I've never done this myself, but I've heard that these sorts of increases are a good way to get out of a 2 year contract early, which is only fair, since they totally are trying to change the contract on us to charge us more than we originally agreed to.
Now that it's a reasonable possibility (at least sometime in the not so distant future) to get a decent Linux stack on a cell phone that will have enough people using it and working on it so that it really works, I can't see why I would care about any new phone that isn't going to run Android.
I'm tired of all the ridiculous bugs in phone software. I've pretty much given up on a phone that just works. I want one that if it's broken, I can make it work.
The real reason SMS messages are so expensive is that carriers don't want them to cannibalize their bottom line. There are many cases where it is just as practical, or even better to send a short text message, but people call because they don't want to pay for the text. If cell phone companies reduced the prices of SMS, people would substitute SMS for airtime minutes.
And that's why the rest of us wait for format wars to end.
Furthermore, some of us have already decided that the new High-Def Movies don't really provide all that much of an advantage to us. DVDs were much much more convenient than VHS tapes:
- they don't wear out just by being played
- they don't melt just because you leave them in a car
- they don't take up nearly as much cabinet space
- and (most importantly for me) you can stick them in your laptop and watch them
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD don't seem to have any practical advantages beyond better picture and sound. There's the possibility of sticking whole seasons of TV on a single disc, but they don't seem to be doing that.
Unfortunately, No, the mean straight mp3s. Because mp3s are now like.doc files apparently. Even though there are alternatives that are superior, and yes, cheaper, people still want mp3s the way they want Microsoft Office. Mmm. Not exactly. By this point, everything from DVD players to cell phones to car stereos to Barbie Dolls have MP3 support implemented in hardware, or at least implemented in someway that is not easily modified. This is not as simple as installing OpenOffice.org on your computer. The MP3 format is going to be around for a long time, and even when other formats gain footholds, it will still be necessary for many devices to transcode back into MP3.
Um... The article he linked is saying that campus wide emails might not be the best alert system in an emergency, citing the Virginia Tech incident:
Although the first shootings occurred just before 7:15 a.m., officials at the school -- formally known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University -- didn't send out a campuswide e-mail about the incident to more than 26,000 students and faculty members until about 9:30 a.m. In that first incident, two students were killed in a dormitory, but no specific information was included in the e-mail; students were simply told there had been a shooting and urged to be "cautious" and report anything suspicious.
At the time, many students were already on campus or en route and never received word that something was amiss. The school also did not lock down the campus after the first shootings.
Just 15 minutes after that 9:30 a.m. e-mail went out, police received a 911 call reporting additional shootings in an engineering building on the campus. It was there that the majority of deaths occurred: 30 people were shot and killed before the assailant apparently turned the gun on himself.
While university officials and various law enforcement agencies are still unraveling exactly what happened, the use of the e-mail notification system and the timeline related to when messages went out are expected to be part of the probe.
Yes. Email is not an efficient system for getting messages to people within 15 minutes. But that's not in any way the same as college students increasingly ignore campus wide emails. (Although on that note, I think it's a case of the boy who cried wolf. If you send out an "important" email, it had better be actually important, or I won't be as likely to read the next one.)
Are we sure that the monkeys aren't colorblind? Because the tests were done on Capuchin monkeys, which are a group of New World monkeys. I don't know specifically about Capuchins, but the males of many other New World species are commonly colorblind. If you're color blind, red == green.
This, I think is the primary problem with game reviews: that they try to compare completely different things. You cannot compare a multiplayer game to a single player game--they serve completely different functions and are based on entirely different criteria. Is a game with a 10/10 multiplayer but 6/10 single player less perfect than a game with 10/10 single player but no multiplayer whatsoever? Would it be better just to not include the single player at all?
What needs to be done is to realize that gamers play games for very different reasons. Some people are looking for a time-sink, some people are looking for a really compelling story, some people are looking for something fun to do every once in a while with their friends. These things can't be compared to one another, but things within the category can be compared. Genre-based evaluations sort of take care of this, but not perfectly.
Apple doesn't own the music they sell you, they license it from the music labels. If the music labels say they can't use the same songs for ringtones then Apple can't easily let you do it under the terms of their contract. Why don't you blame the labels because it's their fault not Apple's.
Maybe, but what about music from CDs I bought and imported myself into my library?
Really, in most cases I would agree with you. I think that the opportunism of lawsuits against any mistake or misfortune that might happen is out of control.
However, when it comes to police officers giving a citizen orders to do things even though the citizen insists that he is within his rights to decline, there has to be some sort of penalty. There has to be some sort of penalty for violating the rights, and it can't just be a slap on the wrist, or officers will be able to do whatever they want, and figure out if it was legal or not later.
The key difference between engaging sexually with a minor and rape is that the former is a crime of communication, whereas the latter is a crime of physical action. In the first case, the crime is being committed simply over a different medium of communication, namely the internet, just as stealing money from an online bank is a real crime being committed over a different medium. However, physical rape cannot be committed over the internet anymore than vehicular manslaughter, because the medium has no capabilities of causing real world consequences, at least until computers are in charge of driving are cars like they are in charge of banking systems.
However, this is simply speaking legally. Morally, it's still disgusting.
Actually, I think the example given in the article about Google already doing this outside of the US and Canada is a pretty good demonstration that this is, in fact, possible:
Try it yourself. As I write this, if you search for "BMW" at www.google.de -- the German version of Google's site -- you get only ads that are friendly to the car company. If you search for "BMW" on www.google.com -- the U.S. version of the site -- the first ad that appears in the right hand column is for Infiniti. The Trademark Protection Act merely extends the same rights already enjoyed by mark holders throughout the rest of the world to Utah.
If you haven't read the article, I'd recommend it. This is one of those rare cases when an article is actually well thought-out and well written.
I think one main problem people have reached in promoting Linux is trying to fit it into the same category as the consumer operating systems. Honsetly, I think we can all agree that is not really what Linux is about. I don't think any of us really want a bunch of whiny Linux users who are dependent on us at all time to fix things whenever things don't work as they expect.
What we actually want is an increase on the number of people who are taking control of the computer rather than merely using it, driving the machine instead of just going along for the ride. And if this is what we want, we need not to solve all the problems for people, but to show them how we would solve it, to teach them how to solve these difficulties themselves. This may require a bit more effort on our part, and a lot more patience, but I think the end result is much better for everyone, because we end up with not fans and users, but with teammates.
Unfortunately, that will not at all work as you intend with the growing number of people who believe that they are "computer illiterate" or "don't know how to use computers." This is an alarming growth, and we need to help people reach the point where they can help themselves, or we will find that the business models where the consumers are treated like helpless sheep to be sheared that we all know and hate will be the only ones left.
You mean this isn't how customer support is supposed to act?
p.s. The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.
Truly. It's really awful about our culture that we expect everyone to treat us with the utmost of respect and politeness, but then when things don't go our way we are unbelievably rude in turn.
What's more, even if the customer did have some sort of "right" to "get even", that certainly doesn't give anyone and everyone on the internet carte blanche to harass, intimidate and abuse this guy. Just because you heard about someone being a jerk doesn't give you free license to be as inhumane as you'd please.
Our society really needs to grow up, and maybe what we need is some customer service managers that will take the kiddie gloves off. Employees in the service industry are still people and you do not have the right to abuse and degrade them just because you happen to be consuming their employer's services.
I've always been a big fan of the reverse-motion sensor light... I think it's much more useful to have them turn off when they see motion than turn on.
Eco-hippies can be early adopters if they like, but from a financal standpoint it will take a rather large increase in the cost of power or a significant drop in the cost of efficent power supplies to make this worthwhile.
I'm an "Eco-hippie" or at least an environmentalist, and I've calculated this out myself...(and by myself, I mean through Google) 1W *1 year = 8.8 kW hrs. = about $1 of energy. I'm almost positive the environmental damage by everyone throwing out their old stuff just to replace it with new equipment outweighs any gain from energy saved. Even if all of the old units are recycled, recycling takes energy, and it takes energy to produce the new equipment.
So, while this would be a nice way build them for the future, I don't think we'd be helping much by replacing our old equipment prematurely. There are lots of much more effective ways of saving energy... Replacing incandescents with CFLs, driving less, etc... People are only going to do so much... Let's get them to focus on the things that are actually going to help the environment.
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I've never done this myself, but I've heard that these sorts of increases are a good way to get out of a 2 year contract early, which is only fair, since they totally are trying to change the contract on us to charge us more than we originally agreed to.
Now that it's a reasonable possibility (at least sometime in the not so distant future) to get a decent Linux stack on a cell phone that will have enough people using it and working on it so that it really works, I can't see why I would care about any new phone that isn't going to run Android. I'm tired of all the ridiculous bugs in phone software. I've pretty much given up on a phone that just works. I want one that if it's broken, I can make it work.
Monopoly is the key factor here:
The real reason SMS messages are so expensive is that carriers don't want them to cannibalize their bottom line. There are many cases where it is just as practical, or even better to send a short text message, but people call because they don't want to pay for the text. If cell phone companies reduced the prices of SMS, people would substitute SMS for airtime minutes.
Actually, cramming more content was originally one of the highly-hailed features about High Def Content. I was really just throwing it out there as a possible advantage beyond HD.
Furthermore, some of us have already decided that the new High-Def Movies don't really provide all that much of an advantage to us. DVDs were much much more convenient than VHS tapes:
- they don't wear out just by being played
- they don't melt just because you leave them in a car
- they don't take up nearly as much cabinet space
- and (most importantly for me) you can stick them in your laptop and watch them
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD don't seem to have any practical advantages beyond better picture and sound. There's the possibility of sticking whole seasons of TV on a single disc, but they don't seem to be doing that.
Exactly. I didn't really use email until I got to college. But now it's just really a good system.
I read TFA to see what he had to say about college students:
Colleges are finding that students increasingly ignore or never receive campus-wide e-mail announcements.Um... The article he linked is saying that campus wide emails might not be the best alert system in an emergency, citing the Virginia Tech incident:
Although the first shootings occurred just before 7:15 a.m., officials at the school -- formally known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University -- didn't send out a campuswide e-mail about the incident to more than 26,000 students and faculty members until about 9:30 a.m. In that first incident, two students were killed in a dormitory, but no specific information was included in the e-mail; students were simply told there had been a shooting and urged to be "cautious" and report anything suspicious. At the time, many students were already on campus or en route and never received word that something was amiss. The school also did not lock down the campus after the first shootings. Just 15 minutes after that 9:30 a.m. e-mail went out, police received a 911 call reporting additional shootings in an engineering building on the campus. It was there that the majority of deaths occurred: 30 people were shot and killed before the assailant apparently turned the gun on himself. While university officials and various law enforcement agencies are still unraveling exactly what happened, the use of the e-mail notification system and the timeline related to when messages went out are expected to be part of the probe.Yes. Email is not an efficient system for getting messages to people within 15 minutes. But that's not in any way the same as college students increasingly ignore campus wide emails. (Although on that note, I think it's a case of the boy who cried wolf. If you send out an "important" email, it had better be actually important, or I won't be as likely to read the next one.)
I saw your title and thought, hmmm, this might be an interesting analogy...
But it was actually just "people who believe in proprietary security are like creationists... because everyone else says they're wrong."
Are we sure that the monkeys aren't colorblind? Because the tests were done on Capuchin monkeys, which are a group of New World monkeys. I don't know specifically about Capuchins, but the males of many other New World species are commonly colorblind. If you're color blind, red == green.
This, I think is the primary problem with game reviews: that they try to compare completely different things. You cannot compare a multiplayer game to a single player game--they serve completely different functions and are based on entirely different criteria. Is a game with a 10/10 multiplayer but 6/10 single player less perfect than a game with 10/10 single player but no multiplayer whatsoever? Would it be better just to not include the single player at all?
What needs to be done is to realize that gamers play games for very different reasons. Some people are looking for a time-sink, some people are looking for a really compelling story, some people are looking for something fun to do every once in a while with their friends. These things can't be compared to one another, but things within the category can be compared. Genre-based evaluations sort of take care of this, but not perfectly.
Of course "Unlimited Mail Storage" is an overcommitted quota. At least until they invent INFINITE drives.
What they are saying is that as users increase their storage, they will expand their storage to accommodate. What more do you want?
Maybe, but what about music from CDs I bought and imported myself into my library?
Really, in most cases I would agree with you. I think that the opportunism of lawsuits against any mistake or misfortune that might happen is out of control. However, when it comes to police officers giving a citizen orders to do things even though the citizen insists that he is within his rights to decline, there has to be some sort of penalty. There has to be some sort of penalty for violating the rights, and it can't just be a slap on the wrist, or officers will be able to do whatever they want, and figure out if it was legal or not later.
The key difference between engaging sexually with a minor and rape is that the former is a crime of communication, whereas the latter is a crime of physical action. In the first case, the crime is being committed simply over a different medium of communication, namely the internet, just as stealing money from an online bank is a real crime being committed over a different medium. However, physical rape cannot be committed over the internet anymore than vehicular manslaughter, because the medium has no capabilities of causing real world consequences, at least until computers are in charge of driving are cars like they are in charge of banking systems. However, this is simply speaking legally. Morally, it's still disgusting.
Actually, I think the example given in the article about Google already doing this outside of the US and Canada is a pretty good demonstration that this is, in fact, possible:
If you haven't read the article, I'd recommend it. This is one of those rare cases when an article is actually well thought-out and well written.
Can one imagine a religion which believes "There are chosen people, but they're not us"
Yes. I'm pretty sure that's what most gentile Christians believe.
I think one main problem people have reached in promoting Linux is trying to fit it into the same category as the consumer operating systems. Honsetly, I think we can all agree that is not really what Linux is about. I don't think any of us really want a bunch of whiny Linux users who are dependent on us at all time to fix things whenever things don't work as they expect. What we actually want is an increase on the number of people who are taking control of the computer rather than merely using it, driving the machine instead of just going along for the ride. And if this is what we want, we need not to solve all the problems for people, but to show them how we would solve it, to teach them how to solve these difficulties themselves. This may require a bit more effort on our part, and a lot more patience, but I think the end result is much better for everyone, because we end up with not fans and users, but with teammates.
Unfortunately, that will not at all work as you intend with the growing number of people who believe that they are "computer illiterate" or "don't know how to use computers." This is an alarming growth, and we need to help people reach the point where they can help themselves, or we will find that the business models where the consumers are treated like helpless sheep to be sheared that we all know and hate will be the only ones left.
p.s. The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.
Truly. It's really awful about our culture that we expect everyone to treat us with the utmost of respect and politeness, but then when things don't go our way we are unbelievably rude in turn.
What's more, even if the customer did have some sort of "right" to "get even", that certainly doesn't give anyone and everyone on the internet carte blanche to harass, intimidate and abuse this guy. Just because you heard about someone being a jerk doesn't give you free license to be as inhumane as you'd please.
Our society really needs to grow up, and maybe what we need is some customer service managers that will take the kiddie gloves off. Employees in the service industry are still people and you do not have the right to abuse and degrade them just because you happen to be consuming their employer's services.
Then California wouldn't be "leading the way" anymore, since other states, such as Connecticut are already subsidizing CFLs.
More moving parts that can break in my mobile phone.
Nah, nah it's a kilometer of depth... We just warm up the outside of the planet a bit.
WTF, mate?
I've always been a big fan of the reverse-motion sensor light... I think it's much more useful to have them turn off when they see motion than turn on.
I'm an "Eco-hippie" or at least an environmentalist, and I've calculated this out myself...(and by myself, I mean through Google) 1W *1 year = 8.8 kW hrs. = about $1 of energy. I'm almost positive the environmental damage by everyone throwing out their old stuff just to replace it with new equipment outweighs any gain from energy saved. Even if all of the old units are recycled, recycling takes energy, and it takes energy to produce the new equipment.
So, while this would be a nice way build them for the future, I don't think we'd be helping much by replacing our old equipment prematurely. There are lots of much more effective ways of saving energy... Replacing incandescents with CFLs, driving less, etc... People are only going to do so much... Let's get them to focus on the things that are actually going to help the environment.