I got rid of my regular land line, and went with "Phone Power", a cheap VoIP provider out of Calfornia. (Only $14.95 per month if you're willing to sign a 2 year contract with them, and you get unlimited calls to anywhere in the USA for that price.) I'm sure there are many other inexpensive choices as well. (I was previously using "AT&T Callvantage", but that one is going away so I had to switch services. It cost more like $25 a month anyway.)
A nice side-effect of switching my service to VoIP is, I can centrally create a list of "speed dial" numbers on their web site, and all phones in my house use them. (They're all dialed with the * and then a 2 digit number.) Additionally, Phone Power does a "virtual 2nd. line" feature that could come in handy. Basically, a second phone jack on the terminal adapter they ship you can be configured as the "virtual" number. So when you're on a phone in the house that's running off the primary jack of the adapter, and a second call comes in, it will ring the phone(s) on the second jack and allow someone to answer it without interrupting your original conversation. Alternately, you can take the call yourself on the primary line by clicking over, in the typical "call waiting" manner. By the same token, even though phones on both jacks will present themselves as being the same phone number, you can make 2 simultaneous outgoing calls with both of them.
A caller ID log is also maintained on their web site for you, and you can even click on a call in the log to add it to a "block" list. (Once blocked, future incoming calls from that number either get immediately routed to your voice mailbox, or they get an immediate busy signal... your choice.)
The voice mailbox feature can essentially be "disabled" if you still prefer using a traditional answering machine, by telling it to wait an "unlimited" amount of time before calls are transferred to it once your number starts ringing. But if you do opt to use it, it's pretty powerful too. You can have copies of your messages emailed to you as.WAV sound file attachments, for example. And by setting up "advanced call routing", you can create a whole sequence of phone numbers that a call will ring before going to voicemail. (This might prevent someone NEEDING to leave you voicemail in the first place, if you have, say, a cellphone ring simultaneously with your home number.)
I used to care if my land line phones had certain features, but now, I've realized VoIP renders most of it pointless duplication.
Umm... let me get this straight then? You believe it's an undeniable *fact* that email not only IS not private as it currently stands, but SHOULD not ever be considered private?
I'd argue that in reality, the expectation of privacy for electronic mail by the general public is no different than the expectation of privacy they have for physical mail. Unfortunately, the implementation most often used today doesn't live up to the expectations people have. (People tend to think that because they can't check their mail without the proper login and password, that means the mail is "secure". They're used to thinking that passwords = security when it comes to computers.)
With the right software and proper configuration, it's possible to encrypt all outgoing email automatically, and ensure it really is private. IMHO, it's too bad the systems administrators didn't foresee the need for this when paid customers (usually using dial-up modems with a local ISP) started signing up and trying this stuff out for the first time. (Perhaps the truth is, many of them rather *liked* the idea that if they so desired, they'd be able to snoop into the emails of any of their users, as desired?)
Now, we're reaching a point where the courts are playing "catch up" with the technology, and they're starting to make legal rulings on this stuff. If it's codified into law that it's ILLEGAL to ensure emails have true privacy, that'd be a shame and a big loss for the userbase as a whole.
I know companies like to claim that because they own the servers and the Internet connections the corporate emails travel over and get stored on, they own the "rights" to all of the employee emails as well. But to me, that's rather like an owner of an apartment complex claiming he/she can legally go through any of the tenants' physical mailboxes at will, because he/she owns the panel of mailboxes in the wall that it all gets put in! (Even in my apartment scenario though, the landlord could possibly get away with opening people's individual mailboxes, if all he/she was doing was counting the number of envelopes a tenant received each day, or was just reading the postcards before putting them back. The fact that most mail is inside an envelope that can't be opened without leaving behind evidence it was opened/tampered with adds another layer of security for the tenant. That's where our current email infrastructure is lacking. The law is effectively saying "Everything's written on the equivalent of postcards that anyone can see as they handle it, anyway - so why should we grant it any legal privacy rights?")
Which P2P sharing program are you referring to? The ones I've seen or tried have always made it fairly clear what they're sharing on your drive. LimeWire for example, displays a big list on your screen of the files it's marking for sharing if you click the "Share" button under "My Library" and try to share all your media. It has filters, as well, to make it easy to only share files with certain extensions (like MP3 or AVI).
I don't get how someone could overlook the fact it shares their material, even IF the default happens to be enabling the sharing functionality? If you're purposely ignoring a "What I'm sharing" link right at the top of the screen, and so forth - then I'd say it's the USER'S fault.
To be fair, Apple did a *lot* of these commercials, and I remember quite a few that point out benefits of OS X. They're not ALL about bashing the other platform and saying nothing about themselves. Sometimes, it's indirect but just as valid - like the "Wheel of Vista" commercial they did, to emphasize that OS X only has one version for everyone, unlike Microsoft, where they have all these different "flavors" at different price-points.
On the same note, if OS X was deployed as widely in big, corporate settings as Windows is, you'd have the exact same thing going on as this story talks about. People would say "Don't upgrade to Snow Leopard until they release 10.6.2!" I've *never* seen a new OS released that didn't have patches released for it soon afterward. History shows that the patches for the more severe issues tend to get done first, and then the little nit-picky stuff slowly gets ironed out after that. So it's always wise to wait a little while before deploying a brand new OS release.
Indeed, and because we still haven't really learned that lesson (that property rights should *really* be treated as rights, and not subject to modification whenever government finds it more convenient), we're going to see this repeated.
It's certainly one of the ongoing battles with Monsanto corp. over some of the toxic waste sites they've left behind over the years. They've been playing all sorts of legal games to dodge paying for some of it though, including filing bankruptcy and spinning things off to a new company, Solutia.
If individual homeowners could file suits any time a corporation generates pollution that falls on their personal property, I bet they'd treat much more carefully. As it stands though, something like that would be a "David vs. Goliath" battle most homeowners can't afford to fight.
I have to strongly disagree with you. You're making the false assumption that I.T. workers are continually "under-bidding" each other in a "race to the bottom". I'm finding that entire premise really hard to comprehend. I've worked in I.T. for close to 20 years now, straight through the whole.COM rise and fall, the whole Y2K scare, and many other things. What I've seen is more of a case of industry making adjustments to the economic realities of their situation over time.
During the "glory days" of I.T. when people were commanding huge salaries and calling the shots in many businesses, you were also in the heyday of computers and I.T. adding BIG changes to the way things worked. Companies that had never really "computerized" before were suddenly discovering things like "sales force automation software", ERP packages, network and Internet faxing, computer-based training, and were inter-connecting with other businesses over broadband Internet connections which were just becoming "standard issue" for everyone. Given all of that, it was pretty EASY for a manager to show big "returns on investment" with his/her I.T. staff.
After all of that became "standard practice" for everyone though, the competitive edge for introducing it was over. Businesses were largely left paying I.T. people big salaries and waiting for the "next big improvement" they'd bring to the table -- but not really getting one. Everything moved to more of a "maintenance mode", with I.T. staff spending most of their time ensuring the technologies they implemented kept working properly (and often, finding out they didn't work as advertised - meaning more expenses switching them out for other solutions that actually did what they promised!).
I really don't know anyone in I.T. today who is willingly asking for a lower salary than they used to get, simply because they're trying to "out compete" other applicants. It's more of a situation of businesses drawing a line, saying "No way we're paying 6 figures anymore for this type of work! We did that in the late 90's and maybe it made sense then, but I.T. is much more of a "necessary cost of doing business" now, vs. a driver of innovative ways to cut costs." If you keep submitting resumes asking for salary $X and nobody calls you back, you finally give in and try asking for $X - Y, until people start responding.
Revolutionary changes don't happen on a consistent, regular basis.... True for I.T. as well as any other field. I think I.T. is in a more mature, stable part of the business cycle right now.
Truthfully, I think this is the smartest route for a lot of us I.T. types to pursue, as the economy remains this sour.
I'm (thankfully) still employed in corporate I.T. - but our entire company is hanging on by a thread. (We're in steel manufacturing and our sales are tied directly to new home and commercial construction, which isn't going to exactly be "booming" for quite some time.) When you add to that the fact that the owner was really due to retire a couple years ago, and it appears nobody else has the financial means or interest to take over when he does retire -- it means my chance of having a future here are slim, looking a year or two into the future.
I've had a small side business I kept going, doing on-site PC service and consulting work. Basically, that means I offer anything from assistance setting up a basic web site for someone's small business to cleaning spyware off their PC, to doing the research and leg-work to get someone the perfect new notebook computer for their needs. Just last week, I got a doctor's office out of a pinch when their front office computer's motherboard died (in an eMachines tower). They tried a big-box retailer for assistance first, but of course, was informed they'd have to buy a whole new computer first, and then pay hundreds for a tech to transfer all their data off the old PC and onto the new one, AND it would take at least a week to get it finished. (I was able to go in, pick up the broken machine, swap the hard drive into a used Pentium 4 clone mini-tower I had lying around, get Windows XP to work with the different hardware, and return it to them by the next business day - all for a total cost of around $300. Other than the cost of gas for the 2 trips, it was all profit to me since I was getting rid of a clone I got free when I helped a different customer upgrade their old PC to a new one.) Customer was delighted and is now referring me to others.
I've never had to spend anything on advertising, besides about $40 in stamps and paper to send out some letters to strategic people and businesses, when I first started, to let them know I existed. Every regular customer I've gotten has been through word of mouth and referrals. I have no cost for a physical office either, since I go to them. I like keeping it a small, side thing for now -- but if my day job dies off, I think I'm going to gamble on growing it into a full-time business. The era of the "mom and pop computer store" really took a beating and almost died in the 90's with all the mega chain stores and cut-rate pricing on new PCs from giants like Dell and HP. But there's still a void to be filled in the area of providing good SERVICE at a price low enough so it makes sense to do the repairs vs. just buying new and starting over from scratch. This is where the big guys CAN'T compete - because they want each broken PC to result in a NEW computer sale!
I would think they'd have some success starting a fund people can optionally donate a few bucks to, to help offset shipping and production costs on the free CDs they send out. Then simply tell people that if the fund runs dry, shipping of CDs gets halted until more donations are made.
I suspect the majority of people requesting the free CD are doing so because they're in a situation where downloading and burning the ISO image is too troublesome (limited bandwidth like some corporations have, or someone using satellite broadband where they have a transfer cap before getting charged per K downloaded, etc.). Asking them to kick a few dollars back into the fund after they install and start using the product doesn't seem like a big deal.
Obviously, it'd still be a good idea to track addresses and enforce a "one copy per mailing address, per release" rule....
Well, sure... MS keeps an eye on Linux to see how far popular distros have come. In fact, they *even* have some developers working for them who like and use Linux.
But we've heard for well over a decade now that "any time now", Linux is going to have its day and "threaten Windows for dominance".... and it never really happens.
I think it's rather idealistic to believe Linux can somehow overtake a gigantic commercial endeavor to make and market an operating system, when in reality, a BIG part of such a battle would involve convincing a massive number of existing Windows users to abandon the platform they're already used to using. Considering the advertising and P.R. budgets for a Linux distro vs. somebody like Apple or Microsoft? You can see a little problem there.
If Linux was just as ready and user-friendly for the desktop PC as what Apple or Microsoft had to offer, about 18 years ago, THEN we'd have more of a "fair fight". But in reality, Linux is a "Johnny come lately" to the game, having spent much of its existence concentrating on being true to its Unix roots with shell scripts, a command line, and catering more to server administration and educational/research/mathematical apps than to entertainment, "home productivity apps" and the like.
I believe when the Mac Mini G4 was first released, the pricing on it was $499 for the lower end model, and $599 for the higher-end one, in U.S. dollars. So the current pricing doesn't seem "out of line" to me, by comparison. It's a well-known issue/problem that Apple's pricing can get pretty skewed in other countries though -- so won't try to speak for anyplace other than the U.S.
Seriously, I've played *plenty* of 1st. person shooters. If they neuter this one with no way to easily play on custom maps and so forth, it just means it has little value to me, vs. the others that were capable of those things. Why would I pay my hard-earned money for THAT? Simple, I won't -- because it's just entertainment we're talking about here. My world won't end if I don't own the latest revision of the CoD series. I'd rather keep on playing my CoD 4 with custom mods and maps that keep it "fresh".
If they're really doing this to generate an excuse to drop PC gaming platforms? Again, so be it. That's their decision and ultimately, their loss, as far as I'm concerned. I own a PS3 as well as both PC and Mac systems I can game on, and I practically never buy the PS3 console version of ANY 3D shooter type game. (I did it with Unreal Tournament 3, only because of the promise it actually supported a regular USB keyboard and mouse on the console.) I guess it's just habit, but I'd much rather sit down to a good 1st. person shooter on a computer system, where I have my comfortable chair and desk with everything just where I want it - and the display is just the right size so you can take in the whole view without your eyes panning left and right (like they would to see it all on my plasma TV I've got the PS3 attached to).
As someone who has lived his whole life in the USA, I can't say that I've "experienced" health-care in other parts of the world before. But thanks to the Internet, I've at least learned *some* about the differences.
I definitely don't claim the USA has the "best health-care in the world", but I do think it's a hugely complex issue that people tend to over-simplify based on their personal experiences.
Among other things, I've been told that the USA earns some "points" in having superior health-care to most of the rest of the world by way of a superior ambulance service. I think it was someone from either England or Germany, I recently saw complaining about the fact that with their govt. run health-care system, the ambulances were only outfitted with a minimum of devices on-board. With most ambulance services in the USA being privately owned and operated, they're not subject to government telling them what can and can't be put on-board, so they tend to compete for being the "best equipped". Therefore, patients here have a much better shot at making it to a hospital without the trip making their condition worse, or even dying before they get there.
There's also the issue of our nation's political "philosophy" on things. All else aside, it runs counter to our founding principles to claim that American citizens have a fundamental "right" to free health-care, because that in-turn, means we've just legislated our doctors and medical staff into "slavery", by stating they MUST provide medical treatment to all who require it (with no corresponding fundamental right to their compensation for said work).
I think there are plenty of steps that can be taken to improve our health-care situation without an all-out move to socialized medicine. A big one nobody really wants to touch is malpractice suits. Perhaps we need to be more proactive about stripping doctors of their license to practice in any of the 50 states as soon as they "screw up" even once, and at the same time, ditch the idea of awarding huge financial settlements all the time? All that does is cost everyone more per visit, as doctors charge enough to cover their costly malpractice insurance, from insurers who HAVE to charge those rates to cover the high settlements that keep getting awarded!
I completely agree with you about skilled trades (like a machinist) being every bit as valuable to our society as someone working in a "white collar" office job. But unfortunately, we *also* still have a system in place where we generally pay salaries based on one's "credentials", instead of based on how well they can do a job a company needs to get done.
People with the most "formal education" tend to be the ones calling the shots in financial matters in companies, and they gravitate towards rewarding people based on the formal education metric.
Therefore, a top-notch CNC machinist will still only get paid the "going rate" required to employ one, whereas someone in management who holds a degree from a "prestigious university" will keep getting salary increases, if only to "keep that talent from walking out our door and going elsewhere". Half the time, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point. The upper-management character who starts drawing a salary well into the 6 figures generates a perception of offering great worth to a company, simply because he's compensated that well. He might not really do much of anything beyond the basic essentials (and got lucky that the people below him are working their butts off, and just happen to be providing a product or service that's in high demand) -- but that salary he draws "proves" his worth to everyone else who might be hiring.
I'm kind of bummed out I just switched our company to Kaspersky AV, and *might* not have done so if I read this article first. BUT, there's also the problem of finding a Windows corporate anti-virus product that provides a central administration console. That's pretty much a requirement, as far as I'm concerned. Currently, McAfee (our previously used software) has one, as does Symantec (which I greatly dislike as a product and won't consider). Kaspersky does too, and I actually found their central admin. console a little easier to use and less buggy than McAfee's. Additionally, Kaspersky cost us about $750 less than renewing McAfee.
As far as I'm aware, you can't centrally deploy and administer products like Avast or AVG, can you?
1. Most modern systems *do* draw a lot more than 100 watts because of a power-hungry 3D video card. Yeah, some systems are just going to have cheap, integrated Intel video or what-not... but any of the PCIe or AGP cards out there are going to bump up the power requirements considerably. Furthermore, people want some "headroom" so the expansion slots can actually be filled with cards, without exceeding the limit of the power supply. (What about that TV tuner/PVR board someone had their eye on, for example?) And don't forget the firewire or USB devices that get their power from the system.
2. As for devices not living up to their stated ratings, it's not always a case where it's obvious enough that you can just "return it if it doesn't work". More often, the stuff works for a little while, before either burning out (outside the return window from the vendor who sold it to you!). Or it delivers power outside the normal, allowable ranges, shortening the life of the components until your motherboard has blown capacitors on it or you've had 2 premature drive failures you can't explain, all inside of 1-2 years.
3. I never said Apple made "perfect devices". But within the realm of reality (where ALL electronics components have a certain failure rate, no matter who assembles them), their products have been quite good. Receiving 1 "DOA" item, while frustrating, is far better than it dying after you've already started using it a little while and invested time putting all your software and data on it.
4. I think the I.T. industry would be doing just FINE if personal computers were priced in the $1000-2000 range today. That would still put them in at a price point as low as 50% lower than they cost in 1985 dollars. But more importantly, as people get more practical use out of a computer today, the up-front cost is more justifiable. Everyone I know has data on their PC that's worth FAR more than the system itself cost! So why "cheap out" on the hardware and put that at risk?
I remember all too well the days of multiple DSL providers sharing Bell's copper wiring.... You had to deal with retaliation by Bell workers who didn't like the other providers encroaching on what they saw as "their territory". Your DSL order via Covad or Nothpoint, for example, would often have big delays before installation was complete, compared to the same type of order direct from your local Bell company. Issues with errors on the circuit were rampant, too - especially when a Bell worker would do things like stealing the "tested good" copper pairs in a box for Bell service, leaving the "questionable" ones for the people ordering the 3rd. party DSL services.
Even when things proceeded normally with a new installation, there was always the extra hassle of knowing your ISP was just a "middle man" in the equation. Every time you reported an outage or issue to them, they'd have to turn around and open a trouble ticket with Bell, and work things through with them before reporting any progress back to you.
I'm not saying opening up the lines to competition is a bad thing... but there are problems inherent with doing so, when the party owning the physical connections doesn't get as much financial incentive to maintain the circuits when a 3rd. party is running THEIR data over them.
If they're following the outlined rules and they're still losing money, then it sounds like yes, they DO have an obligation to lose money! (At least, up until they modify the rules to avoid it.)
Even if they made it a rule in writing on the wall that "card counting is not allowed", it's pretty tough to enforce it fairly. Effectively, such a rule amounts to enforcing "thought crime" -- because they have no way to directly see into a player's brain and figure out what they're thinking. All they can do is look for patterns of behavior that suggest card counting is going on.
When you consider that way back in the 1980's, people were shelling out upwards of $2000 for a new computer, what makes you think it's so "shocking" that people would still pay over $1000 for a new system in today's dollars?
Although the market has been flooded with "entry level" systems starting as low as $300 or so, that doesn't mean everyone has decided there's no reason to spend more. And although I realize the cheap PCs have been great from a standpoint in getting more people on-board with using a computer at home, they've also resulted in lower standards across the board. I, for one, am tired of the garbage that passes for a power supply out there. You've got the same problem as cheap, imported car and home stereo equipment, where the wattage ratings mean nothing. I can remember when you could pull a power supply out of one of the original IBM AT machines and it might say something really low, by today's standards, like an 85 watt rating. Yet you could add a bunch of power splitters to the thing and hook it up to a FAR more modern system that needed at least a 250 watt power supply to run, and it would still power it! These days, you get power supplies with a 450 or 500 watt rating that conk out if they're asked to output more than about HALF of that rating!
I'm equally tired of the way manufacturers cut corners on things like cooling fans (cheap sleeve bearings, so the fan quits spinning after a year or two, risking destroying far more expensive components), or sourcing the cheapest motherboards they can find that have the ports and connectors they require. (Again, where's the real savings when your new machine gets flaky and starts refusing to power up half the time, risking all your important data?)
All of this (and shoddy software!) are reasons I've been "loving my PC" for years now by switching to higher-end Macs. Yep, they cost more.... a lot more in the case of the Mac Pro. But I've had practically NO headaches or hardware issues. (My first Macbook Pro portable did arrive DOA, but it was swapped immediately and its replacement worked great. Even there though, the things were shipping direct from a factory in China. Back when people were conditioned to pay more for computers, all the way around, these things would have still been assembled and QA tested here in the USA.)
A post below this one complains about Need for Speed, as an example of this adaptation done poorly. I'd agree, because it's so obvious, it's kind of insulting to the player. It cheapens the experience if you're trying to best to get through a game, and you obviously see the rest of the game "slow down" to accommodate a big mistake you make.
Ideally, I'd like to see games strike a balance where as you get better, they keep "pushing" you a little bit harder, but do it in such a gradual and unobtrusive way that you never even realize it's happening. (I think many games already do this in a non-intelligent fashion. They purposely increase the level of difficulty of little things as you progress through levels, making an assumption that the player has "mastered" certain techniques by the time they succeeded in beating certain puzzles or "bosses" placed as obstacles to advancing. The problem is, sometimes people just "brute force" defeat a level boss or lucky-guess their way past a tough spot without really learning the technique the game author assumed they learned. Then the levels that come next get frustrating for the player, and the person tends to just quit playing instead of trying to finish the game.)
I'd have to say though, in general, I think racing games are the most frustrating to play. If they're realistic, they're pretty much a case of "one false move and you lose", because you're racing against a number of other "contestants". What are the chances that ALL of them will make a mistake that puts each and every one of them further behind you after a slip-up you make? When they're setting up a "fun scenario" where you're this "larger than life" racing character (a la recent Need for Speed games), they tend to fall into the opposite trap. They can't maintain any respectability in the gameplay because you see obviously "worthy opponents" suddenly do nonsensical things, repeatedly, any time you screw up, just to justify how your car has a second chance at overtaking them a little further down the road.
I think they almost need to continuously analyze your driving style and skill level, and mimic it with the other cars you're racing against, to ensure you're all so closely matched that it really does seem accurate that your cars are all racing pretty close to each other through most of the course.
I won't speculate about the intent of the original poster, but I found it somewhat interesting (and maybe even disappointing?) that it required a regular computer OS to function AT ALL?!
If I spent $60K on a single purpose device like this, I'd wonder why it doesn't just have an integrated, dedicated operating system in flash memory or something? It wouldn't negate its ability to show up on a network (if that was needed/wanted), nor its ability to save images or videos in standard file formats.
It seems like a "lazy way out" to design what's basically a "stand alone" piece of equipment so it requires a full-blown personal computer operating system to run the code that makes it work?
What so many people seem to be completely ignoring is the fact that AT&T is focused on the NEXT generation of networks... the "4G" if you will.
I attended an AT&T sponsored "lunch and learn" session on "The future of wireless", several months back. (I got a free invite from our AT&T business sales rep. at my work. It included a free lunch at a nice hotel, and it's not often AT&T gives you ANYTHING free, so I figured "What the heck?" and went.)
They made it abundantly clear at this session that AT&T sees "smartphones" as the future of their business. The speaker even made a point of emphasizing that they feel the idea of a "telephone" is outdated. The future they see is everyone carrying around pocket computers, essentially, which do happen to allow making/taking voice calls, but will be used just as much, if not more, for data-related purposes.
They went on to say that they were pretty much getting behind the iPhone as *the* premiere device for this future, with the Blackberry being supported strongly as well, as the "alternate". They felt that a large display screen was an essential component to making all of this work, and right now, the iPhone is the only "smartphone" in widespread use with a big enough screen. The Blackberry, by contrast, they felt was a big player for other reasons. (Some people prefer having a real keyboard, if they're going to do a lot of data entry from their device, and the Blackberry has obvious advantages right now from corporate standpoints, where secure communications takes precedence over all else.)
AT&T has some interest in expanding into selling software and services related to all of this. (They mentioned a partnership, for example, with a company that makes development software that allows someone to code an app once, and have it support many different smartphone devices, without the developer having to concern him/herself with details of the screen resolutions and input limitations of each specific device. They also wanted to move into the space of selling tools to companies, to enable the remote use of their internal databases from mobile devices.)
Although it was more implied than stated, I came away with a pretty strong "hint" that AT&T really doesn't want to spend TOO much on improving their admittedly sub-standard 3G data network, because they feel the future is with migrating people to the next generation of data networks instead. They have goals of rolling it out by some time in 2011, at least for trial use and testing. If they make any moves like eliminating "unlimited" plans for iPhones to get more revenue, you can bet the extra profits WON'T improve your 3G performance. They'd simply funnel that into future R&D and rolling out of the new network (which won't even be compatible with the current crop of iPhones anyway). Any improvements you'd see would ONLY be from people leaving AT&T for other networks, or people reducing their usage of their iPhones to try to save money.
Oh, and for what it's worth, another "key point" they made (in response to a question from someone in attendance) was that AT&T still feels the "bread and butter" of the Internet should/will reside on land based connections. At the end of the day, they don't think much of the idea of everything "going wireless" to the point where T1 circuits and such cease to exist. They view the "wireless cellular network" as never being more than a "bridge" back to a wired network someplace nearby. (I happen to largely agree with them here, and think that's probably "common sense". Yet others would say that just reflects AT&T's long-standing mentality and interest in copper wires and land-lines... and that they're incapable of "thinking far enough outside the box". Some might envision high-speed wireless comprised of everything from satellite to wi-fi repeaters placed all over as a future that would take the whole Internet into the wireless realm....)
Yep.... I agree completely. This is also where that $100 "entry fee" comes into play as a positive thing... A lot of people were railing against it, initially, as I recall. But by putting up a financial barrier to entry like that, it gives Apple a decent way to make a ban on a specific developer have some "teeth" to it. (If you want to keep spamming the app store with dozens or hundreds of bogus apps, simply to be a squatter, or to bog down the submission process and make Apple look bad, or ?? -- at least it's gonna cost you $100 a pop, each time they discover you and ban you.)
I'm wondering how Skype will handle a call if you lose your 3G signal and the iPhone switches to an available wi-fi signal, or back?
That's a pretty common scenario here at my workplace, for example. We have wi-fi in the office but sometimes you might walk out to the parking lot where the wi-fi drops out, and you're back on 3G... and vice-versa obviously happens when you go back inside.
You'd see the same thing happening at restaurants like McDonalds that have free wi-fi for iPhone owners. Are people going to drop all their Skype calls as they leave or enter places like that?
That, alone, could be a big motivator for people to just use the "real" cell network instead of Skype.....
But as someone who played with jailbreaking for quite a while, I'd also caution people not to necessarily delve into it, if the Skype option will work for you too, and you're just impatient to start using it on the AT&T network.....
Jailbroken iPhones are a bit like running commercial software you cracked with some "patcher" program. They might work just fine at the time you do it, but you've started on a journey of regular "cat and mouse" games of updates breaking your jailbreak, waiting and searching around for updated fixes, downtime spent re-applying them, etc. It may well be worth it, too.... but there's definitely an increased level of time commitment there, keeping it working.
Also, though I can't speak for the current situation, in the past - I had more issues with sluggishness and instability with my jailbroken iPhone, mostly due to so many people trying to code apps for it to do things Apple never officially allowed. You had programs that were clearly "beta quality" launching background processes that used up CPU time, etc. etc. It was a lot of fun to tinker around with... but in the end, my cellphone number is also the main number for my side business. It's not worth potentially losing calls and customers if my iPhone is "down". So I went back to the official OS updates.
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I got rid of my regular land line, and went with "Phone Power", a cheap VoIP provider out of Calfornia. (Only $14.95 per month if you're willing to sign a 2 year contract with them, and you get unlimited calls to anywhere in the USA for that price.) I'm sure there are many other inexpensive choices as well. (I was previously using "AT&T Callvantage", but that one is going away so I had to switch services. It cost more like $25 a month anyway.)
A nice side-effect of switching my service to VoIP is, I can centrally create a list of "speed dial" numbers on their web site, and all phones in my house use them. (They're all dialed with the * and then a 2 digit number.) Additionally, Phone Power does a "virtual 2nd. line" feature that could come in handy. Basically, a second phone jack on the terminal adapter they ship you can be configured as the "virtual" number. So when you're on a phone in the house that's running off the primary jack of the adapter, and a second call comes in, it will ring the phone(s) on the second jack and allow someone to answer it without interrupting your original conversation. Alternately, you can take the call yourself on the primary line by clicking over, in the typical "call waiting" manner. By the same token, even though phones on both jacks will present themselves as being the same phone number, you can make 2 simultaneous outgoing calls with both of them.
A caller ID log is also maintained on their web site for you, and you can even click on a call in the log to add it to a "block" list. (Once blocked, future incoming calls from that number either get immediately routed to your voice mailbox, or they get an immediate busy signal ... your choice.)
The voice mailbox feature can essentially be "disabled" if you still prefer using a traditional answering machine, by telling it to wait an "unlimited" amount of time before calls are transferred to it once your number starts ringing. But if you do opt to use it, it's pretty powerful too. You can have copies of your messages emailed to you as .WAV sound file attachments, for example. And by setting up "advanced call routing", you can create a whole sequence of phone numbers that a call will ring before going to voicemail. (This might prevent someone NEEDING to leave you voicemail in the first place, if you have, say, a cellphone ring simultaneously with your home number.)
I used to care if my land line phones had certain features, but now, I've realized VoIP renders most of it pointless duplication.
Umm... let me get this straight then? You believe it's an undeniable *fact* that email not only IS not private as it currently stands, but SHOULD not ever be considered private?
I'd argue that in reality, the expectation of privacy for electronic mail by the general public is no different than the expectation of privacy they have for physical mail. Unfortunately, the implementation most often used today doesn't live up to the expectations people have. (People tend to think that because they can't check their mail without the proper login and password, that means the mail is "secure". They're used to thinking that passwords = security when it comes to computers.)
With the right software and proper configuration, it's possible to encrypt all outgoing email automatically, and ensure it really is private. IMHO, it's too bad the systems administrators didn't foresee the need for this when paid customers (usually using dial-up modems with a local ISP) started signing up and trying this stuff out for the first time. (Perhaps the truth is, many of them rather *liked* the idea that if they so desired, they'd be able to snoop into the emails of any of their users, as desired?)
Now, we're reaching a point where the courts are playing "catch up" with the technology, and they're starting to make legal rulings on this stuff. If it's codified into law that it's ILLEGAL to ensure emails have true privacy, that'd be a shame and a big loss for the userbase as a whole.
I know companies like to claim that because they own the servers and the Internet connections the corporate emails travel over and get stored on, they own the "rights" to all of the employee emails as well. But to me, that's rather like an owner of an apartment complex claiming he/she can legally go through any of the tenants' physical mailboxes at will, because he/she owns the panel of mailboxes in the wall that it all gets put in! (Even in my apartment scenario though, the landlord could possibly get away with opening people's individual mailboxes, if all he/she was doing was counting the number of envelopes a tenant received each day, or was just reading the postcards before putting them back. The fact that most mail is inside an envelope that can't be opened without leaving behind evidence it was opened/tampered with adds another layer of security for the tenant. That's where our current email infrastructure is lacking. The law is effectively saying "Everything's written on the equivalent of postcards that anyone can see as they handle it, anyway - so why should we grant it any legal privacy rights?")
Which P2P sharing program are you referring to? The ones I've seen or tried have always made it fairly clear what they're sharing on your drive. LimeWire for example, displays a big list on your screen of the files it's marking for sharing if you click the "Share" button under "My Library" and try to share all your media. It has filters, as well, to make it easy to only share files with certain extensions (like MP3 or AVI).
I don't get how someone could overlook the fact it shares their material, even IF the default happens to be enabling the sharing functionality? If you're purposely ignoring a "What I'm sharing" link right at the top of the screen, and so forth - then I'd say it's the USER'S fault.
To be fair, Apple did a *lot* of these commercials, and I remember quite a few that point out benefits of OS X. They're not ALL about bashing the other platform and saying nothing about themselves. Sometimes, it's indirect but just as valid - like the "Wheel of Vista" commercial they did, to emphasize that OS X only has one version for everyone, unlike Microsoft, where they have all these different "flavors" at different price-points.
On the same note, if OS X was deployed as widely in big, corporate settings as Windows is, you'd have the exact same thing going on as this story talks about. People would say "Don't upgrade to Snow Leopard until they release 10.6.2!" I've *never* seen a new OS released that didn't have patches released for it soon afterward. History shows that the patches for the more severe issues tend to get done first, and then the little nit-picky stuff slowly gets ironed out after that. So it's always wise to wait a little while before deploying a brand new OS release.
Indeed, and because we still haven't really learned that lesson (that property rights should *really* be treated as rights, and not subject to modification whenever government finds it more convenient), we're going to see this repeated.
It's certainly one of the ongoing battles with Monsanto corp. over some of the toxic waste sites they've left behind over the years. They've been playing all sorts of legal games to dodge paying for some of it though, including filing bankruptcy and spinning things off to a new company, Solutia.
If individual homeowners could file suits any time a corporation generates pollution that falls on their personal property, I bet they'd treat much more carefully. As it stands though, something like that would be a "David vs. Goliath" battle most homeowners can't afford to fight.
I have to strongly disagree with you. You're making the false assumption that I.T. workers are continually "under-bidding" each other in a "race to the bottom". I'm finding that entire premise really hard to comprehend. I've worked in I.T. for close to 20 years now, straight through the whole .COM rise and fall, the whole Y2K scare, and many other things. What I've seen is more of a case of industry making adjustments to the economic realities of their situation over time.
During the "glory days" of I.T. when people were commanding huge salaries and calling the shots in many businesses, you were also in the heyday of computers and I.T. adding BIG changes to the way things worked. Companies that had never really "computerized" before were suddenly discovering things like "sales force automation software", ERP packages, network and Internet faxing, computer-based training, and were inter-connecting with other businesses over broadband Internet connections which were just becoming "standard issue" for everyone. Given all of that, it was pretty EASY for a manager to show big "returns on investment" with his/her I.T. staff.
After all of that became "standard practice" for everyone though, the competitive edge for introducing it was over. Businesses were largely left paying I.T. people big salaries and waiting for the "next big improvement" they'd bring to the table -- but not really getting one. Everything moved to more of a "maintenance mode", with I.T. staff spending most of their time ensuring the technologies they implemented kept working properly (and often, finding out they didn't work as advertised - meaning more expenses switching them out for other solutions that actually did what they promised!).
I really don't know anyone in I.T. today who is willingly asking for a lower salary than they used to get, simply because they're trying to "out compete" other applicants. It's more of a situation of businesses drawing a line, saying "No way we're paying 6 figures anymore for this type of work! We did that in the late 90's and maybe it made sense then, but I.T. is much more of a "necessary cost of doing business" now, vs. a driver of innovative ways to cut costs." If you keep submitting resumes asking for salary $X and nobody calls you back, you finally give in and try asking for $X - Y, until people start responding.
Revolutionary changes don't happen on a consistent, regular basis .... True for I.T. as well as any other field. I think I.T. is in a more mature, stable part of the business cycle right now.
Truthfully, I think this is the smartest route for a lot of us I.T. types to pursue, as the economy remains this sour.
I'm (thankfully) still employed in corporate I.T. - but our entire company is hanging on by a thread. (We're in steel manufacturing and our sales are tied directly to new home and commercial construction, which isn't going to exactly be "booming" for quite some time.) When you add to that the fact that the owner was really due to retire a couple years ago, and it appears nobody else has the financial means or interest to take over when he does retire -- it means my chance of having a future here are slim, looking a year or two into the future.
I've had a small side business I kept going, doing on-site PC service and consulting work. Basically, that means I offer anything from assistance setting up a basic web site for someone's small business to cleaning spyware off their PC, to doing the research and leg-work to get someone the perfect new notebook computer for their needs. Just last week, I got a doctor's office out of a pinch when their front office computer's motherboard died (in an eMachines tower). They tried a big-box retailer for assistance first, but of course, was informed they'd have to buy a whole new computer first, and then pay hundreds for a tech to transfer all their data off the old PC and onto the new one, AND it would take at least a week to get it finished. (I was able to go in, pick up the broken machine, swap the hard drive into a used Pentium 4 clone mini-tower I had lying around, get Windows XP to work with the different hardware, and return it to them by the next business day - all for a total cost of around $300. Other than the cost of gas for the 2 trips, it was all profit to me since I was getting rid of a clone I got free when I helped a different customer upgrade their old PC to a new one.) Customer was delighted and is now referring me to others.
I've never had to spend anything on advertising, besides about $40 in stamps and paper to send out some letters to strategic people and businesses, when I first started, to let them know I existed. Every regular customer I've gotten has been through word of mouth and referrals. I have no cost for a physical office either, since I go to them. I like keeping it a small, side thing for now -- but if my day job dies off, I think I'm going to gamble on growing it into a full-time business. The era of the "mom and pop computer store" really took a beating and almost died in the 90's with all the mega chain stores and cut-rate pricing on new PCs from giants like Dell and HP. But there's still a void to be filled in the area of providing good SERVICE at a price low enough so it makes sense to do the repairs vs. just buying new and starting over from scratch. This is where the big guys CAN'T compete - because they want each broken PC to result in a NEW computer sale!
I would think they'd have some success starting a fund people can optionally donate a few bucks to, to help offset shipping and production costs on the free CDs they send out. Then simply tell people that if the fund runs dry, shipping of CDs gets halted until more donations are made.
I suspect the majority of people requesting the free CD are doing so because they're in a situation where downloading and burning the ISO image is too troublesome (limited bandwidth like some corporations have, or someone using satellite broadband where they have a transfer cap before getting charged per K downloaded, etc.). Asking them to kick a few dollars back into the fund after they install and start using the product doesn't seem like a big deal.
Obviously, it'd still be a good idea to track addresses and enforce a "one copy per mailing address, per release" rule....
Well, sure ... MS keeps an eye on Linux to see how far popular distros have come. In fact, they *even* have some developers working for them who like and use Linux.
But we've heard for well over a decade now that "any time now", Linux is going to have its day and "threaten Windows for dominance" .... and it never really happens.
I think it's rather idealistic to believe Linux can somehow overtake a gigantic commercial endeavor to make and market an operating system, when in reality, a BIG part of such a battle would involve convincing a massive number of existing Windows users to abandon the platform they're already used to using. Considering the advertising and P.R. budgets for a Linux distro vs. somebody like Apple or Microsoft? You can see a little problem there.
If Linux was just as ready and user-friendly for the desktop PC as what Apple or Microsoft had to offer, about 18 years ago, THEN we'd have more of a "fair fight". But in reality, Linux is a "Johnny come lately" to the game, having spent much of its existence concentrating on being true to its Unix roots with shell scripts, a command line, and catering more to server administration and educational/research/mathematical apps than to entertainment, "home productivity apps" and the like.
I believe when the Mac Mini G4 was first released, the pricing on it was $499 for the lower end model, and $599 for the higher-end one, in U.S. dollars.
So the current pricing doesn't seem "out of line" to me, by comparison. It's a well-known issue/problem that Apple's pricing can get pretty skewed in other countries though -- so won't try to speak for anyplace other than the U.S.
Seriously, I've played *plenty* of 1st. person shooters. If they neuter this one with no way to easily play on custom maps and so forth, it just means it has little value to me, vs. the others that were capable of those things. Why would I pay my hard-earned money for THAT? Simple, I won't -- because it's just entertainment we're talking about here. My world won't end if I don't own the latest revision of the CoD series. I'd rather keep on playing my CoD 4 with custom mods and maps that keep it "fresh".
If they're really doing this to generate an excuse to drop PC gaming platforms? Again, so be it. That's their decision and ultimately, their loss, as far as I'm concerned. I own a PS3 as well as both PC and Mac systems I can game on, and I practically never buy the PS3 console version of ANY 3D shooter type game. (I did it with Unreal Tournament 3, only because of the promise it actually supported a regular USB keyboard and mouse on the console.) I guess it's just habit, but I'd much rather sit down to a good 1st. person shooter on a computer system, where I have my comfortable chair and desk with everything just where I want it - and the display is just the right size so you can take in the whole view without your eyes panning left and right (like they would to see it all on my plasma TV I've got the PS3 attached to).
As someone who has lived his whole life in the USA, I can't say that I've "experienced" health-care in other parts of the world before. But thanks to the Internet, I've at least learned *some* about the differences.
I definitely don't claim the USA has the "best health-care in the world", but I do think it's a hugely complex issue that people tend to over-simplify based on their personal experiences.
Among other things, I've been told that the USA earns some "points" in having superior health-care to most of the rest of the world by way of a superior ambulance service. I think it was someone from either England or Germany, I recently saw complaining about the fact that with their govt. run health-care system, the ambulances were only outfitted with a minimum of devices on-board. With most ambulance services in the USA being privately owned and operated, they're not subject to government telling them what can and can't be put on-board, so they tend to compete for being the "best equipped". Therefore, patients here have a much better shot at making it to a hospital without the trip making their condition worse, or even dying before they get there.
There's also the issue of our nation's political "philosophy" on things. All else aside, it runs counter to our founding principles to claim that American citizens have a fundamental "right" to free health-care, because that in-turn, means we've just legislated our doctors and medical staff into "slavery", by stating they MUST provide medical treatment to all who require it (with no corresponding fundamental right to their compensation for said work).
I think there are plenty of steps that can be taken to improve our health-care situation without an all-out move to socialized medicine. A big one nobody really wants to touch is malpractice suits. Perhaps we need to be more proactive about stripping doctors of their license to practice in any of the 50 states as soon as they "screw up" even once, and at the same time, ditch the idea of awarding huge financial settlements all the time? All that does is cost everyone more per visit, as doctors charge enough to cover their costly malpractice insurance, from insurers who HAVE to charge those rates to cover the high settlements that keep getting awarded!
I completely agree with you about skilled trades (like a machinist) being every bit as valuable to our society as someone working in a "white collar" office job. But unfortunately, we *also* still have a system in place where we generally pay salaries based on one's "credentials", instead of based on how well they can do a job a company needs to get done.
People with the most "formal education" tend to be the ones calling the shots in financial matters in companies, and they gravitate towards rewarding people based on the formal education metric.
Therefore, a top-notch CNC machinist will still only get paid the "going rate" required to employ one, whereas someone in management who holds a degree from a "prestigious university" will keep getting salary increases, if only to "keep that talent from walking out our door and going elsewhere". Half the time, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point. The upper-management character who starts drawing a salary well into the 6 figures generates a perception of offering great worth to a company, simply because he's compensated that well. He might not really do much of anything beyond the basic essentials (and got lucky that the people below him are working their butts off, and just happen to be providing a product or service that's in high demand) -- but that salary he draws "proves" his worth to everyone else who might be hiring.
I'm kind of bummed out I just switched our company to Kaspersky AV, and *might* not have done so if I read this article first. BUT, there's also the problem of finding a Windows corporate anti-virus product that provides a central administration console. That's pretty much a requirement, as far as I'm concerned. Currently, McAfee (our previously used software) has one, as does Symantec (which I greatly dislike as a product and won't consider). Kaspersky does too, and I actually found their central admin. console a little easier to use and less buggy than McAfee's. Additionally, Kaspersky cost us about $750 less than renewing McAfee.
As far as I'm aware, you can't centrally deploy and administer products like Avast or AVG, can you?
Just a few responses:
1. Most modern systems *do* draw a lot more than 100 watts because of a power-hungry 3D video card. Yeah, some systems are just going to have cheap, integrated Intel video or what-not ... but any of the PCIe or AGP cards out there are going to bump up the power requirements considerably. Furthermore, people want some "headroom" so the expansion slots can actually be filled with cards, without exceeding the limit of the power supply. (What about that TV tuner/PVR board someone had their eye on, for example?) And don't forget the firewire or USB devices that get their power from the system.
2. As for devices not living up to their stated ratings, it's not always a case where it's obvious enough that you can just "return it if it doesn't work". More often, the stuff works for a little while, before either burning out (outside the return window from the vendor who sold it to you!). Or it delivers power outside the normal, allowable ranges, shortening the life of the components until your motherboard has blown capacitors on it or you've had 2 premature drive failures you can't explain, all inside of 1-2 years.
3. I never said Apple made "perfect devices". But within the realm of reality (where ALL electronics components have a certain failure rate, no matter who assembles them), their products have been quite good. Receiving 1 "DOA" item, while frustrating, is far better than it dying after you've already started using it a little while and invested time putting all your software and data on it.
4. I think the I.T. industry would be doing just FINE if personal computers were priced in the $1000-2000 range today. That would still put them in at a price point as low as 50% lower than they cost in 1985 dollars. But more importantly, as people get more practical use out of a computer today, the up-front cost is more justifiable. Everyone I know has data on their PC that's worth FAR more than the system itself cost! So why "cheap out" on the hardware and put that at risk?
I remember all too well the days of multiple DSL providers sharing Bell's copper wiring.... You had to deal with retaliation by Bell workers who didn't like the other providers encroaching on what they saw as "their territory". Your DSL order via Covad or Nothpoint, for example, would often have big delays before installation was complete, compared to the same type of order direct from your local Bell company. Issues with errors on the circuit were rampant, too - especially when a Bell worker would do things like stealing the "tested good" copper pairs in a box for Bell service, leaving the "questionable" ones for the people ordering the 3rd. party DSL services.
Even when things proceeded normally with a new installation, there was always the extra hassle of knowing your ISP was just a "middle man" in the equation. Every time you reported an outage or issue to them, they'd have to turn around and open a trouble ticket with Bell, and work things through with them before reporting any progress back to you.
I'm not saying opening up the lines to competition is a bad thing ... but there are problems inherent with doing so, when the party owning the physical connections doesn't get as much financial incentive to maintain the circuits when a 3rd. party is running THEIR data over them.
If they're following the outlined rules and they're still losing money, then it sounds like yes, they DO have an obligation to lose money! (At least, up until they modify the rules to avoid it.)
Even if they made it a rule in writing on the wall that "card counting is not allowed", it's pretty tough to enforce it fairly. Effectively, such a rule amounts to enforcing "thought crime" -- because they have no way to directly see into a player's brain and figure out what they're thinking. All they can do is look for patterns of behavior that suggest card counting is going on.
Really?
When you consider that way back in the 1980's, people were shelling out upwards of $2000 for a new computer, what makes you think it's so "shocking" that people would still pay over $1000 for a new system in today's dollars?
Although the market has been flooded with "entry level" systems starting as low as $300 or so, that doesn't mean everyone has decided there's no reason to spend more. And although I realize the cheap PCs have been great from a standpoint in getting more people on-board with using a computer at home, they've also resulted in lower standards across the board. I, for one, am tired of the garbage that passes for a power supply out there. You've got the same problem as cheap, imported car and home stereo equipment, where the wattage ratings mean nothing. I can remember when you could pull a power supply out of one of the original IBM AT machines and it might say something really low, by today's standards, like an 85 watt rating. Yet you could add a bunch of power splitters to the thing and hook it up to a FAR more modern system that needed at least a 250 watt power supply to run, and it would still power it! These days, you get power supplies with a 450 or 500 watt rating that conk out if they're asked to output more than about HALF of that rating!
I'm equally tired of the way manufacturers cut corners on things like cooling fans (cheap sleeve bearings, so the fan quits spinning after a year or two, risking destroying far more expensive components), or sourcing the cheapest motherboards they can find that have the ports and connectors they require. (Again, where's the real savings when your new machine gets flaky and starts refusing to power up half the time, risking all your important data?)
All of this (and shoddy software!) are reasons I've been "loving my PC" for years now by switching to higher-end Macs. Yep, they cost more.... a lot more in the case of the Mac Pro. But I've had practically NO headaches or hardware issues. (My first Macbook Pro portable did arrive DOA, but it was swapped immediately and its replacement worked great. Even there though, the things were shipping direct from a factory in China. Back when people were conditioned to pay more for computers, all the way around, these things would have still been assembled and QA tested here in the USA.)
A post below this one complains about Need for Speed, as an example of this adaptation done poorly. I'd agree, because it's so obvious, it's kind of insulting to the player. It cheapens the experience if you're trying to best to get through a game, and you obviously see the rest of the game "slow down" to accommodate a big mistake you make.
Ideally, I'd like to see games strike a balance where as you get better, they keep "pushing" you a little bit harder, but do it in such a gradual and unobtrusive way that you never even realize it's happening. (I think many games already do this in a non-intelligent fashion. They purposely increase the level of difficulty of little things as you progress through levels, making an assumption that the player has "mastered" certain techniques by the time they succeeded in beating certain puzzles or "bosses" placed as obstacles to advancing. The problem is, sometimes people just "brute force" defeat a level boss or lucky-guess their way past a tough spot without really learning the technique the game author assumed they learned. Then the levels that come next get frustrating for the player, and the person tends to just quit playing instead of trying to finish the game.)
I'd have to say though, in general, I think racing games are the most frustrating to play. If they're realistic, they're pretty much a case of "one false move and you lose", because you're racing against a number of other "contestants". What are the chances that ALL of them will make a mistake that puts each and every one of them further behind you after a slip-up you make? When they're setting up a "fun scenario" where you're this "larger than life" racing character (a la recent Need for Speed games), they tend to fall into the opposite trap. They can't maintain any respectability in the gameplay because you see obviously "worthy opponents" suddenly do nonsensical things, repeatedly, any time you screw up, just to justify how your car has a second chance at overtaking them a little further down the road.
I think they almost need to continuously analyze your driving style and skill level, and mimic it with the other cars you're racing against, to ensure you're all so closely matched that it really does seem accurate that your cars are all racing pretty close to each other through most of the course.
But then I realized I live in a world that just awarded Barrack Obama a Nobel Peace prize. In that light, it's all starting to make more sense.
I won't speculate about the intent of the original poster, but I found it somewhat interesting (and maybe even disappointing?) that it required a regular computer OS to function AT ALL?!
If I spent $60K on a single purpose device like this, I'd wonder why it doesn't just have an integrated, dedicated operating system in flash memory or something? It wouldn't negate its ability to show up on a network (if that was needed/wanted), nor its ability to save images or videos in standard file formats.
It seems like a "lazy way out" to design what's basically a "stand alone" piece of equipment so it requires a full-blown personal computer operating system to run the code that makes it work?
What so many people seem to be completely ignoring is the fact that AT&T is focused on the NEXT generation of networks... the "4G" if you will.
I attended an AT&T sponsored "lunch and learn" session on "The future of wireless", several months back. (I got a free invite from our AT&T business sales rep. at my work. It included a free lunch at a nice hotel, and it's not often AT&T gives you ANYTHING free, so I figured "What the heck?" and went.)
They made it abundantly clear at this session that AT&T sees "smartphones" as the future of their business. The speaker even made a point of emphasizing that they feel the idea of a "telephone" is outdated. The future they see is everyone carrying around pocket computers, essentially, which do happen to allow making/taking voice calls, but will be used just as much, if not more, for data-related purposes.
They went on to say that they were pretty much getting behind the iPhone as *the* premiere device for this future, with the Blackberry being supported strongly as well, as the "alternate". They felt that a large display screen was an essential component to making all of this work, and right now, the iPhone is the only "smartphone" in widespread use with a big enough screen. The Blackberry, by contrast, they felt was a big player for other reasons. (Some people prefer having a real keyboard, if they're going to do a lot of data entry from their device, and the Blackberry has obvious advantages right now from corporate standpoints, where secure communications takes precedence over all else.)
AT&T has some interest in expanding into selling software and services related to all of this. (They mentioned a partnership, for example, with a company that makes development software that allows someone to code an app once, and have it support many different smartphone devices, without the developer having to concern him/herself with details of the screen resolutions and input limitations of each specific device. They also wanted to move into the space of selling tools to companies, to enable the remote use of their internal databases from mobile devices.)
Although it was more implied than stated, I came away with a pretty strong "hint" that AT&T really doesn't want to spend TOO much on improving their admittedly sub-standard 3G data network, because they feel the future is with migrating people to the next generation of data networks instead. They have goals of rolling it out by some time in 2011, at least for trial use and testing. If they make any moves like eliminating "unlimited" plans for iPhones to get more revenue, you can bet the extra profits WON'T improve your 3G performance. They'd simply funnel that into future R&D and rolling out of the new network (which won't even be compatible with the current crop of iPhones anyway). Any improvements you'd see would ONLY be from people leaving AT&T for other networks, or people reducing their usage of their iPhones to try to save money.
Oh, and for what it's worth, another "key point" they made (in response to a question from someone in attendance) was that AT&T still feels the "bread and butter" of the Internet should/will reside on land based connections. At the end of the day, they don't think much of the idea of everything "going wireless" to the point where T1 circuits and such cease to exist. They view the "wireless cellular network" as never being more than a "bridge" back to a wired network someplace nearby. (I happen to largely agree with them here, and think that's probably "common sense". Yet others would say that just reflects AT&T's long-standing mentality and interest in copper wires and land-lines ... and that they're incapable of "thinking far enough outside the box". Some might envision high-speed wireless comprised of everything from satellite to wi-fi repeaters placed all over as a future that would take the whole Internet into the wireless realm....)
Yep.... I agree completely. This is also where that $100 "entry fee" comes into play as a positive thing... A lot of people were railing against it, initially, as I recall. But by putting up a financial barrier to entry like that, it gives Apple a decent way to make a ban on a specific developer have some "teeth" to it. (If you want to keep spamming the app store with dozens or hundreds of bogus apps, simply to be a squatter, or to bog down the submission process and make Apple look bad, or ?? -- at least it's gonna cost you $100 a pop, each time they discover you and ban you.)
I'm wondering how Skype will handle a call if you lose your 3G signal and the iPhone switches to an available wi-fi signal, or back?
That's a pretty common scenario here at my workplace, for example. We have wi-fi in the office but sometimes you might walk out to the parking lot where the wi-fi drops out, and you're back on 3G ... and vice-versa obviously happens when you go back inside.
You'd see the same thing happening at restaurants like McDonalds that have free wi-fi for iPhone owners. Are people going to drop all their Skype calls as they leave or enter places like that?
That, alone, could be a big motivator for people to just use the "real" cell network instead of Skype .....
Good to know about that one. Thanks!
But as someone who played with jailbreaking for quite a while, I'd also caution people not to necessarily delve into it, if the Skype option will work for you too, and you're just impatient to start using it on the AT&T network.....
Jailbroken iPhones are a bit like running commercial software you cracked with some "patcher" program. They might work just fine at the time you do it, but you've started on a journey of regular "cat and mouse" games of updates breaking your jailbreak, waiting and searching around for updated fixes, downtime spent re-applying them, etc. It may well be worth it, too .... but there's definitely an increased level of time commitment there, keeping it working.
Also, though I can't speak for the current situation, in the past - I had more issues with sluggishness and instability with my jailbroken iPhone, mostly due to so many people trying to code apps for it to do things Apple never officially allowed. You had programs that were clearly "beta quality" launching background processes that used up CPU time, etc. etc. It was a lot of fun to tinker around with ... but in the end, my cellphone number is also the main number for my side business. It's not worth potentially losing calls and customers if my iPhone is "down". So I went back to the official OS updates.