They do track everything you watch. They can and they will and there are no laws to stop them. The regular Sky subscription T & Cs even insists that you have the phoneline plugged in at all times, otherwise your special deal on the decoder is void. And I am sure that nothing stops them from sharing your habits with their 'affiliates'.
The reason they charge exorbitant prices for services is because they have to, and can. The business models of these companies do not allow them to give value to their customers, only to their shareholders (ideally value should be provided to both parties). In the UK the extra charge for making call to a different network is mostly at least 400% more than the cost of a same network call - why? - To make more money, and don't even ask about international calls. The cost of international SMS is ~3 times more than a local one - why? - To make more money. Sure the tech is there to play videos and the like on your mobile, but you will pay for this big time. The current income per user is ~£22/month and their business model for 3G require £50/m per user? How will they get there? Prepare to see some more disproportionate pricing for all the new features.
I don't think we will ever see a network that says data is data, and we will charge you the same whether it is voice, text or pictures. And, oh yes, we will charge you only 20% extra for the convenience over fixed line communications.
AFAIK the DotGNU project needs an IP "clean room" to keep their goal of a MS free.Net implementation. They are using the ECMA standard for input and that is supposed to be it. This is not the Mono goal, so obviously DotGNU people should not be on the Mono list.
I use an old Compaq PII 350 to test new distributions - works well for comparing the install procedures and how fast applications execute. Redhat has never found the sound card (not even v8.0), while SuSE 8 and Knoppix sees it first time round. So not all distros are equal on hardware detection.
(Redhat 8 has nicer fonts out of the box though!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
They do track everything you watch. They can and they will and there are no laws to stop them. The regular Sky subscription T & Cs even insists that you have the phoneline plugged in at all times, otherwise your special deal on the decoder is void. And I am sure that nothing stops them from sharing your habits with their 'affiliates'.
The reason they charge exorbitant prices for services is because they have to, and can. The business models of these companies do not allow them to give value to their customers, only to their shareholders (ideally value should be provided to both parties). In the UK the extra charge for making call to a different network is mostly at least 400% more than the cost of a same network call - why? - To make more money, and don't even ask about international calls. The cost of international SMS is ~3 times more than a local one - why? - To make more money. Sure the tech is there to play videos and the like on your mobile, but you will pay for this big time. The current income per user is ~£22/month and their business model for 3G require £50/m per user? How will they get there? Prepare to see some more disproportionate pricing for all the new features. I don't think we will ever see a network that says data is data, and we will charge you the same whether it is voice, text or pictures. And, oh yes, we will charge you only 20% extra for the convenience over fixed line communications.
AFAIK the DotGNU project needs an IP "clean room" to keep their goal of a MS free .Net implementation. They are using the ECMA standard for input and that is supposed to be it. This is not the Mono goal, so obviously DotGNU people should not be on the Mono list.
China would love this. Another step closer to paying no techno tax to the west.
I use an old Compaq PII 350 to test new distributions - works well for comparing the install procedures and how fast applications execute. Redhat has never found the sound card (not even v8.0), while SuSE 8 and Knoppix sees it first time round. So not all distros are equal on hardware detection.
(Redhat 8 has nicer fonts out of the box though!:-)