How is T-Mobile "monopolistic"? They are the smallest of the four major US carriers. And the smaller of the two GSM carriers. They don't hold a majority position in the market no matter how you slice it, let alone a share that would be considered a monopoly.
I read it differently. Bill Gates wants more H1-B workers which he can, unofficially, work at those kind of hours. That creates a watermark in the marketplace, against which non-H1B workers need to compete for jobs. I bet if Microsoft improved working conditions and company policies (both stemming from the same dysfunctional root, most likely) they'd have plenty of folks beating a path to their door.
Yup, from what I can see this entire story is just a rehash of what Gates has already said concerning H1B Visa quotas (unfortunately TFA from that story is no longer available).
Regardless of how efficient the new bulb is, it will be a net loss to the environment (and possibly to everyone's pocketbook) if it only lasts half as long as a normal bulb.
Indeed, I love some of the wording in this press release:
"The new high efficiency incandescent (HEI(TM)) lamp, which incorporates innovative new materials being developed in partnership by GE's Lighting division, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and GE's Global Research Center, headquartered in Niskayuna, NY, would replace traditional 40- to 100-Watt household incandescent light bulbs, the most popular lamp type used by consumers today.
"Being developed" "would replace" - lots of future-tense in these statements. In other words, expect at least a two years lead before these bulbs actually appear in stores.
The target for these bulbs at initial production is to be nearly twice as efficient, at 30 lumens-per-Watt, as current incandescent bulbs. Ultimately the high efficiency lamp (HEI) technology is expected to be about four times as efficient as current incandescent bulbs...
Translation: The tech actually isn't there yet, we can only manage to make the bulbs twice as efficient right now.
Note that no time frame is given for getting to 4x goal. But once we get there, your 60 watt bulb will be replaced by a bulb with equivalent light that only uses 15w of power.
and comparable to CFL bulbs.
Translation: Still less efficient than CFLs but closer. A 60w equivalent CFL would be about 11 watts if I remember right.
Also, no life expectancy of bulbs or pricing given. I bet they last about as long as current incandescent lights (a lot less than CFLs), and cost about three times as much as normal incandescents.
If I'm offered 5Mits/s from my cable provider, that is an obligation for them to fill my order. If they can't fulfill my expectations, then they shouldn't have offered the service to begin with. If telco XYZ is getting bitten for overselling their lines that sure as hell isn't my problem as a consumer. What I do with my 5Mbits/s is my own business. I could use the internet to check my email (10kb), or surf the web a while (2MB), or download a YouTube video (200M?).
Maybe the problem is too many providers offering unlimited bandwidth quotas with their service. I personally only get 6GB of bandwidth a month with my data service, so I recently had to add a 10GB block (at $10 a month) because of heavy YouTube watching. Because of this quota, I don't leave torrents seeding or internet radio playing 24/7. If people had to pay for heavy usage all the time they would be better about not constant saturating the neighborhood's node.
This is nothing but Skype trying to get the government to regulate a market for itself. If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so. As it is now, they own the equipment because they paid to build it.
I think this proposal has a snowball's chance in Hell. If we can't even get the FCC to outlaw hardware locking of phones, what chance would Skype think they have of getting the entire network opened up?
What we're seeing here is Skype realizing they aren't going to be the next Ma Bell, because their product is pretty much stuck in the home of the user. Yeah, you can run Skype off any internet connection, but with some businesses/hotspots using port filters and traffic shaping to prevent things like Skype and torrents from working, and the ubiquitous free metropolitan Wi-Fi not happening, Skype is finding themselves losing out to the cell phone providers, whose coverage is just getting closer and closer to gapless as networks slowly expand. Why get Skype with rate plans getting cheaper (per minute) and coverage working on most major highways?
i would bet that there are - I'm not sure but the Yahoo push-mail may be one of them as well. I am also thinking if there are not others already there will be as Apple comes up with other ideas to make phone use easier. Lockin was a sad nessecity to allow innovation to proceed at a reasonable pace in the cell phone carrier market we have today.
Ah, I had forgotten about that. Yahoo-specific push mail might involve a business partnership between Apple, Cingular, and Yahoo. But push mail itself can be done other ways, Blackberry service runs over Cingular networks. The iPhone has IMAP access abilities, this would be a great time for Apple to begin supporting idle state on their.Mac mail service.
The question is, is the iPhone an attractive device without features that require Cingulars network? Internet access, Multitouch, Google Maps, integrated Video iPod, these are all features people would love that would work equally well on any high-speed date network. There is no reason the iPhone couldn't be available to all, with some special features requiring Cingular's network.
Apple didn't take things as far as they could here.
if Apple meant it, the phones would be 100% unbranded and unlocked, they'd take any GSM provider's card....
And then Apple would not be able to provide features like visual voice mail which require changes to the carrier network.
Are there any other features that require Cingular on the iPhone? I hate to think we're justifying the decision to lock the iPhone on a single feature most people could care less about.
What Apple gets by partnering is concessions in network development they would never get if they stood along against all other phone companies. That is the value that Apple brings to the table, making complex things easier and stuff like network improvements to handle random access voice mail are part and parcel of that.
Voicemail is a very small part of the phone user's experience. The interface itself is a far larger one, and Apple went a long way for that by not letting Cingular add some garish orange and blue logoed interface to their phone. I have an unlocked Cingular phone I'm using on another network, and I've talked to my carrier and it seems there is no way to reload the phone with a generic or even T-Mobile branded version of the interface. I'll always have "Jack" bid me goodbye when I switch off my phone, as well as have "Cingular marketplace" ect icons that do nothing on my menus.
If the iPhone were just like any other MVNO phone, it would lose a lot of potential for true innovation in phone development.
The iPhone doesn't have to be part of a MVNO-initiative by Apple, they should just be selling it as a phone you plug your own SIM into. Ringtones, ect can be downloaded from Apple or anywhere else like people do now.
The scientists were baffled at the man's insistence they not drill into the amber but where allowed to make a quick sketch of the prehistoric amphibian.
While we are correcting things from my point of view the above poster cannot spell colour correctly.
The spelling I gave is most certainly correct. It is the American spelling of color and has been in use for over a hundred years. Ironic note: Firefox's spell checker is flagging your spelling of color as incorrect right now as I type this. But I'm not going to make the same mistake you are, because I actually recognize that "colour" is the British English spelling of color and that Firefox is flagging it because it is referencing an en-US spelling dictionary.
So long as people have interesting things to say why bring out the red pen?
Because what you were saying wasn't interesting. There seems to be this trend when people write stories to end them with a question to start discussion. But quite often the question is so obvious you don't need to discuss it to get the answer.
Cell phone manufacturers are not rushing to adopt grayscale screens with patent lists a mile long. Gee, I wonder why? I mean, they've been working to cram full color QVGA screens into most of their products for the last couple years, obviously 4-bit grayscale is the next step after that! Do people need full color displays to make phone calls? Absolutely not, but its a whiz-bang feature that sell phones, and it is needed when you have a built in camera on the phone (which most do now). Even if the camera was grayscale the e-paper display would not be appropriate, as the refresh rate would not be able to keep up with your movement as you framed the photo subject in the viewfinder.
E-ink is a great technology, but not for cell phones. It would only be usable as a main display in bottom-end handsets, and that is a market segment the industry as a whole tends to ignore. They can make do with cheap monochrome LCDs and get the same usability for much less money than paying the licensing cost for something new like E-ink displays. I can see a place for it in external displays on high end phones, but even those are moving to color now.
I'm afraid that the battle over DRM is about to morph from a guerilla action to mutually assured detruction, and the Copyright Industry may prefer the latter in the end to actually sitting down with their enemy (the customers) and coming up with a reasonable solution.
Here's my reasonable solution: The industry allows me to use their product in whatever personal way I see fit, like I can with a standard audio CD today, and I'll buy their product.
It seems simple but the industry wont agree to it. I think the reason is the industry doesn't like the market the way it has been. They don't like one-time revenue. What they ultimately want is a per use charge on all media, but since that would involve setting up a micropayment system, they do what they deem to be the next best thing: lock the usage of the media in the most artificial ways possible so ultimately the easiest legal solution for the consumer is to simply buy a copy for every device they use it on.
The recording/motion picture industry doesn't seem to understand one fact of business: theft happens. Wal-Mart doesn't add RFID tags to every candy bar, owners of boutiques may watch the door closely, but they both expect to have a little shrink every year (Wal-Mart actually has quite a bit). In both these retailers' situations, the cost of the theft is less than the cost of preventing it (like extra personnel to stand right by the door all day, or RFID tags on items costing less than a pay phone call to begin with, or the cost of frivolous lawsuits when you attempt to capture thieves with force).
Rather than sink millions of dollars into DRM that doesn't work or causes class action lawsuits, the labels need to live with the theft that happens and try to reduce expenses other places to make themselves more profitable. Some of these are:
Reduce executive pay (this is also the one least likely to happen). They may make the company a lot of money, but keep in mind this is the pay of a single employee. Some of these guys are making more money than they could even spend in a lifetime.
Be more selective of signing artists. Give recording contracts to the groups that actually have talent and focus. There are far too many lousy groups getting signed. More prudent investment = better returns for the label. This also leads to more consumer interest in the label. Some consumers are so tired to shuffling through lousy music to find the good stuff they aren't even interested in listening anymore.
Tone down the promotion. You can't make people like an artist. They either do or they don't. If a very popular act is going to do a show, is there any reason you should have to promote it out the wazoo? Wouldn't people be aware of it and spread the info for you via word of mouth? Also, referring back to the last point, a lousy band is going to require more promotion to get those albums sold, making them an even less desirable investment. Plus, too much promotion leads to consumer burnout.
Stop the long-shot piracy lawsuits. If you don't have any hard evidence, you're just burning money. And you're pissing off your legitimate customers with your actions, lowering your sales. People are less likely to sympathize with someone who really is infringing on copyright than they are people who are innocent and being bullied by string arm legal tactics.
What doesn't make sense though, is given the energy efficiency and easy-to-read high contrast functionality of E Ink, why other than Motorola with its Motofone, has no other cell phone manufacturer incorporated E Ink technology into its handsets?"
1. This sentence is a little run-on.
2. This sentence is a declarative ("What doesn't make sense..."), so it should not end with a question mark.
3. This is another stupid question at the end of a summary. People want color (preferably at least 32,000 color) displays in their phones. Few manufacturers are going to pay for premium new tech in what will be one of their bottom-of-the-barrel/developing country and grandma-and-grandpa handsets.
Not too long ago, Random House added the following as an alternate definition of Nazi: a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.
So now the user has to labor under the interface built by the lock-stepping developers, right?
well, they sold it. Sort of comes with the territory. I know if I sold a promise to upgrade and received payment for it, I am pretty sure I am obligated to provide it! Sort by law I believe, although IANAL, so I could be wrong.
If they had printed the Vista upgrade serial number on the certificate, think how much less of a problem this would be. They could put some of that scratch-off silver gummy junk over it. Then they just make a downloadable ISO (maybe wrapped in an executable that prompts for a blank DVD and burns the image), distribute over torrent, ta-da! Distribution problem fixed.
In fact your VoIP over cable uses the exact same infrastructure as your data connection. The only difference is your cable provider probably implements Packet Cable DQOS to provide a QOS service flow over the DOCSIS HFC plant for quality of service.
The point was this wasn't Vonage-style VoIP with lousy sound quality and poor reliability, as the original parent was describing when they mentioned how dumb it was to have an alarm hooked up to VoIP/digital phone service. I don't have my phones hooked into my cable modem and by bandwidth on my web surfing is not affected by the phone service.
I would agree with you except when there is an area wide outage of data service, the phone continues to work. This is both on my company and the company I work for.
The lowest version of Vista should have no trouble on current hardware.
Then they've already prepared for this. IIRC, all those free Vista upgrades being given out were for Home Basic. Dell comes through on their promise for free Vista upgrades in the cheapest, yet technically correct sense possible.
Of course, because assertions of plain-as-day truth have always stopped them dead in their tracks in the past...
Yes, SCO will now say they didn't have enough advance notice she was a real person and will need a delay in the beginning of their court cases to prepare after this shocking turn in events.
Very possible. When a call comes down the line of a standard ILEC phone line, the voltage is ~100VAC to ring the ringers in the phones of your home.
Interesting, I knew the normal voltage was 48v, but I didn't realize this jumped so high for ringing. Although that wouldn't explain why a security system is being thrown off by it, since it would seem the system is not detecting the dial tone to start with. The system wouldn't be receiving calls.
Most people don't seem to realize that they can't just pop as many phones as they want on their line and still have everything ring. I would gauge 4 modern phones to be the limit for most households. But I suppose it may be lower on phones with mechanical ringers (like my rotary). I seem to remember a measurement actually called "ringpower" from the past that dealt with this.
I don't mean to be mean, but home broadband connections and VoIP services do not meet the same standards of reliability and uptime that your landline is generally required to meet.
I think the issue has to do with the actual power coming over the house wiring with VoIP-based phone versus a Baby Bell's network. When I changed my phone service from SBC over to our cable provider, the service is digital, but it's not run over the cable modem, it has it's own dedicated bandwidth. It rarely, if ever, goes down. But I noticed after switching I couldn't hear my 1960's rotary phone in one room. If I'm standing right by it and a call comes in I hear a feeble tapping of the ringer, whereas it rang out clearly before. I can still make/receive calls on it though.
I also get calls occasionally at work (I work for a cable co, not the same as I have) and people have issues with alarm systems not functioning right when all the phones are working.
It seems as though IP Phone adapters don't put out quite the same voltage as a "normal" phone line, so the alarm system may read it as having no phone line connected.
psychologists have done studies showing that people actually subconsciously like the ooohs and aahs and laughs and startles of their fellow popcorn munchers at a movie. yes, a site like slashdot won't admit to the fact, but people apparently have an enhanced emotional experience in a packed theatre... subconciously
I'll admit it. I do enjoy it. So much so when a highly anticipated movie comes out I'll make a point of going to see it during one of the packed shows (Fri/Sat night opening weekend), getting a big tub of buttery popcorn or nachos and a drink. I remember standing in long lines to see the second and third Matrix movies with my sister. That emotion isn't there later on (3-4 weeks into a picture's run) because a lot fewer people are there and many are folks seeing a film for the second or third time.
But lately I haven't been going to the theaters, and it's directly because of the movies. I don't even recognize most of the movies on the Oscar contender lists. As much as I enjoy the opening weekend experience, it's expensive and I haven't seen any movies lately I'm interested seeing enough to pay even matinée rate for (and even that is getting outrageous).
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How is T-Mobile "monopolistic"? They are the smallest of the four major US carriers. And the smaller of the two GSM carriers. They don't hold a majority position in the market no matter how you slice it, let alone a share that would be considered a monopoly.
Yup, from what I can see this entire story is just a rehash of what Gates has already said concerning H1B Visa quotas (unfortunately TFA from that story is no longer available).
Indeed, I love some of the wording in this press release:
"Being developed" "would replace" - lots of future-tense in these statements. In other words, expect at least a two years lead before these bulbs actually appear in stores.
Translation: The tech actually isn't there yet, we can only manage to make the bulbs twice as efficient right now.
Note that no time frame is given for getting to 4x goal. But once we get there, your 60 watt bulb will be replaced by a bulb with equivalent light that only uses 15w of power.
Translation: Still less efficient than CFLs but closer.
A 60w equivalent CFL would be about 11 watts if I remember right.
Also, no life expectancy of bulbs or pricing given. I bet they last about as long as current incandescent lights (a lot less than CFLs), and cost about three times as much as normal incandescents.
After a few more mergers (Verizon, Quest, Rogers) I'm sure "at&t" will.
DRM, and a new EULA.
Maybe the problem is too many providers offering unlimited bandwidth quotas with their service. I personally only get 6GB of bandwidth a month with my data service, so I recently had to add a 10GB block (at $10 a month) because of heavy YouTube watching. Because of this quota, I don't leave torrents seeding or internet radio playing 24/7. If people had to pay for heavy usage all the time they would be better about not constant saturating the neighborhood's node.
And a lousy thief?
I think this proposal has a snowball's chance in Hell. If we can't even get the FCC to outlaw hardware locking of phones, what chance would Skype think they have of getting the entire network opened up?
What we're seeing here is Skype realizing they aren't going to be the next Ma Bell, because their product is pretty much stuck in the home of the user. Yeah, you can run Skype off any internet connection, but with some businesses/hotspots using port filters and traffic shaping to prevent things like Skype and torrents from working, and the ubiquitous free metropolitan Wi-Fi not happening, Skype is finding themselves losing out to the cell phone providers, whose coverage is just getting closer and closer to gapless as networks slowly expand. Why get Skype with rate plans getting cheaper (per minute) and coverage working on most major highways?
Ah, I had forgotten about that. Yahoo-specific push mail might involve a business partnership between Apple, Cingular, and Yahoo. But push mail itself can be done other ways, Blackberry service runs over Cingular networks. The iPhone has IMAP access abilities, this would be a great time for Apple to begin supporting idle state on their
The question is, is the iPhone an attractive device without features that require Cingulars network? Internet access, Multitouch, Google Maps, integrated Video iPod, these are all features people would love that would work equally well on any high-speed date network. There is no reason the iPhone couldn't be available to all, with some special features requiring Cingular's network.
Apple didn't take things as far as they could here.
Are there any other features that require Cingular on the iPhone? I hate to think we're justifying the decision to lock the iPhone on a single feature most people could care less about.
Voicemail is a very small part of the phone user's experience. The interface itself is a far larger one, and Apple went a long way for that by not letting Cingular add some garish orange and blue logoed interface to their phone. I have an unlocked Cingular phone I'm using on another network, and I've talked to my carrier and it seems there is no way to reload the phone with a generic or even T-Mobile branded version of the interface. I'll always have "Jack" bid me goodbye when I switch off my phone, as well as have "Cingular marketplace" ect icons that do nothing on my menus.
The iPhone doesn't have to be part of a MVNO-initiative by Apple, they should just be selling it as a phone you plug your own SIM into. Ringtones, ect can be downloaded from Apple or anywhere else like people do now.
The scientists were baffled at the man's insistence they not drill into the amber but where allowed to make a quick sketch of the prehistoric amphibian.
The spelling I gave is most certainly correct. It is the American spelling of color and has been in use for over a hundred years. Ironic note: Firefox's spell checker is flagging your spelling of color as incorrect right now as I type this. But I'm not going to make the same mistake you are, because I actually recognize that "colour" is the British English spelling of color and that Firefox is flagging it because it is referencing an en-US spelling dictionary.
Because what you were saying wasn't interesting. There seems to be this trend when people write stories to end them with a question to start discussion. But quite often the question is so obvious you don't need to discuss it to get the answer.
Cell phone manufacturers are not rushing to adopt grayscale screens with patent lists a mile long. Gee, I wonder why? I mean, they've been working to cram full color QVGA screens into most of their products for the last couple years, obviously 4-bit grayscale is the next step after that! Do people need full color displays to make phone calls? Absolutely not, but its a whiz-bang feature that sell phones, and it is needed when you have a built in camera on the phone (which most do now). Even if the camera was grayscale the e-paper display would not be appropriate, as the refresh rate would not be able to keep up with your movement as you framed the photo subject in the viewfinder.
E-ink is a great technology, but not for cell phones. It would only be usable as a main display in bottom-end handsets, and that is a market segment the industry as a whole tends to ignore. They can make do with cheap monochrome LCDs and get the same usability for much less money than paying the licensing cost for something new like E-ink displays. I can see a place for it in external displays on high end phones, but even those are moving to color now.
Here's my reasonable solution: The industry allows me to use their product in whatever personal way I see fit, like I can with a standard audio CD today, and I'll buy their product.
It seems simple but the industry wont agree to it. I think the reason is the industry doesn't like the market the way it has been. They don't like one-time revenue. What they ultimately want is a per use charge on all media, but since that would involve setting up a micropayment system, they do what they deem to be the next best thing: lock the usage of the media in the most artificial ways possible so ultimately the easiest legal solution for the consumer is to simply buy a copy for every device they use it on.
The recording/motion picture industry doesn't seem to understand one fact of business: theft happens. Wal-Mart doesn't add RFID tags to every candy bar, owners of boutiques may watch the door closely, but they both expect to have a little shrink every year (Wal-Mart actually has quite a bit). In both these retailers' situations, the cost of the theft is less than the cost of preventing it (like extra personnel to stand right by the door all day, or RFID tags on items costing less than a pay phone call to begin with, or the cost of frivolous lawsuits when you attempt to capture thieves with force).
Rather than sink millions of dollars into DRM that doesn't work or causes class action lawsuits, the labels need to live with the theft that happens and try to reduce expenses other places to make themselves more profitable. Some of these are:
1. This sentence is a little run-on.
2. This sentence is a declarative ("What doesn't make sense..."), so it should not end with a question mark.
3. This is another stupid question at the end of a summary. People want color (preferably at least 32,000 color) displays in their phones. Few manufacturers are going to pay for premium new tech in what will be one of their bottom-of-the-barrel/developing country and grandma-and-grandpa handsets.
So now the user has to labor under the interface built by the lock-stepping developers, right?
If they had printed the Vista upgrade serial number on the certificate, think how much less of a problem this would be. They could put some of that scratch-off silver gummy junk over it. Then they just make a downloadable ISO (maybe wrapped in an executable that prompts for a blank DVD and burns the image), distribute over torrent, ta-da! Distribution problem fixed.
Yes, but only with Evolution for a window manager.
The point was this wasn't Vonage-style VoIP with lousy sound quality and poor reliability, as the original parent was describing when they mentioned how dumb it was to have an alarm hooked up to VoIP/digital phone service. I don't have my phones hooked into my cable modem and by bandwidth on my web surfing is not affected by the phone service.
I would agree with you except when there is an area wide outage of data service, the phone continues to work. This is both on my company and the company I work for.
Then they've already prepared for this. IIRC, all those free Vista upgrades being given out were for Home Basic. Dell comes through on their promise for free Vista upgrades in the cheapest, yet technically correct sense possible.
Yes, SCO will now say they didn't have enough advance notice she was a real person and will need a delay in the beginning of their court cases to prepare after this shocking turn in events.
Interesting, I knew the normal voltage was 48v, but I didn't realize this jumped so high for ringing. Although that wouldn't explain why a security system is being thrown off by it, since it would seem the system is not detecting the dial tone to start with. The system wouldn't be receiving calls.
Most people don't seem to realize that they can't just pop as many phones as they want on their line and still have everything ring. I would gauge 4 modern phones to be the limit for most households. But I suppose it may be lower on phones with mechanical ringers (like my rotary). I seem to remember a measurement actually called "ringpower" from the past that dealt with this.
Allowing them to continue their pursuit of John Connor despite multiple shotgun hits.
I think the issue has to do with the actual power coming over the house wiring with VoIP-based phone versus a Baby Bell's network. When I changed my phone service from SBC over to our cable provider, the service is digital, but it's not run over the cable modem, it has it's own dedicated bandwidth. It rarely, if ever, goes down. But I noticed after switching I couldn't hear my 1960's rotary phone in one room. If I'm standing right by it and a call comes in I hear a feeble tapping of the ringer, whereas it rang out clearly before. I can still make/receive calls on it though.
I also get calls occasionally at work (I work for a cable co, not the same as I have) and people have issues with alarm systems not functioning right when all the phones are working.
It seems as though IP Phone adapters don't put out quite the same voltage as a "normal" phone line, so the alarm system may read it as having no phone line connected.
"Captain Sensibility" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though.
I'll admit it. I do enjoy it. So much so when a highly anticipated movie comes out I'll make a point of going to see it during one of the packed shows (Fri/Sat night opening weekend), getting a big tub of buttery popcorn or nachos and a drink. I remember standing in long lines to see the second and third Matrix movies with my sister. That emotion isn't there later on (3-4 weeks into a picture's run) because a lot fewer people are there and many are folks seeing a film for the second or third time.
But lately I haven't been going to the theaters, and it's directly because of the movies. I don't even recognize most of the movies on the Oscar contender lists. As much as I enjoy the opening weekend experience, it's expensive and I haven't seen any movies lately I'm interested seeing enough to pay even matinée rate for (and even that is getting outrageous).