I think Apple need to enter the phone handset market - people will not spend $150 on an iPod when they can get a free phone that will allow them to play MP3s. Why would people carry two devices when they could do it all with one?
Nokia are now starting to produce some decent MP3 phones, such as the N series, Sony-Ericsson are producing some pretty good walkman phones (Sony making up for the lost oppotunity with MP3 players) - and don't forget these guys are actually pretty good at intuitive UIs, Nokia in particular with context sensitive soft keys etc. Apple iPods may be much simpler to use than most mobile phones but that is partially because they have a much smaller feature set.
All you need is one of the major networks to offer a decent MP3 service and people will move to it - why wait until you get home to buy a tune, if you hear it on the radio or as someone else's ring tune you can buy it immediately.
As for Apple starting a network - they could launch an MVNO but they do not have the expertise to build their own and why would they.
Well done on having not only superior ears that can allow you to hear a rich aural experience from 192kbps MP3 but also on having such a superior attitude.
I have done blind tests (through accident) on differing levels of MP3 compression. I first ripped some of my CDs at 192kps to listen to them on my iPod and they sounded great. I then bought a client device to allow me to listen to my ripped CDs via my hi-fi and they sounded sh*te. I thought I had problems with my hi-fi/digital music client so I re-recorded some of the albums as 320kps MP3s. Now on the client device I can't see the full file name so it is a blind test - in every instance the one that sounded better turned out to be the one recorded at the higher rate. The diference is fairly obvious, the 192kbps rip just sounds tinny.
There is no point spending any money on decent hi-fi equipment just to play poor quality recordings.
The easy way to solve this is to stop anomymous entries - anyone that disseminates libelous information anywhere should be open to legal penalties. If you publish you should be prepared to defend your statements.
The just edit it back answer is not satisfactory. In the time the information was available people will have seen it - they may never re-read the updated information or they may not believe the update having been prejudiced by the original information.
Wikipedia is destroying itself due to complete idiots wasting the medium to slag each other off, argue pointlessly and attack other people for their political viewpoints. It is no better than the graffiti you see written on the inside of toilet stalls.
As an example look up the world cup on Wikipedia, page after page on whether it should be called the FIFA world cup, soccer world cup, football world cup or world cup, followed by pages re-analysing why the US really came third in 1936. There is no useful information at all.
Firstly, I would like to see these examples of civilisations ruined by multi-culturalism. In the past most countries insisted on any immigrants adopting their own rules, for example Europe in the middle ages with their pogroms against Jews, medieval Spain under the second wave of Moors then fundamentalist Catholics, Rome where all non-Romans were not citizens, medieval England where Catholics were forced to pray in Anglican churches under threat of fines or execution, the Americas where non-Christians were forced to convert under pain of death by numerous waves of settlers, the US where slaves were forced into Christianity etc, etc. In fact the only examples of where multi-culturalism has been evident and allowed to flourish it has worked - under the first wave of Moors in Spain Christians, Jews and Muslims lived and worked together, in London (and often in other trading centres) where Jews and Christians worked together setting up business and trading empires, in Hong Kong where Europeans and Chinese worked together to build global businesses, in New York where strict Jews live with Christians, Asians, Muslims and Mexicans and California where people of European and Asian decent mix to create a scientific and artistic hot house.
Friend of mine took Larium - took her almost two years to fully recover. Kind of ruined my trip round SE Asia having to drag somone kicking and screaming into a mental hospital in Thailand. After flying back home she then got committed to a mental hospital for another 6 months followed by 18 months of severe depression. Not a good drug to have to take.
Which European restrictions are you talking about? The US and the EU are fairly even when it comes to f*cking over the third world through tariffs. At least though Europe does not insist that almost all of it's foreign aid is spent with European companies or only fund causes that meet it's own idealogical requirements at the expense of the people who need the help - for your information over 80% of US foreign aid is spent with American companies in the countries requiring help (even if local and cheaper alternatives are available), the EU contibutes a much higher amount to aid per capita and in total and the EU does not, for example, insist on abstinence to combat the spread of aids when it has been proved to be ineffective just because some religious and "moral" arseh*les think condoms are the devil's work.
Maybe I haven't read this properly but I can't find explicitly stated anywhere that I will be able to keep my username after the change from @gmail to @googlemail - i.e. if I have xyz@gmail.com will they reserve xyz@googlemail.com for me?
I have a really common name and getting a user name that was remotely like my real name was only possible by getting hold of an invite right at the start. I'll be really pissed off if someone else can swipe it. I've tried opening another account with myname@googlemail.com and it is not available - hopefully this indicates that they have reserved it for me.
This has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard.
The whole point of socialism is to help the poor - modern socialism actively looks to redistribute some of the wealth from the rich so that the poor do not starve or die from easily cured diseases. It ensures that all have the opportunities afforded by education.
How this in any way is the rich protecting themselves is beyond me.
In reality the Republicans in the US are manipulating the poor through abuse of religious beliefs, fake morality and trying to claim tax breaks on inheritance tax or capital gains tax will assist the poor. I've met complete idiots on $15000 a year who think they are better off under the GOP. The GOP has truly learnt from Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses.
IKEA is the world's largest furniture seller and makes much more money than any of the more upmarket furniture sellers.
Something you generally learn pretty quickly in IT (or should) is that you make what the customer wants - no point building a Rolls Royce if the customer wants something cheap to get the shops and back.
This is another of those great stories where people release research on the bleeding obvious.
Has anyone tried to use their handset in a heavilly populated urban area at around midnight on New Year's Eve? Suprisingly enough, due to all the people sending "Happy New Year" SMSs the network falls to it's knees - the spike in traffic traffic is such, we were carrying of the order of thousands of SMSs/second, that it is simply uneconomical to build a network that will support it (you would have half your capacity unused for the rest of the year).
Maybe I should apply for a professorship at Penn State as not only did I already know that, I was also responsible for putting a solution together to deal with these very issues at my empolyer (large mobile telco) last Xmas/New Year. You can actually manage the level of service you offer to get around this and give priority to 999 (911) calls and calls made by handsets owned by the emergency services (and network engineers).
Couple of comments - very few modern phones actually cost $100. Most cost considerably more and once you add on cost of sale you would be looking at closer to double that just for a cheap handset. Comparing it to a landline does not help your argument - a wireless fixed line handset will cost you 50 - 100 USD to buy just the phone and wouldn't have the same level of complexity in it's radio hardware or a nice screen.
I'm not expecting telcos to make money in their first year - rolling out a network nationally (my experience is in the UK) from scratch takes several years and billions of USD. You have to spend hundreds of millions on back office, billing and CRM systems (as an example our event/call rating system runs on approximately 20 million USD worth of hardware) and set up an entire organisation (in our case) of three to four thousand staff. You then have to spend further hundreds of millions on radio kit, fibre, switching etc., etc., etc. No one expects mobile telcos companies to do anything but EBITDA break even within 10 years.
Now the market has been thrown in turmoil by a mew entrant in the UK who have slashed prices - some networks are now moving to 18month contracts because it is the only way that they can recoup the cost of customer aquisition and the handset subsidies. It is an industry with very small margins and probably not a good one to buy shares in.
Now I agree that once the contract has expired that you should be able to take your handset with you - the contract is calculated to make sure the network should make some money. However many of the people posting on this board seem to think it is fundamentally wrong that they cannot do this from the moment they buy the handset/contract package. I'm simply explaining that it's not some misuse of the DMCA act to screw customers - it's in place because customers demand cheap handsets - that's what sells. You can buy unlocked handsets (in Europe at least) but they don't sell. The reason they don't sell is that they are hundreds of dollars. It's not a conspiracy - if some entrepeneur could find a way to undercut the competition they would, there just isn't the margin to do it.
As I pointed out - and I know - new (latest tech) phones do not cost 50-100 dollars.
3G handsets at the moment are running at around 300-400USD, you then have to pay commision to the sales staff in the outlets (~50-100USD). Networks make a significant loss on the handsets which is why the more expensive your contract the cheaper the phone - that is how the network makes money.
Out of your call fees the network has to pay for infrastructure e.g. base stations, switches, billing systems, interconnect charges, back-bone costs, staff costs - i.e. operating costs. The revenue then goes to cover the cost of sale e.g. handset subsidy, commision - what ever is left is profit. Suprisingly, at the moment at least in Europe, most mobile telcos are not actually making much money considering the investment required - hence the slide in stock prices at many of these companies.
Unlocking a handset before the costs are covered leads to a loss per customer - this gets allowed and the next thing you know us poor IT geeks in the industry will be out of a job...
Phone handsets (at least the latest on the market) cost hundreds of dollars. When you sign up for a contract or buy a pre-pay handset you generally get them for a fraction of that price as the network makes the money back on the calls.
If you allow customers to unlock their handsets then the neworks will put handset prices up sigificantly as they have to try to make a profit.
So complain all you like about your rights - either you get stuck with one network for a period of time or you pay a lot more for handsets up front.
The absolute crap that some people spout is beyond belief and in no way should be modded as insightful.
If you knew anything at all about the panic mongers who dump truckloads of artificial fear and guilt you would know that the chief perpertrators are the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. If you suggested to either the staff of readers of these papers that they were leftist they would take a shotgun to you before setting the hounds on you.
The problem is you don't have Winston Churchill developing strategy - you have a complete f*cking bunch of monkeys who are not even trying to develop a strategy.
And when will Americans give it a rest on this oil for food scandal - most oil leaving Iraq went out through routes policed by American forces. The list of names provided in the oil for food scandal is quite ridiculous, George Galloway, for example, may be a complete arse but he hasn't made any money out of the hundreds of millions of barrels that he was supposedly given (see details of his rebuttal in the US senate). The lists implicate some bizarre people, including many Americans.
The whole oil for food scandal is a disgusting smoke screen put up by the lunatics running your country to distract you all from the many dodgy activities that they are up. I mean diverting funds for oil pales into insignificance compared to invading a country under false pretences causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The sheer level of hypocriy and gall that Bush and his cronies have just beggare belief.
Interesting viewpoint - I'm assuming that if the US is ever invaded you will have your official uniform ready so that you can defend your home and country without fear of being classed as an unlawful combatant.
Not that I don't think the Taliban were awful - they were/are scum, however the US ignoring the Genenva convention for it's own ends sends a powerful and dangerous message.
The decision by the US administration to count them as "enemy combatants" is, quite frankly, complete bollocks and completely without legal merit under international law or US law.
The part I find most ridiculous is that they cannot be, according to Bush et al., defined as part of a recognised army because the US did not recognise their government. What a fantastic get out clause for anyone the US wishes to attack!
Slashdot Mirror
I think Apple need to enter the phone handset market - people will not spend $150 on an iPod when they can get a free phone that will allow them to play MP3s. Why would people carry two devices when they could do it all with one?
Nokia are now starting to produce some decent MP3 phones, such as the N series, Sony-Ericsson are producing some pretty good walkman phones (Sony making up for the lost oppotunity with MP3 players) - and don't forget these guys are actually pretty good at intuitive UIs, Nokia in particular with context sensitive soft keys etc. Apple iPods may be much simpler to use than most mobile phones but that is partially because they have a much smaller feature set.
All you need is one of the major networks to offer a decent MP3 service and people will move to it - why wait until you get home to buy a tune, if you hear it on the radio or as someone else's ring tune you can buy it immediately.
As for Apple starting a network - they could launch an MVNO but they do not have the expertise to build their own and why would they.
Well done on having not only superior ears that can allow you to hear a rich aural experience from 192kbps MP3 but also on having such a superior attitude.
I have done blind tests (through accident) on differing levels of MP3 compression. I first ripped some of my CDs at 192kps to listen to them on my iPod and they sounded great. I then bought a client device to allow me to listen to my ripped CDs via my hi-fi and they sounded sh*te. I thought I had problems with my hi-fi/digital music client so I re-recorded some of the albums as 320kps MP3s. Now on the client device I can't see the full file name so it is a blind test - in every instance the one that sounded better turned out to be the one recorded at the higher rate. The diference is fairly obvious, the 192kbps rip just sounds tinny.
There is no point spending any money on decent hi-fi equipment just to play poor quality recordings.
The easy way to solve this is to stop anomymous entries - anyone that disseminates libelous information anywhere should be open to legal penalties. If you publish you should be prepared to defend your statements.
The just edit it back answer is not satisfactory. In the time the information was available people will have seen it - they may never re-read the updated information or they may not believe the update having been prejudiced by the original information.
Wikipedia is destroying itself due to complete idiots wasting the medium to slag each other off, argue pointlessly and attack other people for their political viewpoints. It is no better than the graffiti you see written on the inside of toilet stalls.
As an example look up the world cup on Wikipedia, page after page on whether it should be called the FIFA world cup, soccer world cup, football world cup or world cup, followed by pages re-analysing why the US really came third in 1936. There is no useful information at all.
Wouldn't a low power Pentium M be more sensible - otherwise the fans will drown out my TV and the cost of the power would bankrupt me.
Why do we always assume we need a high end generalist device for a specific usage that could be satisfied with a lower power and cheaper alternative?
And how many of the people bashing Texas were French?
You could try X3 - not quite X-Wing or Tie Fighter for combat or atmosphere but pretty good provided you like your Elite trade/fight space sims.
Couple of points in response to this b*ll*cks.
Firstly, I would like to see these examples of civilisations ruined by multi-culturalism. In the past most countries insisted on any immigrants adopting their own rules, for example Europe in the middle ages with their pogroms against Jews, medieval Spain under the second wave of Moors then fundamentalist Catholics, Rome where all non-Romans were not citizens, medieval England where Catholics were forced to pray in Anglican churches under threat of fines or execution, the Americas where non-Christians were forced to convert under pain of death by numerous waves of settlers, the US where slaves were forced into Christianity etc, etc. In fact the only examples of where multi-culturalism has been evident and allowed to flourish it has worked - under the first wave of Moors in Spain Christians, Jews and Muslims lived and worked together, in London (and often in other trading centres) where Jews and Christians worked together setting up business and trading empires, in Hong Kong where Europeans and Chinese worked together to build global businesses, in New York where strict Jews live with Christians, Asians, Muslims and Mexicans and California where people of European and Asian decent mix to create a scientific and artistic hot house.
You are simply trying to excuse petty racism.
Fantastic - who said Wikepedia wasn't both accurate and useful....
Friend of mine took Larium - took her almost two years to fully recover. Kind of ruined my trip round SE Asia having to drag somone kicking and screaming into a mental hospital in Thailand. After flying back home she then got committed to a mental hospital for another 6 months followed by 18 months of severe depression. Not a good drug to have to take.
Which European restrictions are you talking about? The US and the EU are fairly even when it comes to f*cking over the third world through tariffs. At least though Europe does not insist that almost all of it's foreign aid is spent with European companies or only fund causes that meet it's own idealogical requirements at the expense of the people who need the help - for your information over 80% of US foreign aid is spent with American companies in the countries requiring help (even if local and cheaper alternatives are available), the EU contibutes a much higher amount to aid per capita and in total and the EU does not, for example, insist on abstinence to combat the spread of aids when it has been proved to be ineffective just because some religious and "moral" arseh*les think condoms are the devil's work.
Any chance yo0u would provide a reference for your astonishing claim on the changes in decay rates and other constants?
I will only accept references from peer reviewed journals - quotes from religious demagogues do not count.
Good plan - and it works.
Maybe I haven't read this properly but I can't find explicitly stated anywhere that I will be able to keep my username after the change from @gmail to @googlemail - i.e. if I have xyz@gmail.com will they reserve xyz@googlemail.com for me?
I have a really common name and getting a user name that was remotely like my real name was only possible by getting hold of an invite right at the start. I'll be really pissed off if someone else can swipe it. I've tried opening another account with myname@googlemail.com and it is not available - hopefully this indicates that they have reserved it for me.
This has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard.
The whole point of socialism is to help the poor - modern socialism actively looks to redistribute some of the wealth from the rich so that the poor do not starve or die from easily cured diseases. It ensures that all have the opportunities afforded by education.
How this in any way is the rich protecting themselves is beyond me.
In reality the Republicans in the US are manipulating the poor through abuse of religious beliefs, fake morality and trying to claim tax breaks on inheritance tax or capital gains tax will assist the poor. I've met complete idiots on $15000 a year who think they are better off under the GOP. The GOP has truly learnt from Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses.
Why?
IKEA is the world's largest furniture seller and makes much more money than any of the more upmarket furniture sellers.
Something you generally learn pretty quickly in IT (or should) is that you make what the customer wants - no point building a Rolls Royce if the customer wants something cheap to get the shops and back.
This is another of those great stories where people release research on the bleeding obvious.
Has anyone tried to use their handset in a heavilly populated urban area at around midnight on New Year's Eve? Suprisingly enough, due to all the people sending "Happy New Year" SMSs the network falls to it's knees - the spike in traffic traffic is such, we were carrying of the order of thousands of SMSs/second, that it is simply uneconomical to build a network that will support it (you would have half your capacity unused for the rest of the year).
Maybe I should apply for a professorship at Penn State as not only did I already know that, I was also responsible for putting a solution together to deal with these very issues at my empolyer (large mobile telco) last Xmas/New Year. You can actually manage the level of service you offer to get around this and give priority to 999 (911) calls and calls made by handsets owned by the emergency services (and network engineers).
Couple of comments - very few modern phones actually cost $100. Most cost considerably more and once you add on cost of sale you would be looking at closer to double that just for a cheap handset. Comparing it to a landline does not help your argument - a wireless fixed line handset will cost you 50 - 100 USD to buy just the phone and wouldn't have the same level of complexity in it's radio hardware or a nice screen.
I'm not expecting telcos to make money in their first year - rolling out a network nationally (my experience is in the UK) from scratch takes several years and billions of USD. You have to spend hundreds of millions on back office, billing and CRM systems (as an example our event/call rating system runs on approximately 20 million USD worth of hardware) and set up an entire organisation (in our case) of three to four thousand staff. You then have to spend further hundreds of millions on radio kit, fibre, switching etc., etc., etc. No one expects mobile telcos companies to do anything but EBITDA break even within 10 years.
Now the market has been thrown in turmoil by a mew entrant in the UK who have slashed prices - some networks are now moving to 18month contracts because it is the only way that they can recoup the cost of customer aquisition and the handset subsidies. It is an industry with very small margins and probably not a good one to buy shares in.
Now I agree that once the contract has expired that you should be able to take your handset with you - the contract is calculated to make sure the network should make some money. However many of the people posting on this board seem to think it is fundamentally wrong that they cannot do this from the moment they buy the handset/contract package. I'm simply explaining that it's not some misuse of the DMCA act to screw customers - it's in place because customers demand cheap handsets - that's what sells. You can buy unlocked handsets (in Europe at least) but they don't sell. The reason they don't sell is that they are hundreds of dollars. It's not a conspiracy - if some entrepeneur could find a way to undercut the competition they would, there just isn't the margin to do it.
As I pointed out - and I know - new (latest tech) phones do not cost 50-100 dollars.
3G handsets at the moment are running at around 300-400USD, you then have to pay commision to the sales staff in the outlets (~50-100USD). Networks make a significant loss on the handsets which is why the more expensive your contract the cheaper the phone - that is how the network makes money.
Out of your call fees the network has to pay for infrastructure e.g. base stations, switches, billing systems, interconnect charges, back-bone costs, staff costs - i.e. operating costs. The revenue then goes to cover the cost of sale e.g. handset subsidy, commision - what ever is left is profit. Suprisingly, at the moment at least in Europe, most mobile telcos are not actually making much money considering the investment required - hence the slide in stock prices at many of these companies.
Unlocking a handset before the costs are covered leads to a loss per customer - this gets allowed and the next thing you know us poor IT geeks in the industry will be out of a job...
Phone handsets (at least the latest on the market) cost hundreds of dollars. When you sign up for a contract or buy a pre-pay handset you generally get them for a fraction of that price as the network makes the money back on the calls.
If you allow customers to unlock their handsets then the neworks will put handset prices up sigificantly as they have to try to make a profit.
So complain all you like about your rights - either you get stuck with one network for a period of time or you pay a lot more for handsets up front.
Just launched in the Republic of Ireland as well.
Other networks offer 3G services throughout Europe and Asia - it's just the US that doesn't have this yet.
WFT?
The absolute crap that some people spout is beyond belief and in no way should be modded as insightful.
If you knew anything at all about the panic mongers who dump truckloads of artificial fear and guilt you would know that the chief perpertrators are the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. If you suggested to either the staff of readers of these papers that they were leftist they would take a shotgun to you before setting the hounds on you.
The problem is you don't have Winston Churchill developing strategy - you have a complete f*cking bunch of monkeys who are not even trying to develop a strategy.
And when will Americans give it a rest on this oil for food scandal - most oil leaving Iraq went out through routes policed by American forces. The list of names provided in the oil for food scandal is quite ridiculous, George Galloway, for example, may be a complete arse but he hasn't made any money out of the hundreds of millions of barrels that he was supposedly given (see details of his rebuttal in the US senate). The lists implicate some bizarre people, including many Americans.
The whole oil for food scandal is a disgusting smoke screen put up by the lunatics running your country to distract you all from the many dodgy activities that they are up. I mean diverting funds for oil pales into insignificance compared to invading a country under false pretences causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The sheer level of hypocriy and gall that Bush and his cronies have just beggare belief.
Interesting viewpoint - I'm assuming that if the US is ever invaded you will have your official uniform ready so that you can defend your home and country without fear of being classed as an unlawful combatant.
Not that I don't think the Taliban were awful - they were/are scum, however the US ignoring the Genenva convention for it's own ends sends a powerful and dangerous message.
Um - which rules of war were they violating?
The decision by the US administration to count them as "enemy combatants" is, quite frankly, complete bollocks and completely without legal merit under international law or US law.
The part I find most ridiculous is that they cannot be, according to Bush et al., defined as part of a recognised army because the US did not recognise their government. What a fantastic get out clause for anyone the US wishes to attack!
You saw the ruling - this just encourages more efficient and faster piracy. It is illegal, immoral and aids terrorists.
Just wait until the MPAA and RIAA hear about it.