We've seen this strategy before (sort of) in OS/2.. running your competitors software seems like a good thing when you don't have much native software, but in the end it just undermines the market for native software and leads to the obvious question of why someone wouldn't just buy your competitors platform in the first place. Maybe RIM will be able to provide enough unique value to maintain sales, they do have a massive presence in the business world. OTOH, IBM had a pretty big influence in business computing and OS/2 had a lot of unique capabilities.
Maybe they figured they were screwed anyway and this is just a move to extend the platform's life a while longer.
aye, that page is quite preachy.. my intention was to provide a single link with most of the relevant court decisions and laws on it, and that seemed to fit the bill. personally I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I just don't understand why people believe they don't have the right to drive... where does this privilege idea come from? I couldn't find a law stating that it is not a right and just a "privilege", though there may be.. google just turns up pages like the one I linked to (or even crazier).
Although I mostly agree with your post, I am interested to know where this idea comes from, it seems to have been indoctrinated in a large segment of the population.
So why is the average american citizen so willing to surrender this right and go along with the privilege theory? Did I miss some kind of mass disinformation campaign?
You provide absolutely no evidence for your claim that the internet has anything to do with ham radio's popularity. You repeatedly ignore the FACT that there are more licensed operators today than there were prior to the very events that you claim caused this alleged decline, and continue to insist there has been a decline when your own references show that there has not been.
I'm done. Your accusations of deception are offensive, your delusions are unshaken by fact, and I frankly don't care what you think. I have defended my statements well beyond any rational need, and proven them true. Go find someone else to annoy with your silly made up theories, I have no further interest in them.
The data you site backs up my claim that during the past five years, more new hams have earned a license each year than before. It has nothing to do with renewals, I don't even know what you're trying to say there. How can the renewal of existing licenses explain an INCREASE in total hams? There are more licensed hams today than ever, according to the data you linked to.
The drop in A and N is easily explained by the fact that these classes no longer exist and cannot be issued to new hams, although they can be renewed or converted to the classes that do exist today IIRC.
I see nothing in your data that disproves or refutes my statement, rather I see that it supports exactly what I originally said. Perhaps you should take a closer look.
I specifically said "new licenses issued" and mentioned "new members". If you are going to claim that I am "lying", please at least read what I wrote. Do you have some evidence that my claim in untrue? I'd be happy to know about it.
My point is that when we use big numbers like millions and billions, it's difficult to have a sense of what a reasonable range for any calculation will be. I calculated bandwidth costs (poorly) merely as an example of this and because it's the only metric where we have any data (the number of songs to be delivered) and I personally have any idea at all of costs involved. When someone says they are selling that huge number of songs, my first reaction is to think "shit, the bandwidth to deliver 8 million songs a day, that must cost a fortune" yet when you do the math, it really isn't that expensive at all when we're talking about that kind of income.
If you would read what I wrote, maybe you'd notice that I acknowledged there are other costs and explained that I simply cannot estimate them. To assume these costs are anywhere close to the 1.5 billion they are bringing in is foolish, and I provide bandwidth guesstimates only to illustrate this point.
It's easy to imagine things being very expensive when we start using millions and millions of something, hard for the brain to conceptualize it so we just assume it must be alot and don't usually go much further. But just for fun lets do a little guessing and some math...
8 million songs per day = ~92 songs per second, lets call it 100
100 songs, lets say 10MB per song (google says average size is much less, but why push it).. 1000 MB per second.. so we need a roughly 8000 Mbps connection (for now, lets assume the load is perfectly averaged over time, we'll deal with reality in just a bit). An OC-192 would do fine, at just under 10Gbps throughput.
So what does an OC-192 cost? Well, it really depends on where you want to put it. Google doesn't want to tell me much more than somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 per month. Let's take the worst pricing case.. so with a perfectly distributed load we might need to spend $1.2 million on bandwidth.
Obviously, Apple is going to need burst capacity, and while this may actually be provided through some arrangement with the ISP, lets take the most expensive route and say that Apple has to actually pay full time for its peak potential capacity (which is silly, no one does this, but what the heck, we've got $1.5 billion coming in). Lets say they actually buy the equivalent of *100* OC-192s (now they can do an entire day's traffic every 15 minutes, sweet) , and somehow manage to pay full OC-192 price and at the worst possible rate.. so we're spending $120 million on bandwidth now.
I am by no means good at math or knowledgeable about how bandwidth is priced or delivered at these capacities, but using the worst cases I can find with Google and grossly exaggerating every detail I still can't get the bandwidth costs to be even 10% of their 1.5 billion. In reality I doubt Apple is paying for dedicated lines at all, they probably work out deals with local ISPs and whatnot. I suspect you will find similar results with storage, staff, etc... they just don't amount to that much no matter how crazy you get with over estimating. I'm far too lazy to work it out even if we could get the details needed to actually price these things, but there is no way I'm going to believe that it costs 1.5 billion dollars per year to deliver iTunes unless I see a breakdown that proves it somehow.
"I would argue that Apple probably makes some profit but it isn't a lot."
man.. i was totally with you right until this part. why would you argue that? its 5 BILLION dollars in revenue. Bandwidth and servers, in quantity, are very inexpensive.
If you pay attention to tech news, and the comments that follow the typical tech news story, you'll eventually come to terms with the fact that for some portion of our society, nothing matters unless it's done by Apple or done on an Apple device. Unsurprisingly, Apple is often seen as a leader with all kinds of "firsts" by this same group, as they simple don't register that something exists unless/until Apple does it.
A contract no-one ever reads is hardly something one can really violate.
I don't think the "I didn't read what I signed so it can't be used against me" defense usually works out so well in the real world. Might do better going with the Chewbacca defense.
If you don't think that corporate control of our society is a big problem.. well what can I say... Enjoy the future, brought to by Megacorp, sponsored by Bigco. People like you are letting it happen, trading control for trinkets while the ultra wealthy laugh all the way to the bank.
It's difficult to get exact numbers on a regular basis, at least I haven't found a source. On Jan 18 2011, Apple announce that 160 million iOS devices had been sold in total to date. On Feb 15 Google announced that 350,000 Android devices were coming online per day. It would seem that gives Android a fair chance of adding more devices this year than Apple has gathered in the history of iOS, but of course Apple is moving more units than ever too. Given their relative rates of growth, it seems inevitable that Android will surpass iOS in total users soon, if it hasn't already, not sure anyone can be much more specific than that.
The addition of Verizon hasn't seemed to make much difference, but who really knows, you can find articles claiming the sales are incredible and others claiming the sales are awful. VZ and Apple aren't saying anything, which may be telling us something.. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/26/verizon-still-mum-on-iphone-sales/
I don't see how forgoing all copyleft software is solving the problem mentioned in this story (since this story is specifically about the problem with using that software), regardless of if you use other software or not.
OTOH, if you stick to devices which don't impose restrictions on the software you can run, you do in fact solve the problem, if only for yourself.
Ok, forget Ben. I can't say it as simply, but I'll say it in my own words.
"Trading freedom for safety is a bad deal, and I want no part of it. To think that citizens of a county where thousands have died to create and protect our freedom would so easily give up the right to do what they want to do with a device they own in exchange for an illusion of safety created by a company who's only true motive is profit (and rightly so, not blaming them for that part) makes me sick."
not sure if there is anything like synaptic, but it certainly could be done. AFAIK anyone can create a market, several exist. if there is any real value in the walled garden, anyone could make one for Android and provide a limited experience for those who desired it.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."
-Benjamin Franklin
*He said something like that, no one seems to know exactly what the specific quote is, this is one possible wording. In any case I strongly agree with his meaning.
Completely agree. Open source software has been around much longer than these apps stores, and has been usable on practically all if not all general purpose computing platforms prior to the introduction of the app store scheme. Additionally, the world's most popular smartphone platform has shown that it is quite possible to allow GPL software in an app store model, while MS at least has taken steps to specifically forbid it. This is a self imposed limitation for the app store owners, and while it is entirely their decision to make, any negative effects are also soley their responsibility.
If there was a massive existing library of excellent, best of breed open source games which worked fine on your console but were not allowed by the manufacturer for licensing reasons, I could see people being upset about it.
Why would FOSS developers care whether users who buy into company A's platform can use the software?
Isn't this something the people who bought company A's stuff should be talking to company A about, since the users are the ones at a disadvantage and company A's restrictive model is the reason?
Slashdot Mirror
We've seen this strategy before (sort of) in OS/2.. running your competitors software seems like a good thing when you don't have much native software, but in the end it just undermines the market for native software and leads to the obvious question of why someone wouldn't just buy your competitors platform in the first place.
Maybe RIM will be able to provide enough unique value to maintain sales, they do have a massive presence in the business world. OTOH, IBM had a pretty big influence in business computing and OS/2 had a lot of unique capabilities.
Maybe they figured they were screwed anyway and this is just a move to extend the platform's life a while longer.
aye, that page is quite preachy.. my intention was to provide a single link with most of the relevant court decisions and laws on it, and that seemed to fit the bill. personally I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I just don't understand why people believe they don't have the right to drive... where does this privilege idea come from? I couldn't find a law stating that it is not a right and just a "privilege", though there may be.. google just turns up pages like the one I linked to (or even crazier).
"Driving is not a right, but rather a privilege."
Although I mostly agree with your post, I am interested to know where this idea comes from, it seems to have been indoctrinated in a large segment of the population.
There are multiple court decisions declaring that driving is indeed a right, for example: http://thecountyguard.org/right-2-drive-handout.html
So why is the average american citizen so willing to surrender this right and go along with the privilege theory? Did I miss some kind of mass disinformation campaign?
You provide absolutely no evidence for your claim that the internet has anything to do with ham radio's popularity. You repeatedly ignore the FACT that there are more licensed operators today than there were prior to the very events that you claim caused this alleged decline, and continue to insist there has been a decline when your own references show that there has not been.
I'm done. Your accusations of deception are offensive, your delusions are unshaken by fact, and I frankly don't care what you think. I have defended my statements well beyond any rational need, and proven them true. Go find someone else to annoy with your silly made up theories, I have no further interest in them.
The data you site backs up my claim that during the past five years, more new hams have earned a license each year than before. It has nothing to do with renewals, I don't even know what you're trying to say there. How can the renewal of existing licenses explain an INCREASE in total hams? There are more licensed hams today than ever, according to the data you linked to.
The drop in A and N is easily explained by the fact that these classes no longer exist and cannot be issued to new hams, although they can be renewed or converted to the classes that do exist today IIRC.
I see nothing in your data that disproves or refutes my statement, rather I see that it supports exactly what I originally said. Perhaps you should take a closer look.
I specifically said "new licenses issued" and mentioned "new members". If you are going to claim that I am "lying", please at least read what I wrote. Do you have some evidence that my claim in untrue? I'd be happy to know about it.
My point is that when we use big numbers like millions and billions, it's difficult to have a sense of what a reasonable range for any calculation will be.
I calculated bandwidth costs (poorly) merely as an example of this and because it's the only metric where we have any data (the number of songs to be delivered) and I personally have any idea at all of costs involved. When someone says they are selling that huge number of songs, my first reaction is to think "shit, the bandwidth to deliver 8 million songs a day, that must cost a fortune" yet when you do the math, it really isn't that expensive at all when we're talking about that kind of income.
If you would read what I wrote, maybe you'd notice that I acknowledged there are other costs and explained that I simply cannot estimate them. To assume these costs are anywhere close to the 1.5 billion they are bringing in is foolish, and I provide bandwidth guesstimates only to illustrate this point.
It's easy to imagine things being very expensive when we start using millions and millions of something, hard for the brain to conceptualize it so we just assume it must be alot and don't usually go much further. But just for fun lets do a little guessing and some math...
8 million songs per day = ~92 songs per second, lets call it 100
100 songs, lets say 10MB per song (google says average size is much less, but why push it).. 1000 MB per second.. so we need a roughly 8000 Mbps connection (for now, lets assume the load is perfectly averaged over time, we'll deal with reality in just a bit). An OC-192 would do fine, at just under 10Gbps throughput.
So what does an OC-192 cost? Well, it really depends on where you want to put it. Google doesn't want to tell me much more than somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 per month. Let's take the worst pricing case.. so with a perfectly distributed load we might need to spend $1.2 million on bandwidth.
Obviously, Apple is going to need burst capacity, and while this may actually be provided through some arrangement with the ISP, lets take the most expensive route and say that Apple has to actually pay full time for its peak potential capacity (which is silly, no one does this, but what the heck, we've got $1.5 billion coming in). Lets say they actually buy the equivalent of *100* OC-192s (now they can do an entire day's traffic every 15 minutes, sweet) , and somehow manage to pay full OC-192 price and at the worst possible rate.. so we're spending $120 million on bandwidth now.
I am by no means good at math or knowledgeable about how bandwidth is priced or delivered at these capacities, but using the worst cases I can find with Google and grossly exaggerating every detail I still can't get the bandwidth costs to be even 10% of their 1.5 billion. In reality I doubt Apple is paying for dedicated lines at all, they probably work out deals with local ISPs and whatnot. I suspect you will find similar results with storage, staff, etc... they just don't amount to that much no matter how crazy you get with over estimating. I'm far too lazy to work it out even if we could get the details needed to actually price these things, but there is no way I'm going to believe that it costs 1.5 billion dollars per year to deliver iTunes unless I see a breakdown that proves it somehow.
"I would argue that Apple probably makes some profit but it isn't a lot."
man.. i was totally with you right until this part. why would you argue that? its 5 BILLION dollars in revenue. Bandwidth and servers, in quantity, are very inexpensive.
Things change.. remember when "winning" was good?
If you pay attention to tech news, and the comments that follow the typical tech news story, you'll eventually come to terms with the fact that for some portion of our society, nothing matters unless it's done by Apple or done on an Apple device. Unsurprisingly, Apple is often seen as a leader with all kinds of "firsts" by this same group, as they simple don't register that something exists unless/until Apple does it.
If you don't mind violating a contract
A contract no-one ever reads is hardly something one can really violate.
I don't think the "I didn't read what I signed so it can't be used against me" defense usually works out so well in the real world. Might do better going with the Chewbacca defense.
If you don't think that corporate control of our society is a big problem.. well what can I say... Enjoy the future, brought to by Megacorp, sponsored by Bigco. People like you are letting it happen, trading control for trinkets while the ultra wealthy laugh all the way to the bank.
It's difficult to get exact numbers on a regular basis, at least I haven't found a source. On Jan 18 2011, Apple announce that 160 million iOS devices had been sold in total to date. On Feb 15 Google announced that 350,000 Android devices were coming online per day. It would seem that gives Android a fair chance of adding more devices this year than Apple has gathered in the history of iOS, but of course Apple is moving more units than ever too. Given their relative rates of growth, it seems inevitable that Android will surpass iOS in total users soon, if it hasn't already, not sure anyone can be much more specific than that.
The addition of Verizon hasn't seemed to make much difference, but who really knows, you can find articles claiming the sales are incredible and others claiming the sales are awful. VZ and Apple aren't saying anything, which may be telling us something.. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/26/verizon-still-mum-on-iphone-sales/
I don't see how forgoing all copyleft software is solving the problem mentioned in this story (since this story is specifically about the problem with using that software), regardless of if you use other software or not.
OTOH, if you stick to devices which don't impose restrictions on the software you can run, you do in fact solve the problem, if only for yourself.
http://techaryan.com/eric-schmidt-350000-android-activations-every
350,000 Android activations *every day*. Do you really want to do the math?
Ok, forget Ben. I can't say it as simply, but I'll say it in my own words.
"Trading freedom for safety is a bad deal, and I want no part of it. To think that citizens of a county where thousands have died to create and protect our freedom would so easily give up the right to do what they want to do with a device they own in exchange for an illusion of safety created by a company who's only true motive is profit (and rightly so, not blaming them for that part) makes me sick."
-Lod, 2011
not sure if there is anything like synaptic, but it certainly could be done. AFAIK anyone can create a market, several exist.
if there is any real value in the walled garden, anyone could make one for Android and provide a limited experience for those who desired it.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."
-Benjamin Franklin
*He said something like that, no one seems to know exactly what the specific quote is, this is one possible wording. In any case I strongly agree with his meaning.
Completely agree. Open source software has been around much longer than these apps stores, and has been usable on practically all if not all general purpose computing platforms prior to the introduction of the app store scheme. Additionally, the world's most popular smartphone platform has shown that it is quite possible to allow GPL software in an app store model, while MS at least has taken steps to specifically forbid it. This is a self imposed limitation for the app store owners, and while it is entirely their decision to make, any negative effects are also soley their responsibility.
If there was a massive existing library of excellent, best of breed open source games which worked fine on your console but were not allowed by the manufacturer for licensing reasons, I could see people being upset about it.
I get that, I agree with you... but.. why would FOSS care what company A does or if it's users can use FOSS? What does FOSS have to gain here?
Why would FOSS developers care whether users who buy into company A's platform can use the software?
Isn't this something the people who bought company A's stuff should be talking to company A about, since the users are the ones at a disadvantage and company A's restrictive model is the reason?
Problem fixed.
***Alternate, sane equipment list***
Most any Android phone (1.5 or higher)
SipDroid http://sipdroid.org/
Google Voice and/or any SIP provider
The best part? It actually works.