The iPhone is a tremendous jump over standard cell phones and will lead the way for the foreseeable future
No, it's not - especially at the price they're selling it at. There are more advanced phones on the market that cost less (I'd take a Nokia N95 over an iPhone any day). Even less "advanced" phones have more features than the iPhone, thanks to third party apps that don't require hacking to install.
Because they install the Last Mile hardware (wired and wireless), they own it, and there is no legal requirements that they allow competitors to truly use it.
I though the US had Local Loop Unbundling? Or is the FCC not in the habit of enforcing a competitive market?
As a consumer, I want this because I dream that one day soon I can buy a linux smartphone that surfs the web, plays music, and connects to any of the major competitive cell-phone companies without requiring a subscription term or early cancellation fee of any kind.
Why can't you just buy & use an OpenMoko now? Can't you just get a SIM card for it or is the US telcom market seriously screwed up?
2 days ago I bought a Motorola F3 as a spare phone. £9.99 on T-Mobile PAYG + £10 airtime from carphone warehouse.
I've just inserted an Orange SIM and it seems to be unlocked (I had to try it after looking at the packaging and I noticed it was generic and didn't mention T-Mobile)
The difference to the tmobile plan is you can choose to use VOIP even on the £7.50 one but they'll charge you £2/mb for the privilege
How do they tell that any particular packet is a VOIP packet? If I were to tunnel a VOIP call through ssh or ipsec, would I end up not being charged more (or is a case of if it's not HTTP, it gets charged at a higher rate)?
... Since in Europe, you're not responsible for the cost of incoming phone calls...... this is not true in all of Europe. In non-Soviet Russia...
Nowhere in this conversation is the Union mentioned, only the generic "in Europe". "Since in Europe, you're not responsible for the cost of incoming phone calls" implies that it is true for all of Europe, EU member states or not. The fact that EU areas have EU inspired competition laws is irrelevant - "Since in Europe, you're not responsible" is not true, because not all of Europe has those laws. Nor is EU membership a requirement for strong competition laws - Capitalist Russia, or anywhere else in Europe but outside the EU, could come up with it's own competition laws that are more stringent than EU ones.
T-Mobile UK Web N Walk is £7.95 ($16) a month extra on pay monthly (both flext and Ufix plans), with a 1GB a month fair use limit. There are also Web N Walk Plus and Max options on flext with 3GB and 10GB limits respectively. There is also a £1 a day option (also available on the Pay As You Go plans). Looking at the T&Cs only flext Max doesn't specifically disallow internet voice calls.
so T-Mobile don't have much influence over its operation in that respect.
Truphone's mainly designed to work on mobile phones with built in Wifi (the Nokia e60/61/70 and N80 phones). I'm guessing that's why T-Mobile don't like it, but it's hard to see how they can justify not terminating calls - after all, they have plenty of other competitors that they'll terminate calls with.
I'm surprised that Apple would only be going with one provider. You don't get many exclusive to only one network phones in the UK - most providers sell the same phones as their competitors. My understanding is that the US market is different, so I can see them going with a single provider, but in Europe and/including the UK it might be different.
Looking at the specs http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html, the iPhone is quad band. It should work on any network in the UK, except 3 (assuming the euro-iPhone isn't 3G).
"once the Liberal Democratic Party supplants Labour, are they going to be doing more of this, or less?"
The LibDems supplant Labour? Not likely, they're the 3rd party and they are slowly loosing what ground they have gained in recent years. The main opposition party is the Conservatives, and on this sort of thing who can tell, but they have tended to be the side of personal freedom lately. As for the LibDems, I do remember that one of their MPs called for the banning of pretty much every video not suitable for children (so much for the liberal in Liberal Democrat). The LibDems have all sorts of wacky and occasionally contradictory policies, but since they know they have no chance of winning a majority they come up with whatever nonsense they think might get them a few votes.
Welcome to the UK, where the left wing are the fascists and the un-elected house in parliament is the staunchest supporter of freedom and democracy.
MS just doesn't want to spend money where there is basically none to be made.
Explain Internet Explorer. They don't make money on it, they never will make money with it, yet will still dump money into it whenever they feel it has effective competition (but will stop development once that competition disappears)
Why do we need to agree on package managers? Your distro selects your choice of package manager, not yourself (I use Ubuntu, therefore I use dpkg/apt). From a user standpoint, most of them use a similar syntax or have a gui on top, so you'll never really notice the difference. It's not like windows where every bit of software you want needs to be separately downloaded and installed from all sorts of sources - almost everything you want will be coming from your distro's repository, properly packaged for your system. And if for some reason you absolutely have to use a package in a foreign format, alien can usually take care of it.
I thought there were differences between cars sold in different states - ie, a certain model of a car in NY will be slightly different from that same model of car in CA, because the emission requirements in CA are so strict that it makes the cars more expensive, so to keep costs down only the cars meant for CA meet the CA emissions regulations.
simple enough that it doesn't need a huge BIOS outside of the voting software
BIOSes are a PC legacy. It's little more than a crippled boot loader, and all the work it does is thrown away by modern 32 bit OSes. Embedded systems don't use them (they tend to just use a plain boot loader or just use a small, simple OS and skip boot loading entirely, even x86 based embedded systems). Non x86 machines never had BIOSes and tended to have more advanced booting firmware (such as OpenBoot/Open Firmware). It's even slowly dying out on x86 - the Intel Macs use EFI instead.
You should be able to build a machine based entirely on open components, from the CPU, through the firmware to the OS and finally up to the voting software.
Don't forget 18R, which can only be sold in licensed sex shops. I can't see why a videogame can't be awarded that, but I'm not sure a sex shop would sell it.
Slashdot Mirror
The iPhone is a tremendous jump over standard cell phones and will lead the way for the foreseeable future
No, it's not - especially at the price they're selling it at. There are more advanced phones on the market that cost less (I'd take a Nokia N95 over an iPhone any day). Even less "advanced" phones have more features than the iPhone, thanks to third party apps that don't require hacking to install.
which you can usually get unlocked unofficially...
And officially as well, it's just that that the unofficial unlockers are usually cheaper.
So, are wireless providers required to explicitly offer an unlocking service, or just to not arrest you if you do unlock your phone?
They have to explicitly unlock the phone. The exact details (such as how much it costs to unlock) vary from state to state and provider to provider.
Because they install the Last Mile hardware (wired and wireless), they own it, and there is no legal requirements that they allow competitors to truly use it.
I though the US had Local Loop Unbundling? Or is the FCC not in the habit of enforcing a competitive market?
As a consumer, I want this because I dream that one day soon I can buy a linux smartphone that surfs the web, plays music, and connects to any of the major competitive cell-phone companies without requiring a subscription term or early cancellation fee of any kind.
Why can't you just buy & use an OpenMoko now? Can't you just get a SIM card for it or is the US telcom market seriously screwed up?
2 days ago I bought a Motorola F3 as a spare phone. £9.99 on T-Mobile PAYG + £10 airtime from carphone warehouse.
I've just inserted an Orange SIM and it seems to be unlocked (I had to try it after looking at the packaging and I noticed it was generic and didn't mention T-Mobile)
While the RedHat/Debian packaging systems may be a forks,
dpkg and rpm aren't forks, in the same way that Linux and Solaris aren't forks - they're 2 independent implementations of much the same thing.
"here is a petition calling for the removal of the head of the UK Association of Chief Police Officers."
Do you really want to let them know your name? Signing that petition seems like a fast track ticket to getting put on a watch list.
The difference to the tmobile plan is you can choose to use VOIP even on the £7.50 one but they'll charge you £2/mb for the privilege
How do they tell that any particular packet is a VOIP packet? If I were to tunnel a VOIP call through ssh or ipsec, would I end up not being charged more (or is a case of if it's not HTTP, it gets charged at a higher rate)?
... Since in Europe, you're not responsible for the cost of incoming phone calls ... ... this is not true in all of Europe. In non-Soviet Russia ...
Nowhere in this conversation is the Union mentioned, only the generic "in Europe". "Since in Europe, you're not responsible for the cost of incoming phone calls" implies that it is true for all of Europe, EU member states or not. The fact that EU areas have EU inspired competition laws is irrelevant - "Since in Europe, you're not responsible" is not true, because not all of Europe has those laws. Nor is EU membership a requirement for strong competition laws - Capitalist Russia, or anywhere else in Europe but outside the EU, could come up with it's own competition laws that are more stringent than EU ones.
T-Mobile UK Web N Walk is £7.95 ($16) a month extra on pay monthly (both flext and Ufix plans), with a 1GB a month fair use limit. There are also Web N Walk Plus and Max options on flext with 3GB and 10GB limits respectively. There is also a £1 a day option (also available on the Pay As You Go plans). Looking at the T&Cs only flext Max doesn't specifically disallow internet voice calls.
According to the article, because of the Competition Act.
But Russia (Soviet or otherwise) is a part of Europe. The posts have only mentioned Europe and not the EU.
EU != Europe.
so T-Mobile don't have much influence over its operation in that respect.
Truphone's mainly designed to work on mobile phones with built in Wifi (the Nokia e60/61/70 and N80 phones). I'm guessing that's why T-Mobile don't like it, but it's hard to see how they can justify not terminating calls - after all, they have plenty of other competitors that they'll terminate calls with.
I'm surprised that Apple would only be going with one provider. You don't get many exclusive to only one network phones in the UK - most providers sell the same phones as their competitors. My understanding is that the US market is different, so I can see them going with a single provider, but in Europe and/including the UK it might be different.
Looking at the specs http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html, the iPhone is quad band. It should work on any network in the UK, except 3 (assuming the euro-iPhone isn't 3G).
"once the Liberal Democratic Party supplants Labour, are they going to be doing more of this, or less?"
The LibDems supplant Labour? Not likely, they're the 3rd party and they are slowly loosing what ground they have gained in recent years. The main opposition party is the Conservatives, and on this sort of thing who can tell, but they have tended to be the side of personal freedom lately. As for the LibDems, I do remember that one of their MPs called for the banning of pretty much every video not suitable for children (so much for the liberal in Liberal Democrat). The LibDems have all sorts of wacky and occasionally contradictory policies, but since they know they have no chance of winning a majority they come up with whatever nonsense they think might get them a few votes.
Welcome to the UK, where the left wing are the fascists and the un-elected house in parliament is the staunchest supporter of freedom and democracy.
Then why was it left to stagnate until Firefox popped up?
MS just doesn't want to spend money where there is basically none to be made.
Explain Internet Explorer. They don't make money on it, they never will make money with it, yet will still dump money into it whenever they feel it has effective competition (but will stop development once that competition disappears)
Why do we need to agree on package managers? Your distro selects your choice of package manager, not yourself (I use Ubuntu, therefore I use dpkg/apt). From a user standpoint, most of them use a similar syntax or have a gui on top, so you'll never really notice the difference. It's not like windows where every bit of software you want needs to be separately downloaded and installed from all sorts of sources - almost everything you want will be coming from your distro's repository, properly packaged for your system. And if for some reason you absolutely have to use a package in a foreign format, alien can usually take care of it.
I thought there were differences between cars sold in different states - ie, a certain model of a car in NY will be slightly different from that same model of car in CA, because the emission requirements in CA are so strict that it makes the cars more expensive, so to keep costs down only the cars meant for CA meet the CA emissions regulations.
simple enough that it doesn't need a huge BIOS outside of the voting software
BIOSes are a PC legacy. It's little more than a crippled boot loader, and all the work it does is thrown away by modern 32 bit OSes. Embedded systems don't use them (they tend to just use a plain boot loader or just use a small, simple OS and skip boot loading entirely, even x86 based embedded systems). Non x86 machines never had BIOSes and tended to have more advanced booting firmware (such as OpenBoot/Open Firmware). It's even slowly dying out on x86 - the Intel Macs use EFI instead.
he'll then ask for the BIOS, and the CPU firmware
SPARC is an open CPU design http://www.opensparc.net/
You should be able to build a machine based entirely on open components, from the CPU, through the firmware to the OS and finally up to the voting software.
Unless the Flying Spaghetti Monster lives in that pond
Lives under the pond? No. Lying dead under the pond, waiting and dreaming? Yes.
Don't forget 18R, which can only be sold in licensed sex shops. I can't see why a videogame can't be awarded that, but I'm not sure a sex shop would sell it.
Whatever happened to punishing the guilty and letting the rest of us move on with our lives?
Well, they've decided to start letting prisoners go free early because the have run out of space.link
So now, the guilty get to get on with their lives, while the rest of us get punished.
Any "colony" would need to be no further than ~5 light years from the central hub for any sort of meaningful society to maintain itself.
That assumes the colony wants some sort of relationship with Earth or the Solar System. The colonists might want to leave everything here behind.