No, not on my plan. I don't have to extend my contract, once my T-Mobile contract runs out it just becomes a month to month contract that I can cancel at any time. If I buy a new phone elsewhere, there is not contract extension. Many people like the idea of getting a free phone once a year and then cry foul when their contract is extended and they can't get out of it.
The 'free' phone gimmick was one of the reasons I switched to T-Mobile in the first place, not all of the other carriers were doing it at the time and I thought it was a nice benefit. Now, I'm not so sure... but that's my choice.
Maybe your economic education was different than mine, but when government regulation steps in this is not "Market Forces At Work". If the market was demanding this, people wouldn't be getting free phones with a contract renewal. Instead they would buy their phones elsewhere and not have to deal with termination fees.
The 'free' phone, contract extension, termination fee model has worked because the market likes it. Now we have a few people that still want their free phones, but don't want to have to pay to get out of the contract they signed. If the FCC regulates this and gets rid of the termination fees, plan prices will increase, everyone will have to pay for their phones and everyone will bitch about that.
Why not? I think it's perfectly reasonable when you sign up with a carrier to have a 1 year contract. After that most contracts go month to month, and you only get in trouble if you take advantage of their 'free' phone offers.
There are inherent costs associated with acquiring and setting up a new client on a phone network. Why shouldn't the carriers be able to at least ensure that they can make up those costs with an initial contract?
I wish people on slashdot would realize that using a risk analysis to make decisions is not greed.
And that there is a difference between profit and greed. Call it what you like, if Apple had sweetened the deal, it might have lowered the risk for Verizon. It was a simple business decision, and all business is based on money (profit). Apple wanted too big of a piece of the pie to make it worthwhile for Verizon to take the risk. The discussion to decide if that's 'greed' or not is just semantics.
As I said, it will be interesting to see if that pace continues. It may taper off, or it may just be getting started. There are many factors, general economy, early adopters vs. mainstream, etc... That pace may increase or it may decrease, it's hard to say at this point.
Maybe, but if they aren't meeting their sales goals their profit numbers probably aren't working out. Too early to tell, 1.7 million units in first quarter would mean they are on pace to sell almost 8 million in 2008. If their goal was 10, that's not horrible, but it will be interesting to see if the pace continues. If they end up 20% below projections, they could have cut 10% off their offer and probably ended up making more money.
I doubt that going with AT&T over Verizon has had that desvastating an effect on their sales.
AT&T probably wasn't a bad choice since they are the largest carrier with 71 million subscribers. Thing is, that's less than a 1/3 of US cell phones. If they had offered a version for Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, they could have tripled their available market.
Obviously the terms they offered to Verizon weren't acceptable, so their greed has resulted in lower sales. Very simple.
With carriers offering different levels of service, and all the 'contract extensions' when buying new phones, it can be difficult to get out of contracts. I have a friend that wants to buy his son an iphone, but he has three other lines through Verizon, can't get out of his contract without paying, and doesn't want to put his son who's going away to college on a different carrier that doesn't share minutes.
Yes, we should get back to the good old days where only white, educated males got to vote. We had WAY better presidents back then.
You have a point, but just because you can't read doesn't mean you are stupid or uninformed, especially in the case of those who are visually impaired.
You bring up a good point though, although the problems are deeper than the uninformed or uneducated voting.
Or, you could put all that GPL code into a library and link it in to your app so you avoid the problem of having to release all of your source.
Linking, even dynamic linking, doesn't get you off the hook if you distribute all of the pieces together and they don't work separately. It doesn't necessarily get you off the hook in other cases either (avoiding a long legal discussion).
However, the Skype code, at least the important part of it, isn't in the Linux kernel. It's a user-mode application and the GPL of the kernel doesn't apply to it.
Interesting. Was just going on memory when I posted that, guess that will teach me. Does bring up an interesting discussion though. Are there any proprietary Linux apps that don't use ANY dynamic libraries that are under the GPL. If find that difficult to believe.
However, the Skype code, at least the important part of it, isn't in the Linux kernel. It's a user-mode application and the GPL of the kernel doesn't apply to it.
Not sure I understand this portion of your comment. You don't have to be kernel code to dynamically link to a library...
On a larger note, probably somewhat OT, I think the restriction against dynamically linking to GPL code is stupid, and I would be curious if there is any case law on the validity of the idea that dynamically linking to a library makes the whole codebase one application subject to the terms of the license of the library. Does the GPL specifically specify this situation in the license, or is this just an interpretation by the FSF?
Legal issues aside, it's just a bad position for the GPL to be in. I'm a huge fan of Open Source Software, but I also recognize that developers have to make a living. If a company can use GPL code as a libray, support and donate to that library as needed, and still keep a portion proprietary to generate revenue, more power to them. Making linking to a library a violation of licensing terms for proprietary software pretty may explain why there is so little commercial software for Linux. If Adobe and Microsoft have to not only rewrite their app for Linux, but can't rely on common libraries that are available in Windows and OSX.
Or you could use that free thing, add value to it and post the source code like you are supposed to. Then you save money and help out the public good all at the same time. That is how GPL is supposed to work.
Or, you could put all that GPL code into a library and link it in to your app so you avoid the problem of having to release all of your source. Support the open source portion as you should, and keep your proprietary codebase clean. You really can have it both ways, why not just do it.
Just be grateful that Microsoft wasn't put in charge of creating the Internet, or we'd all still be using station wagons full of tapes* in 2020, while waiting for Internet 3.1**.
* And you think global warming is bad in our reality...
** aka Internet for Workgroups
And eventually we would get Internet Vista and Applie would come out with Internet X.
Couldn't the same be done for Linux by booting up in single-user mode and editing/etc/shadow? I think that's exactly the point. Password recovery on a Linux system is trivial. You don't even have to edit/etc/shadow. Boot from a CD login as root, and use the passwd command to update your root password. It can only be done if you have physical access to the machine. It's extremely difficult to accomplish that remotely.
Windows just makes that process a PITA. It can be done by copying the SAM file, or using a third party utility, but I've run into a similar situation before and it's a hassle.
I agree, the availability is really overestimated by people who are not in those situations.
My parents live on a major highway less than a mile from the city limits of a city with a population of around 70K. There is no cable, no dsl, and they live at a lower elevation near the river so the local wireless provider doesn't have line of sight. Other than satellite, which as you say is pretty much a joke, they have no options. Cellular might be workable, but it's somewhat cost prohibitive as well.
The problem isn't so much the size of the pages, but the overall availability of broadband. There needs to be a cost effective way to get high band out to these 'rural' areas.
Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) They should have thrown in a Y so the system could have been called MAYHEM. Yes, but they couldn't have told the press about it. We all know what the first rule of Project Mayhem is...
Good question. I as I said, we never participated - so I'm no expert, but probably the closest thing we are going to find on slashdot. That said, from what I understand, corn subsidies are based on land use. To participate a farmer has to agree not to plant a certain amount of acres to anything, and the government pays them based on that acreage. I don't have any stats, but based on this article, participation in some of the programs is decreasing.
This is probably part of the reasoning for the subsidies to start with. By paying farmers not to produce the government has allowed more farming operations to remain solvent. Now that the price of corn has risen to a level where it is more economical to plant those acres than collect government funding, our capacity has been able to increase overnight. Without the subsidies agricultural would have been subject to more market swings, and overall capacity woiuld have reduced to meet demand, resulting in more failed farming operations. The question is, was it worth spending billions of dollars over the last 30 years waiting for E85 to increase demand on corn. Are we better off, or worse off?
You are correct, E85 is much higher ocatne and can run at higher compression ratios. Diesel-esque is probably not accurate. Most diesel engines run a compression ratio over 20:1. Ethanol will run at a max of 15:1.
Regardless, you point is well taken. The problem is compression ratio is a function of engine design. Without a physical modification there is no way to increase compression ratio. An engine with a 15:1 compression ratio will not run on gasoline, and there is no practical way to dynamically reduce combustion chamber size or increase piston volume. As long as cars are designed as flex fuel vehicles that will run both gasoline and ethonal we must compare the efficiency on a low compression engine. If E85 becomes a standard, and new cars are optimized for that fuel, that may change.
If there are published studies comparing the emissions of a flex fuel vehicle on both E85 and gasoline that show a reduction of pollutants per mile driven, I would be interested to see them. The fact remains that the driving force behind E85 is primarily to reduce foriegn oil dependence, not efficiency, cost of operation or lower tailpipe emissions.
Where are you getting this "eek" assumption from? Farm subsidies are very generous in the US. I don't think it's an "eek", it's no 7-figures, but it's certainly sustainable.
From personal experience. I've watched my Father quit farming and go to work at the USPS because he couldn't make a living. I've watched my sisters and I all enter different career fields because the lack of opportunity in agriculture. I've seen many of the local farms that I grew up with be sold off either because the operation wasn't profitable or because the children of the farmers didn't think it would be in the future.
Take a look at historic corn prices. When adjusted for inflation the price of corn has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY in the last 35 years. Just as we've seen lately, the price of corn directly impacts the price of other crops and livestock. If the price of corn stays down, the farmer doesn't make much money.
My great grandfather, in the years before and after the great depression, was a profitable enough farmer that he was able to purchase 3 separate farms and pay them all off. Most farming operations today are either living off government subsidies or going broke. I can't really comment on the subsidies, we never took any significant money from the government, but I know it's tough to make a living in agriculture without that government money.
You seem to be ignoring what happens down on the farm. Corn is ideal because we already had the infrastructure in place to integrate corn-based ethanol plants into the supply chain with virtually no cost (money or energy).
Not to mention that the farmer doesn't CARE what his product is being used for. He sells it wholesale, and it doesn't matter if it's used for ethanol, tortillas, whiskey, cattle feed, whatever.
Switching to a new crop, like switchgrass, would be a difficult process. Probably the most difficult feat would be to convince the industry that a wholesale change to the new product is a good long term decision and will be viable in the future.
Here's another question... Does ethanol burn any cleaner than gasoline? It seems a bit moronic for us to be jacking up food prices throughout the world, just so we can burn yet-another-fuel. Sure, we won't run out of *this* fuel, but our oil supplies are fun from out yet. Unless this fuel is really MUCH cleaner than gasoline...
I'm not sure this is really clear. I haven't seen anything definitive about how clean E85 is. I do know that it is less efficient, so you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. Even if it is cleaner, it may not be clean enough to offset the addtional consumption.
It's mostly about keeping the money in the US economy rather than sending it to the middle east and funding the terrorists.
Your example, if true, would be directly attributable to climate change.
The beer issue being discussed has nothing to do with ACTUAL climate change. In reality it doesn't have anything to do with climate change. Corn is being used to create E85. E85's primary goal isn't reduction of greenhouse gasses and stemming climate change (although there may be some of this), it is designed to reduce the US dependence on foriegn oil for economic/political reasons. Subsidization of E85 has resulted in higher Corn prices. Farmers, most of whom barely eek out a living, obviously plant more of the crop that is bringing the highest price at market.
Once the wholesale price of barley increases adequately, the farming industry will switch back to barley and beer production will resume.
I agree 100%. The President takes the heat for all these fascist goings on because he's an easy target. In reality, it's Democratic Congress that is funding the war in Iraq and passing every other piece of tyrannical legislation that comes along, but no one mentions that.
Are you under impression that each shooting in a ghetto is as well publicized as those among rich guys or that most of the most recent high and low profile shooting incidents combined involved college students?
Absolutely not, but the discussion was concerning the Patriot Act and national security. Terrorism, domestic mass shootings, etc.. are the factors driving government policy. Gang shootings and inner city violence are not. I agree that poverty and education can have a major impact on crime rates, but it will not in the high profile cases that make the news media and are driving political action. The Patriot Act wasn't inspired by a shooting in a ghetto, it was inspired by 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the same way, the current proposals to bail out lending institutions and homeowners weren't inspired by the thousands of hardworking Americans that have lost their home due to an injury or being laid off work. They are being pushed to alleviate the financial consequences of greedy lenders that gave bad loans and greedy consumers that paid too much for houses they couldn't afford, and then blame the problem on "predatory lenders".
High profile issues generate high profile results. Individual shootings in a ghetto don't threaten the perceived safety of Average Joe suburbanite American. Terrorist attacks, school shootings, home foreclosures, and rising interest rates do.
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No, not on my plan. I don't have to extend my contract, once my T-Mobile contract runs out it just becomes a month to month contract that I can cancel at any time. If I buy a new phone elsewhere, there is not contract extension. Many people like the idea of getting a free phone once a year and then cry foul when their contract is extended and they can't get out of it.
The 'free' phone gimmick was one of the reasons I switched to T-Mobile in the first place, not all of the other carriers were doing it at the time and I thought it was a nice benefit. Now, I'm not so sure... but that's my choice.
Maybe your economic education was different than mine, but when government regulation steps in this is not "Market Forces At Work". If the market was demanding this, people wouldn't be getting free phones with a contract renewal. Instead they would buy their phones elsewhere and not have to deal with termination fees.
The 'free' phone, contract extension, termination fee model has worked because the market likes it. Now we have a few people that still want their free phones, but don't want to have to pay to get out of the contract they signed. If the FCC regulates this and gets rid of the termination fees, plan prices will increase, everyone will have to pay for their phones and everyone will bitch about that.
Why not? I think it's perfectly reasonable when you sign up with a carrier to have a 1 year contract. After that most contracts go month to month, and you only get in trouble if you take advantage of their 'free' phone offers. There are inherent costs associated with acquiring and setting up a new client on a phone network. Why shouldn't the carriers be able to at least ensure that they can make up those costs with an initial contract?
As I said, it will be interesting to see if that pace continues. It may taper off, or it may just be getting started. There are many factors, general economy, early adopters vs. mainstream, etc... That pace may increase or it may decrease, it's hard to say at this point.
Maybe, but if they aren't meeting their sales goals their profit numbers probably aren't working out. Too early to tell, 1.7 million units in first quarter would mean they are on pace to sell almost 8 million in 2008. If their goal was 10, that's not horrible, but it will be interesting to see if the pace continues. If they end up 20% below projections, they could have cut 10% off their offer and probably ended up making more money.
AT&T probably wasn't a bad choice since they are the largest carrier with 71 million subscribers. Thing is, that's less than a 1/3 of US cell phones. If they had offered a version for Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, they could have tripled their available market.
Obviously the terms they offered to Verizon weren't acceptable, so their greed has resulted in lower sales. Very simple.
With carriers offering different levels of service, and all the 'contract extensions' when buying new phones, it can be difficult to get out of contracts. I have a friend that wants to buy his son an iphone, but he has three other lines through Verizon, can't get out of his contract without paying, and doesn't want to put his son who's going away to college on a different carrier that doesn't share minutes.
More importantly, why did we get so worried about disenfranchising someone who wasn't smart enough to recognize these invalid looking ballots?
Yes, we should get back to the good old days where only white, educated males got to vote. We had WAY better presidents back then.
You have a point, but just because you can't read doesn't mean you are stupid or uninformed, especially in the case of those who are visually impaired.
You bring up a good point though, although the problems are deeper than the uninformed or uneducated voting.
Linking, even dynamic linking, doesn't get you off the hook if you distribute all of the pieces together and they don't work separately. It doesn't necessarily get you off the hook in other cases either (avoiding a long legal discussion).
However, the Skype code, at least the important part of it, isn't in the Linux kernel. It's a user-mode application and the GPL of the kernel doesn't apply to it.
Interesting. Was just going on memory when I posted that, guess that will teach me. Does bring up an interesting discussion though. Are there any proprietary Linux apps that don't use ANY dynamic libraries that are under the GPL. If find that difficult to believe.However, the Skype code, at least the important part of it, isn't in the Linux kernel. It's a user-mode application and the GPL of the kernel doesn't apply to it.
Not sure I understand this portion of your comment. You don't have to be kernel code to dynamically link to a library...On a larger note, probably somewhat OT, I think the restriction against dynamically linking to GPL code is stupid, and I would be curious if there is any case law on the validity of the idea that dynamically linking to a library makes the whole codebase one application subject to the terms of the license of the library. Does the GPL specifically specify this situation in the license, or is this just an interpretation by the FSF?
Legal issues aside, it's just a bad position for the GPL to be in. I'm a huge fan of Open Source Software, but I also recognize that developers have to make a living. If a company can use GPL code as a libray, support and donate to that library as needed, and still keep a portion proprietary to generate revenue, more power to them. Making linking to a library a violation of licensing terms for proprietary software pretty may explain why there is so little commercial software for Linux. If Adobe and Microsoft have to not only rewrite their app for Linux, but can't rely on common libraries that are available in Windows and OSX.
Or, you could put all that GPL code into a library and link it in to your app so you avoid the problem of having to release all of your source. Support the open source portion as you should, and keep your proprietary codebase clean. You really can have it both ways, why not just do it.
And eventually we would get Internet Vista and Applie would come out with Internet X.
Windows just makes that process a PITA. It can be done by copying the SAM file, or using a third party utility, but I've run into a similar situation before and it's a hassle.
I agree, the availability is really overestimated by people who are not in those situations. My parents live on a major highway less than a mile from the city limits of a city with a population of around 70K. There is no cable, no dsl, and they live at a lower elevation near the river so the local wireless provider doesn't have line of sight. Other than satellite, which as you say is pretty much a joke, they have no options. Cellular might be workable, but it's somewhat cost prohibitive as well. The problem isn't so much the size of the pages, but the overall availability of broadband. There needs to be a cost effective way to get high band out to these 'rural' areas.
Good question. I as I said, we never participated - so I'm no expert, but probably the closest thing we are going to find on slashdot. That said, from what I understand, corn subsidies are based on land use. To participate a farmer has to agree not to plant a certain amount of acres to anything, and the government pays them based on that acreage. I don't have any stats, but based on this article, participation in some of the programs is decreasing.
This is probably part of the reasoning for the subsidies to start with. By paying farmers not to produce the government has allowed more farming operations to remain solvent. Now that the price of corn has risen to a level where it is more economical to plant those acres than collect government funding, our capacity has been able to increase overnight. Without the subsidies agricultural would have been subject to more market swings, and overall capacity woiuld have reduced to meet demand, resulting in more failed farming operations. The question is, was it worth spending billions of dollars over the last 30 years waiting for E85 to increase demand on corn. Are we better off, or worse off?
You are correct, E85 is much higher ocatne and can run at higher compression ratios. Diesel-esque is probably not accurate. Most diesel engines run a compression ratio over 20:1. Ethanol will run at a max of 15:1.
Regardless, you point is well taken. The problem is compression ratio is a function of engine design. Without a physical modification there is no way to increase compression ratio. An engine with a 15:1 compression ratio will not run on gasoline, and there is no practical way to dynamically reduce combustion chamber size or increase piston volume. As long as cars are designed as flex fuel vehicles that will run both gasoline and ethonal we must compare the efficiency on a low compression engine. If E85 becomes a standard, and new cars are optimized for that fuel, that may change.
If there are published studies comparing the emissions of a flex fuel vehicle on both E85 and gasoline that show a reduction of pollutants per mile driven, I would be interested to see them. The fact remains that the driving force behind E85 is primarily to reduce foriegn oil dependence, not efficiency, cost of operation or lower tailpipe emissions.
From personal experience. I've watched my Father quit farming and go to work at the USPS because he couldn't make a living. I've watched my sisters and I all enter different career fields because the lack of opportunity in agriculture. I've seen many of the local farms that I grew up with be sold off either because the operation wasn't profitable or because the children of the farmers didn't think it would be in the future.
Take a look at historic corn prices. When adjusted for inflation the price of corn has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY in the last 35 years. Just as we've seen lately, the price of corn directly impacts the price of other crops and livestock. If the price of corn stays down, the farmer doesn't make much money.
My great grandfather, in the years before and after the great depression, was a profitable enough farmer that he was able to purchase 3 separate farms and pay them all off. Most farming operations today are either living off government subsidies or going broke. I can't really comment on the subsidies, we never took any significant money from the government, but I know it's tough to make a living in agriculture without that government money.
You seem to be ignoring what happens down on the farm. Corn is ideal because we already had the infrastructure in place to integrate corn-based ethanol plants into the supply chain with virtually no cost (money or energy).
Not to mention that the farmer doesn't CARE what his product is being used for. He sells it wholesale, and it doesn't matter if it's used for ethanol, tortillas, whiskey, cattle feed, whatever.
Switching to a new crop, like switchgrass, would be a difficult process. Probably the most difficult feat would be to convince the industry that a wholesale change to the new product is a good long term decision and will be viable in the future.
Here's another question... Does ethanol burn any cleaner than gasoline? It seems a bit moronic for us to be jacking up food prices throughout the world, just so we can burn yet-another-fuel. Sure, we won't run out of *this* fuel, but our oil supplies are fun from out yet. Unless this fuel is really MUCH cleaner than gasoline...
I'm not sure this is really clear. I haven't seen anything definitive about how clean E85 is. I do know that it is less efficient, so you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. Even if it is cleaner, it may not be clean enough to offset the addtional consumption.It's mostly about keeping the money in the US economy rather than sending it to the middle east and funding the terrorists.
Your example, if true, would be directly attributable to climate change.
The beer issue being discussed has nothing to do with ACTUAL climate change. In reality it doesn't have anything to do with climate change. Corn is being used to create E85. E85's primary goal isn't reduction of greenhouse gasses and stemming climate change (although there may be some of this), it is designed to reduce the US dependence on foriegn oil for economic/political reasons. Subsidization of E85 has resulted in higher Corn prices. Farmers, most of whom barely eek out a living, obviously plant more of the crop that is bringing the highest price at market.
Once the wholesale price of barley increases adequately, the farming industry will switch back to barley and beer production will resume.
I agree 100%. The President takes the heat for all these fascist goings on because he's an easy target. In reality, it's Democratic Congress that is funding the war in Iraq and passing every other piece of tyrannical legislation that comes along, but no one mentions that.
You forgot Podiobook - say it out loud.
God doesn't need a spaceship. Keeps costs down.
Absolutely not, but the discussion was concerning the Patriot Act and national security. Terrorism, domestic mass shootings, etc.. are the factors driving government policy. Gang shootings and inner city violence are not. I agree that poverty and education can have a major impact on crime rates, but it will not in the high profile cases that make the news media and are driving political action. The Patriot Act wasn't inspired by a shooting in a ghetto, it was inspired by 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the same way, the current proposals to bail out lending institutions and homeowners weren't inspired by the thousands of hardworking Americans that have lost their home due to an injury or being laid off work. They are being pushed to alleviate the financial consequences of greedy lenders that gave bad loans and greedy consumers that paid too much for houses they couldn't afford, and then blame the problem on "predatory lenders".
High profile issues generate high profile results. Individual shootings in a ghetto don't threaten the perceived safety of Average Joe suburbanite American. Terrorist attacks, school shootings, home foreclosures, and rising interest rates do.