There was a lot of hoopla about this before it went into effect about how the mobile phone service providers were scared about losing customers, and how lots of people would want to jump ship immediately - Hong Kong was used as a case study.
I read a recent article in the Economist, though, that said a more appropriate comaprison was with Australia. Hong Kong's market is already saturated, and much fewer people are locked into contracts. So, the only way mobile companies can get new customers is by poaching them from the competition. In the US, on the other hand, the market is far from saturated, most of the market is locked into contracts, and there's more room for growth by attracting people who don't currently own a mobile.
So, it doesn't seem as if this law will really hurt US providers that much.
The article said that the family sells their surplus power back to the power company...
I envision a future where PV homeowners can share their extra power with their neighbors through a P2P system... of course, the local energy company will call it "stealing" and attempt to sue those homeowners who are engaging in the theft from honest, hardworking oil companies.
Having lived in Thailand for a long time and having seen that laws are enforced less-than-vigorously, I can't see this really changing anything.
Thailand is the kind of place where I can go to Pantip Plaza and have my choice of five floors of pirated software for $2.50US/CD. When the police come to crack down, you throw a sheet over your stall - if you can't see it, apparently it's not there (with the aid of a bit of a kickback, of course). Get pulled over? Shell out a few hundred baht to compensate the officer for his time, and you're on your way.
On the other hand, there was a crackdown on nightlife a year or two ago and they're forcing everyone to close their bars at 2am, this seems to be largely followed. But even if Internet Cafes are forced to close, I'm sure that today's enterprising young children will find some way around that, and they shouldn't be up that late, anyway. As for adults - they have better things to do between the hours of 10pm and 6am, believe you me.
If we're jamming every radio communication in Iraq and taking out their telephones, how is it that CNN et al can have live broadcats out of Baghdad? I assume that we can selectively jam communications, or is it something else?
A chance to make up for past injustices
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The only merit that this war has is that it will remove Saddam Hussein. It is a chance to make up for grievous past mistakes made by the United States in its foreign policy. If the Iraqi people are fully and unconditionally supported by America in the next few decades, Iraq has a chance to once again become one of the most stable and prosperious regions in the Middle East.
On to a more cynical note. The war is only justified if it kills fewer people than would have died in the remainder of Saddam's rule. Over 150,000 Iraqis, military and civilian, died as a direct result of Allied attacks in the Gulf War. That's about how many Saddam killed himself in previous gas attacks against his own people. If this war truly is about the welfare of the Iraqi people, we have to make sure it doesn't make them suffer more than they would otherwise. And we have to be ready to follow up with massive amounts of aid. Not just food and medicine, but capital and technical expertise.
As for the other reasons that justify the war? They are nonsense. Yes, Saddam has WMD, and yes, he has used them against civilian populations. AMERICA has WMD and AMERICA has used them against civilian populations twice - in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We also used chemical agents in Vietnam that cause birth defects to this day.
In the end, I think that America is very vaguely doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. This should have been done twenty years ago, and the war now doesn't even begin to make up for America's failures in the past. Maybe things will start to change (but, to be cyncial again - OF COURSE AMERICA WON'T CHANGE. America doesn't give half a shit about the rest of the world). We'll really have to wait to see who is vindicated, and who isn't.
I don't understand how a story like this can make front-page slashdot, yet the story about the man burning his penis with his laptop can't. A distinct failure in public safety awareness, if I ever saw one.
I realize that some people say there's no demand for 3G yet, and that's what I used to think to, that it was just a bunch of useless technology. Then I got to visit the ITU Telecom Asia conference this past week, where NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom and others were exhibiting their wares. Besides the usual wireless broadband internet application, they had lots of novel uses for their phones - most of which were full-color, hi-res, built-in camera.
NTT was featuring a sort of Vindigo for your phone - it would display info about restaurants, cinemas, etc. according to your location. FOMA was demonstrating videoconferencing through a phone. SK Telecom had developed a method to use your phone as a debit card, whereby you would just hold it up to a sensor to pay. Some other company had a way to remotely pay for parking through your phone using a specially-designed parking meter.
Point is, these technologies really are useful, and you realize this once you've actually had time to play around with them.
...Nokia is the Blizzard of handphone companies... they really can do no wrong. It looks like they're finally moving over to tri-band models, so maybe we'll start seeing better phones in Yankland.
I do wish Nokia would standardize SyncML across all of their phone models. That way we could see iSync compatibility, even if bluetooth is excluded. My understanding is that someone could write some lower-level driver to allow an infrared sync, so long as the phone supports SyncML.
But even with all those features, what really sells me on Nokia phones is their aesthetics - you really just can't find better-looking phones out there, with the possible exception of the Moto v70. Handphones are status symbols in many parts of the world, and these new models will make heads turn.
>>"If the U.S. gets tied up in a ground war in the Middle East, China's going to be real tempted...."
Bullshit. China doesn't want war with Taiwan. It likes the status quo - strategic ambuiguity, in that the U.S. may or may not aid Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. With strategic ambuiguity, China won't attack (because the US might back Taiwan) and Taiwan won't declare independence (because it doesn't know whether or not it will receive US support). The region is stable, trade flourishes, and everyone is happy.
Problem is, Bush has come close to ditching strategic ambiguity by saying things like aiding Taiwan using "whatever it [takes] to help Taiwan defend itself." ("Crossing the Red Lines," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 04 2002). If Bush ditches strategic ambiguity, he gives Chen Shui-Bian carte blanche to declare independence, something that will prompt an immediate invasion by China.
In any event, China is patient. It can wait for some future point when Taiwan might be more amenable to reunification. And will the US public really support a war against China, given the current aversion to war casualties? Once the first American destroyer goes down in the Taiwan Straits, the US public will start asking why we're fighting to keep two Chinese peoples separate. Once the first Chinese soldier dies, the Chinese public will ask why the US is fighting to keep two Chinese peoples separate. Quite frankly, this issue means much more to the Chinese than it does to Americans.
And for those who would point out that the US has many, many nuclear weapons as a deterrent:
The Chinese have nukes too. They also have missiles that can hit Los Angeles.
Do you want to preserve Taipei's autonomy at the expense of Los Angeles' population? I don't think that the American public does.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they just confiscate the cars of drunk drivers? I hear they do it in Sweden.
There was a lot of hoopla about this before it went into effect about how the mobile phone service providers were scared about losing customers, and how lots of people would want to jump ship immediately - Hong Kong was used as a case study.
I read a recent article in the Economist, though, that said a more appropriate comaprison was with Australia. Hong Kong's market is already saturated, and much fewer people are locked into contracts. So, the only way mobile companies can get new customers is by poaching them from the competition. In the US, on the other hand, the market is far from saturated, most of the market is locked into contracts, and there's more room for growth by attracting people who don't currently own a mobile.
So, it doesn't seem as if this law will really hurt US providers that much.
I envision a future where PV homeowners can share their extra power with their neighbors through a P2P system... of course, the local energy company will call it "stealing" and attempt to sue those homeowners who are engaging in the theft from honest, hardworking oil companies.
Having lived in Thailand for a long time and having seen that laws are enforced less-than-vigorously, I can't see this really changing anything.
Thailand is the kind of place where I can go to Pantip Plaza and have my choice of five floors of pirated software for $2.50US/CD. When the police come to crack down, you throw a sheet over your stall - if you can't see it, apparently it's not there (with the aid of a bit of a kickback, of course). Get pulled over? Shell out a few hundred baht to compensate the officer for his time, and you're on your way.
On the other hand, there was a crackdown on nightlife a year or two ago and they're forcing everyone to close their bars at 2am, this seems to be largely followed. But even if Internet Cafes are forced to close, I'm sure that today's enterprising young children will find some way around that, and they shouldn't be up that late, anyway. As for adults - they have better things to do between the hours of 10pm and 6am, believe you me.
Use Vince to change your default ftp helper. It's kind of like the protocol helper prefs in Classic IE.
If we're jamming every radio communication in Iraq and taking out their telephones, how is it that CNN et al can have live broadcats out of Baghdad? I assume that we can selectively jam communications, or is it something else?
On to a more cynical note. The war is only justified if it kills fewer people than would have died in the remainder of Saddam's rule. Over 150,000 Iraqis, military and civilian, died as a direct result of Allied attacks in the Gulf War. That's about how many Saddam killed himself in previous gas attacks against his own people. If this war truly is about the welfare of the Iraqi people, we have to make sure it doesn't make them suffer more than they would otherwise. And we have to be ready to follow up with massive amounts of aid. Not just food and medicine, but capital and technical expertise.
As for the other reasons that justify the war? They are nonsense. Yes, Saddam has WMD, and yes, he has used them against civilian populations. AMERICA has WMD and AMERICA has used them against civilian populations twice - in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We also used chemical agents in Vietnam that cause birth defects to this day.
In the end, I think that America is very vaguely doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. This should have been done twenty years ago, and the war now doesn't even begin to make up for America's failures in the past. Maybe things will start to change (but, to be cyncial again - OF COURSE AMERICA WON'T CHANGE. America doesn't give half a shit about the rest of the world). We'll really have to wait to see who is vindicated, and who isn't.
I don't understand how a story like this can make front-page slashdot, yet the story about the man burning his penis with his laptop can't. A distinct failure in public safety awareness, if I ever saw one.
NTT was featuring a sort of Vindigo for your phone - it would display info about restaurants, cinemas, etc. according to your location. FOMA was demonstrating videoconferencing through a phone. SK Telecom had developed a method to use your phone as a debit card, whereby you would just hold it up to a sensor to pay. Some other company had a way to remotely pay for parking through your phone using a specially-designed parking meter.
Point is, these technologies really are useful, and you realize this once you've actually had time to play around with them.
I do wish Nokia would standardize SyncML across all of their phone models. That way we could see iSync compatibility, even if bluetooth is excluded. My understanding is that someone could write some lower-level driver to allow an infrared sync, so long as the phone supports SyncML.
But even with all those features, what really sells me on Nokia phones is their aesthetics - you really just can't find better-looking phones out there, with the possible exception of the Moto v70. Handphones are status symbols in many parts of the world, and these new models will make heads turn.
If you want to sync your phone using iSync, make sure it's SyncML compliant - not all bluetooth phones are SyncML compliant, ie the Nokia 8910.
>>"If the U.S. gets tied up in a ground war in the Middle East, China's going to be real tempted ...."
Bullshit. China doesn't want war with Taiwan. It likes the status quo - strategic ambuiguity, in that the U.S. may or may not aid Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. With strategic ambuiguity, China won't attack (because the US might back Taiwan) and Taiwan won't declare independence (because it doesn't know whether or not it will receive US support). The region is stable, trade flourishes, and everyone is happy.
Problem is, Bush has come close to ditching strategic ambiguity by saying things like aiding Taiwan using "whatever it [takes] to help Taiwan defend itself." ("Crossing the Red Lines," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 04 2002). If Bush ditches strategic ambiguity, he gives Chen Shui-Bian carte blanche to declare independence, something that will prompt an immediate invasion by China.
In any event, China is patient. It can wait for some future point when Taiwan might be more amenable to reunification. And will the US public really support a war against China, given the current aversion to war casualties? Once the first American destroyer goes down in the Taiwan Straits, the US public will start asking why we're fighting to keep two Chinese peoples separate. Once the first Chinese soldier dies, the Chinese public will ask why the US is fighting to keep two Chinese peoples separate. Quite frankly, this issue means much more to the Chinese than it does to Americans.
And for those who would point out that the US has many, many nuclear weapons as a deterrent:
The Chinese have nukes too. They also have missiles that can hit Los Angeles.
Do you want to preserve Taipei's autonomy at the expense of Los Angeles' population? I don't think that the American public does.