While that may well be true, being an asshole isn't (or at least SHOULDN'T be) illegal.
That said, thought the summary doesn't seem to mention it, I've heard other statements that the tweets included a threat on the athlete's life. If that's the case, its understandable. If he's just being a jerk though, then just ignore him.
The trick is to teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery. When I grew up we had guns in the house and not locked up at all. My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded.
It was like that from birth till I moved out. Wanna know why me and my siblings didn't die horrible deaths? Because we didn't feel a need to secretly "play" with the gun. If I wanted to go out and shoot it all I had to do was ask and my dad would take me out shooting. Not only that, but during those shooting sessions he taught me exactly how the gun worked, how to safely load and unload it, and how to handle it. Even if I HAD handled the gun while he was gone I was perfectly capable to doing so safely.
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
There are a ton of guns that are designed specifically for target shooting or hunting. A Walther GSP is designed to kill people about as much as an Indy Car is designed to take kids to soccer practice.
No, I'm 30. My mother came from a family of 6 (that survived - 2 sets of twins were stillborn so 10 total) and my father came from a family of 7 (all survived). Of of their cousins came from similar sized families. I am from a more rural area so trends can lag a bit here.
With the advent of medicine, however, mortality rates plummeted but birth rates did not.
I'm not sure that's the case - at least not here in the US. If you go back to my parents generation all the families had 5-7 children without fail. Some had more than that (my grandfather on my mother's side came from a family of 14).
Fastforward to modern times. None of my aunts or uncles had more than 3 kids per family. Between my own generation I'm seeing more like 1 or 2 kids per family. Part of it may be the increased cost of raising children - part of it may be the increased number of women in the workplace (where each child is not only time off from work for recovery but without a parent at home each is another daycare bill). I'm sure a large part of it is simply the invention of birth control.
Regardless, birth rates per family (if not for the planet as a whole) seem to have come down significantly in the last 50 years.
Indeed. I don't think many CCW holders are experts at all (nor do I consider myself one - though I do shoot quite a bit). My point is simply that most of them still have at least the same weapons proficiency as the cops that so many think are the magic cavalry riding in to save the day.
Put it this way - I don't think most average citizens are great chefs either, but I'd trust them to cook up a meal just as much as I'd trust the teenage fry cook down at McDonalds - even though he is technically the "professional".
Because its a stupid policy, that obviously bit them hard. A single gunmen took out 13 high trained people and wounded 29 more - all because they weren't allowed the tools to defend themselves. Its a dumb decision to disarm anyone - soldiers OR civilians.
The Army made the exact mistake that WAY too many people make. They assumed that there was an area where they were safe. Every time the issue of carry comes up there's somebody spouting off "OMG Why do you need to carry a gun to the mall?" or "OMG Why do you need to carry a gun to the grocery store?". And so on for some unimaginably long list of places.
The reality is that that none of those locations are safe. Its not that you "need" the gun at any of them. If I truly thought I needed it there then I just wouldn't go in the first place. The issue is that that I'm not sure that I don't need the gun. If I carry it and don't need it then its of no trouble - it sat unobtrusively and harmlessly in its holster. If I don't carry it and DO need it then the consequences could be far,far worse.
Not every weapon is a gun. Having a gun doesn't make you bulletproof. If the other guy has a gun and I have a knife, it makes my job harder. And if the other guy has a gun and all I have a stapler or can full of soda, it's harder still. But the most dangerous weapon of all isn't what's in you hands. It's what's in your head.
And what I'm saying is you're still stuck on that hollywood "magic military" or "magic badge" complex. Training is good and important, but you have to be able to meet a threat on equal grounds. If your attacker has a weapon then aside from sheer luck you generally need a weapon thats at least in the same ballpark of capabilities to counter that threat.
As a quote from Jet Li himself (who has amassed more training and expertise than most of us could dream of):
A gun outdoes years of martial arts training in a split second. Like I've said many times before, it is important to differentiate between movies and reality. The hero in movies may be able to knock the gun off his opponent and save the day, but in real life - probably that is not the case.
Not, allegedly, if you're combat-trained. Not having a gun handy isn't considered an excuse.
Ok, so by your logic, you can hold up a military base shooting as an example of that fact that weapons aren't going to save you, but when its brought to light that the victims in that shooting didn't have access to any weapons then that's "no excuse"?
Boy if that isn't taking the "magic military" complex to a whole new level.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but conceal carry licenses are already reasonably available in all but 4 states (Illinois is the ONLY state that doesn't issue them at all - Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland have them but it's virtually impossible to get one). There are MILLIONS of legal concealed carry permit holders out there. Nearly half the population has a firearm in their household. You still don't have to "wear kevlar suits everywhere".
Realistically, incidents such as this are a rarity. Most gun owners are responsible and upstanding citizens. Every time the issue of of conceal carry comes up you always have the naysayers who claim that there will be blood in the streets. Innocent bystanders will be caught in the every present crossfire situation and people will be shooting each other up for parking spots in the grocery store. It never happens.
As a matter of fact as gun carry laws have gotten ever more permissive in the last few decades violent crime rates have continues to drop. Now is that a direct result? I'm not sure. Crime rates might have dropped anyways. Regardless, permissive concealed carry certainly hasn't resulted in any INCREASE.
One of the worst shooting incidents in recent times came on an army base.
You do realize that on a state-side base (such as Ft Hood that you're referring to) almost none of the soldiers inside are allowed to carry loaded weapons right? The fact that they're wearing camo and have Jeeps sitting outside means zilch if you're still force to walk around unarmed
Yes, actually I do. Most hobbyists I know visit the range at least monthly. Many weekly (as a competitive shooter I tend to shoot around 200 rounds per week in practice and another 450 or so per month in competition). Excepting specialized teams like SWAT and the like, many police officers visit the range yearly for their annual qualification and not much more than that.
The idea that your average street cop is some tactical expert is simply not true.
Do you realize how poor the firearms training and proficiency is among actual police officers, much less security guards?
Most average concealed carry permit holders are much better marksmen and practice far more often. With them you have people who have made a conscious choice to carry that gun and most who take the time out to get a permit and carry are fairly dedicated to the idea. Police and security guards on the other hand are carrying as part of their JOB. Many never have fired a gun in a real situation and only do the bare minimum in practice requirements (typically a yearly range qualification of pretty low requirements).
As someone who does pretty heavy competitive shooting (USPSA and IDPA), I see a LOT of law enforcement (and military) competitors, and most of them turn in some pretty poor scores (except those that have a separate interest in firearms and put in the same practice as the other competitors).
People just have to get away from the idea that the badge is magic. Except for highly specialized teams like SWAT, police are generally not all that much more qualified to "handle" defense of people than the actual people being threatened are. Their main rule is the apprehension and detainment of criminals. IE, the aftermath. We ALL should take a role in the protection of ourselves when out and about.
I can respect your opinion, but to a large degree I think we as a society have just gotten too sensitive. That's not a problem that is inherent to women, men, old people, young people, or any particular ethnic group. Its a problem we have all developed.
Yes, it was a childish and stupid prank. Its not something I'd do and I'd wonder about the maturity level of anyone that would stick such rubbish into a piece of code.
That said, it's gotten to the point lately where it seems that the primary occupation of people is to go around looking for things to be offended by. People are so insecure and unhappy in their lives that they need to generate controversy on a regular interval. Every action anyone takes is carefully scrutinized for any hint of content that is currently accepted as "offensive" because no opportunity to be offended can be passed up.
Whether its claiming that gay marriage is an affront to nature or "BIG BOOBS" slipping into the kernel as an immature joke, just learn to ignore something if you don't like it folks.
Actually, no. Commercial bulk mail gets most of its discount from pre-sorting. The POSTNET barcode has always just added an additional (and much smaller) discount to the bulk rate, but has never been required.
Starting in 2013 (though this date has been pushed back several times already) POSTNET is being phased out in favor of the "Intelligent Barcode" system, though I'm not sure if the barcode will actually become mandatory at that point or if POSTNET will just become invalid.
That - or rather, the difficulty in "going legit" - is the real issue here.
People tend to take the path of least resistance. In the past, I've bought some TV shows off of iTunes. Also bought a few on Xbox 360 Marketplace, and a few off of Amazon's service.
You know what? The iTunes ones don't really work anymore as I decided I no longer wanted to use iTunes. The Amazon ones don't work either after I switched away from Windows. The Xbox360 purchases technically still work, but only on the Xbox which sits in my bedroom, when almost all my TV watching is done in the living room.
The bottom line is that PURCHASED media is limited, crippled, and aggravating crap.
Compare to the piracy route: go to Bittorrent, search. Click on the little magnet. Wait for a bit, and a regular media file shows up. Whatever quality I want. I can copy it to my Android tablet. I can stream it over to my AppleTV running XBMC. I can play it on any of my computers in the house. It just works.
Essentially, but people who actually PAY get an inferior product.
Compare to music now: I buy virtually ALL of my music, because music is generally not copy protected anymore, and the legit sources are easy to use and priced right.
For better or for worse, tons of infighting and quibbling over all sorts of different things IS Linux. If I wanted a really nice, polished Unix system that had an authoritative body managing everything to make sure it stays that way, I'd just use Mac OS X.
What you're arguing for is basically like walking into a nice restaurant and claiming that they'd make so much more money if they just reduced their prices, and to do that they could cut some ingredient quality and pre-cook some foods to save time and the like. Eventually you get to the point where you've recreated a Taco Bell out of a nice restaurant - and that wouldn't even be a problem except that if Taco Bell was what you wanted, there was already one right down the street.
Let Linux be what Linux is. There's plenty of us who enjoy it just fine as is. Heck the ONLY thing I might get from an increased user-base would be more games, and I'm already doing most of my gaming on consoles anyways, so it's a moot point.
Yes. It was also mostly the AAA titles that ran that much, and then only at launch. I had an SNES and lots of games, but the vast majority were still purchases at $50 or less. Street Fighter 2 Turbo was $80 and was the only game at that high of a price that I ever got (it was a Christmas gift).
There are lots of us that went through organizational effort to ensure that our start menu was properly categorized and organized. If I installed a new program it typically went to one of several categories much like you see on a modern Linux install (Accessories, Games, Multimedia, Productivity, Utilities). For people who put in that extra effort to keep things clean, everything post-XP has been a letdown.
With the paths that Microsoft and most of the big Linux distros have been going down lately, I'm actually looking at just buying a Mac Mini for my next system.
Back in the early 90s the cost of entry was about $2500 you could count the people you knew with one on you fingers
You're a little high on that estimate. I got my first "IBM Compatible PC" back around that time (I had had a Commodore 64 for a few years earlier) and there were plenty of options under $1500, with many hovering around $1300. The one I ended up getting was from Montgomery Wards and was on sale for $999. It was a Packard Bell 486SX 20Mhz with 2MB Ram, 80MB hard drive, WIndows 3.1, and SuperVGA graphics. Didn't even have a modem, sound card, nor CD-ROM (though all of those things were later added, in addition to bumping the RAM up to 6MB and the processor up to a 486DX 75MHz via an Overdrive chip). Still, this was the first machine that that I connected up to the internet from home with.
They were a lot cheaper than what you're thinking. Still high by today's standards, but not quite as bad as your post would indicate.
Yep. I started using the internet in the mid-1990's when it had a few years on it but still wasn't quite universal like it is now. When one of the teachers at school was showing this cool new technology they were even describing all the now long forgotten things like Gopher and Finger. The main thing I saw that kicked off widespread usage was simple: "unlimited" usage policies.
Nobody really was interested when you paid for an AOL account and got 5 hours online. They weren't interested when they bumped that up to 20, 40, nor 80. People really didn't seem to bother much until they were told "Here, use this all you want.". Having the average price of a dial-up account fall from $30-40 down to $10-15 per month certainly didn't hurt either.
Its kinda funny though that now that as a society we're hooked, it's trending in the opposite direction. A cellular data plan is typically $30+ and has limits that you can actually hit pretty easily with normal usage patterns.
Slashdot Mirror
While that may well be true, being an asshole isn't (or at least SHOULDN'T be) illegal.
That said, thought the summary doesn't seem to mention it, I've heard other statements that the tweets included a threat on the athlete's life. If that's the case, its understandable. If he's just being a jerk though, then just ignore him.
The trick is to teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery. When I grew up we had guns in the house and not locked up at all. My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded.
It was like that from birth till I moved out. Wanna know why me and my siblings didn't die horrible deaths? Because we didn't feel a need to secretly "play" with the gun. If I wanted to go out and shoot it all I had to do was ask and my dad would take me out shooting. Not only that, but during those shooting sessions he taught me exactly how the gun worked, how to safely load and unload it, and how to handle it. Even if I HAD handled the gun while he was gone I was perfectly capable to doing so safely.
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
http://www.amazon.com/Gunvault-MVB500-Microvault-Biometric-Pistol/dp/B001UAMZD4
Place your hand on the box and it unlocks. You and retrieve a gun from this box in 2-3 seconds.
There are a ton of guns that are designed specifically for target shooting or hunting. A Walther GSP is designed to kill people about as much as an Indy Car is designed to take kids to soccer practice.
No, I'm 30. My mother came from a family of 6 (that survived - 2 sets of twins were stillborn so 10 total) and my father came from a family of 7 (all survived). Of of their cousins came from similar sized families. I am from a more rural area so trends can lag a bit here.
With the advent of medicine, however, mortality rates plummeted but birth rates did not.
I'm not sure that's the case - at least not here in the US. If you go back to my parents generation all the families had 5-7 children without fail. Some had more than that (my grandfather on my mother's side came from a family of 14).
Fastforward to modern times. None of my aunts or uncles had more than 3 kids per family. Between my own generation I'm seeing more like 1 or 2 kids per family. Part of it may be the increased cost of raising children - part of it may be the increased number of women in the workplace (where each child is not only time off from work for recovery but without a parent at home each is another daycare bill). I'm sure a large part of it is simply the invention of birth control.
Regardless, birth rates per family (if not for the planet as a whole) seem to have come down significantly in the last 50 years.
Indeed. I don't think many CCW holders are experts at all (nor do I consider myself one - though I do shoot quite a bit). My point is simply that most of them still have at least the same weapons proficiency as the cops that so many think are the magic cavalry riding in to save the day.
Put it this way - I don't think most average citizens are great chefs either, but I'd trust them to cook up a meal just as much as I'd trust the teenage fry cook down at McDonalds - even though he is technically the "professional".
Because its a stupid policy, that obviously bit them hard. A single gunmen took out 13 high trained people and wounded 29 more - all because they weren't allowed the tools to defend themselves. Its a dumb decision to disarm anyone - soldiers OR civilians.
The Army made the exact mistake that WAY too many people make. They assumed that there was an area where they were safe. Every time the issue of carry comes up there's somebody spouting off "OMG Why do you need to carry a gun to the mall?" or "OMG Why do you need to carry a gun to the grocery store?". And so on for some unimaginably long list of places.
The reality is that that none of those locations are safe. Its not that you "need" the gun at any of them. If I truly thought I needed it there then I just wouldn't go in the first place. The issue is that that I'm not sure that I don't need the gun. If I carry it and don't need it then its of no trouble - it sat unobtrusively and harmlessly in its holster. If I don't carry it and DO need it then the consequences could be far,far worse.
Not every weapon is a gun. Having a gun doesn't make you bulletproof. If the other guy has a gun and I have a knife, it makes my job harder. And if the other guy has a gun and all I have a stapler or can full of soda, it's harder still. But the most dangerous weapon of all isn't what's in you hands. It's what's in your head.
And what I'm saying is you're still stuck on that hollywood "magic military" or "magic badge" complex. Training is good and important, but you have to be able to meet a threat on equal grounds. If your attacker has a weapon then aside from sheer luck you generally need a weapon thats at least in the same ballpark of capabilities to counter that threat.
As a quote from Jet Li himself (who has amassed more training and expertise than most of us could dream of):
A gun outdoes years of martial arts training in a split second. Like I've said many times before, it is important to differentiate between movies and reality. The hero in movies may be able to knock the gun off his opponent and save the day, but in real life - probably that is not the case.
Pretty sure "phablets" was an intentional misspelling to create a portmanteau from the source words phone and tablet.
Not, allegedly, if you're combat-trained. Not having a gun handy isn't considered an excuse.
Ok, so by your logic, you can hold up a military base shooting as an example of that fact that weapons aren't going to save you, but when its brought to light that the victims in that shooting didn't have access to any weapons then that's "no excuse"?
Boy if that isn't taking the "magic military" complex to a whole new level.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but conceal carry licenses are already reasonably available in all but 4 states (Illinois is the ONLY state that doesn't issue them at all - Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland have them but it's virtually impossible to get one). There are MILLIONS of legal concealed carry permit holders out there. Nearly half the population has a firearm in their household. You still don't have to "wear kevlar suits everywhere".
Realistically, incidents such as this are a rarity. Most gun owners are responsible and upstanding citizens. Every time the issue of of conceal carry comes up you always have the naysayers who claim that there will be blood in the streets. Innocent bystanders will be caught in the every present crossfire situation and people will be shooting each other up for parking spots in the grocery store. It never happens.
As a matter of fact as gun carry laws have gotten ever more permissive in the last few decades violent crime rates have continues to drop. Now is that a direct result? I'm not sure. Crime rates might have dropped anyways. Regardless, permissive concealed carry certainly hasn't resulted in any INCREASE.
Of course. I'm sure if this guy had just encountered a "No Guns Allowed" sign he would have pouted a bit and went home . . .
Gay marriage is the only one on that list that is in any "grey area".
Guns are legal. Marijuana isn't.
People have differing opinions of what the law "should" be, but opinions on a law don't bring it into a grey area.
One of the worst shooting incidents in recent times came on an army base.
You do realize that on a state-side base (such as Ft Hood that you're referring to) almost none of the soldiers inside are allowed to carry loaded weapons right? The fact that they're wearing camo and have Jeeps sitting outside means zilch if you're still force to walk around unarmed
Yes, actually I do. Most hobbyists I know visit the range at least monthly. Many weekly (as a competitive shooter I tend to shoot around 200 rounds per week in practice and another 450 or so per month in competition). Excepting specialized teams like SWAT and the like, many police officers visit the range yearly for their annual qualification and not much more than that.
The idea that your average street cop is some tactical expert is simply not true.
Do you realize how poor the firearms training and proficiency is among actual police officers, much less security guards?
Most average concealed carry permit holders are much better marksmen and practice far more often. With them you have people who have made a conscious choice to carry that gun and most who take the time out to get a permit and carry are fairly dedicated to the idea. Police and security guards on the other hand are carrying as part of their JOB. Many never have fired a gun in a real situation and only do the bare minimum in practice requirements (typically a yearly range qualification of pretty low requirements).
As someone who does pretty heavy competitive shooting (USPSA and IDPA), I see a LOT of law enforcement (and military) competitors, and most of them turn in some pretty poor scores (except those that have a separate interest in firearms and put in the same practice as the other competitors).
People just have to get away from the idea that the badge is magic. Except for highly specialized teams like SWAT, police are generally not all that much more qualified to "handle" defense of people than the actual people being threatened are. Their main rule is the apprehension and detainment of criminals. IE, the aftermath. We ALL should take a role in the protection of ourselves when out and about.
I can respect your opinion, but to a large degree I think we as a society have just gotten too sensitive. That's not a problem that is inherent to women, men, old people, young people, or any particular ethnic group. Its a problem we have all developed.
Yes, it was a childish and stupid prank. Its not something I'd do and I'd wonder about the maturity level of anyone that would stick such rubbish into a piece of code.
That said, it's gotten to the point lately where it seems that the primary occupation of people is to go around looking for things to be offended by. People are so insecure and unhappy in their lives that they need to generate controversy on a regular interval. Every action anyone takes is carefully scrutinized for any hint of content that is currently accepted as "offensive" because no opportunity to be offended can be passed up.
Whether its claiming that gay marriage is an affront to nature or "BIG BOOBS" slipping into the kernel as an immature joke, just learn to ignore something if you don't like it folks.
Actually, no. Commercial bulk mail gets most of its discount from pre-sorting. The POSTNET barcode has always just added an additional (and much smaller) discount to the bulk rate, but has never been required.
Starting in 2013 (though this date has been pushed back several times already) POSTNET is being phased out in favor of the "Intelligent Barcode" system, though I'm not sure if the barcode will actually become mandatory at that point or if POSTNET will just become invalid.
That - or rather, the difficulty in "going legit" - is the real issue here.
People tend to take the path of least resistance. In the past, I've bought some TV shows off of iTunes. Also bought a few on Xbox 360 Marketplace, and a few off of Amazon's service.
You know what? The iTunes ones don't really work anymore as I decided I no longer wanted to use iTunes. The Amazon ones don't work either after I switched away from Windows. The Xbox360 purchases technically still work, but only on the Xbox which sits in my bedroom, when almost all my TV watching is done in the living room.
The bottom line is that PURCHASED media is limited, crippled, and aggravating crap.
Compare to the piracy route: go to Bittorrent, search. Click on the little magnet. Wait for a bit, and a regular media file shows up. Whatever quality I want. I can copy it to my Android tablet. I can stream it over to my AppleTV running XBMC. I can play it on any of my computers in the house. It just works.
Essentially, but people who actually PAY get an inferior product.
Compare to music now: I buy virtually ALL of my music, because music is generally not copy protected anymore, and the legit sources are easy to use and priced right.
I'd agree with this idea, maybe Linux needs the software equivalent of the Council of Nicea...
http://xkcd.com/927/
For better or for worse, tons of infighting and quibbling over all sorts of different things IS Linux. If I wanted a really nice, polished Unix system that had an authoritative body managing everything to make sure it stays that way, I'd just use Mac OS X.
What you're arguing for is basically like walking into a nice restaurant and claiming that they'd make so much more money if they just reduced their prices, and to do that they could cut some ingredient quality and pre-cook some foods to save time and the like. Eventually you get to the point where you've recreated a Taco Bell out of a nice restaurant - and that wouldn't even be a problem except that if Taco Bell was what you wanted, there was already one right down the street.
Let Linux be what Linux is. There's plenty of us who enjoy it just fine as is. Heck the ONLY thing I might get from an increased user-base would be more games, and I'm already doing most of my gaming on consoles anyways, so it's a moot point.
Yes. It was also mostly the AAA titles that ran that much, and then only at launch. I had an SNES and lots of games, but the vast majority were still purchases at $50 or less. Street Fighter 2 Turbo was $80 and was the only game at that high of a price that I ever got (it was a Christmas gift).
There are lots of us that went through organizational effort to ensure that our start menu was properly categorized and organized. If I installed a new program it typically went to one of several categories much like you see on a modern Linux install (Accessories, Games, Multimedia, Productivity, Utilities). For people who put in that extra effort to keep things clean, everything post-XP has been a letdown.
With the paths that Microsoft and most of the big Linux distros have been going down lately, I'm actually looking at just buying a Mac Mini for my next system.
Back in the early 90s the cost of entry was about $2500 you could count the people you knew with one on you fingers
You're a little high on that estimate. I got my first "IBM Compatible PC" back around that time (I had had a Commodore 64 for a few years earlier) and there were plenty of options under $1500, with many hovering around $1300. The one I ended up getting was from Montgomery Wards and was on sale for $999. It was a Packard Bell 486SX 20Mhz with 2MB Ram, 80MB hard drive, WIndows 3.1, and SuperVGA graphics. Didn't even have a modem, sound card, nor CD-ROM (though all of those things were later added, in addition to bumping the RAM up to 6MB and the processor up to a 486DX 75MHz via an Overdrive chip). Still, this was the first machine that that I connected up to the internet from home with.
They were a lot cheaper than what you're thinking. Still high by today's standards, but not quite as bad as your post would indicate.
Yep. I started using the internet in the mid-1990's when it had a few years on it but still wasn't quite universal like it is now. When one of the teachers at school was showing this cool new technology they were even describing all the now long forgotten things like Gopher and Finger. The main thing I saw that kicked off widespread usage was simple: "unlimited" usage policies.
Nobody really was interested when you paid for an AOL account and got 5 hours online. They weren't interested when they bumped that up to 20, 40, nor 80. People really didn't seem to bother much until they were told "Here, use this all you want.". Having the average price of a dial-up account fall from $30-40 down to $10-15 per month certainly didn't hurt either.
Its kinda funny though that now that as a society we're hooked, it's trending in the opposite direction. A cellular data plan is typically $30+ and has limits that you can actually hit pretty easily with normal usage patterns.