So I'm supposed to incur a $300 fee for breaking my contract...
No, if they change your plan, you can get out of the contract without fee. However, it looks like in this case, they are not modifying existing contracts. As a current customer, you don't have a complaint until your current contract expires. Then you switch, incur no fee and get the pricing plan you want.
No carrier is any better at this, except the MVNOs, but they offer the absolute worst customer service and overall feature set
I don't disagree. So it's a $20/month customer service charge. Does that make it better? You stick with AT&T or Verizon Wireless because they provide the best overall package for you. But you've got other options, you've just eliminated them because they don't give you want you want either.
Right on. I wish they had 2G only modes for my phone to save on battery. When I'm not browsing or watching video - what do I need 3G (or 4G) for?
It's like that stupid "Flash Mob" AT&T commercial. It's not like 4G actually gets the messages to me faster, the latency is probably about the same. Most importantly, the latency from the vibration of my phone, to me getting my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, etc. - that latency is significantly longer than anything experienced on 2G or 3G. When my phone is in "passive" mode, it makes perfect sense to not be on 4G (or 3G). I'm way off-topic now.
Do you think that companies charge you what things cost to make?
Do you think that it costs Fiji Water twice as much as Aquafina to bottle H2O? Newsflash: businesses charge on value, derived from what people are willing to pay, not based on what it costs them to produce such items. In cases of price gouging, competitors come into the market and undercut the original producer. In the case of Mobile Wireless, apparently it's a little bit trickier to upend the market, due to the massive capital infusion it would require to build out a national network.
No, the parent gave you an option - move your business to another carrier. You have at least 2 other choices (Sprint, Verizon Wireless) and in some cases many more (Metro PCS, TracFone, U.S. Cellular, Cricket). What's so hard about switching carriers again?
And now we know why Internet connections are so expensive. The damage experienced on your land (through the dog, or installer stupidity) cost the telco easily over $2000. You'd have to have service trouble free for a long time (5 years?) for them to make that money back.
What easily sellable assets does US goverment have to cover their debts if suddenly there was no further loans incoming? I know they have a lot of assets, some are even resesable, but in such a bust situation, how likely are they to be able to raise the money to pay off all the loans without davaluating the whole currency massively by "printing money"?
Nothing easily sell-able, true. However, most highly leveraged countries/individuals don't have the ability to easily move everything to close out a debt. Look at the mortgage crisis. Lots of people had $500K assets (houses) and $500K of debt (mortgage). When rates went up, many of them could not move their asset back into cash to pay down the debt.
Hypothetically, I bet that Alaska could fetch a lot of cash if the US really wanted to sell off some land. There's a lot of Gold, a lot of Oil, a lot of Coal up there. Canada might be interested. Hell, China might be interested. Unlike the housing industry, even if the US wanted to sell this stuff, it wouldn't devalue it. Unlike McMansions in Florida, there's really only one Alaska. There also appears to be a shortage of land for sale to foreign nations these days. If you really want to get crazy, selling off California would be worth quite a bit, even if logistically difficult. The infrastructure alone would make it worth a lot of cash.
Unfortunately, my family uses Verizon wireless, but I wasn't going to call customer service any time soon.
Verizon Wireless is not affected - they're non union and a different company from Verizon Telecom, jointly owned by Verizon Communications (55%) and Vodaphone (45%). The level of disinformation happening in this Slashdot discussion far exceeds the normal level.
Compare that to a commercially available 10Gbps link available from any business class provider, and you're going to trounce them. The latest stuff is 100Gbps, which you should be able to get a hold of if you're willing to shell out right now, but it's still a blow out. You are indeed correct.
A couple of other items to note: 1. You can add a day at the front and a day at the back to load and unload the truck and you're still around 10 Tbps. 2. If you add another 2 days to collect all the data, write it to harddrives and then do the same 2 day process at the back end, you're still around 5 Tbps. 3. A more fair comparison is probably not using such a slow mechanism like a dump truck (I understand it's there to prove a point in your analogy). But instead use a cargo plan. You'll get 23,200 cubic feet of storage out of a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy cargo plane which is about 32 dumptrucks. Also, you can get across the country in 6 hours, even assuming some landing and takeoff. If you still assume it takes several days to load and unload the plane, you'd probably be up in the 1 Pbps range. 4. I was trying to think what would be the fastest way to load and unload the truck, and then I realized I was insane for trying to calculate such a dumb thing. The real answer here is to build storage arrays on the truck and have it roll back and forth. Essentially, it's a mobile data center. You have a few hundred 10 Gbps ports on the rear of the truck to plug in, and you can download all of your data on and off of it pretty quickly, without manual labor beyond plugging in a port. Further, this would be a very fun way for the Pirate Bay, or someone similar to distribute data if they ever wanted to go physical (and thus blatantly break the law). Once a week, the Pirate Bay truck would roll into town and all the kids could plug in the back to download petabytes of information before it leaves for the week. A fun concept, if nothing else.
But, in twenty years, when someone actually needs this stuff on Mars, you'll be looking at $0.10 GB to get it up there, even assuming NASA or the like has to pay for a special "ruggedized" harddrive that is guaranteed to work in a different atmosphere. Storage costs will drop.
I think the real problem is getting it back. Right now, probes have a really slow data connection to send back data. Assuming we can blast off tons of harddrives to them doesn't help that side of the equation.
Also, I was going to make a witty comment about latency, but a few others beat me to the punch (no gaming on Mars), using "sneakerNET" to shuttle things back and forth gives possible the worst latency of all: years.
I know this is all panacea, but wouldn't it be nice if these companies did in spite of pressure from consumers. I don't know much about these boxes, but it doesn't seem like a task that would cost them very much to change.
When cable companies evaluate new STB, they do indeed evaluate draw on standby and active. It isn't worth more than one tiny decision point, but it's there. Ultimately, if they get a "green" STB as an option, they can sell that value-add to the consumers and you'll get pretty much exactly what you're asking for. It's a free market, but the cable company is the customer, you're just the end user.
By contrast, it sounds like team STB has somehow managed to miss Every Single Development in computer and embedded device power management in the last decade.
I'm guessing that the real problem is the average age of a STB. The TV company does not swap out STBs unless you complain, leaving a lot of people untouched since they first moved to digital cable. A few more jumped on the HD bandwagon. A few more hopped in at HD DVR. But realistically, there hasn't been a reason to upgrade your cable box in a few years. Go into any local business and you're bound to see a cable box circa 2001 providing signal to their TV. The TV might be brand new, but the cable box is old.
You're assuming that the people who design cheap chargers for computers compare at all about efficiency in the AC Adapter. I would guess that they just care that it passes compliance testing and doesn't explode into flames too often. The people who care about efficiency are working on the actual device.
Are you saying that the terrorists are invested in the company they are trying to hack? Unlikely.
Or, are you making the lazy assumption that shareholders are bad people and labeling them terrorists? I got news for you: do you have a 401K or a pension? You're likely a shareholder of something. That probably doesn't make you a bad person, and certainly not a terrorist.
I've had engineers tell me that: "This code is so screwed up, the best I can get it to scale is X. You want 100X, it's just not possible without rebuilding the entire product." So, to a certain extent, on large projects, engineers are in a similar boat where there is some gray area.
Of course, government can't directly regulate what companies pay... but indirectly, it can: after all, the reason doctors and lawyers make so much money is because of the laws that govern their profession.
If the government is serious, they could exempt engineers from Federal Tax.
A doctor, lawyer, economist, politician, ect can all give BS answers why their little plans like keeping unemployment below 8% didn't pan out
Good reasoning, but let's not lump doctors in with lawyers and politicians. Do you really think that a doctor can just say: "Oh, but that patient is just sleeping, not dead." Clearly there is some BS about what works and what doesn't, but probably about the same as in engineering.
I reminded myself of the classic Monty Python Parrot Sketch.
Slashdot Mirror
So I'm supposed to incur a $300 fee for breaking my contract...
No, if they change your plan, you can get out of the contract without fee. However, it looks like in this case, they are not modifying existing contracts. As a current customer, you don't have a complaint until your current contract expires. Then you switch, incur no fee and get the pricing plan you want.
And remember, this is just for new customers.
Doesn't this negate your point about having to switch all your phones and the family plan?
No carrier is any better at this, except the MVNOs, but they offer the absolute worst customer service and overall feature set
I don't disagree. So it's a $20/month customer service charge. Does that make it better? You stick with AT&T or Verizon Wireless because they provide the best overall package for you. But you've got other options, you've just eliminated them because they don't give you want you want either.
Right on. I wish they had 2G only modes for my phone to save on battery. When I'm not browsing or watching video - what do I need 3G (or 4G) for?
It's like that stupid "Flash Mob" AT&T commercial. It's not like 4G actually gets the messages to me faster, the latency is probably about the same. Most importantly, the latency from the vibration of my phone, to me getting my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, etc. - that latency is significantly longer than anything experienced on 2G or 3G. When my phone is in "passive" mode, it makes perfect sense to not be on 4G (or 3G). I'm way off-topic now.
Do you think that companies charge you what things cost to make? Do you think that it costs Fiji Water twice as much as Aquafina to bottle H2O? Newsflash: businesses charge on value, derived from what people are willing to pay, not based on what it costs them to produce such items. In cases of price gouging, competitors come into the market and undercut the original producer. In the case of Mobile Wireless, apparently it's a little bit trickier to upend the market, due to the massive capital infusion it would require to build out a national network.
shut up and take it.
No, the parent gave you an option - move your business to another carrier. You have at least 2 other choices (Sprint, Verizon Wireless) and in some cases many more (Metro PCS, TracFone, U.S. Cellular, Cricket). What's so hard about switching carriers again?
And now we know why Internet connections are so expensive. The damage experienced on your land (through the dog, or installer stupidity) cost the telco easily over $2000. You'd have to have service trouble free for a long time (5 years?) for them to make that money back.
What easily sellable assets does US goverment have to cover their debts if suddenly there was no further loans incoming? I know they have a lot of assets, some are even resesable, but in such a bust situation, how likely are they to be able to raise the money to pay off all the loans without davaluating the whole currency massively by "printing money"?
Nothing easily sell-able, true. However, most highly leveraged countries/individuals don't have the ability to easily move everything to close out a debt. Look at the mortgage crisis. Lots of people had $500K assets (houses) and $500K of debt (mortgage). When rates went up, many of them could not move their asset back into cash to pay down the debt.
Hypothetically, I bet that Alaska could fetch a lot of cash if the US really wanted to sell off some land. There's a lot of Gold, a lot of Oil, a lot of Coal up there. Canada might be interested. Hell, China might be interested. Unlike the housing industry, even if the US wanted to sell this stuff, it wouldn't devalue it. Unlike McMansions in Florida, there's really only one Alaska. There also appears to be a shortage of land for sale to foreign nations these days. If you really want to get crazy, selling off California would be worth quite a bit, even if logistically difficult. The infrastructure alone would make it worth a lot of cash.
Unfortunately, my family uses Verizon wireless, but I wasn't going to call customer service any time soon.
Verizon Wireless is not affected - they're non union and a different company from Verizon Telecom, jointly owned by Verizon Communications (55%) and Vodaphone (45%). The level of disinformation happening in this Slashdot discussion far exceeds the normal level.
I love the dumptruck analogy, but I'm not convinced of the math. Let's see if we can work it out:
A dumptruck has a volume of approximately 722 cubic feet (17 x 8.5 x 5) source. Converting that gets us 1,247,616 cubic inches.
A harddrive is 3.5" x 102 mm x 25.4 mm source. Or about 14 cubic inches.
This means that roughly, we can fit about 89,115 hard drives into a dumptruck, assuming everything fits perfectly.
The largest commercially available 3.5" harddrive is 3 TB. This means that we're going to have 267,343 TB on our truck.
Driving across the country takes 26 hours assuming no stopping. Source
This yields 267,343 TB / 26 hours = 2,138,744 Tb / 26 hours = 2,138,744 Tb / 93,600 seconds = 22.849 Tbps = 22,849 Gbps.
Compare that to a commercially available 10Gbps link available from any business class provider, and you're going to trounce them. The latest stuff is 100Gbps, which you should be able to get a hold of if you're willing to shell out right now, but it's still a blow out. You are indeed correct.
A couple of other items to note:
1. You can add a day at the front and a day at the back to load and unload the truck and you're still around 10 Tbps.
2. If you add another 2 days to collect all the data, write it to harddrives and then do the same 2 day process at the back end, you're still around 5 Tbps.
3. A more fair comparison is probably not using such a slow mechanism like a dump truck (I understand it's there to prove a point in your analogy). But instead use a cargo plan. You'll get 23,200 cubic feet of storage out of a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy cargo plane which is about 32 dumptrucks. Also, you can get across the country in 6 hours, even assuming some landing and takeoff. If you still assume it takes several days to load and unload the plane, you'd probably be up in the 1 Pbps range.
4. I was trying to think what would be the fastest way to load and unload the truck, and then I realized I was insane for trying to calculate such a dumb thing. The real answer here is to build storage arrays on the truck and have it roll back and forth. Essentially, it's a mobile data center. You have a few hundred 10 Gbps ports on the rear of the truck to plug in, and you can download all of your data on and off of it pretty quickly, without manual labor beyond plugging in a port. Further, this would be a very fun way for the Pirate Bay, or someone similar to distribute data if they ever wanted to go physical (and thus blatantly break the law). Once a week, the Pirate Bay truck would roll into town and all the kids could plug in the back to download petabytes of information before it leaves for the week. A fun concept, if nothing else.
But, in twenty years, when someone actually needs this stuff on Mars, you'll be looking at $0.10 GB to get it up there, even assuming NASA or the like has to pay for a special "ruggedized" harddrive that is guaranteed to work in a different atmosphere. Storage costs will drop.
I think the real problem is getting it back. Right now, probes have a really slow data connection to send back data. Assuming we can blast off tons of harddrives to them doesn't help that side of the equation.
Also, I was going to make a witty comment about latency, but a few others beat me to the punch (no gaming on Mars), using "sneakerNET" to shuttle things back and forth gives possible the worst latency of all: years.
I read "gender breakdown" as "genetic breakdown." Needless to say, I was more excited before I re-read the post.
My Blackberry has $5/month global roaming capabilities for data, I don't think it's anything special that you can't get.
You live by the wall, you die by the wall.
I know this is all panacea, but wouldn't it be nice if these companies did in spite of pressure from consumers. I don't know much about these boxes, but it doesn't seem like a task that would cost them very much to change.
When cable companies evaluate new STB, they do indeed evaluate draw on standby and active. It isn't worth more than one tiny decision point, but it's there. Ultimately, if they get a "green" STB as an option, they can sell that value-add to the consumers and you'll get pretty much exactly what you're asking for. It's a free market, but the cable company is the customer, you're just the end user.
Whereas I would gladly shave a few watts off my electric bill because that means cash in the bank. To each his own, I suppose.
By contrast, it sounds like team STB has somehow managed to miss Every Single Development in computer and embedded device power management in the last decade.
I'm guessing that the real problem is the average age of a STB. The TV company does not swap out STBs unless you complain, leaving a lot of people untouched since they first moved to digital cable. A few more jumped on the HD bandwagon. A few more hopped in at HD DVR. But realistically, there hasn't been a reason to upgrade your cable box in a few years. Go into any local business and you're bound to see a cable box circa 2001 providing signal to their TV. The TV might be brand new, but the cable box is old.
You're assuming that the people who design cheap chargers for computers compare at all about efficiency in the AC Adapter. I would guess that they just care that it passes compliance testing and doesn't explode into flames too often. The people who care about efficiency are working on the actual device.
The FCC is for regulating the communications infrastructure of the country, not for regulating the telcos.
the terrorism effected by the capitalist system designed to make wealth trickle up.
What does this mean?
Are you saying that the terrorists are invested in the company they are trying to hack? Unlikely.
Or, are you making the lazy assumption that shareholders are bad people and labeling them terrorists? I got news for you: do you have a 401K or a pension? You're likely a shareholder of something. That probably doesn't make you a bad person, and certainly not a terrorist.
I've had engineers tell me that: "This code is so screwed up, the best I can get it to scale is X. You want 100X, it's just not possible without rebuilding the entire product." So, to a certain extent, on large projects, engineers are in a similar boat where there is some gray area.
Car analogy win!
All joking aside, I think this is actually the best analogy I have ever seen used on Slashdot, maybe on the Internet. And you used cars!
Of course, government can't directly regulate what companies pay... but indirectly, it can: after all, the reason doctors and lawyers make so much money is because of the laws that govern their profession.
If the government is serious, they could exempt engineers from Federal Tax.
A doctor, lawyer, economist, politician, ect can all give BS answers why their little plans like keeping unemployment below 8% didn't pan out
Good reasoning, but let's not lump doctors in with lawyers and politicians. Do you really think that a doctor can just say: "Oh, but that patient is just sleeping, not dead." Clearly there is some BS about what works and what doesn't, but probably about the same as in engineering.
I reminded myself of the classic Monty Python Parrot Sketch.