I think you've got it backwards. AT&T sold the wireless division 2 years ago. Then, SBC (co-owners of Cingular) bought AT&T last year. Finally, the new AT&T bought Bell South this year. So, AT&T and it's wireless division are re-married.
AT&T (read, the old SBC) has publicly announced that it is considering changing the Cingular name back to AT&T wireless as they believe more in the power of the AT&T brand.
They are legal banking holidays on which the stock markets are closed. Nothing more. No company in the USA is legally required to offer any holiday off with pay. Now, having said that, most offer some paid holidays because of employee retention.
I currently work for a very large, nationwide retailer (not the evil empire known as Wal-Mart), and we honor six holidays at headquarters, and there are way more legal banking holidays than that. Our stores are only closed on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.
I've previously worked for the largest hospitals & clinics system in our metro area, and while we honored a few holidays, we had not official holiday pay. Holidays, vacation, and sick time were all rolled up into a generic "paid time off" balance. You could come in and work on the holiday so as to keep your paid time off for another time.
I live and work in the Minneapolis-St.Paul (Twin Cities) metro (Minnesota). All of the things that Lumpy points out are true here, as well. And Mn/DOT loves many 1+ year construction projects that occur simultaneously, so often if you think finding a new route will solve your problem of your normal freeway into the downtowns having one lane closed for the next two years, think again. The alternate route probably has Mississippi River bridge work this year!
Feature on our Avaya (formerly Lucent/AT&T) PBX: Extension to Cellular - both ring simultaneously! Who's to know you weren't at your desk? And, when I call into the office, it appears on the PHB's phone as if I'm calling from my desk! It's brilliant, I tell you!:)
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has real-time traffic tracking capabilities (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/map/re freshmap.html) in the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitian area that are completely anonymous. Mn/DOT embeds detectors in the pavement down the center of each lane of the freeway and on every entrance ramp to measure volume, occupancy, speed, and flow. They use this information to control the freeway entrance meters. We are one of the few metro areas in the U.S. that effectively uses on-ramp meters to assist in controlling traffic flow during the dreaded rush hours.
This seems like a much better way to gather really useful traffic information than tracking cellular phone movements, especially with how spotty cellular tower coverage can be.
While I agree with part of what you said, Slashdot is a geek news site. Just like other forms of media, you have to grab attention. Also, I think it's worth noting that you should always RTFA that's been linked to.
It's also worth noting that the Verizon CEO wants to eliminate as much regulation as possible at the state level and give it to Congress and the FCC. Yikes!
This is a feature that people will actually use. At work, I am stuck with a piece of junk Nextel phone which I would like to run over with my car most days. I have a Verizon phone for personal use, and have always been pleased with the service. Any competition against Nextel's Direct Connect feature is a good thing.
The "last mile" is really a hamper. Sure, lots of fiber was installed in the dot-com boom, but there's no money now to make it live. Until we see fiber to the curb (FTTC) similar to the ION project that Sprint rolled out in Las Vegas, the speeds will be slower for DSL. I used to work for Sprint, before ION, and I've seen lots of "last mile" wire. You've got wire out there that's not even twisted pair running from a home to the C.O. And in core neighborhoods in larger cities, lots of the "last mile" is overhead, not buried, which presents a whole host of other problems.
FTTC is the answer, but the telcos are not interested in investing in infrastructure right now. In areas where the telcos buried the fiber, they aren't interested in spending the money to make it live...it'll remain dark for a few years, I'd bet.
PS: I've heard some really bad things about Sprint's ION service...I didn't use it as an example of the type of service, only as an example of FTTC. Having worked for Sprint, I know how bad of a company it really is...
I once heard it said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican congresscritter is the name. It doesn't matter if you are a left-wing or a right-wing congresscritter, you will do whatever in your power to protect the money rolling in from whatever side of the fence you are on. Lobbyist money is very compelling!
According to the Censorware Project site neither you nor Michael Sims is affiliated with the project any longer. So, what gives? Are you here just to bash people with no reason?
It may be a lie in Ohio, but it's not in Minnesota. Minnesota is not a right to work state. So, if you are a grocery bagger at the local supermarket, you will have to join the union. What does a union do for you at a supermarket...ensure you make $7.00 to 8.50 hourly to bag groceries? I am betting that you'd make the same $$ even if there was no union
However, I also believe that unions have their place in certain jobs. For instance, like at Wal-Mart because of the examples listed above. I worked for Wal-Mart in college, and the corporation as a whole (fortunately, the managers at my store were not completely crazy) treats its employees like crap! Contrast this with Target, where I worked after I had worked at Wal-Mart, and it's a whole different feeling. Comparted to Wal-Mart, working at Target was actually rewarding.
I am also frequent (a.k.a. Elite) flyer on NWA (Northwest Airlines) as well...the company that provided the Airphone service quit the business. Their codeshare partner, Continental, still has the phones in its planes, which are provided by a different company than the one NWA was using. If I remember right from the news release in the Minneapolis StarTribune, the cost of re-fitting the airplanes with the different company's service was cost prohibitive since very few people used the Airphones.
If you bothered to read the linked article, you would see that the poster just copied what was in the Secuity Focus advisory wholesale, making no edits. It is the Secuity Focus advisory that couldn't "be bothered to write out entire words..."
Doesn't anybody that reads/. bother to read the linked to articles? Alas, this comment was posted by an Anonymous Coward, so I digress...
Walk between your 802.11b Access-Point and your laptop with an 802.11b PC Card while talking on your 2.4GHz cordless phone and chances are the data connection will be interrupted, but your phone call will be ok. I have seen it happen time and time again.
With so many devices in the same spectrum, there will only be more problems like this. It seems to me that moving to a different spectrum (such as 802.11a provides) makes the most sense, even if you need three times the Access Points to provide the same service.
I should have mentioned that NEC and Mitsubishi are now known NEC/Mitsubishi Electronics Display since the visual equipment divisions of the two companies merged in the beginning of 2000, and in comparing specs of NEC vs. Mitsubishi LCD panels, they are virtually the same.
Also, the monitor cost me $499 at Best Buy, which has a 14-day return policy on displays. I feel faily confident in Best Buy's return policies, but I also live in their hometown (Minneapolis, MN).
Just bought a new Mitsubishi DiamondPoint NXM76LCD display. 17" & 1280x1024. This is a great monitor...very clear and much better for general business use than a CRT display. Graphic artists looking for exceptional color reproduction, though, it just can't be had on an LCD, you're stuck with CRT.
I had a Radeon 7000, so I hooked up the display VGA. It was very good, but it was missing something...DVI. I had been drooling over an AIW Radeon for a while, so I bought one, hooked the LCD up using DVI, and the rest is history. Exceptionally clear, bright, display with no dead pixels...and WOW, a DVI connected LCD rules in comparison to a VGA connected CRT display!
Most museums place items of such great importance under locked glass, or they just lock them up altogether and show replicas. Why the hell would they just let any ol' person touch them. Paper that old is sensitive to light, not to mention the oils on your fingers!
What is talked about in this article has nothing to do with changing the US wireless pricing structure. It has to do with telephone exchange and Rate Center boundaries.
For example: If you live in the 900-555-XXXX exchange, and your cell phone is in the 900-655-XXXX exchange, it may very well be free to call your cell phone today. However, after the realingment of the boundaries, the 900-655-XXXX exchange may no longer be in your Rate Center. Therefore, it would then be an Intra-LATA long distance call.
In general, this change will affect very few people.
NOTE: If your phone numbers are in the 900 area code at all, you may have other problems besides what Rate Center you are in...:)
As other posters have stated, in Europe, cell phone users get (often) free incoming airtime because landline users pay a fee to call cellular exchanges. This has been proposed in the US, but I don't think it's ever going to happen.
Increasing the cost of something will not eliminate stupidity. Just as you cannot legislate against stupidity.
People who can't turn off their phone or set it on vibrate in certain public areas (restaurants, movie theaters, live music events, etc.) just don't have common sense, and you could never raise the cost to a level to keep it away from all of them.
Currently, Avaya (previously part of Lucent) has ported over its proprietary DEFINITY PBX software and AUDIX software to Red Hat. You have the option to purchase the PBX software/hardware as either based on Linux or based on the previous operating system, Oryx/Pecos (created by Bell Labs).
Avaya is betting the farm on Linux. It hit a performance ceiling with the propietary O/S (Oryx/Pecos - written by Bell Labs), and has some impressive results in its first Linux boxen. The PBX has three times the call processing capacity (counted in Busy Hour Call Completions) under Linux.
The broadband companies will let you run anything you want, for a price...
My roomates and I live in Minneapolis and have two broadband choices: Qwest DSL or Time Warner Cable. We chose Time Warner because (1) we are too far from the CO for decent DSL speeds, and (2) we could sign up for RoadRunner Business Class.
Standard broadband is targeted directly at those that want web, e-mail, and file downloading faster. And because of this, the broadband companies do not intend it for web hosting, e-mail servers, and the like. However, by signing up for RoadRunner Business Class, we are able to run our own web servers, e-mail servers, and use VPNs.
The cost for all of this: $110 per month in addition to our standard cable service. This give us a guaranteed 768K Up/768K Down with no multi-page, tiny-print document of what we can and cannot do with our service.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you've got it backwards. AT&T sold the wireless division 2 years ago. Then, SBC (co-owners of Cingular) bought AT&T last year. Finally, the new AT&T bought Bell South this year. So, AT&T and it's wireless division are re-married.
AT&T (read, the old SBC) has publicly announced that it is considering changing the Cingular name back to AT&T wireless as they believe more in the power of the AT&T brand.
They are legal banking holidays on which the stock markets are closed. Nothing more. No company in the USA is legally required to offer any holiday off with pay. Now, having said that, most offer some paid holidays because of employee retention.
I currently work for a very large, nationwide retailer (not the evil empire known as Wal-Mart), and we honor six holidays at headquarters, and there are way more legal banking holidays than that. Our stores are only closed on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.
I've previously worked for the largest hospitals & clinics system in our metro area, and while we honored a few holidays, we had not official holiday pay. Holidays, vacation, and sick time were all rolled up into a generic "paid time off" balance. You could come in and work on the holiday so as to keep your paid time off for another time.
I live and work in the Minneapolis-St.Paul (Twin Cities) metro (Minnesota). All of the things that Lumpy points out are true here, as well. And Mn/DOT loves many 1+ year construction projects that occur simultaneously, so often if you think finding a new route will solve your problem of your normal freeway into the downtowns having one lane closed for the next two years, think again. The alternate route probably has Mississippi River bridge work this year!
Feature on our Avaya (formerly Lucent/AT&T) PBX: Extension to Cellular - both ring simultaneously! Who's to know you weren't at your desk? And, when I call into the office, it appears on the PHB's phone as if I'm calling from my desk! It's brilliant, I tell you! :)
George Carlin: "Government wants to control language because that's how you control thought. And, basically, that's the business they're in."
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has real-time traffic tracking capabilities (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/map/re freshmap.html) in the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitian area that are completely anonymous. Mn/DOT embeds detectors in the pavement down the center of each lane of the freeway and on every entrance ramp to measure volume, occupancy, speed, and flow. They use this information to control the freeway entrance meters. We are one of the few metro areas in the U.S. that effectively uses on-ramp meters to assist in controlling traffic flow during the dreaded rush hours.
This seems like a much better way to gather really useful traffic information than tracking cellular phone movements, especially with how spotty cellular tower coverage can be.
While I agree with part of what you said, Slashdot is a geek news site. Just like other forms of media, you have to grab attention. Also, I think it's worth noting that you should always RTFA that's been linked to.
It's also worth noting that the Verizon CEO wants to eliminate as much regulation as possible at the state level and give it to Congress and the FCC. Yikes!
This is a feature that people will actually use. At work, I am stuck with a piece of junk Nextel phone which I would like to run over with my car most days. I have a Verizon phone for personal use, and have always been pleased with the service. Any competition against Nextel's Direct Connect feature is a good thing.
The "last mile" is really a hamper. Sure, lots of fiber was installed in the dot-com boom, but there's no money now to make it live. Until we see fiber to the curb (FTTC) similar to the ION project that Sprint rolled out in Las Vegas, the speeds will be slower for DSL. I used to work for Sprint, before ION, and I've seen lots of "last mile" wire. You've got wire out there that's not even twisted pair running from a home to the C.O. And in core neighborhoods in larger cities, lots of the "last mile" is overhead, not buried, which presents a whole host of other problems.
FTTC is the answer, but the telcos are not interested in investing in infrastructure right now. In areas where the telcos buried the fiber, they aren't interested in spending the money to make it live...it'll remain dark for a few years, I'd bet.
PS: I've heard some really bad things about Sprint's ION service...I didn't use it as an example of the type of service, only as an example of FTTC. Having worked for Sprint, I know how bad of a company it really is...
...led by left-wing whiners...
I once heard it said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican congresscritter is the name. It doesn't matter if you are a left-wing or a right-wing congresscritter, you will do whatever in your power to protect the money rolling in from whatever side of the fence you are on. Lobbyist money is very compelling!
Nope, not the tech industry, either. I live in the hometown of Northwest Airlines, and it's the airline industry who is blaming SARS this quarter!
According to the Censorware Project site neither you nor Michael Sims is affiliated with the project any longer. So, what gives? Are you here just to bash people with no reason?
It may be a lie in Ohio, but it's not in Minnesota. Minnesota is not a right to work state. So, if you are a grocery bagger at the local supermarket, you will have to join the union. What does a union do for you at a supermarket...ensure you make $7.00 to 8.50 hourly to bag groceries? I am betting that you'd make the same $$ even if there was no union
However, I also believe that unions have their place in certain jobs. For instance, like at Wal-Mart because of the examples listed above. I worked for Wal-Mart in college, and the corporation as a whole (fortunately, the managers at my store were not completely crazy) treats its employees like crap! Contrast this with Target, where I worked after I had worked at Wal-Mart, and it's a whole different feeling. Comparted to Wal-Mart, working at Target was actually rewarding.
Just my $0.02!
I am also frequent (a.k.a. Elite) flyer on NWA (Northwest Airlines) as well...the company that provided the Airphone service quit the business. Their codeshare partner, Continental, still has the phones in its planes, which are provided by a different company than the one NWA was using. If I remember right from the news release in the Minneapolis StarTribune, the cost of re-fitting the airplanes with the different company's service was cost prohibitive since very few people used the Airphones.
And I have moderator points...I chose to post instead of mod it down.
I actually thought someone else would have modded it down. That was my mistake!
If you bothered to read the linked article, you would see that the poster just copied what was in the Secuity Focus advisory wholesale, making no edits. It is the Secuity Focus advisory that couldn't "be bothered to write out entire words..."
/. bother to read the linked to articles? Alas, this comment was posted by an Anonymous Coward, so I digress...
Doesn't anybody that reads
Right on!
Walk between your 802.11b Access-Point and your laptop with an 802.11b PC Card while talking on your 2.4GHz cordless phone and chances are the data connection will be interrupted, but your phone call will be ok. I have seen it happen time and time again.
With so many devices in the same spectrum, there will only be more problems like this. It seems to me that moving to a different spectrum (such as 802.11a provides) makes the most sense, even if you need three times the Access Points to provide the same service.
Sorry...
I should have mentioned that NEC and Mitsubishi are now known NEC/Mitsubishi Electronics Display since the visual equipment divisions of the two companies merged in the beginning of 2000, and in comparing specs of NEC vs. Mitsubishi LCD panels, they are virtually the same.
Also, the monitor cost me $499 at Best Buy, which has a 14-day return policy on displays. I feel faily confident in Best Buy's return policies, but I also live in their hometown (Minneapolis, MN).
Just bought a new Mitsubishi DiamondPoint NXM76LCD display. 17" & 1280x1024. This is a great monitor...very clear and much better for general business use than a CRT display. Graphic artists looking for exceptional color reproduction, though, it just can't be had on an LCD, you're stuck with CRT.
I had a Radeon 7000, so I hooked up the display VGA. It was very good, but it was missing something...DVI. I had been drooling over an AIW Radeon for a while, so I bought one, hooked the LCD up using DVI, and the rest is history. Exceptionally clear, bright, display with no dead pixels...and WOW, a DVI connected LCD rules in comparison to a VGA connected CRT display!
Most museums place items of such great importance under locked glass, or they just lock them up altogether and show replicas. Why the hell would they just let any ol' person touch them. Paper that old is sensitive to light, not to mention the oils on your fingers!
What is talked about in this article has nothing to do with changing the US wireless pricing structure. It has to do with telephone exchange and Rate Center boundaries.
:)
For example: If you live in the 900-555-XXXX exchange, and your cell phone is in the 900-655-XXXX exchange, it may very well be free to call your cell phone today. However, after the realingment of the boundaries, the 900-655-XXXX exchange may no longer be in your Rate Center. Therefore, it would then be an Intra-LATA long distance call.
In general, this change will affect very few people.
NOTE: If your phone numbers are in the 900 area code at all, you may have other problems besides what Rate Center you are in...
As other posters have stated, in Europe, cell phone users get (often) free incoming airtime because landline users pay a fee to call cellular exchanges. This has been proposed in the US, but I don't think it's ever going to happen.
Increasing the cost of something will not eliminate stupidity. Just as you cannot legislate against stupidity.
People who can't turn off their phone or set it on vibrate in certain public areas (restaurants, movie theaters, live music events, etc.) just don't have common sense, and you could never raise the cost to a level to keep it away from all of them.
Currently, Avaya (previously part of Lucent) has ported over its proprietary DEFINITY PBX software and AUDIX software to Red Hat. You have the option to purchase the PBX software/hardware as either based on Linux or based on the previous operating system, Oryx/Pecos (created by Bell Labs).
Avaya is betting the farm on Linux. It hit a performance ceiling with the propietary O/S (Oryx/Pecos - written by Bell Labs), and has some impressive results in its first Linux boxen. The PBX has three times the call processing capacity (counted in Busy Hour Call Completions) under Linux.
The broadband companies will let you run anything you want, for a price...
My roomates and I live in Minneapolis and have two broadband choices: Qwest DSL or Time Warner Cable. We chose Time Warner because (1) we are too far from the CO for decent DSL speeds, and (2) we could sign up for RoadRunner Business Class.
Standard broadband is targeted directly at those that want web, e-mail, and file downloading faster. And because of this, the broadband companies do not intend it for web hosting, e-mail servers, and the like. However, by signing up for RoadRunner Business Class, we are able to run our own web servers, e-mail servers, and use VPNs.
The cost for all of this: $110 per month in addition to our standard cable service. This give us a guaranteed 768K Up/768K Down with no multi-page, tiny-print document of what we can and cannot do with our service.
Just my $.02.