).
Companies that fail to comply should be fined out the wazoo and injunctions should be placed on credit reporting agencies to withold any negative reports from the provider. There is just no excuse for billing people $30k, $300, or even $3 for a service a consumer did not ask for.
Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't manage to discover this when I was messing around with it (granted, this was also a while ago). I'd certainly prefer a GPL solution - I'll have to check this out again some day.
Are you suggesting that a newspaper that charges money tends to cater to people who tend to vote Republican, and a newspaper that doesn't charge money tends to cater to people who tend to vote Democrat?
Stop the presses! :)
The next thing you'll be telling me is that the Wall Street Journal is a conservative paper and that just proves they don't know anything about money...
Clearly all three of those papers were tools of the establishment, however. None of them endorsed my cousin Fred for President, and EVERYBODY knows he was the best candidate. My neighborhood voted for him, after all! At least, my neighbors all say they voted for him when I ask them.
Yup. I run vmware-server on my linux box (free for personal use). It is the only free solution around that:
1. Doesn't require anything more than a 386 on the host (ie works on 2+year old CPUs).
2. Doesn't require anything special in the guests to make them run (at least minimally).
3. Doesn't need to be attached to a console of some kind to run (ie runs detached in the background).
I'm not aware of any other solutions that meet these criteria. I messed around with VirtualBox, which works fine except that it runs in a window and you can't run it NOT in a window and attach/detach from the console at will. You can run vmware-server on a system that doesn't even have X11 installed...
The same issues apply to the advertising world. In fact - they apply to a greater degree because of brand association issues (who wants to run their ads during a grim holocaust documentary, even though people might pay to see one).
The quest for eyeballs drives sensational news. Micropayments wouldn't change that. And people like you and me would still pay to read well-written news. Look at how many people donate to their local PBS station (if you're in the states).
That is just one idea. There are other options too. However, content simply can't be completely free - not all of it. Sure, people might dial in traffic reports for free, or you could glean that from networked GPS units. However, nobody is going to do an in-depth investigation of some government scandal for a blog. There are isolated cases where it has happened, but they're more the exception than the rule and there are limits to just how much digging they can do.
They really need some kind of working micropayment system. If they could just charge a penny to read an article (with a free abstract) they could make some revenue. That might not work for local news.
People who think that content will just exist without any payment at all are deluded. It seems to work for open source software, but that's about it - and that doesn't require realtime dedication of any kind to keep going (it can evolve at its own pace - unlike the news).
There has to be a happy medium somewhere between $25 CDs and The Pirate Bay...