It seems to me you have been brainwashed into believing that the "service plan" is absolutely neccessary and that in many cases the customer is the enemy.
It is absolutely ridiculous that customers should have to bribe retailers into standing behind their products. Further, it is insulting to insinuate that if the customer doesn't pay the bribe that they should receive lower standards of service.
I bought a Panasonic projection LCD television last fall from Sears for about 25% off retail. Panasonic had a set of bad ballasts in many of these televisions. I did not purchase any sort of "service plan". Sears came to my house twice, sent me an extra bulb (which I still have), and when they found out the parts would take six weeks to get cheerfully exchanged the television in three days for a new one.
Now, I didn't have to bribe Sears to get excellent service, the way it should be.
I recently helped my father choose a laptop to buy at Best Buy and from that experience believe that it is Best Buy's intent to bamboozle most customers with "service plans", signing them up for services they don't need, AND engaging in activities bordering on credit fraud. The people I dealt with there lied to my father several times and then argued with me when I tried to keep them from screwing him. My favorite was the jerkoff who insisted that the credit app section for the Household Mastercard was only requesting information rather than applying for a second credit card.
Guess where I'm more likely to buy my next major consumer electronics device?
America might devise a way to shield itself from nuclear weapons and impose a cruel imperalist yoke on the rest of the world for another hundred years, but in time it will equal out.
You had a reasonably coherent argument going until you got to this sentence.
If you honestly believe that the US has imperialist intentions I suggest you try removing the tin foil hat as it is interfering with your brain. If the US had imperialist intentions then please explain its actions after World War II in regards to Japan and Germany. If the US has imperialist intentions then please explain why Bush is so intent on a handover of control on June 30, apparently whether or not the Iraqis are ready. Please explain why Puerto Rico continues to have self-determination votes and places like the Marshall Islands are free to become independent countries instead of remaining US possessions.
The fact is that the US has the largest economy in the world, a very high standard of living, freedom and self-determination, and sees a path to world stability by encouraging poorer countries to try what has worked for us. Wouldn't you agree that when violence is abandoned in favor of democracy that stability ensues?
Further, GPS is rightly jammed for anti-American forces, why should we provide an enemy with accurate guidance capabilities during a time of war? As for civilian use, the navigation system in my Jeep works great with it. It is free for anyone in the world to use, subject only to the caveat that the signal might be degreaded during conflicts.
It seems in your world America is the root of all that is bad and wrong. I'd love to know where you live and how you came to this conclusion.
Inside the US seat-back phone calls run $2-$3 per minute. I had to make a call over India from Lufthansa's satellite phone on Inmarsat's network at $10 per minute a few years ago. That was an expensive call.
Roaming on a $10 per minute network certaintly would keep the chatter to a minimum for those who don't want to listen to people on mobile phones in airplanes. SMS, however, would be very cool and should be very quiet.
I hop online and download a JAVA applet which lets me decode my random identifying number in private. I can then punch this number into the net (which let's me see any vote I want since the information isn't tied to anyone) -- and tells me who I voted for.
While your plan makes provisions for "randomly" pulling multiple voter records to obfuscate what your actual vote was you're creating a system by which your identity could potentially be tracked and tied to your vote, something paper ballots in todays world are designed to avoid.
Regardless of your position on guns this is similar to the government retaining NICS records as a passive database of gun owners, something that was specifically prohibited by law but is somehow argued to be allowed for "administrative" purposes. Another example is the passive database created by LEOs running serial numbers of firearms in possession of lawful carry permit holders during traffic stops.
In the voting case the party in power would simply record your IP/telephone number and the voter ID number you checked on, especially since most people will only check their own record, and now they know you voted for the other guys.
There are some collection agencies that run a similar passive information collection effort by sending you a letter telling you that you have an "important" message waiting at 800-123-4567, id 987654. You call in and pick up the message, something like, "Please drive carefully!" and figure WTF. Well, now they've got the number you called from and will be calling in a day or two.
There are *many* forms of passive data collection, these are just a few examples.
In my personal opinion the only way to make electronic voting work is to produce a paper ballot from the voting machine for the voter to look at and verify then place in the ballot box to be read optically at a central counting station. This allows the ease of use of electronic machines to be married to the accountability of the physical paper trail of ballots we are familiar with.
I wanted to get the local channels in HDTV. But to do that I'd have to switch back to cable.
Do what people did for thirty years before CATV came into existance, put up a freakin antenna and receive it over the air. The Dish Network HD-capable receiver has an ATSC tuner in it that is designed to be used with an antenna.
If you live in a city something like the Silver Sensor antenna would be a great choice if none of your local digitals are on VHF.
And what's better? Just like for the last sixty years you can receive them over the air for free.
In fact there's a lot of free television out there on the airwaves, a visit to Lyngsat's Free-To-Air section provides an interesting list.
A C-Class!!!! People who make USD 200K/a drive a S-Class. (They also don't flaunt the fact they're making that much:-) ).
Yes, but unless you want to pay a 111% tarriff or play games to get it imported to India you're *much* better off buying a locally assembled C-Class. Besides, you're NOT driving it anyway, you're just riding in the back around town.
And who's flaunting?:) I don't live in India, I just said if my company wanted me to live there it would take a fairly large amount of money for me to go.
Since my boss lived in India for three or four years I am sure he would be willing to meet a resonable pay requirement. Surprisingly the number I mentioned would likely fall within "reasonable" to him.
I'm white and I have a 5-year multiple entry visa for India.
And I can work there as much as I like so long as I am paid by my American consulting company which the Indian company pays.
Having been there several times, however, I wouldn't be willing to live there for under $200k a year. That's jsut because I'm a prick and want to live in a nice house with plenty of house labor and to be driven around in a Mercedes.
Actually, the being driven in a Mercedes part is almost neccessary as the traffic is out of control. The horn is used *all* the time in Chennai. I have rode in many cars there, usually an Ambassador or a Toyota mini-SUV and they are no where near as quiet or comfortable as a C-class.
The nice part is that under US law your first $80k is tax-free when you are working outside the US and stay overseas more than 330 days out of the year.
So if you could stand a five year stint in India you could come back to a minimum of $400k in savings that was collected tax free. Think free house!
Huh? Are you aware that 8VSB for digital TV is 19.2 Mbps in 6 MHz and that wire-based 256QAM does 39 Mbps in 6 MHz?
Even if we assume no better encoding than 8VSB can be developed (or is in use) for wireless, 8VSB gives us 96 Mbps in 30 Mhz or about 3 Mbps per MHz, about six times your "estimate".
The energy from those towers at those frequencies would make the city a very dangerous place to be.
By your calculations we better leave the cities now as in places like LA there are currently 14 digital TV stations on the air for an aggregate bandwidth of 268.8 Mbps.
Having been to India four times myself and having had business colleagues have medical and dental work done while there I am of the conclusion that I wouldn't do it.
Just to take the dentistry as an example, one colleague's implanted teeth are cracking and will have to be replaced, another colleague had a very bad infection from having had surgical material left under a tooth cap. Yes these things could happen in the US as well but in my direct experience every person I know who has had work done in India has had a complication or problem from it.
I'm not sure if this isn't some sort of self-grandstanding on India's part. Listen to Vajpayee sometime and get an idea of the arrogance of some of the government there. Vajpayee one time told the world that India had the solutions to all of the world's problems, all we had to do was ask.
After having travelled there several times I'll take our solutions any day.
but that is why there are humans around and ways to override systems
Scarily enough this isn't always true, at least the last part of your statement.
Airbus' fly-by-wire system has certain limits it will not allow the pilot to exceed, limits that do not exist in Boeing's fly-by-wire systems.
I believe a crash of one of Airbus' new planes at the Paris Air Show was traced to a software problem that prevented the pilots from climbing out of their fly by for the crowd. Many pilots are made nervous by this lack of total control over the aircraft as there is *no way* to override it.
Seems like people love to talk about convergence and eliminating the "old" system. Convergence is nice but why would I have a $600 PC everywhere in my house that I might want to use a phone? I can buy a cheapo Princess phone for $10 these days and it takes up a lot less room.
What people sometimes miss is that most of the public just wants a phone that works when it is supposed to. An example is ATT Wireless' GSM network. High speed data and seamless international roaming is nice but coverage is horrible in many areas thus all the bells and whistles are wasted on people in areas where the GSM deployment is botched. ATT is losing a lot of GSM customers to other networks like Verizon or Nextel because their networks provide better coverage. (Yes in the case of Verizon they have nice wireless data goodies too)
IMO, mobile telephones will replace regular household phones in much larger numbers than PCs replacing phones ever will. Further, specialty devices like D-Link's video "phone" that can be connected to the TV (larger display) may be more popular with non-geeks who just want a computer for word processing and browsing the intarweb.
Stop blaming the amp on your problems. Blame Satan instead.
In this case he is still accurate as in most cases Satan runs the local cable company. (Well, ok, maybe not Satan himself but one of his minions. There aren't many companies that can abuse their customers like the cable company and still have them come back for more)
Having been involved in the operation of several call centers in India and working with a few software engineers there I would suggest that even though Bangalore has 20,000 more "engineers" that overall productivity is somewhat lower than the smaller number of workers in the US.
In our experience we found that dependent on the job we needed 2.5 to 5 Indian employees to match the productivty of a US employee. At $1/hr or thereabouts it is still cheaper to hire five Indians in place of one American, however.
You know I've been reading slashdot for a few years now. Very infrequently does an article description as inane as this pass through. Are the editors so dumb as to let this crap through or do they not pay attention?
Come on, an American Dictator in 2000 is reasonable? Give me a break. Not even the furthest left liberal can say that with a straight face. You might not agree with the President, and you might believe that the Florida recount would have given it to Gore, but the fact remains that Bush sleeps in the White House and you have a new opportunity next fall to replace him.
In other words, quit crying over the fact Bush is President. If you don't like it make an effort to change it next November but please give this crap a rest.
I worked for one of the first companies to open a call center in India, ours was in Chennai. We started doing it in 1993.
We hired a guy with a PhD in education to teach us how to work with the Indians and to help the Indians understand us. I've got a copy of one of his papers and it makes good reading.
The largest problem is the difference in education systems. In the US we stress problem solving above all else, in India and other parts of Asia memorization is king. Our problem with our Indian employees became that if we gave them a procedure they could follow it easily but they couldn't develop the procedure on their own, thus everything must be scripted because the typical call center agent can't think on their feet.
As far as communication differences we employed an American accent program to help smooth out the Indian accent. For the guys we put on the phone in outbound situations it worked great and they were easily understood. Some of the other folks needed a lot more help.
It all comes down to how much you're willing to pay for good equipment and good training, both for the Indian employees and the Americans responsible for supervising the overseas call center.
In the simpsons intro when the little girl is scanned on the cash register, the total due window even says "NRA Rules".
Actually, it does not. I checked this out on my Tivo last night because I was curious as to what it really said. The episode I checked said something like 847.46 and was from the 1999 season. Little did I know that piece of useless knowledge would come in handy today.
I do not purport to know Groenig's political leanings but in my opinion the Simpson's slap at both the left and right in a pretty equal fashion. (And I'm a conservative, nearly libertarian, if my point of view matters to you.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it harder to pull in a digital signal properly than an analog one?
This is rarely true. Check antennaweb.org with your address, you typically need a lower gain antenna to receive a digital broadcaster at equivilent power to its analog service. 8VSB, the radio encoding standard for digital TV has a raw encoding rate in the high 30's Mbps while the DTV stream is only 19.2 Mbps of that. The rest is error correction and content recovery. It is conventionally thought that 8VSB is easier to receive than analog and it is shown that first and second channel seperation interference is signifcantly less allowing for digitals to be closer spaced, thus fitting into less spectrum, thus opening 700-800 MHz for mobile services.
Digital TV, however, will be like DBS in that it will be an all or nothing proposition. You will either receive enough signal to put together a usable MPEG stream or not, unlike analog where the picture does all sorts of interesting things.
I wish it was like europe, any phone on any network, just slip out the simm card and your done
I've edited the remainer of your comment as it shows a basic lack of understanding about the differences between the US and European cellular systems.
When Europe made the transition from analog to digital cellular service the governments chose GSM (a TDM technology) as the standard.
In the US the government felt that the free market should decide what standards were best. This is how a capitalistic market works. Interoperability was not the primary goal as was mandated in Europe. Your complaint is not with the "money grubbing" carriers but with the toothless and nutless FCC.
The reality of the situation is that carriers who chose CDMA now are in a better position to migrate to 3G technologies as CDMA technology is the most efficent way to use bandwidth. GSM and TDMA carriers are in the most trouble as there is no simple way to migrate from TDM to CDMA technologies.
Give me signal strength out here in the woods, and I'll give you my money
Not to diminsh your choice of locations to live but UHF and nearly microwave RF doesn't penetrate woods very well. If you're serious about getting good signal inside your house don't expect the mobile carrier to plop a tower nearby to help you out. Get yourself a cellular repeater (about $700) and install it in your house. You indicate that Cingular is fine outside the house, then a repeater would make it fine inside the house.
I live in the middle of a well populated area and have one bar inside my house and two to three outside. If I place one of these repeaters with a yagi pointed at the local cell I could expect to get 4-5 bars inside my house. Not a bad improvement.
One place that sells cell repeaters is http://www.jdteck.com/product/phprepeater.htm
Yes, you see, it is true the brain is like a herd of buffalo.
You see, a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as its slowest members. When those members are killed the entire herd moves faster. So when (alcohol, 3G RF, other substances) kill off the slower brain cells the entire brain operates more efficiently!
Speaking realistically, however, I occasionally have the opportunity to visit a building roof mounted cell site and when I do I always come away with a very dull headache. This is an 800 MHz primarily but there is some 1900 MHz there too.
Too bad the FCC's balls are in the broadcasters' purse.
Simply put, many people can't receieve a HD signal period. Where I live only one station is transmitting HD and they are 65 miles away, so no over-the-air (UHF).
Until the FCC requires full power DTV transmission along with must-carry on cable systems and a requirement to pass the highest definition signal available from a network the masses just don't have enough access to HD, period.
I don't imagine too many people want to listen to silence. Seeing as the UK is not within the footprint of the XM birds it would be awful useless to have an XM radio there.
Barring that, it seems to me that there is no provision for low-powered FM devices. Remember those FM microphones that you could use as a kid to annoy your parents and everyone else within ear shot and radio range? What about those too?
Oh, right. In the US we only have three nationwide GSM providers who all have roaming agreements with each other and all offer GPRS
Maybe your ATT phone behaves differently from mine but ATT does not have a roaming agreement with T-Mobile that I know of. Being on ATT's GSM network is a big disappointment in the US, however, when I travel to Europe and Asia I love it. (Or more accurately their roaming partners) Plus ATT's GPRS pricing is onerous. I mentioned this to one of their employees and he showed me I could buy 200 MB for something like $200. I laughed and told him VZ is unlimited for $80 and Nextel is unlimited for $55.
One nice thing is that ATT doesn't charge me to receive SMS anywhere in the world so it does make a nice "free" international text pager.
I don't know about you but i'd pay at least double for a ticket if i were assured in writing that i'd have Internet and Mobile phone access for the entire flight, a truly reclining and comfortable seat, and enough space to comfortably fold my legs into.
Unfortunately it's a little more than that, and that's just to get into business class.
I've travelled to India a few times... Coach to India from the US is typically about $1500, Business is at least $4500 these days, and First, well, let's say its cheaper to buy a Round the World First fare for about $7500.
If you fly to a place like India where international fares are cheap consider buying a one-way ticket there and buying your return tickets there, in the end you can save at least $1500 per round trip. Round the World business on Star Alliance from India can be had for about $4000 as opposed to $6500 or so in the US and round trip business from India to the US can be had for as low as $3000 on BA. (note: Not Air India!)
Simply put, the lawsuit has become a tool of negotiation. I hate to say it but I have personally become quite sue-happy over the last few years as I have found that the only way to compel someone to obey the law or perform according to contract is to point the "loaded gun" of a lawsuit at them. People are not interested in doing what is right, only what is easy for them. Filing a lawsuit against them throws a wrench into that "easy calculation."
Once filed against people are usually very eager to settle unless you are arguing a very contentious or large value contract.
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It is absolutely ridiculous that customers should have to bribe retailers into standing behind their products. Further, it is insulting to insinuate that if the customer doesn't pay the bribe that they should receive lower standards of service.
I bought a Panasonic projection LCD television last fall from Sears for about 25% off retail. Panasonic had a set of bad ballasts in many of these televisions. I did not purchase any sort of "service plan". Sears came to my house twice, sent me an extra bulb (which I still have), and when they found out the parts would take six weeks to get cheerfully exchanged the television in three days for a new one.
Now, I didn't have to bribe Sears to get excellent service, the way it should be.
I recently helped my father choose a laptop to buy at Best Buy and from that experience believe that it is Best Buy's intent to bamboozle most customers with "service plans", signing them up for services they don't need, AND engaging in activities bordering on credit fraud. The people I dealt with there lied to my father several times and then argued with me when I tried to keep them from screwing him. My favorite was the jerkoff who insisted that the credit app section for the Household Mastercard was only requesting information rather than applying for a second credit card.
Guess where I'm more likely to buy my next major consumer electronics device?
You had a reasonably coherent argument going until you got to this sentence.
If you honestly believe that the US has imperialist intentions I suggest you try removing the tin foil hat as it is interfering with your brain. If the US had imperialist intentions then please explain its actions after World War II in regards to Japan and Germany. If the US has imperialist intentions then please explain why Bush is so intent on a handover of control on June 30, apparently whether or not the Iraqis are ready. Please explain why Puerto Rico continues to have self-determination votes and places like the Marshall Islands are free to become independent countries instead of remaining US possessions.
The fact is that the US has the largest economy in the world, a very high standard of living, freedom and self-determination, and sees a path to world stability by encouraging poorer countries to try what has worked for us. Wouldn't you agree that when violence is abandoned in favor of democracy that stability ensues?
Further, GPS is rightly jammed for anti-American forces, why should we provide an enemy with accurate guidance capabilities during a time of war? As for civilian use, the navigation system in my Jeep works great with it. It is free for anyone in the world to use, subject only to the caveat that the signal might be degreaded during conflicts.
It seems in your world America is the root of all that is bad and wrong. I'd love to know where you live and how you came to this conclusion.
What kind of fees can we expect for this?
Inside the US seat-back phone calls run $2-$3 per minute. I had to make a call over India from Lufthansa's satellite phone on Inmarsat's network at $10 per minute a few years ago. That was an expensive call.
Roaming on a $10 per minute network certaintly would keep the chatter to a minimum for those who don't want to listen to people on mobile phones in airplanes. SMS, however, would be very cool and should be very quiet.
While your plan makes provisions for "randomly" pulling multiple voter records to obfuscate what your actual vote was you're creating a system by which your identity could potentially be tracked and tied to your vote, something paper ballots in todays world are designed to avoid.
Regardless of your position on guns this is similar to the government retaining NICS records as a passive database of gun owners, something that was specifically prohibited by law but is somehow argued to be allowed for "administrative" purposes. Another example is the passive database created by LEOs running serial numbers of firearms in possession of lawful carry permit holders during traffic stops.
In the voting case the party in power would simply record your IP/telephone number and the voter ID number you checked on, especially since most people will only check their own record, and now they know you voted for the other guys.
There are some collection agencies that run a similar passive information collection effort by sending you a letter telling you that you have an "important" message waiting at 800-123-4567, id 987654. You call in and pick up the message, something like, "Please drive carefully!" and figure WTF. Well, now they've got the number you called from and will be calling in a day or two.
There are *many* forms of passive data collection, these are just a few examples.
In my personal opinion the only way to make electronic voting work is to produce a paper ballot from the voting machine for the voter to look at and verify then place in the ballot box to be read optically at a central counting station. This allows the ease of use of electronic machines to be married to the accountability of the physical paper trail of ballots we are familiar with.
I wanted to get the local channels in HDTV. But to do that I'd have to switch back to cable.
Do what people did for thirty years before CATV came into existance, put up a freakin antenna and receive it over the air. The Dish Network HD-capable receiver has an ATSC tuner in it that is designed to be used with an antenna.
If you live in a city something like the Silver Sensor antenna would be a great choice if none of your local digitals are on VHF.
And what's better? Just like for the last sixty years you can receive them over the air for free.
In fact there's a lot of free television out there on the airwaves, a visit to Lyngsat's Free-To-Air section provides an interesting list.
Yes, but unless you want to pay a 111% tarriff or play games to get it imported to India you're *much* better off buying a locally assembled C-Class. Besides, you're NOT driving it anyway, you're just riding in the back around town.
And who's flaunting? :) I don't live in India, I just said if my company wanted me to live there it would take a fairly large amount of money for me to go.
Since my boss lived in India for three or four years I am sure he would be willing to meet a resonable pay requirement. Surprisingly the number I mentioned would likely fall within "reasonable" to him.
I'm white and I have a 5-year multiple entry visa for India.
And I can work there as much as I like so long as I am paid by my American consulting company which the Indian company pays.
Having been there several times, however, I wouldn't be willing to live there for under $200k a year. That's jsut because I'm a prick and want to live in a nice house with plenty of house labor and to be driven around in a Mercedes.
Actually, the being driven in a Mercedes part is almost neccessary as the traffic is out of control. The horn is used *all* the time in Chennai. I have rode in many cars there, usually an Ambassador or a Toyota mini-SUV and they are no where near as quiet or comfortable as a C-class.
The nice part is that under US law your first $80k is tax-free when you are working outside the US and stay overseas more than 330 days out of the year.
So if you could stand a five year stint in India you could come back to a minimum of $400k in savings that was collected tax free. Think free house!
Huh? Are you aware that 8VSB for digital TV is 19.2 Mbps in 6 MHz and that wire-based 256QAM does 39 Mbps in 6 MHz?
Even if we assume no better encoding than 8VSB can be developed (or is in use) for wireless, 8VSB gives us 96 Mbps in 30 Mhz or about 3 Mbps per MHz, about six times your "estimate".
The energy from those towers at those frequencies would make the city a very dangerous place to be.
By your calculations we better leave the cities now as in places like LA there are currently 14 digital TV stations on the air for an aggregate bandwidth of 268.8 Mbps.
Having been to India four times myself and having had business colleagues have medical and dental work done while there I am of the conclusion that I wouldn't do it.
Just to take the dentistry as an example, one colleague's implanted teeth are cracking and will have to be replaced, another colleague had a very bad infection from having had surgical material left under a tooth cap. Yes these things could happen in the US as well but in my direct experience every person I know who has had work done in India has had a complication or problem from it.
I'm not sure if this isn't some sort of self-grandstanding on India's part. Listen to Vajpayee sometime and get an idea of the arrogance of some of the government there. Vajpayee one time told the world that India had the solutions to all of the world's problems, all we had to do was ask.
After having travelled there several times I'll take our solutions any day.
Scarily enough this isn't always true, at least the last part of your statement.
Airbus' fly-by-wire system has certain limits it will not allow the pilot to exceed, limits that do not exist in Boeing's fly-by-wire systems.
I believe a crash of one of Airbus' new planes at the Paris Air Show was traced to a software problem that prevented the pilots from climbing out of their fly by for the crowd. Many pilots are made nervous by this lack of total control over the aircraft as there is *no way* to override it.
What people sometimes miss is that most of the public just wants a phone that works when it is supposed to. An example is ATT Wireless' GSM network. High speed data and seamless international roaming is nice but coverage is horrible in many areas thus all the bells and whistles are wasted on people in areas where the GSM deployment is botched. ATT is losing a lot of GSM customers to other networks like Verizon or Nextel because their networks provide better coverage. (Yes in the case of Verizon they have nice wireless data goodies too)
IMO, mobile telephones will replace regular household phones in much larger numbers than PCs replacing phones ever will. Further, specialty devices like D-Link's video "phone" that can be connected to the TV (larger display) may be more popular with non-geeks who just want a computer for word processing and browsing the intarweb.
Stop blaming the amp on your problems. Blame Satan instead.
In this case he is still accurate as in most cases Satan runs the local cable company. (Well, ok, maybe not Satan himself but one of his minions. There aren't many companies that can abuse their customers like the cable company and still have them come back for more)
Having been involved in the operation of several call centers in India and working with a few software engineers there I would suggest that even though Bangalore has 20,000 more "engineers" that overall productivity is somewhat lower than the smaller number of workers in the US.
In our experience we found that dependent on the job we needed 2.5 to 5 Indian employees to match the productivty of a US employee. At $1/hr or thereabouts it is still cheaper to hire five Indians in place of one American, however.
Come on, an American Dictator in 2000 is reasonable? Give me a break. Not even the furthest left liberal can say that with a straight face. You might not agree with the President, and you might believe that the Florida recount would have given it to Gore, but the fact remains that Bush sleeps in the White House and you have a new opportunity next fall to replace him.
In other words, quit crying over the fact Bush is President. If you don't like it make an effort to change it next November but please give this crap a rest.
We hired a guy with a PhD in education to teach us how to work with the Indians and to help the Indians understand us. I've got a copy of one of his papers and it makes good reading.
The largest problem is the difference in education systems. In the US we stress problem solving above all else, in India and other parts of Asia memorization is king. Our problem with our Indian employees became that if we gave them a procedure they could follow it easily but they couldn't develop the procedure on their own, thus everything must be scripted because the typical call center agent can't think on their feet.
As far as communication differences we employed an American accent program to help smooth out the Indian accent. For the guys we put on the phone in outbound situations it worked great and they were easily understood. Some of the other folks needed a lot more help.
It all comes down to how much you're willing to pay for good equipment and good training, both for the Indian employees and the Americans responsible for supervising the overseas call center.
Actually, it does not. I checked this out on my Tivo last night because I was curious as to what it really said. The episode I checked said something like 847.46 and was from the 1999 season. Little did I know that piece of useless knowledge would come in handy today.
I do not purport to know Groenig's political leanings but in my opinion the Simpson's slap at both the left and right in a pretty equal fashion. (And I'm a conservative, nearly libertarian, if my point of view matters to you.)
This is rarely true. Check antennaweb.org with your address, you typically need a lower gain antenna to receive a digital broadcaster at equivilent power to its analog service. 8VSB, the radio encoding standard for digital TV has a raw encoding rate in the high 30's Mbps while the DTV stream is only 19.2 Mbps of that. The rest is error correction and content recovery. It is conventionally thought that 8VSB is easier to receive than analog and it is shown that first and second channel seperation interference is signifcantly less allowing for digitals to be closer spaced, thus fitting into less spectrum, thus opening 700-800 MHz for mobile services.
Digital TV, however, will be like DBS in that it will be an all or nothing proposition. You will either receive enough signal to put together a usable MPEG stream or not, unlike analog where the picture does all sorts of interesting things.
I've edited the remainer of your comment as it shows a basic lack of understanding about the differences between the US and European cellular systems.
When Europe made the transition from analog to digital cellular service the governments chose GSM (a TDM technology) as the standard.
In the US the government felt that the free market should decide what standards were best. This is how a capitalistic market works. Interoperability was not the primary goal as was mandated in Europe. Your complaint is not with the "money grubbing" carriers but with the toothless and nutless FCC.
The reality of the situation is that carriers who chose CDMA now are in a better position to migrate to 3G technologies as CDMA technology is the most efficent way to use bandwidth. GSM and TDMA carriers are in the most trouble as there is no simple way to migrate from TDM to CDMA technologies.
Not to diminsh your choice of locations to live but UHF and nearly microwave RF doesn't penetrate woods very well. If you're serious about getting good signal inside your house don't expect the mobile carrier to plop a tower nearby to help you out. Get yourself a cellular repeater (about $700) and install it in your house. You indicate that Cingular is fine outside the house, then a repeater would make it fine inside the house.
I live in the middle of a well populated area and have one bar inside my house and two to three outside. If I place one of these repeaters with a yagi pointed at the local cell I could expect to get 4-5 bars inside my house. Not a bad improvement.
One place that sells cell repeaters is http://www.jdteck.com/product/phprepeater.htm
Yes, you see, it is true the brain is like a herd of buffalo.
You see, a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as its slowest members. When those members are killed the entire herd moves faster. So when (alcohol, 3G RF, other substances) kill off the slower brain cells the entire brain operates more efficiently!
Speaking realistically, however, I occasionally have the opportunity to visit a building roof mounted cell site and when I do I always come away with a very dull headache. This is an 800 MHz primarily but there is some 1900 MHz there too.
Simply put, many people can't receieve a HD signal period. Where I live only one station is transmitting HD and they are 65 miles away, so no over-the-air (UHF).
Until the FCC requires full power DTV transmission along with must-carry on cable systems and a requirement to pass the highest definition signal available from a network the masses just don't have enough access to HD, period.
I don't imagine too many people want to listen to silence. Seeing as the UK is not within the footprint of the XM birds it would be awful useless to have an XM radio there.
Barring that, it seems to me that there is no provision for low-powered FM devices. Remember those FM microphones that you could use as a kid to annoy your parents and everyone else within ear shot and radio range? What about those too?
Maybe your ATT phone behaves differently from mine but ATT does not have a roaming agreement with T-Mobile that I know of. Being on ATT's GSM network is a big disappointment in the US, however, when I travel to Europe and Asia I love it. (Or more accurately their roaming partners) Plus ATT's GPRS pricing is onerous. I mentioned this to one of their employees and he showed me I could buy 200 MB for something like $200. I laughed and told him VZ is unlimited for $80 and Nextel is unlimited for $55.
One nice thing is that ATT doesn't charge me to receive SMS anywhere in the world so it does make a nice "free" international text pager.
Unfortunately it's a little more than that, and that's just to get into business class.
I've travelled to India a few times... Coach to India from the US is typically about $1500, Business is at least $4500 these days, and First, well, let's say its cheaper to buy a Round the World First fare for about $7500.
If you fly to a place like India where international fares are cheap consider buying a one-way ticket there and buying your return tickets there, in the end you can save at least $1500 per round trip. Round the World business on Star Alliance from India can be had for about $4000 as opposed to $6500 or so in the US and round trip business from India to the US can be had for as low as $3000 on BA. (note: Not Air India!)
Once filed against people are usually very eager to settle unless you are arguing a very contentious or large value contract.