Eh? I'm not the one defaming a whole nation with some simplistic
blather.You are. And that makes me a xenophobe how? You're the one that's interpreted my original post to be an Attack On India By A Self Hating Indian.
I fail to see why this is a bad thing. The Americans are concerned about privacy because they have the luxury to do so. We do not. There are more important things. I never said anything about it being good or bad-I was talking of the cultural context. It's common in India to field questions about one's family, marital status, salary and so on from complete strangers; such behaviour would be considered rude in the West. Given this situation, how
many people here would take online privacy seriously?
Wrong again, my dear self-loather. Freedom is a complex and nuanced
business, and needs to be implemented with different priorities given
to it's many aspects. What are you, Ernesto Guevara? Go live in a
jungle with your Naxalite friends. So freedom of speech doesn't count for squat I suppose, in your scheme of things.
They DO, my dear ignoramus, or did you conveniently forget the public interest litigation filed against that bitch Indira Gandhi and her Congress (I) thugs when she tried to convert our country into a police state? Good point. But should things again deteriorate to such a level before people sit up and take notice? We don't see any citizen's movements against moral policing and censorship (either it's not considered important enough-which is what my original point was, or it's not given the coverage it ought to have; if you know of any such movement online let me know.)
This is like the frog in the pan of hot water..the sooner such censorship is nipped in the bud the better, unless the situation of the Chinese internet seems ideal.
Absurd. What you're implicitly referring to (absolute freedom) gives
rise to absolute anarchy. "Freedom" in the sense of "Democracy" DOES
mean 'subject to certain terms', like LAWS. Or would you rather our nation degenerate into riots. I should have mentioned freedom of speech. That's what the conversation was about if you hadn't twigged.
All the examples I cited specifically deal with this.
Wow, bring on the xenophobes!!
First off-I was talking about how Indians are culturally not bothered about privacy, let alone online privacy.
I'm quite aware of what our constitution provides, thank you very much; it is all the more ironic that when these rights are trampled by fundamentalist groups and even the government, no one raises a word of protest.
Merely having freedom of speech in the constitution is meaningless. Have you seen the uproar whenever anyone writes or produces anything controversial? How about the banning of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses because it would offend the Muslim minority?
How about the moral police that comes out ever so often over ridiculous issues?
Or the very recent Orkut case that went all the way to Parliament, wasting precious time when we have a million more important matters to discuss?
Or-scariest of all, the IT Act of 2000. One of the provisions of the act is to allow the police to search or arrest any individual without a warrant, at the same time giving the govt. and its officers immunity from prosecution in case they made a mistake with respect to said individuals.
How come no one's talking of freedom of speech during such times? What's the use of having these rights in the constitution if no one is going to bother when they are violated??
Freedom is binary-you either have it or you don't. Freedom 'subject to the following terms and conditions' is an oxymoron.
(I'm not claiming that the US is any better, they've had their own record of violations)
Going by what you've said, Americans could do the same, sit back on their asses and turn a blind eye to whatever's going on there-be it the debate on net neutrality, or evolution vs. 'intelligent design' and so on.
Democracy is something that has to be protected and upheld by citizens, once you allow a legal precedent to ban something because someone gets offended, there's no looking back. In India, given the small proportion of population that is educated and affluent (the fact that we're both posting here puts us firmly in this bracket), it is sad that no one is protesting against these things(yup, this again includes me).
Especially this being Slashdot, where people can be expected to know about adblocking!
If you don't mind paying and getting commercial software on Windows-get Ad Muncher. The most comprehensive adblocker I've seen-it can filter any application and is tiny and easy to use. It passed the ultimate test for me-running an unpatched IE6 on a bunch of warez/porn sites and nuking nearly everything off the page. Yeah, i live dangerously:D
For the rest, there's always the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox. I've been filtering ads for years because they're all US centric and I don't buy stuff online anyway.
There's no point linking the 'do no evil' slogan to their ad policy. They showed text ads till now as a differentiation from other engines, at some point they gave in to the lure of the cash and decided to go all out with video ads. Or they must have deduced that showing video ads is profitable. As a publicly owned company, whose primary goal is to maximize shareholder value, what are they doing wrong? (Too bad if you thought of them any other way)
From personal experience, most Indians are either unaware, or don't care about online privacy. This probably has to do with our culture, India being a 'high contact' culture that places more importance on family and societal ties than the individual. In real life as well, privacy is something unheard of for many. In a city like Bombay, it's not uncommon for families of upto 10 people to be living crowded in a one or 2 room tenement. Even among the educated and affluent, the general attitude is one of 'who cares'. You can see this in the tone of the linked article on mid-day. The concerns on privacy are added as an afterthought, especially the comment that privacy violation is ok if it's done on a public computer. The uproar over orkut being censored in India was disturbingly in favor of censoring orkut (in india, not on slashdot). I haven't come across any citizens groups or any sort of anti-censorship activism here. You(US) guys are really lucky to have your First Amendment. There's nothing like that in our constitution.
I'm actually 29:) What you heard was a rant after spending 5 years in this industry. One thing I've learnt early on is 'Find something you like, then figure out a way to get paid to do that.'-similar to what you've said. I'm probably one of the very few people here who did a full time MBA and chucked it over in favor of writing code because that's what i like doing. (Not to mention that Dilbertisms in real life are not funny).I think it's a generational thing. The Americans I mentioned, who I enjoyed working with-all without exception were a minimum of 35 years old. I'd say they took their first steps in the early 80s when there was no internet and computers were so hard to use that only geeks who really loved tinkering would want to work with them. Here, the computer boom began only around 2000 with the Y2K bug requiring people in droves to fix it; so there is no one in India of that age or experience.
Also-I could be wrong-but I've seen the general trend of looking down on kids who do well in academics (the geek/nerd stereotype) seems more prevalent over there. Here in India(especially south India) we have a strong tradition of doing well in studies, and many Indians feel education is the most valuable thing they can give their children.
lol
I download something from Napster
And the same guy I downloaded it from starts downloading it from me when I'm done
I message him and say "What are you doing? I just got that from you"
"getting my song back fucker"
Wipro started out as a conglomerate in the 70s. The software division began in the mid 90's and since then it has overshadowed the other lines of business. Did you really find it easier to look for wiprocorporate.com rather than wipro.com which should be more obvious? Of course you could've RTFA, but then this is Slashdot...
Embellishing is one thing, but claiming 2 years of experience by sticking in descriptions for fictitious projects that I never worked for is plain barefaced lying. They tried to justify it to me by saying essentially that they could get away with it-or that competitors like Infosys or TCS do it all the time. And of course, the office was nicely decorated with posters full of malarkey like 'trust and responsibility in relationships' and so on-empty slogans. As for certs-here you were forced to take the cert. exam but they reimburse the fees only if you clear it. It's hardly surprising that the value of certifications has plummeted in the market.
Yup, I'm still in India, never been to the US-an anachronism these days. Sad to say, even an IIT or IIM pedigree doesn't guarantee anything-I've seen quite a few such alumni who don't live upto the hype about their institutions.
Let me shed some more light here. I'm Indian, sitting in my country, and currently work for a Fortune 100 American company that's outsourced work here. I've been into computers and programming from my school days, starting with Turbo Pascal on creaky school XTs running MSDOS 5 in the early 90s. Right from then on, I knew I wanted to write software for a living because I love coding and creating stuff. Back then, I innocently dreamt that all software companies were great places to work, filled with geniuses who made games like Doom, or packages like Corel Draw (this was 1994). Much later, I've grown older and wiser-to the fact that 90% of people (at least in India) are just in it for the money, or to land an H1B in the US-i.e. anything but an interest for the subject. Every place I've worked-I've found people who are totally unidimensional-they'll sit and learn Java, but will not show the slightest interest in the field of computers, or the world of IT in general. (If there are any Indians living in India, who've always been here, AND who read Slashdot regularly, I haven't seen any). Another common attitude here is-that programming is a kind of menial job and one should get out of it as soon as possible, and become a 'manager'. It's not uncommon to find people becoming 'team leaders' within 5 years and 'project managers' within 7. This is in stark contrast to my experience with US companies. In a previous job, for a US company that made medical imaging/archiving software, I was in awe of the guys who had written the software. One of them was the CTO of the company, and even he still wrote code. Perhaps because you guys have had computers as part of your culture for a much longer time than we have-there are people out there(even reading this right now, I bet) with over 20-30 years of experience who still love to code and are passionate about Unix or Linux or the open source movement or whatever. I have always found it a great pleasure working with American(and British) colleagues just for these reasons: 1) Thorough, indepth knowledge and experience of the matter at hand. Not someone who just picked up 'Java for Dummies' and tried to bullshit his way through something, but someone who KNOWS his stuff. You won't find many Indians with 15 yrs of unix network programming experience here in India. 2) Communication skills: While most Indians may not sound like Apu from the Simpsons, I've had trouble understanding some people here, and some of them have actually gone and worked on projects in the US! I pity whoever had to work with them without an interpreter. There have been times when I've had to interpret on behalf of someone over a teleconference.
Unless people here start off with an actual aptitude and interest for computers rather than as a passport to settling abroad or earning big bucks, this situation will prevail.
I have had first hand experience working for Wipro-the worst 5 months of my career. They routinely make freshers with no experience mug up-yes, MUG UP the answers to certification exams and then take them-so that clients can be impressed with the 'certified' developers.
The final straw for me was when they doctored my resume with fake experience and sent it over to the client-their people grilled me over my 'new and improved' resume and after that I walked out.
And why in God's name should your teacher give you any respect? Your self-righteous attitude is, in my opinion, one of the main problems with youth culture today. As a child, it is highly unlikely you have done anything worthwhile. There is simply no reason why any responsible adult should give you (as a child) any "respect" at all. It's not to do with self righteousness. Individualism is not a trait that exhibits itself only when people grow older. A teacher should realize that not all kids learn the same way. Some may be brighter and quicker at learning stuff than others, and would get bored with the pace of teaching. The 'respect' refered to by the GP is this-acknowledge that kids are different and should be nurtured carefully if they're to develop their personality and grow to the best of their potential.
Which of course, goes against the ethos of most public schools. The Montessori schools somewhat address this, atleast for very young kids.
You mean you have to show them the phone you plan to use with their network? O__O! In India, you can buy a prepaid SIM card from literally anywhere. Small streetside kiosks stocking newspapers and cigarettes also have these. For about 200 to 300 Rs. (40 Rs. to the dollar) as well as some proof of ID, you can purchase a SIM card. Whether you get the shopkeeper to put it in the phone for you or do it yourself is upto you.
People who come to visit India from overseas love this. You needn't pay exorbitant roaming charges to your operator back home; just come here, buy a cheap basic phone for $50 (if you don't have a GSM phone already), get a prepaid SIM card as above and you can have a local number for the duration of your stay in India.Call charges are extremely competitive- as low as 2.5 cents a minute for local calls (incoming calls are free everywhere except when roaming), and around 25 cents/minute for international calls to the US/UK.
I've bashed Apple a LOT, on nearly every iPhone related story that came out, and my main peeve has been the locking up with AT&T. The iPhone was very well received, not just by fanboys but probably everyone else in the US. Hacking a phone is no joke-and usually such tampering voids your warranty. (Much the same with overclocking your PC or graphics card). Of course, there are those who would figure out a way to get Linux running on a new model of toaster if it were there-but the iPhone hack was probably eagerly awaited by many. Is Apple blind to the fact that there's probably lots of people out there who want the iPhone, but are keeping away because they don't want to be tied into an operator?? Or, for that matter, people in other countries? (In India, there's already rumors that Apple will launch it tied up with Airtel, India's largest mobile operator-for around 26k rupees (it's 40 Rs/dollar at current rates). Some people have indicated (here) that they don't mind an operator contract if the phone is offered cheap. Now if this is 26k with an operator contract, what on earth would it cost without? That budget is easily super high end smartphone land-you can get the N95 and other competing smartphones from O2 and others WITHOUT any contracts for the same amount!!
If only they would sell the iPhone directly through retail outlets, and allow you to use the operator of your choice. But no-they want a piece of the usage charges as well.
Set the iPhone free. And I'm pretty sure lots more people will scramble to get it.
You don't buy an internet router from your ISP. You don't buy cars from the Highway Department (or equivalent) You don't buy your TV,dishwasher,microwave or other electrical appliances from the electricity company.
So why on earth do americans still meekly accept the logic of buying mobile phones from service providers?
The sooner unlocked phones proliferate, there won't be a need to jump through such hoops to unlock an iPhone, or any other phone.
I understand that the ISP has no control over the infrastructure and so on..but why are we suddenly having to pay for this?
The whole net neutrality issue sounds like telcos wanting to grab a piece of the pie. Rather like the mafia. You don't pay for any additional value or better service, you're ending up having to pay MORE to continue to get the same service as before. Extortion.
In short, pay the local mafia goons so that they don't come break your legs.
When was net neutrality even something to be questioned, say 4-5 years ago?
I totally agree with what you've said-Apple products' ease of use is what counts first. The GP is confusing issues-Apple has actually never gone in for open standards in terms of hardware or OS. They've always sold a tightly integrated (although great) user experience, and only in recent years this tendency has reduced (support for USB and PCI with the iMac, where older macs had their own proprietary interfaces, and more recently support for Intel CPUs). As a hardware platform-the iPod is pretty much locked down, since you must have iTunes to use it, and it won't just work as a USB drive without some hacking/tweaking.
The same goes for the iPhone-even more tightly locked down(no 3rd party apps,locked to AT&T).
However, locked hardware platform != intrinsically supporting DRM (if Jobs' article doesn't make that clear)
Of course Apple stands to gain from removing DRM-iTunes' catalogue will be available to people using other MP3 players, for starters!
6 months back, he himself spoke against the negative effects of DRM and how Apple was implementing DRM only to comply with the wishes of the recording industry.
Now fear of an Apple monopoly on DRM has finally forced Universal (for starters) to think about selling unencumbered music.
So we have him to thank for scaring the recording companies into removing DRM! (hoping that they eventually will)
Heat does not require a medium to propagate. In a vacuum, heat can travel through radiation, so you would have to be pretty well insulated to prevent that.
Any of the Nseries devices from Nokia can do the things you list, except for GPS which currently is only on the N95. Memory can be upgraded by mini/microSD cards, they support music(mp3/aac/wma/wav/midi as well as streaming realmedia), voice dialing, all have minimum 2mp cameras that can record 320x240 mp4 video(N93/95 support VGA or 640x480 res. video),sync contacts and calendar with Outlook/Notes (theres recently a new free 'Mail4Exchange' app available for download for Exchange email), pop3/imap email,MMS,bluetooth,infrared(on some of them) 3G/edge.Except for N70,N72 and N90, the rest use the S60 3rd edition OS, with its improved browser that can render full websites and supports RSS. The included free version of QuickOffice lets you view (but not edit) MS Office documents.
One suggestion-always buy unlocked phones, and dont get stuck into one operator/usage plan.
Yet another 'shootout' without Nokia/SE..
on
Smartphone Shootout
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Call me when the iPhone can do the following-
allow you to use any song from your collection as a ringtone.
allow you to share content-be it tones, music, pictures or video-over wifi/bluetooth with other devices/smartphone users.
Let you simply use that entire 8 GB storage as a portable drive and copy whatever stuff u want onto it.(can it?)
allow you to use any operator you like without having to be shackled to AT&T
allow you to use any 3rd party application WITHOUT having to hack the firmware or do anything out of the ordinary.
Nokia and Sony-Ericsson devices let you do all that. It's just the simple philosophy at the heart of each one. Nokia/SE believe in letting the user be in complete control over their mobile phone, and to personalize it the way they want. You want to use it as a business phone? It can sync with Outlook/Notes. Music? Photography?Video? All these are supported, with no restrictions. 3rd party apps? The manufacturers realize that they cannot possibly cover every possible usage scenario, or think of everything a user might want. Hence an SDK for companies to create new apps and games.
For example,check out miniGPS, which simulates GPS by detecting where you are within the GSM network and alerting you with reminders, or switching profiles (imagine phone automatically going to silent mode when you reach your office and reverting when you leave it).
How about a bluetooth presentation director, so you can control a powerpoint presentation with your phone? It can be done.
Or, check out Advanced Call Manager, that provides sophisticated control over who can contact you and when, and what recorded message to play for them.
Or take Agile Messenger, that lets you chat on AIM,Yahoo,MSN,Google,ICQ and Jabber.
There are several such companies offering hundreds of applications for smartphones and there's no limit to what you can find for your phone. Oh, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use these applications, many average joes use them!
I agree that not everyone might want all these applications. But doesn't the same argument hold for your PC as well? You can customize a PC any way you want in terms of hardware, operating system, or other software. It's upto you- what you want and how much you're willing to pay for it.
It's about CHOICE. Putting choice in the hand of the consumer, based on the assumption that the consumer knows best what they want out of their phone. As opposed to something that's pretty to look at but strictly locked down, based on what Steve Jobs thinks you should be allowed to use, besides extorting money every step of the way.
Since this was about browsers-Check out the S60 browser as well as the response to the Reality Distortion Field regarding the iPhone's browser!!
Finally, as an aside, what's up with depending on the operator to provide handsets? No wonder you get armtwisted into paying for ringtones and phones with crippled features. Or do you also buy your cars from the highway department?
Nokia sells over the counter handsets, so all you need is a GSM SIM card. At least you'll get a fully featured phone that doesn't have features disabled!
Slashdot Mirror
I should have mentioned freedom of speech. That's what the conversation was about if you hadn't twigged. All the examples I cited specifically deal with this.
First off-I was talking about how Indians are culturally not bothered about privacy, let alone online privacy. I'm quite aware of what our constitution provides, thank you very much; it is all the more ironic that when these rights are trampled by fundamentalist groups and even the government, no one raises a word of protest.
Merely having freedom of speech in the constitution is meaningless. Have you seen the uproar whenever anyone writes or produces anything controversial? How about the banning of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses because it would offend the Muslim minority? How about the moral police that comes out ever so often over ridiculous issues?
Or the very recent Orkut case that went all the way to Parliament, wasting precious time when we have a million more important matters to discuss?
Or-scariest of all, the IT Act of 2000. One of the provisions of the act is to allow the police to search or arrest any individual without a warrant, at the same time giving the govt. and its officers immunity from prosecution in case they made a mistake with respect to said individuals.
How come no one's talking of freedom of speech during such times? What's the use of having these rights in the constitution if no one is going to bother when they are violated??
Freedom is binary-you either have it or you don't. Freedom 'subject to the following terms and conditions' is an oxymoron. (I'm not claiming that the US is any better, they've had their own record of violations)
Going by what you've said, Americans could do the same, sit back on their asses and turn a blind eye to whatever's going on there-be it the debate on net neutrality, or evolution vs. 'intelligent design' and so on. Democracy is something that has to be protected and upheld by citizens, once you allow a legal precedent to ban something because someone gets offended, there's no looking back. In India, given the small proportion of population that is educated and affluent (the fact that we're both posting here puts us firmly in this bracket), it is sad that no one is protesting against these things(yup, this again includes me).
If you don't mind paying and getting commercial software on Windows-get Ad Muncher. The most comprehensive adblocker I've seen-it can filter any application and is tiny and easy to use. It passed the ultimate test for me-running an unpatched IE6 on a bunch of warez/porn sites and nuking nearly everything off the page. Yeah, i live dangerously
For the rest, there's always the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox. I've been filtering ads for years because they're all US centric and I don't buy stuff online anyway.
There's no point linking the 'do no evil' slogan to their ad policy. They showed text ads till now as a differentiation from other engines, at some point they gave in to the lure of the cash and decided to go all out with video ads. Or they must have deduced that showing video ads is profitable. As a publicly owned company, whose primary goal is to maximize shareholder value, what are they doing wrong? (Too bad if you thought of them any other way)
From personal experience, most Indians are either unaware, or don't care about online privacy. This probably has to do with our culture, India being a 'high contact' culture that places more importance on family and societal ties than the individual. In real life as well, privacy is something unheard of for many. In a city like Bombay, it's not uncommon for families of upto 10 people to be living crowded in a one or 2 room tenement. Even among the educated and affluent, the general attitude is one of 'who cares'.
You can see this in the tone of the linked article on mid-day. The concerns on privacy are added as an afterthought, especially the comment that privacy violation is ok if it's done on a public computer. The uproar over orkut being censored in India was disturbingly in favor of censoring orkut (in india, not on slashdot). I haven't come across any citizens groups or any sort of anti-censorship activism here.
You(US) guys are really lucky to have your First Amendment. There's nothing like that in our constitution.
I'm actually 29 :)
What you heard was a rant after spending 5 years in this industry. One thing I've learnt early on is 'Find something you like, then figure out a way to get paid to do that.'-similar to what you've said.
I'm probably one of the very few people here who did a full time MBA and chucked it over in favor of writing code because that's what i like doing. (Not to mention that Dilbertisms in real life are not funny).I think it's a generational thing. The Americans I mentioned, who I enjoyed working with-all without exception were a minimum of 35 years old. I'd say they took their first steps in the early 80s when there was no internet and computers were so hard to use that only geeks who really loved tinkering would want to work with them. Here, the computer boom began only around 2000 with the Y2K bug requiring people in droves to fix it; so there is no one in India of that age or experience.
Also-I could be wrong-but I've seen the general trend of looking down on kids who do well in academics (the geek/nerd stereotype) seems more prevalent over there. Here in India(especially south India) we have a strong tradition of doing well in studies, and many Indians feel education is the most valuable thing they can give their children.
lol
I download something from Napster
And the same guy I downloaded it from starts downloading it from me when I'm done
I message him and say "What are you doing? I just got that from you"
"getting my song back fucker"
1) zip Backup.zip ~/stuff
2) mv Backup.zip ~/Kazaa/share/Britney&ParisDoAHorse.mpg
3) ??
4) Profit!!
You mean emigrate don't you? Seen from here,(I live in India) you'd be immigrating :D
Wipro started out as a conglomerate in the 70s. The software division began in the mid 90's and since then it has overshadowed the other lines of business. Did you really find it easier to look for wiprocorporate.com rather than wipro.com which should be more obvious? Of course you could've RTFA, but then this is Slashdot...
Embellishing is one thing, but claiming 2 years of experience by sticking in descriptions for fictitious projects that I never worked for is plain barefaced lying. They tried to justify it to me by saying essentially that they could get away with it-or that competitors like Infosys or TCS do it all the time. And of course, the office was nicely decorated with posters full of malarkey like 'trust and responsibility in relationships' and so on-empty slogans.
As for certs-here you were forced to take the cert. exam but they reimburse the fees only if you clear it. It's hardly surprising that the value of certifications has plummeted in the market.
Yup, I'm still in India, never been to the US-an anachronism these days. Sad to say, even an IIT or IIM pedigree doesn't guarantee anything-I've seen quite a few such alumni who don't live upto the hype about their institutions.
Let me shed some more light here. I'm Indian, sitting in my country, and currently work for a Fortune 100 American company that's outsourced work here. I've been into computers and programming from my school days, starting with Turbo Pascal on creaky school XTs running MSDOS 5 in the early 90s. Right from then on, I knew I wanted to write software for a living because I love coding and creating stuff. Back then, I innocently dreamt that all software companies were great places to work, filled with geniuses who made games like Doom, or packages like Corel Draw (this was 1994).
Much later, I've grown older and wiser-to the fact that 90% of people (at least in India) are just in it for the money, or to land an H1B in the US-i.e. anything but an interest for the subject. Every place I've worked-I've found people who are totally unidimensional-they'll sit and learn Java, but will not show the slightest interest in the field of computers, or the world of IT in general. (If there are any Indians living in India, who've always been here, AND who read Slashdot regularly, I haven't seen any).
Another common attitude here is-that programming is a kind of menial job and one should get out of it as soon as possible, and become a 'manager'.
It's not uncommon to find people becoming 'team leaders' within 5 years and 'project managers' within 7.
This is in stark contrast to my experience with US companies. In a previous job, for a US company that made medical imaging/archiving software, I was in awe of the guys who had written the software. One of them was the CTO of the company, and even he still wrote code.
Perhaps because you guys have had computers as part of your culture for a much longer time than we have-there are people out there(even reading this right now, I bet) with over 20-30 years of experience who still love to code and are passionate about Unix or Linux or the open source movement or whatever. I have always found it a great pleasure working with American(and British) colleagues just for these reasons:
1) Thorough, indepth knowledge and experience of the matter at hand. Not someone who just picked up 'Java for Dummies' and tried to bullshit his way through something, but someone who KNOWS his stuff. You won't find many Indians with 15 yrs of unix network programming experience here in India.
2) Communication skills: While most Indians may not sound like Apu from the Simpsons, I've had trouble understanding some people here, and some of them have actually gone and worked on projects in the US! I pity whoever had to work with them without an interpreter.
There have been times when I've had to interpret on behalf of someone over a teleconference.
Unless people here start off with an actual aptitude and interest for computers rather than as a passport to settling abroad or earning big bucks, this situation will prevail.
I have had first hand experience working for Wipro-the worst 5 months of my career. They routinely make freshers with no experience mug up-yes, MUG UP the answers to certification exams and then take them-so that clients can be impressed with the 'certified' developers. The final straw for me was when they doctored my resume with fake experience and sent it over to the client-their people grilled me over my 'new and improved' resume and after that I walked out.
You mean you have to show them the phone you plan to use with their network? O__O!
In India, you can buy a prepaid SIM card from literally anywhere. Small streetside kiosks stocking newspapers and cigarettes also have these. For about 200 to 300 Rs. (40 Rs. to the dollar) as well as some proof of ID, you can purchase a SIM card. Whether you get the shopkeeper to put it in the phone for you or do it yourself is upto you.
People who come to visit India from overseas love this. You needn't pay exorbitant roaming charges to your operator back home; just come here, buy a cheap basic phone for $50 (if you don't have a GSM phone already), get a prepaid SIM card as above and you can have a local number for the duration of your stay in India.Call charges are extremely competitive- as low as 2.5 cents a minute for local calls (incoming calls are free everywhere except when roaming), and around 25 cents/minute for international calls to the US/UK.
I've bashed Apple a LOT, on nearly every iPhone related story that came out, and my main peeve has been the locking up with AT&T. The iPhone was very well received, not just by fanboys but probably everyone else in the US. Hacking a phone is no joke-and usually such tampering voids your warranty. (Much the same with overclocking your PC or graphics card). Of course, there are those who would figure out a way to get Linux running on a new model of toaster if it were there-but the iPhone hack was probably eagerly awaited by many.
Is Apple blind to the fact that there's probably lots of people out there who want the iPhone, but are keeping away because they don't want to be tied into an operator?? Or, for that matter, people in other countries? (In India, there's already rumors that Apple will launch it tied up with Airtel, India's largest mobile operator-for around 26k rupees (it's 40 Rs/dollar at current rates). Some people have indicated (here) that they don't mind an operator contract if the phone is offered cheap.
Now if this is 26k with an operator contract, what on earth would it cost without? That budget is easily super high end smartphone land-you can get the N95 and other competing smartphones from O2 and others WITHOUT any contracts for the same amount!!
If only they would sell the iPhone directly through retail outlets, and allow you to use the operator of your choice. But no-they want a piece of the usage charges as well.
Set the iPhone free. And I'm pretty sure lots more people will scramble to get it.
You don't buy an internet router from your ISP.
You don't buy cars from the Highway Department (or equivalent)
You don't buy your TV,dishwasher,microwave or other electrical appliances from the electricity company.
So why on earth do americans still meekly accept the logic of buying mobile phones from service providers?
The sooner unlocked phones proliferate, there won't be a need to jump through such hoops to unlock an iPhone, or any other phone.
I understand that the ISP has no control over the infrastructure and so on..but why are we suddenly having to pay for this? The whole net neutrality issue sounds like telcos wanting to grab a piece of the pie. Rather like the mafia. You don't pay for any additional value or better service, you're ending up having to pay MORE to continue to get the same service as before. Extortion. In short, pay the local mafia goons so that they don't come break your legs. When was net neutrality even something to be questioned, say 4-5 years ago?
Or you can use this extension in Firefox to bypass all such 'login required' sites...
The same goes for the iPhone-even more tightly locked down(no 3rd party apps,locked to AT&T).
However, locked hardware platform != intrinsically supporting DRM (if Jobs' article doesn't make that clear) Of course Apple stands to gain from removing DRM-iTunes' catalogue will be available to people using other MP3 players, for starters!
6 months back, he himself spoke against the negative effects of DRM and how Apple was implementing DRM only to comply with the wishes of the recording industry. Now fear of an Apple monopoly on DRM has finally forced Universal (for starters) to think about selling unencumbered music. So we have him to thank for scaring the recording companies into removing DRM! (hoping that they eventually will)
Heat does not require a medium to propagate. In a vacuum, heat can travel through radiation, so you would have to be pretty well insulated to prevent that.
Any of the Nseries devices from Nokia can do the things you list, except for GPS which currently is only on the N95. Memory can be upgraded by mini/microSD cards, they support music(mp3/aac/wma/wav/midi as well as streaming realmedia), voice dialing, all have minimum 2mp cameras that can record 320x240 mp4 video(N93/95 support VGA or 640x480 res. video),sync contacts and calendar with Outlook/Notes (theres recently a new free 'Mail4Exchange' app available for download for Exchange email), pop3/imap email,MMS,bluetooth,infrared(on some of them) 3G/edge.Except for N70,N72 and N90, the rest use the S60 3rd edition OS, with its improved browser that can render full websites and supports RSS. The included free version of QuickOffice lets you view (but not edit) MS Office documents. One suggestion-always buy unlocked phones, and dont get stuck into one operator/usage plan.
- allow you to use any song from your collection as a ringtone.
- allow you to share content-be it tones, music, pictures or video-over wifi/bluetooth with other devices/smartphone users.
- Let you simply use that entire 8 GB storage as a portable drive and copy whatever stuff u want onto it.(can it?)
- allow you to use any operator you like without having to be shackled to AT&T
- allow you to use any 3rd party application WITHOUT having to hack the firmware or do anything out of the ordinary.
Nokia and Sony-Ericsson devices let you do all that. It's just the simple philosophy at the heart of each one. Nokia/SE believe in letting the user be in complete control over their mobile phone, and to personalize it the way they want. You want to use it as a business phone? It can sync with Outlook/Notes. Music? Photography?Video? All these are supported, with no restrictions. 3rd party apps? The manufacturers realize that they cannot possibly cover every possible usage scenario, or think of everything a user might want. Hence an SDK for companies to create new apps and games. For example,check out miniGPS, which simulates GPS by detecting where you are within the GSM network and alerting you with reminders, or switching profiles (imagine phone automatically going to silent mode when you reach your office and reverting when you leave it). How about a bluetooth presentation director, so you can control a powerpoint presentation with your phone? It can be done.Or, check out Advanced Call Manager, that provides sophisticated control over who can contact you and when, and what recorded message to play for them. Or take Agile Messenger, that lets you chat on AIM,Yahoo,MSN,Google,ICQ and Jabber. There are several such companies offering hundreds of applications for smartphones and there's no limit to what you can find for your phone. Oh, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use these applications, many average joes use them!
I agree that not everyone might want all these applications. But doesn't the same argument hold for your PC as well? You can customize a PC any way you want in terms of hardware, operating system, or other software. It's upto you- what you want and how much you're willing to pay for it.
It's about CHOICE. Putting choice in the hand of the consumer, based on the assumption that the consumer knows best what they want out of their phone. As opposed to something that's pretty to look at but strictly locked down, based on what Steve Jobs thinks you should be allowed to use, besides extorting money every step of the way.
Since this was about browsers-Check out the S60 browser as well as the response to the Reality Distortion Field regarding the iPhone's browser!! Finally, as an aside, what's up with depending on the operator to provide handsets? No wonder you get armtwisted into paying for ringtones and phones with crippled features. Or do you also buy your cars from the highway department? Nokia sells over the counter handsets, so all you need is a GSM SIM card. At least you'll get a fully featured phone that doesn't have features disabled!