Instead of using a single, remote pilot to fly just one UAV, DARPA imagines 'an app that allows a swarm of small deployed UAVs to be controlled as a single unit (a hive [mind] so to speak)'.
FOSS killed the PC because most of it is just a copy of existing commercial software. Take Open Office for example, it strives to emulate MS Office slavishly rather than providing some compatibility and striving to compete with it by offering features not available with MS Office. The negative effect of all this was to kill any chance of alternative competing software packages like Wordperfect and the Lotus suite from making a dent in MS Office by entrenching MS Office format as the standard and making it impossible to compete with "free" software. The average Joe does not care about GNU "freedom" or any of the other propaganda that RMS is promoting as long as they can get their software for "free".
When walled gardens came along, third party developer saw a new frontier where they could compete with the big guys on a more level playing field and because of the increasing onerous conditions of GPL there was very little chance of GPL'ed software being published on the iOS app store thereby increasing competition among software developers building original software from scratch.
Every email that you send whether encrypted or not travels through multiple servers on the internet and is stored, at least temporarily on each of those servers as it routes through the internet.
If you are concerned about privacy, you should not divulge sensitive information on the internet or use encrypted email and/or more secure point to point protocols.
The stark reality however, is that nobody is interested in spying on boring ordinary people never mind that spying on everyone would be prohibitively expensive and a logistical nightmare.
You might want to check out the CNET reviews on the various phones for battery life. The Apple numbers are conservative and seem to be either consistent or lower than those achieved by third party reviewers whereas the opposite is true for android handsets.
Having just bought an iphone 4S I can at least say the battery life is pathetic, I am lucky if it lasts a day. Like the phone but wish I could change the battery.
Go into Settings-> Location Services and System Services and toggle off Setting Time Zone as well as any other service that you see a purple arrow by or is something with a grey arrow that you don't need or want.
Your iPhone 4S should be lasting you at least a day. Mine lasts about two days on a single charge with Wifi turned on all of the time. Also, turn off blutooth unless if you really need it.
Well, maybe the passengers should be required to remove the battery from their iphones and ipads in the future...
Maybe passengers with phones with removable batteries should be limited to one battery in total including checked luggage forcing them to buy another battery at their destination. On their way back, they would have to ship one of their batteries back home. That way people with android phones with removable batteries but shitty battery life would get why removable batteries are not an advantage if you need them to compensate for poor battery performance.
A ban on phones with non-removable batteries may be necessary. You can carry the phone on board, but the battery has to go in a plastic bag in luggage.
Obvious troll is obvious. This was one incident and we do not know what the circumstances were. It is possible that the passenger had sat on the phone by having it in their back pocket and then battery could have ignited after the glass punctured the battery and sweat reacted with the lithium.
I'd rather have twice (or more) the battery life per charge than a removable battery which is one reason I have an iPhone 4S instead of an android handset.
Where are you going to keep those extra batteries that you have to swap throughout the day when you are not on a plane? What happens when you have then in your pocket with some keys and one of the keys short the terminals on a battery in your pocket?
I'm not a programmer, I'm a network admin, so maybe I'm missing something here...but couldn't a teleconference provide the same benefits that you are claiming to find in the main development office? I have three company provided laptops, all of which have built in web cams. I really don't see why you still couldn't have whiteboard sessions and meetings with stakeholders, even when working from home, the local coffee shop/pub or satellite office.
Come on, what are you really saving with that? Nothing really other than some office space for the company. Big deal. I have a really short commute and no, phone calls or even web cams are not a good substitute for working with your team. I used to work in the "head office" with the majority of my team in the development office where I am now and it is just not the same if you try to remotely "pair program" with a tool like Remote Administrator and voice chat. Video chat really adds very little to the equation for work collaboration. We do use webex and other remote viewing programs for meetings with stakeholders but it is still very useful having team members in the same office which is why one of our remote colleagues is flown in every once in a while to work and attend planning sessions or to attend training with the rest of us.
We still do dial in our team member in the other office but I find my productivity is much higher now that I am in the same office as the testers and the other developers.
If the idea of your "personal" devices becoming work devices is what irks you, then get a second phone dedicated to work. I bought a laptop "for work", and while it is my own deductible expense, I only have work stuff on it. It is my work computer: when I'm typing at that laptop, I'm working and getting paid. If I feel like using my desktop peripherals and displays, then I remote into that laptop to keep everything focused.
I don't use my phone much for work, other than checking email when I'm bored, so I suppose I'm lucky for that, but if work were spilling into my personal life, I'd get another phone, and turn the ringer off when I'm off the clock. Then if a client or coworker calls my personal number, they know they're crossing that line and anything done on that call is either a special favour, or billed at emergency rates. With many carriers, you can add this second phone onto your existing plan, only paying a nominal fee for the second number, definitely less than $20. Don't you think a healthy work/life separation is worth $20 a month ? To me, that sounds a bargain!
To each their own I guess but I cannot help think that you have trouble separating your work life from your home life. If you have a work supplied phone with email then guess what? Your colleagues will expect that you would at least read and respond to email outside of normal work hours.
In the industry I work for there are some really strict security rules so my work laptop never leaves my workplace unless if I'm on a business trip. It has full disk encryption enabled and is tied to the corporate domain so buying a laptop for work would never be an option for me. I am also careful to not work on sensitive information on my laptop directly opting to work through VMs on the network instead because there is always a chance that my laptop could be lost or stolen when I'm on a trip for business.
My work does have my personal cell phone number but they are only allowed to call it in case of an emergency and my smartphone only has my personal emails/calendars and apps on it.
Just as with the laptop, a work phone would have to be company supplied and it would be a blackberry. I hate blackberry devices with a passion and I would never want to have one because I would feel obligated to check my work email outside of the office at least periodically.
My short 25 minute commute from my door to the office floor is my "me" time so I have no interest in using it to read emails on a corporate device.
no travil to work means you are alway punching in at start and punching out after work only a fool would agree that working at home means I am always avalabel.
now if they want to pay me to be 24/7 call from home say with a 1-2 hour le way to make sure that if I am out I can just get back.... that would do for me...
My commute time is approximately 25 minutes and webex/cameras are no substitute for meetings with team members. You cannot always have the stakeholder in person but you should try to have the majority of your team in the same office.
The 24/7 issue I'm talking about has to do with the expectation that you would answer email even after work hours if you have a work supplied phone which is why I would never accept a work supplied blackberry.
Dude, I like "my" smartphone and tablet for "personal" use because that is why "I" bought them with "my" money. I like having my work and home separate and I don't want to be available 24/7 because I have no interest in being a "drone".
You might find this hard to believe but, as a software developer, I feel that I'm much more productive now that I work in the main development office than even when I worked from a satellite office. Modern software development is a very social pursuit with standup meetings, white boarding sessions and meetings with stakeholders.
Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach where some analyst talks to the user to get requirements, writes up a large requirements document and then the developer works off that and later hands it off to QA for testing.
So you are too stupid to understand that free market economics cannot function without some government regulation?
Right there you pretty much lost the whole argument.
As long as companies are licensing public property or resources then the government has a right to regulate that sector
I like how you just automatically assume the government "owns" the whole radio spectrum to start with.
Companies can self-regulate within a spectrum too you know... After all, where is the governing worldwide body that dictated all countries use GSM? And yet that is what most countries ended up supporting.
Sorry Mr. American but contrary to your dogma, no country on this earth is a pure free market economy. Pure free market economies, much like political anarchies cannot exist in the real world. Why? Because just like political anarchy, economic anarchy will collapse quickly upon itself and degenerate into a a form of mercantilism. What you call "free market" economics was regulated into being and is currently regulated in the US. What do you think laws such as anti-combines legislation are all about? They prevent the market from destroying itself through collusion between competitors and formation of absolute monopolies or use of company with a monopoly from abusing their market position to engage in anti-competitive activity.
Here is another little gem for you. Socialism in the US is alive and well in the US. Your local fire department is an example of socialism as is your local local public library. You could say that your founding fathers believed in not only liberty but also socialism. Public libraries were the idea of Benjamin Franklin after all.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the US is a mixed economy even without having to invoke the large military industrial complex. The US spends a lot more on defence than most "free market" economies.
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the next step from 3G/WCDMA & HSPA for many already on the GSM technology curve but also for others too, such as CDMA operators. This new radio access technology will be optimized to deliver very fast data speeds of up to 100Mb/s downlink and 50Mb/s uplink (peak rates).
Designed to be backwards-compatible with GSM and HSPA, LTE incorporates Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) in combination with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) in the downlink and Single Carrier FDMA in the uplink to provide high levels of spectral efficiency and end user data rates exceeding 100 Mbps, coupled with major improvements in capacity and reductions in latency. LTE will support channel bandwidths from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz and both FDD and TDD operation.
Although both LTE and WiMAX use the OFDMA air interface, LTE has the advantage of being backwards compatible with existing GSM and HSPA networks, enabling mobile operators deploying LTE to continue to provide a seamless service across LTE and existing deployed networks.
You have no clue what LTE is and I suspect that you are a shill for Verizon trying to hide the fact that they should have gone with HSPA+ first before going to LTE so that they could have a fall back mode similar to how Edge is a fallback mode from HSPA.
Please don't hold up Canada as a bastion of cellular freedom. It has to be one of the worst (for consumers) in the world. *Everywhere else* has better options, better carriers and better deals. The only fair carrier in Canada is WIND which is T-Mobile for the great white north. All the other carriers are... Rogers, ew. Think 2 year contracts are bad? How about 3 years... that standard in Canada because there is *NO* competition at all. ETF fees are huge! Personal compare list: Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, UAE, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, China.
Have you looked at American plans versus Canadian ones? Have you? WIND/Mobilicity etc... are bit players and useless to anyone who travels outside of major cities because they have almost no coverage outside of a handful of cities. Contract or no contract, you still pay for service.
Wind mobile, mobilicity and their like are small bit player with extremely limited coverage areas and even fewer handset options than even T-Mobile in the US. They really are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I would never consider an AWS carrier because of the lack of hardest availability and the lack of coverage outside of major metropolitan areas.
So, you are too stupid to understand limited government involvement. Perhaps you think the government should be making all decisions for corporations, what OS they should run, etc....
So you are too stupid to understand that free market economics cannot function without some government regulation? The carriers do not "own' the spectrum, they have a "license" for it which means that the government can license the same frequency bands to multiple parties and they can also approve or ban certain radio technologies. They can also use some of the levers they have at their disposal to force direct competition when it comes to radio frequencies and radio technologies.
As long as companies are licensing public property or resources then the government has a right to regulate that sector to protect consumers from monopolies and collusion.
Yeah... there is no way you can seriously be arguing that the state Canadian telcoms are in is preferable what we have here in the US.
Hmm. Let's see.... I can get a subsidized iPhone 4S on any plan combination of data and voice as long as it is at least 50 dollars per month and I can choose one of the following HSPA+ carriers: Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Koodo, Virgin or one of several regional carriers if I happen to live in a couple of the provinces. Canada got unlocked iPhones a year before they became available in the US and several of the carriers offer unlocking either 90 days into the contract in good standing or at the end of the contract. I got my 4S subsidized on a 70 dollars per month plan that included 6GB of data (free tethering), 6pme evenings and weekends, 10 favourite numbers, unlimited texts/MMS and voice mail.
You forgot to mention 3-year contract length, and minimum $65 a month for a data plan and voice plan with an iPhone 4S from a Canadian provider. You also forgot to mention paying extra for caller id, a feature which has always been free anywhere but Canada.
Rogers owns Fido, Telus owns Koodo, Bell owns Virgin Canada, and Bell has an alliance with Telus to share infrastructure. Hardly a competitive environment.
The contract length is irrelevant since you have to pay for service with or without a contract and because most carriers in Canada no longer charge an ETF fee but rather just charge the remaining amount on the device subsidization at the time that you break the contract. You can also pay 50 dollars to some of the carriers to get an official unlock within 90 days of the start of the contract as long as you are in good standing.
The minimum combination of voice+data is 50 dollars per month, not 65 per month. You could "save" money by buying the phone upfront but then you would have to go without data and rely on wifi hotspots limiting your capabilities.
As I mentioned, Fido offers plans for city dwellers while Rogers focuses on rural users who need a larger network for their commute and Koodo offers different plans from its parent as does Virgin versus Bell. I don't see your point about Telus and Bell sharing some infrastructure since wired phones do the same and the same thing happens between Verizon and Sprint and AT&T and T-Mobile in the US right now even without a merger.
Actually 70 dollars is a good deal if you "work" during the day compared with what carriers in the US charge for smart phones. If I'm at work from 9am to around 5-5:30pm then I'm not going to be using my phone much before 6pm when unlimited local calls kick in. Paying to receive calls? Airtime is airtime. What part of "unlimited" messaging do you not understand?
The contract is pretty much irrelevant since you would still need to pay for service even if you bought it off contract/unlocked. You would saving "nothing" by going off contract and you would actually end up paying "more" in the end. Do you think you get free service if you bring in an unlocked phone? Also, carriers like Telus have a "tab" for the phone so you actually pay the remaining amount on the phone subsidization instead of an ETF and the same thing applies for Virgin.
I was on Fido before switching to Telus and even though Rogers owns Fido there is still pricing differentiation between the Fido and Rogers brands. For example, you can get a "City Fido" plan if you do not travel much outside of one of the major metropolitan cities.
The american carriers do not even offer a 50 dollar option for subsidized iPhones.
Yeah... there is no way you can seriously be arguing that the state Canadian telcoms are in is preferable what we have here in the US.
Hmm. Let's see.... I can get a subsidized iPhone 4S on any plan combination of data and voice as long as it is at least 50 dollars per month and I can choose one of the following HSPA+ carriers: Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Koodo, Virgin or one of several regional carriers if I happen to live in a couple of the provinces. Canada got unlocked iPhones a year before they became available in the US and several of the carriers offer unlocking either 90 days into the contract in good standing or at the end of the contract. I got my 4S subsidized on a 70 dollars per month plan that included 6GB of data (free tethering), 6pme evenings and weekends, 10 favourite numbers, unlimited texts/MMS and voice mail.
This is not in the public interest but allowing fragmentation of cellular standards between GSM/HSPA and CDMA was in the public interest by allowing the major carriers to offer incompatible services so that they did not have to directly compete with each other was? Was it in the public interest to allow a a further fragmentation of GSM/HSPA between standard HSPA with AT&T and AWS for T-Mobile? Was it in the public interest to allow further fragmentation of CDMA with Sprint going early with CDMA + WiMax?
The major carriers could have all agreed to use HSPA years ago and shared the standard frequencies used in Canada just like how Canada has Telus, Bell, Rogers and smaller virtual carriers all operating HSPA frequency networks compatible with the iPhone and other popular handsets.
Android is a Google product and Google's main business is selling advertising. Android just another channel for ad traffic for Google and so Google does not consider android users to be their customers. Rather, users of Google's services are the "product" sold to their real customers namely, advertisers.
Given this nature of Google's "free" services, explain to me how Google is interested in preserving your privacy and not intruding on it?
Why do well-educated scientists consider alien life, even if it's very simple or nothing like life here on earth, to be such an absurd idea? Why do they have so much trouble considering it with any seriousness?
They are aware that of the lack of evidence for alien life? It seems to me that your relatives understand the difference between science and science fiction while you do not.
There is a difference between putting forward a hypothesis that life "might" exist on other planets given the right conditions and believing that alien life "must" exist.
Scientists ultimately have to deal with facts and even test theories against real observations. Their rational approach is what separates scientists from science "enthusiasts".
either give a gift that you actually think they would like or don't bother
Which is why you should probably stick to FOSS games. Most people love casual games, so why not give them the gift of Frozen Bubble? Just make sure to package it for easy installation on Windows -- that would even count as a small DIY project.
Sorry but no, that does not count as a DYI project. Frozen Bubble does not have a high degree of replay value for someone who is not a FOSS Zealot. It is not even an original game but rather a penguin themed cheap knock off of the Bust-a-Move (Puzzle Bobble) arcade game from 1994. Even the original game does not have a lot of replay value today.
The gift is supposed to be for the "other" person, not the gift giver. So with that in mind, the giver should try to please the recipient rather than themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried multiple browsers? Not all browsers have the same performance with HTML5+ Javascript.
Instead of using a single, remote pilot to fly just one UAV, DARPA imagines 'an app that allows a swarm of small deployed UAVs to be controlled as a single unit (a hive [mind] so to speak)'.
What could possibly go wrong?
FOSS killed the PC because most of it is just a copy of existing commercial software. Take Open Office for example, it strives to emulate MS Office slavishly rather than providing some compatibility and striving to compete with it by offering features not available with MS Office. The negative effect of all this was to kill any chance of alternative competing software packages like Wordperfect and the Lotus suite from making a dent in MS Office by entrenching MS Office format as the standard and making it impossible to compete with "free" software. The average Joe does not care about GNU "freedom" or any of the other propaganda that RMS is promoting as long as they can get their software for "free".
When walled gardens came along, third party developer saw a new frontier where they could compete with the big guys on a more level playing field and because of the increasing onerous conditions of GPL there was very little chance of GPL'ed software being published on the iOS app store thereby increasing competition among software developers building original software from scratch.
Every email that you send whether encrypted or not travels through multiple servers on the internet and is stored, at least temporarily on each of those servers as it routes through the internet.
If you are concerned about privacy, you should not divulge sensitive information on the internet or use encrypted email and/or more secure point to point protocols.
The stark reality however, is that nobody is interested in spying on boring ordinary people never mind that spying on everyone would be prohibitively expensive and a logistical nightmare.
4500mAh battery, 4 days of battery life on my Android phone. I'd like to see your dinky iPhone do better.
Also my battery won't explode like yours might.
My iPhone 4S lasts two and a half days and is considerably lighter than your boat anchor.
You might want to check out the CNET reviews on the various phones for battery life. The Apple numbers are conservative and seem to be either consistent or lower than those achieved by third party reviewers whereas the opposite is true for android handsets.
Having just bought an iphone 4S I can at least say the battery life is pathetic, I am lucky if it lasts a day. Like the phone but wish I could change the battery.
Go into Settings-> Location Services and System Services and toggle off Setting Time Zone as well as any other service that you see a purple arrow by or is something with a grey arrow that you don't need or want.
Your iPhone 4S should be lasting you at least a day. Mine lasts about two days on a single charge with Wifi turned on all of the time. Also, turn off blutooth unless if you really need it.
Well, maybe the passengers should be required to remove the battery from their iphones and ipads in the future...
Maybe passengers with phones with removable batteries should be limited to one battery in total including checked luggage forcing them to buy another battery at their destination. On their way back, they would have to ship one of their batteries back home. That way people with android phones with removable batteries but shitty battery life would get why removable batteries are not an advantage if you need them to compensate for poor battery performance.
A ban on phones with non-removable batteries may be necessary. You can carry the phone on board, but the battery has to go in a plastic bag in luggage.
Obvious troll is obvious. This was one incident and we do not know what the circumstances were. It is possible that the passenger had sat on the phone by having it in their back pocket and then battery could have ignited after the glass punctured the battery and sweat reacted with the lithium.
I'd rather have twice (or more) the battery life per charge than a removable battery which is one reason I have an iPhone 4S instead of an android handset.
Where are you going to keep those extra batteries that you have to swap throughout the day when you are not on a plane? What happens when you have then in your pocket with some keys and one of the keys short the terminals on a battery in your pocket?
I'm not a programmer, I'm a network admin, so maybe I'm missing something here...but couldn't a teleconference provide the same benefits that you are claiming to find in the main development office? I have three company provided laptops, all of which have built in web cams. I really don't see why you still couldn't have whiteboard sessions and meetings with stakeholders, even when working from home, the local coffee shop/pub or satellite office.
Come on, what are you really saving with that? Nothing really other than some office space for the company. Big deal. I have a really short commute and no, phone calls or even web cams are not a good substitute for working with your team. I used to work in the "head office" with the majority of my team in the development office where I am now and it is just not the same if you try to remotely "pair program" with a tool like Remote Administrator and voice chat. Video chat really adds very little to the equation for work collaboration. We do use webex and other remote viewing programs for meetings with stakeholders but it is still very useful having team members in the same office which is why one of our remote colleagues is flown in every once in a while to work and attend planning sessions or to attend training with the rest of us.
We still do dial in our team member in the other office but I find my productivity is much higher now that I am in the same office as the testers and the other developers.
If the idea of your "personal" devices becoming work devices is what irks you, then get a second phone dedicated to work. I bought a laptop "for work", and while it is my own deductible expense, I only have work stuff on it. It is my work computer: when I'm typing at that laptop, I'm working and getting paid. If I feel like using my desktop peripherals and displays, then I remote into that laptop to keep everything focused.
I don't use my phone much for work, other than checking email when I'm bored, so I suppose I'm lucky for that, but if work were spilling into my personal life, I'd get another phone, and turn the ringer off when I'm off the clock. Then if a client or coworker calls my personal number, they know they're crossing that line and anything done on that call is either a special favour, or billed at emergency rates. With many carriers, you can add this second phone onto your existing plan, only paying a nominal fee for the second number, definitely less than $20. Don't you think a healthy work/life separation is worth $20 a month ? To me, that sounds a bargain!
To each their own I guess but I cannot help think that you have trouble separating your work life from your home life. If you have a work supplied phone with email then guess what? Your colleagues will expect that you would at least read and respond to email outside of normal work hours.
In the industry I work for there are some really strict security rules so my work laptop never leaves my workplace unless if I'm on a business trip. It has full disk encryption enabled and is tied to the corporate domain so buying a laptop for work would never be an option for me. I am also careful to not work on sensitive information on my laptop directly opting to work through VMs on the network instead because there is always a chance that my laptop could be lost or stolen when I'm on a trip for business.
My work does have my personal cell phone number but they are only allowed to call it in case of an emergency and my smartphone only has my personal emails/calendars and apps on it.
Just as with the laptop, a work phone would have to be company supplied and it would be a blackberry. I hate blackberry devices with a passion and I would never want to have one because I would feel obligated to check my work email outside of the office at least periodically.
My short 25 minute commute from my door to the office floor is my "me" time so I have no interest in using it to read emails on a corporate device.
did anyone say you had to be working 24/7 ?
why not at home work tell 5 sing off Done.
no travil to work means you are alway punching in at start and punching out after work only a fool would agree that working at home means I am always avalabel.
now if they want to pay me to be 24/7 call from home say with a 1-2 hour le way to make sure that if I am out I can just get back .... that would do for me ...
My commute time is approximately 25 minutes and webex/cameras are no substitute for meetings with team members. You cannot always have the stakeholder in person but you should try to have the majority of your team in the same office.
The 24/7 issue I'm talking about has to do with the expectation that you would answer email even after work hours if you have a work supplied phone which is why I would never accept a work supplied blackberry.
Dude, I like "my" smartphone and tablet for "personal" use because that is why "I" bought them with "my" money. I like having my work and home separate and I don't want to be available 24/7 because I have no interest in being a "drone".
You might find this hard to believe but, as a software developer, I feel that I'm much more productive now that I work in the main development office than even when I worked from a satellite office. Modern software development is a very social pursuit with standup meetings, white boarding sessions and meetings with stakeholders.
Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach where some analyst talks to the user to get requirements, writes up a large requirements document and then the developer works off that and later hands it off to QA for testing.
So you are too stupid to understand that free market economics cannot function without some government regulation?
Right there you pretty much lost the whole argument.
As long as companies are licensing public property or resources then the government has a right to regulate that sector
I like how you just automatically assume the government "owns" the whole radio spectrum to start with.
Companies can self-regulate within a spectrum too you know... After all, where is the governing worldwide body that dictated all countries use GSM? And yet that is what most countries ended up supporting.
Sorry Mr. American but contrary to your dogma, no country on this earth is a pure free market economy. Pure free market economies, much like political anarchies cannot exist in the real world. Why? Because just like political anarchy, economic anarchy will collapse quickly upon itself and degenerate into a a form of mercantilism. What you call "free market" economics was regulated into being and is currently regulated in the US. What do you think laws such as anti-combines legislation are all about? They prevent the market from destroying itself through collusion between competitors and formation of absolute monopolies or use of company with a monopoly from abusing their market position to engage in anti-competitive activity.
Here is another little gem for you. Socialism in the US is alive and well in the US. Your local fire department is an example of socialism as is your local local public library. You could say that your founding fathers believed in not only liberty but also socialism. Public libraries were the idea of Benjamin Franklin after all.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the US is a mixed economy even without having to invoke the large military industrial complex. The US spends a lot more on defence than most "free market" economies.
Do some research before you start spouting crap:
http://maps.mobileworldlive.com/network.php?cid=88&cname=Canada
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the next step from 3G/WCDMA & HSPA for many already on the GSM technology curve but also for others too, such as CDMA operators. This new radio access technology will be optimized to deliver very fast data speeds of up to 100Mb/s downlink and 50Mb/s uplink (peak rates).
Designed to be backwards-compatible with GSM and HSPA, LTE incorporates Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) in combination with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) in the downlink and Single Carrier FDMA in the uplink to provide high levels of spectral efficiency and end user data rates exceeding 100 Mbps, coupled with major improvements in capacity and reductions in latency. LTE will support channel bandwidths from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz and both FDD and TDD operation.
Although both LTE and WiMAX use the OFDMA air interface, LTE has the advantage of being backwards compatible with existing GSM and HSPA networks, enabling mobile operators deploying LTE to continue to provide a seamless service across LTE and existing deployed networks.
http://www.gsm.org/technology/lte.htm
You have no clue what LTE is and I suspect that you are a shill for Verizon trying to hide the fact that they should have gone with HSPA+ first before going to LTE so that they could have a fall back mode similar to how Edge is a fallback mode from HSPA.
Please don't hold up Canada as a bastion of cellular freedom. It has to be one of the worst (for consumers) in the world. *Everywhere else* has better options, better carriers and better deals. The only fair carrier in Canada is WIND which is T-Mobile for the great white north. All the other carriers are ... Rogers, ew. ... that standard in Canada because there is *NO* competition at all. ETF fees are huge!
Think 2 year contracts are bad? How about 3 years
Personal compare list: Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, UAE, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, China.
Have you looked at American plans versus Canadian ones? Have you? WIND/Mobilicity etc... are bit players and useless to anyone who travels outside of major cities because they have almost no coverage outside of a handful of cities. Contract or no contract, you still pay for service.
Well.. Almost.
Wind mobile, mobilicity and their like are small bit player with extremely limited coverage areas and even fewer handset options than even T-Mobile in the US. They really are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I would never consider an AWS carrier because of the lack of hardest availability and the lack of coverage outside of major metropolitan areas.
So, you are too stupid to understand limited government involvement. Perhaps you think the government should be making all decisions for corporations, what OS they should run, etc....
So you are too stupid to understand that free market economics cannot function without some government regulation? The carriers do not "own' the spectrum, they have a "license" for it which means that the government can license the same frequency bands to multiple parties and they can also approve or ban certain radio technologies. They can also use some of the levers they have at their disposal to force direct competition when it comes to radio frequencies and radio technologies.
As long as companies are licensing public property or resources then the government has a right to regulate that sector to protect consumers from monopolies and collusion.
Yeah... there is no way you can seriously be arguing that the state Canadian telcoms are in is preferable what we have here in the US.
Hmm. Let's see.... I can get a subsidized iPhone 4S on any plan combination of data and voice as long as it is at least 50 dollars per month and I can choose one of the following HSPA+ carriers: Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Koodo, Virgin or one of several regional carriers if I happen to live in a couple of the provinces. Canada got unlocked iPhones a year before they became available in the US and several of the carriers offer unlocking either 90 days into the contract in good standing or at the end of the contract. I got my 4S subsidized on a 70 dollars per month plan that included 6GB of data (free tethering), 6pme evenings and weekends, 10 favourite numbers, unlimited texts/MMS and voice mail.
You forgot to mention 3-year contract length, and minimum $65 a month for a data plan and voice plan with an iPhone 4S from a Canadian provider.
You also forgot to mention paying extra for caller id, a feature which has always been free anywhere but Canada.
Rogers owns Fido, Telus owns Koodo, Bell owns Virgin Canada, and Bell has an alliance with Telus to share infrastructure. Hardly a competitive environment.
The contract length is irrelevant since you have to pay for service with or without a contract and because most carriers in Canada no longer charge an ETF fee but rather just charge the remaining amount on the device subsidization at the time that you break the contract. You can also pay 50 dollars to some of the carriers to get an official unlock within 90 days of the start of the contract as long as you are in good standing.
The minimum combination of voice+data is 50 dollars per month, not 65 per month. You could "save" money by buying the phone upfront but then you would have to go without data and rely on wifi hotspots limiting your capabilities.
As I mentioned, Fido offers plans for city dwellers while Rogers focuses on rural users who need a larger network for their commute and Koodo offers different plans from its parent as does Virgin versus Bell. I don't see your point about Telus and Bell sharing some infrastructure since wired phones do the same and the same thing happens between Verizon and Sprint and AT&T and T-Mobile in the US right now even without a merger.
Actually 70 dollars is a good deal if you "work" during the day compared with what carriers in the US charge for smart phones. If I'm at work from 9am to around 5-5:30pm then I'm not going to be using my phone much before 6pm when unlimited local calls kick in. Paying to receive calls? Airtime is airtime. What part of "unlimited" messaging do you not understand?
The contract is pretty much irrelevant since you would still need to pay for service even if you bought it off contract/unlocked. You would saving "nothing" by going off contract and you would actually end up paying "more" in the end. Do you think you get free service if you bring in an unlocked phone? Also, carriers like Telus have a "tab" for the phone so you actually pay the remaining amount on the phone subsidization instead of an ETF and the same thing applies for Virgin.
I was on Fido before switching to Telus and even though Rogers owns Fido there is still pricing differentiation between the Fido and Rogers brands. For example, you can get a "City Fido" plan if you do not travel much outside of one of the major metropolitan cities.
The american carriers do not even offer a 50 dollar option for subsidized iPhones.
Yeah... there is no way you can seriously be arguing that the state Canadian telcoms are in is preferable what we have here in the US.
Hmm. Let's see.... I can get a subsidized iPhone 4S on any plan combination of data and voice as long as it is at least 50 dollars per month and I can choose one of the following HSPA+ carriers: Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Koodo, Virgin or one of several regional carriers if I happen to live in a couple of the provinces. Canada got unlocked iPhones a year before they became available in the US and several of the carriers offer unlocking either 90 days into the contract in good standing or at the end of the contract. I got my 4S subsidized on a 70 dollars per month plan that included 6GB of data (free tethering), 6pme evenings and weekends, 10 favourite numbers, unlimited texts/MMS and voice mail.
This is not in the public interest but allowing fragmentation of cellular standards between GSM/HSPA and CDMA was in the public interest by allowing the major carriers to offer incompatible services so that they did not have to directly compete with each other was? Was it in the public interest to allow a a further fragmentation of GSM/HSPA between standard HSPA with AT&T and AWS for T-Mobile? Was it in the public interest to allow further fragmentation of CDMA with Sprint going early with CDMA + WiMax?
The major carriers could have all agreed to use HSPA years ago and shared the standard frequencies used in Canada just like how Canada has Telus, Bell, Rogers and smaller virtual carriers all operating HSPA frequency networks compatible with the iPhone and other popular handsets.
Android is a Google product and Google's main business is selling advertising. Android just another channel for ad traffic for Google and so Google does not consider android users to be their customers. Rather, users of Google's services are the "product" sold to their real customers namely, advertisers.
Given this nature of Google's "free" services, explain to me how Google is interested in preserving your privacy and not intruding on it?
Why do well-educated scientists consider alien life, even if it's very simple or nothing like life here on earth, to be such an absurd idea? Why do they have so much trouble considering it with any seriousness?
They are aware that of the lack of evidence for alien life? It seems to me that your relatives understand the difference between science and science fiction while you do not.
There is a difference between putting forward a hypothesis that life "might" exist on other planets given the right conditions and believing that alien life "must" exist.
Scientists ultimately have to deal with facts and even test theories against real observations. Their rational approach is what separates scientists from science "enthusiasts".
either give a gift that you actually think they would like or don't bother
Which is why you should probably stick to FOSS games. Most people love casual games, so why not give them the gift of Frozen Bubble? Just make sure to package it for easy installation on Windows -- that would even count as a small DIY project.
Sorry but no, that does not count as a DYI project. Frozen Bubble does not have a high degree of replay value for someone who is not a FOSS Zealot. It is not even an original game but rather a penguin themed cheap knock off of the Bust-a-Move (Puzzle Bobble) arcade game from 1994. Even the original game does not have a lot of replay value today.
The gift is supposed to be for the "other" person, not the gift giver. So with that in mind, the giver should try to please the recipient rather than themselves.