Who the hell is stupid enough to buy a Lexmark inkjet in the first place. Their business plan is so transparent that you have to be really thick not to get it.
1. Sell printers with half a cartridge of ink with a loss to atract joe-sixpack (EXTRA now with flashing colours for just 99,99 or whatever).
2. Sell cartridges at inflated price to cover for step one (joe-sixpack: I already paid for the printer so why not buy the ink).
3. Profit
In the last six years (not shit) I've gone through three tonerpacks for my HP4L. If you don't desperately need those stupid colors, then why let yourself get raped by those gorillas ? Laser is so much cheaper.
And if you really, really need those colours then for heavens sake buy two printers (one laser, one ink). It will save you in the long run. Black ink is also pretty costly.
Some plane manufactorers (Boing I think) already allow passengers to use cell phones in their planes. The phones are NOT a threat to the plane or the instruments onboard.
The REAL reason is that a cell phone at altitude plays havoc with the cell phone network. Changing cells to fast, access to multiple cells with same frequency etc.
So instead of catching flak from the operators and to fell extra safe the airlines keep up the act.
Hi Kien,
I don't think he's in the business. Then he would have called it PSTN or ISDN (depending last mile gear).
POTS is the good old switch based value added services (called VAS in the alphabet soup). It's stuff like dialing *-something to call the last number that called you etc.
The alternative to POTS is Intelligent Network (IN) where you run your stuff on a seperate platform (this is where I make a living). Gsm prepaid and number portability is the big thing here.
But anyway. The massive problem with VoIP as I see it is not in the regulation area but in interfacing and money.
If somebody makes a call from the IP carrier to a PSTN subscriber there has to be an interconnect agreement between those two carriers to exchange the money for terminating the call in pstn country. In order to do efficient routing you have to have these interconnects all over the place and in order to prevent long distance pstn call-legs.
The other way around is even better. What telephone number do I dial on my pstn phone to call an IP phone ? The international numbering plan is not something you just muck around with. Thats ITU-T stuff and known to be slow as hell.
Forget the technical problems with VoIP. Money and cooperation is the real killers.
From where I'm looking the UN is a forum where contries solves (well at least tries) their differences without the use or threat of use of force. Instead it places focus on getting a majority of contries to back your contrys caurse.
This shifts the balance of power away from the superpowers (unless they have a lot of contries they can force to vote with them).
After the colapse of the east bloc the UN (at that time the west had a majority in the UN so it was a usefull weapon) has lost its usefullness for the US.
If you look around you will notice that the US is withdrawing from a lot of these multinational forums and are instead making deals with other contries one at a time. This way they are in a better position to force their will on other contries. It makes sence if you are the big boy.But the US should be aware though that this is not the way to make freinds in the long run. It has costs...
(1) subsidize censorware
Score one for the bad guys.
(2) criminalize researching it
Score one for the good guys and introducing a double standard.
(3) subsidize researching it
Score again for the bad guys and introducing a tripple standard.
A government that pass that sort of laws is clearly insane. I'm really scared of the people you put in power in the US.
But then again. Democracy is based on the assumptions that the people a) is informed about what is going on, b) act on that information and vote for somebody that has at least half a clue.
Those who don't vote deserve the politicians they get...
I don't know the situation in the states but in Europe the operators were forced to pay astronomical figures for their licenses and at the same time a large number of licenses were for sale.
This had the effect of the goverment draining the telco's of all their capital and their ability to actually deploy the networks. This also left them very vurnable to market drops since the market had to grow at the usual high rate for them to make ends meet.
In my (and several market analyst) oppinion the politicians bears a lot of the blame for the current low in the telco business.
It's only fair that they restore the balance by giving the telco's a hand.
Disclaimer: I don't have shares in any telco's in fact I don't have any.
This radar like gadget is basicly only usefull for detecting the pressence of an object at a location and over time see if it is moving.
This is great to check if somebody is moving into an otherwise empty area on your airbase or powerplant. For tracking individuals in the city this is a non-starter.
Save the paranoia for cell-phone tracking. I know first hand what we can do with that tech.
The part that really pisses me off is the idea of taking the control of the computer away from the owner both technological and legally. I've paid for the thing so now it's mine. Period. It's like buying a car where the manufacturer has placed restrictions on what roads you are allowed to drive on and automatically stop the car if you violate the restrictions.
But this whole scheme has a far more hideous side: in order to make the whole thing work every software and hardware component in the computer through which the IP content is passed through has to be trusted. If it's possible to put in your own driver for the output device then it's trivial to hack the driver to capture the content. Not to mention the fact that you got to have the OS support the whole scheme.
This all boils down to the fact that there is no way this is going to be compatible with our favourite OS. We can't have unprotected IP passing through OSS code. No way. If the market moves to this new scheme of things we're back to the pre DeCSS days where you could only play DVD's under windows. But now it's ALL the content from Internet, next generation DVD's and CD's that are blocked. That is going to hurt us on the desktop...
The 2Mb/s is marketing bullshit of the purest form. It's the theoretical maximum speed (NEVER going to happen in the real world). 1 Mb/s (a realistic real world max) is possible if you are smack next to the antenna (speed decreases with range) and the only active 3G phone within that cell (airwaves are a shared resource remember). There is little chance that any of us will ever be in that fortunate situation.
Based on my experience I can't understand why anybody would want to become a project manager. It's a rotten thankless job and you've got zero job security.
You're basically being squeezed between management, who hands you an impossible job and to few resources to do it and the techies who cant deliver the goods fast enough. While this goes on you have to do a lot of political infighting to steal more resources for your project, prevent other projects from stealing your resource's and competing with the other project managers to look good in order to still have a job in six months.
Being a technical lead is a better job by far (been there) but only if you work with a pm who is actually listening to you otherwise you are a perfect candidate for a scapegoat...
The real trick is to focus very hard on requirements even if this means that analysis drags on for ever and the pm is pesting you to get it over with. Make a document that can stand up in court and don't accept any changes without extra resources or a reduction in other functionality. Make a formal procedure for these changes (they will happen). And when the shit hits the fan: ALWAYS SIDE WITH THE TECHIES. The techies are mostly honest and rarely play political games. The pm's are always up to something and ready so sacrifice you in a heartbeat if it helps them in their games.
Hi,
We've had one on trial for 2-3 weeks by now. The screen and camera are ok i guess. But the phone is a bit on the large side. I stick to my 6310 for now.
Just my two euro cents.
Slashdot Mirror
Who the hell is stupid enough to buy a Lexmark inkjet in the first place. Their business plan is so transparent that you have to be really thick not to get it.
1. Sell printers with half a cartridge of ink with a loss to atract joe-sixpack (EXTRA now with flashing colours for just 99,99 or whatever).
2. Sell cartridges at inflated price to cover for step one (joe-sixpack: I already paid for the printer so why not buy the ink).
3. Profit
In the last six years (not shit) I've gone through three tonerpacks for my HP4L. If you don't desperately need those stupid colors, then why let yourself get raped by those gorillas ? Laser is so much cheaper.
And if you really, really need those colours then for heavens sake buy two printers (one laser, one ink). It will save you in the long run. Black ink is also pretty costly.
TCAP-Abort
Wonderfull typo: Boeing is the name I was after...
The REAL reason is that a cell phone at altitude plays havoc with the cell phone network. Changing cells to fast, access to multiple cells with same frequency etc.
So instead of catching flak from the operators and to fell extra safe the airlines keep up the act.
sig: TCAP-Abort
POTS is the good old switch based value added services (called VAS in the alphabet soup). It's stuff like dialing *-something to call the last number that called you etc.
The alternative to POTS is Intelligent Network (IN) where you run your stuff on a seperate platform (this is where I make a living). Gsm prepaid and number portability is the big thing here.
But anyway. The massive problem with VoIP as I see it is not in the regulation area but in interfacing and money.
If somebody makes a call from the IP carrier to a PSTN subscriber there has to be an interconnect agreement between those two carriers to exchange the money for terminating the call in pstn country. In order to do efficient routing you have to have these interconnects all over the place and in order to prevent long distance pstn call-legs.
The other way around is even better. What telephone number do I dial on my pstn phone to call an IP phone ? The international numbering plan is not something you just muck around with. Thats ITU-T stuff and known to be slow as hell.
Forget the technical problems with VoIP. Money and cooperation is the real killers.
sig: TCAP-abort
Until that law was passed it was legal to borrow and copy a CD from a friend as long as it was for personal use.
Thank god I,m out. And the beer is better too !!!
This shifts the balance of power away from the superpowers (unless they have a lot of contries they can force to vote with them).
After the colapse of the east bloc the UN (at that time the west had a majority in the UN so it was a usefull weapon) has lost its usefullness for the US.
If you look around you will notice that the US is withdrawing from a lot of these multinational forums and are instead making deals with other contries one at a time. This way they are in a better position to force their will on other contries. It makes sence if you are the big boy.But the US should be aware though that this is not the way to make freinds in the long run. It has costs...
Apart from highly recommending the GOF book I'll like to point your attention at the online Java companion to the book.
http://www.patterndepot.com/put/8/JavaPatterns.htm
Actually the companion can be read without the book (for those on a budget).
Cheers, John
A government that pass that sort of laws is clearly insane. I'm really scared of the people you put in power in the US.
But then again. Democracy is based on the assumptions that the people a) is informed about what is going on, b) act on that information and vote for somebody that has at least half a clue.
Those who don't vote deserve the politicians they get...
This had the effect of the goverment draining the telco's of all their capital and their ability to actually deploy the networks. This also left them very vurnable to market drops since the market had to grow at the usual high rate for them to make ends meet.
In my (and several market analyst) oppinion the politicians bears a lot of the blame for the current low in the telco business.
It's only fair that they restore the balance by giving the telco's a hand.
Disclaimer: I don't have shares in any telco's in fact I don't have any.
This is great to check if somebody is moving into an otherwise empty area on your airbase or powerplant. For tracking individuals in the city this is a non-starter.
Save the paranoia for cell-phone tracking. I know first hand what we can do with that tech.
But this whole scheme has a far more hideous side: in order to make the whole thing work every software and hardware component in the computer through which the IP content is passed through has to be trusted. If it's possible to put in your own driver for the output device then it's trivial to hack the driver to capture the content. Not to mention the fact that you got to have the OS support the whole scheme.
This all boils down to the fact that there is no way this is going to be compatible with our favourite OS. We can't have unprotected IP passing through OSS code. No way. If the market moves to this new scheme of things we're back to the pre DeCSS days where you could only play DVD's under windows. But now it's ALL the content from Internet, next generation DVD's and CD's that are blocked. That is going to hurt us on the desktop...
Small wonder that M$ is backing this scheme.
The 2Mb/s is marketing bullshit of the purest form. It's the theoretical maximum speed (NEVER going to happen in the real world). 1 Mb/s (a realistic real world max) is possible if you are smack next to the antenna (speed decreases with range) and the only active 3G phone within that cell (airwaves are a shared resource remember). There is little chance that any of us will ever be in that fortunate situation.
Based on my experience I can't understand why anybody would want to become a project manager. It's a rotten thankless job and you've got zero job security. You're basically being squeezed between management, who hands you an impossible job and to few resources to do it and the techies who cant deliver the goods fast enough. While this goes on you have to do a lot of political infighting to steal more resources for your project, prevent other projects from stealing your resource's and competing with the other project managers to look good in order to still have a job in six months. Being a technical lead is a better job by far (been there) but only if you work with a pm who is actually listening to you otherwise you are a perfect candidate for a scapegoat... The real trick is to focus very hard on requirements even if this means that analysis drags on for ever and the pm is pesting you to get it over with. Make a document that can stand up in court and don't accept any changes without extra resources or a reduction in other functionality. Make a formal procedure for these changes (they will happen). And when the shit hits the fan: ALWAYS SIDE WITH THE TECHIES. The techies are mostly honest and rarely play political games. The pm's are always up to something and ready so sacrifice you in a heartbeat if it helps them in their games.
Hi, We've had one on trial for 2-3 weeks by now. The screen and camera are ok i guess. But the phone is a bit on the large side. I stick to my 6310 for now. Just my two euro cents.