Future new phones certainly have to compete with iPhone's good features, and one of the ways they can do that is to start selling all their new phones unlocked and advertise them as such.
Cell phone companies may not like it, but what it the fear? People pick a cell phone "provider" (I hate the word) because they get the coverage they need & quality of connections or they pick another one. It is always up to the "provider" to be able to compete, so they have to continually improve.
For the user who wants "commodity phones" then pick the all-in-one plan with a free phone from your favorite "provider".
For a user who owns a phone, he can just then do a prepaid plan if he wants to avoid a "provider 2 year plan".
What would happen if the home phone companies started signing every new customer up to a "2 year plan" with a steep bailout clause and penalty? Why should cell phone providers be any different than land lines in this day and age. Well it is obvious that the WDC lobbyists worked hard to get it the way it is now.
Mandatory Disconnect of Infected Computers
on
Storm Worm Rising
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Make it a Federal Law that ISPs must disconnect infected computers, and users would be forced to fix things very quickly.
Then if a botnet attack comes, turn off the overseas pipes as needed. Yeah I am a dreamer, but I am at least half way practical.
Weather improved after the last big Volcanic explosion at an Asian volcano, and thus food production went up, and that will count for something, along with a switch from alcoholic drinks to minimize bad water quality to coffee and tea as noted by other slashdotters.
General production of more advanced materials started to make a significant difference with cast iron, steel from Bessemer's furnaces in 1850s, and concrete in 1840s and steam engines w/Fulton's steam boat in the first decade of the 1800s, and not the least were steam powered looms just before 1800 which allowed large improvements in cloth and reduction in prices which freed huge numbers of people from subsistence clothing jobs.
Lots of things came together at once to make manual labor less intensive, even with just simple tools.
Testla is not really "powered" by electricity. It runs off the power grid, where 80% or so of U.S. power comes from coal plants, with whatever efficiencies that entails.
AirCar is THE SAME. Compressing air has huge compressive energy losses by the way.
If it will take 1000 to 10,000 years for a human space colony to travel to another solar system virtually every mechanical thing in the structure will have to be repaired and/or replaced on the trip.
Physical wear down to microscopic particles, thermal stresses, radiation stresses and mass loss in energy and propulsion systems will assure that such a structure would have to likely shrink over time as materials are lost.
Which of course means delaying action by many decades on ESSENTIAL critical infrastructure items:
1. 50 years of discussion of the insolvency of Social Security from an actuarial point were and are valid.
2. 50 years of illegal migrants after the bracero program in California, and it & border security is still not solved
3. 35 years of oil supply crisis issues, and still there is not a single interim or long term program from congress
4. 20 years of pulling down the military in various ways has to be looked at from the perspective of the bad guys who change and hide and subvert and move from country to country: The U.S. must remain vigilant and up to date in peace time.
5. The constitution basically said the Federal Government should protect borders, commerce and currency and leave other issue to the states, and Congress is arguably not doing so good on a lot of these accounts (Mexico, foreign spying, China for a start resp.).
AT&T likes the idea of monopolies if the past is prologue.
I am the guinea pig for my family and companies, and AT&T doesn't realize the power I hold. I can either keep their revenue down, or I can multiply it many times over, in my own small way as a consumer.
If AT&T tighten the thumbscrews too tight on my iPhone account, my business & my family will not buy iPhones, because I will nix it. After all, my laptop and cell phone right now "does it all".
Competitors are not going to stand still, and they will find ways to implement the feel and functionality of iPhone one way or another, so the idea of "Lock-In" is only going to last for a short period of time. I can even envision an "ePhone" with a fold out track pad which covers the screen (shades it even), and the screen is NOT a touch screen.
Competitors will receive a lot more encouragement if AT&T behaves like the famous monopolies we all love to hate.
Apple understands this well as Jobs joked in the WWDC pricing of Leopard for the 'Home = $129....Ultimate = $129". If AT&T & Apple use the Microsoft Vista method of pricing, the competitors will jump on it as quick as they can.
Using an iPhone may indeed let me leave the MBPro in the office much of the time.
For these types of users, iPhone makes a BIG difference with the iphone in a pocket rather than a ten pound bag with charger and extension cord.
People hereabouts have complained about only 1 cell provider, no 3G, no 20 gig memory, no EU sales, but to fully debug everything before going global, Apple has picked it right to limit it to N. America. Obviously the rest of the options will come, as the 3rd party applications will.
Hey, the phone is not even out, and everyone has statements about various forms of failure. If you want to see failures, take a look at all the losing products from MS over the last 10 years. MS has existed profitably because of two long standing products, and those financed the losses on all the "new" products.
I actually tried to read one of those endless scrolling EULAs.
After about 30 minutes reading through the excessive EULA, and clicking Accept, the application timed me out and wouldn't let me "Accept", so I gave up.
That way, you may not sign up on so many things after trying to ready the EULAs.
Understanding what a person's mental state is from their subtle eye movements are and what they look at might be more important, and invasive, and... undetectable by the interviewee.
The DURING & AFTER the last ice age (wherever you actually put it) has arguably seen the greatest rise of humans and their creative efforts ever.
Seas rose approx 50 meters in that time period. Warming of the climate obviously ocurred over that time period on average (or the ice would not have melted).
Arguably we do not have much historical data to show what happens when temperatures go down, what little we do shows millions of people starved each year during the "little ice age" and during heavy volcanism.
So is there really a question at to what is better? Like who wants freezing in July in the upper mid-west again?
I went for dinner to Granny's house, and her son had given her a shiny new Dell Inspiron Laptop with VISTA to "let us keep in touch".
She had used it a couple times in the interveening week. Now, she said, "Something seems wrong, compared to your Apple laptop".
It took near 5 minutes to boot, opening any new window seemed over a minute, and about half the time Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer just crashed off. Yeah it is probably malware of all types, but they really don't understand any of this.
So much for impressing the customers, though. I doubt Granny & son will buy a new PC w/VISTA any time soon.
So Ballmer made his $30-50 off that sale of VISTA to Dell, and it went to the bottom line, but will it help long term? I don't know. In the long term, only the customer's votes with their dollars tell the tale.
I want to see some very heavy results from independent testing labs that give me an idea that if I put data on such disks that it will be readable in at least 5 years @ 99.99% reliability.
If not, hard drives are way better as they read and write at far higher speeds.
When the year end summaries total up around Christmas 2007, the story will be told.
Consumer enthusiasm for a great advanced phone solution is obvious in the surveys of potential buyers. Lots of the enthusiasm is based on crummy hardware which everyone has had, like unreadable screens, batteries that fly out when dropped and keys that don't work.
Either you will be shown to be prescient, or you will want to forget you ever said that.
His VC arm has put money into Tri Alpha Energy near Irvine, CA which licensed technology from UCI patents for creating the proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction. Paul Allen would not invest without some SERIOUS high level investigation by his own independent PHDs.
FocusFusion.org notes this as do other public references available on the web.
1. The proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction has been well known for decades & has been picked because is is "clean" of gamma rays and neutron production, meaning the equipment doesn't become radioactive. 2. Controlling a continuous reaction process has been the stumbling block 3. Tri-Alpha Energy has obviously produced enough test data and analysis to convince serious investors to fund development of a demonstration unit.
A quick web page for noting various fusion concept/projects:
Slashdot Mirror
Future new phones certainly have to compete with iPhone's good features, and one of the ways they can do that is to start selling all their new phones unlocked and advertise them as such.
Cell phone companies may not like it, but what it the fear? People pick a cell phone "provider" (I hate the word) because they get the coverage they need & quality of connections or they pick another one. It is always up to the "provider" to be able to compete, so they have to continually improve.
For the user who wants "commodity phones" then pick the all-in-one plan with a free phone from your favorite "provider".
For a user who owns a phone, he can just then do a prepaid plan if he wants to avoid a "provider 2 year plan".
What would happen if the home phone companies started signing every new customer up to a "2 year plan" with a steep bailout clause and penalty? Why should cell phone providers be any different than land lines in this day and age. Well it is obvious that the WDC lobbyists worked hard to get it the way it is now.
Make it a Federal Law that ISPs must disconnect infected computers, and users would be forced to fix things very quickly.
Then if a botnet attack comes, turn off the overseas pipes as needed. Yeah I am a dreamer, but I am at least half way practical.
Weather improved after the last big Volcanic explosion at an Asian volcano, and thus food production went up, and that will count for something, along with a switch from alcoholic drinks to minimize bad water quality to coffee and tea as noted by other slashdotters.
General production of more advanced materials started to make a significant difference with cast iron, steel from Bessemer's furnaces in 1850s, and concrete in 1840s and steam engines w/Fulton's steam boat in the first decade of the 1800s, and not the least were steam powered looms just before 1800 which allowed large improvements in cloth and reduction in prices which freed huge numbers of people from subsistence clothing jobs.
Lots of things came together at once to make manual labor less intensive, even with just simple tools.
"Don't Forget the car that Runs on Air!"
Read before posting.
Testla is not really "powered" by electricity. It runs off the power grid, where 80% or so of U.S. power comes from coal plants, with whatever efficiencies that entails.
AirCar is THE SAME. Compressing air has huge compressive energy losses by the way.
Bi-Directional Synching, .pdf, .xls, & .doc reading and browsing is needed and you don't have to lug the Mac Book around all the time anymore.
Then the iPhone "pays" for itself.
I've had mine for just over a week, and I don't regret the money to get these features in a phone I can read in the bright sunlight.
At least he can port MS Office to Linux and start selling Office there in the NIX world.
Of course if Ballmer can't sell Office to the Linux crowd, he can resort to tried and true tactics.
Sue the bastards for setting up the expectation of "Free Software" intended to harm Microsoft...
If it will take 1000 to 10,000 years for a human space colony to travel to another solar system virtually every mechanical thing in the structure will have to be repaired and/or replaced on the trip.
Physical wear down to microscopic particles, thermal stresses, radiation stresses and mass loss in energy and propulsion systems will assure that such a structure would have to likely shrink over time as materials are lost.
Which of course means delaying action by many decades on ESSENTIAL critical infrastructure items:
1. 50 years of discussion of the insolvency of Social Security from an actuarial point were and are valid.
2. 50 years of illegal migrants after the bracero program in California, and it & border security is still not solved
3. 35 years of oil supply crisis issues, and still there is not a single interim or long term program from congress
4. 20 years of pulling down the military in various ways has to be looked at from the perspective of the bad guys who change and hide and subvert and move from country to country: The U.S. must remain vigilant and up to date in peace time.
5. The constitution basically said the Federal Government should protect borders, commerce and currency and leave other issue to the states, and Congress is arguably not doing so good on a lot of these accounts (Mexico, foreign spying, China for a start resp.).
Agreed in some respect.
However with 1 billion handsets selling a year, those suppliers HAVE TO KEEP UP.
Some way, some how, you keep up or die.
AT&T likes the idea of monopolies if the past is prologue.
I am the guinea pig for my family and companies, and AT&T doesn't realize the power I hold. I can either keep their revenue down, or I can multiply it many times over, in my own small way as a consumer.
If AT&T tighten the thumbscrews too tight on my iPhone account, my business & my family will not buy iPhones, because I will nix it. After all, my laptop and cell phone right now "does it all".
Competitors are not going to stand still, and they will find ways to implement the feel and functionality of iPhone one way or another, so the idea of "Lock-In" is only going to last for a short period of time. I can even envision an "ePhone" with a fold out track pad which covers the screen (shades it even), and the screen is NOT a touch screen.
Competitors will receive a lot more encouragement if AT&T behaves like the famous monopolies we all love to hate.
Apple understands this well as Jobs joked in the WWDC pricing of Leopard for the 'Home = $129....Ultimate = $129". If AT&T & Apple use the Microsoft Vista method of pricing, the competitors will jump on it as quick as they can.
"Even if the final release is more polished and completely bug-free, it still won't be as powerful or feature-loaded as Opera or Firefox."
But will the average user CARE.
Using an iPhone may indeed let me leave the MBPro in the office much of the time. For these types of users, iPhone makes a BIG difference with the iphone in a pocket rather than a ten pound bag with charger and extension cord. People hereabouts have complained about only 1 cell provider, no 3G, no 20 gig memory, no EU sales, but to fully debug everything before going global, Apple has picked it right to limit it to N. America. Obviously the rest of the options will come, as the 3rd party applications will. Hey, the phone is not even out, and everyone has statements about various forms of failure. If you want to see failures, take a look at all the losing products from MS over the last 10 years. MS has existed profitably because of two long standing products, and those financed the losses on all the "new" products.
Teachers don't get 4 years for doing it with students.
MVS Express. Once the code is out, do what any monopolist does.
Bully your way to where you want to be. Screw the developers, hobbyists and users.
The mountain of money must be manipulated, massaged and manicured into a megalith worthy of B.G.
I actually tried to read one of those endless scrolling EULAs.
After about 30 minutes reading through the excessive EULA, and clicking Accept, the application timed me out and wouldn't let me "Accept", so I gave up.
That way, you may not sign up on so many things after trying to ready the EULAs.
Understanding what a person's mental state is from their subtle eye movements are and what they look at might be more important, and invasive, and ... undetectable by the interviewee.
Read all about it: The Earth has been warming since the middle of the last ice age...in case you missed it. AND
GASP: The world's oceans have risen an unthinkable 50 meters or so. HORRORs.
Where was Al Gore when we needed him 20,000 years ago to stop this unthinkable destruction of all that land that is now underwater.
It was trying to figure out how to load up more ads...?
The DURING & AFTER the last ice age (wherever you actually put it) has arguably seen the greatest rise of humans and their creative efforts ever.
Seas rose approx 50 meters in that time period. Warming of the climate obviously ocurred over that time period on average (or the ice would not have melted).
Arguably we do not have much historical data to show what happens when temperatures go down, what little we do shows millions of people starved each year during the "little ice age" and during heavy volcanism.
So is there really a question at to what is better? Like who wants freezing in July in the upper mid-west again?
All about backups & Verification of Server Archives...
From first hand experience.
If you are #1 in your field with a monopoly, you should not be talking about (read advertising) your small competitors.
I went for dinner to Granny's house, and her son had given her a shiny new Dell Inspiron Laptop with VISTA to "let us keep in touch".
She had used it a couple times in the interveening week. Now, she said, "Something seems wrong, compared to your Apple laptop".
It took near 5 minutes to boot, opening any new window seemed over a minute, and about half the time Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer just crashed off. Yeah it is probably malware of all types, but they really don't understand any of this.
So much for impressing the customers, though. I doubt Granny & son will buy a new PC w/VISTA any time soon.
So Ballmer made his $30-50 off that sale of VISTA to Dell, and it went to the bottom line, but will it help long term? I don't know. In the long term, only the customer's votes with their dollars tell the tale.
I want to see some very heavy results from independent testing labs that give me an idea that if I put data on such disks that it will be readable in at least 5 years @ 99.99% reliability.
If not, hard drives are way better as they read and write at far higher speeds.
When the year end summaries total up around Christmas 2007, the story will be told.
Consumer enthusiasm for a great advanced phone solution is obvious in the surveys of potential buyers. Lots of the enthusiasm is based on crummy hardware which everyone has had, like unreadable screens, batteries that fly out when dropped and keys that don't work.
Either you will be shown to be prescient, or you will want to forget you ever said that.
His VC arm has put money into Tri Alpha Energy near Irvine, CA which licensed technology from UCI patents for creating the proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction. Paul Allen would not invest without some SERIOUS high level investigation by his own independent PHDs.
FocusFusion.org notes this as do other public references available on the web.
1. The proton - boron 11 fusion/fission reaction has been well known for decades & has been picked because is is "clean" of gamma rays and neutron production, meaning the equipment doesn't become radioactive.
2. Controlling a continuous reaction process has been the stumbling block
3. Tri-Alpha Energy has obviously produced enough test data and analysis to convince serious investors to fund development of a demonstration unit.
A quick web page for noting various fusion concept/projects:
http://www.eastlundscience.com/FUSION2050.html