most of the people at the school expect that you will communicate with them through it.
Presumably these aren't Communications majors.
the subscriptions and lock-ins that the cell companies require in the US
Contracts are not required. Many people are just too dumb, cheap, lazy, or ill-informed to get cell phone service without a contract.
The price of ignoring it is huge.
And when those college students graduate and can't communicate via e-mail or any other method required in the corporate world, they'll be out of a job or have a hard time landing one.
The communication skills of the college students applying for jobs these days is terrible.
The Huston police department spent a lot of money without public knowledge,
What makes you think this was without public knowledge? It's just a continuation of the 24/7/365 surveilance they used to do with helicopters. Try really hard not to make stuff up to fit your own agenda.
Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation. If you see one, you know something is up ( or its just the local TV station running traffic reports.. )
These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. Later they will just record every move everyone makes, regardless of any suspicion. Do you want that? I don't. Unless I'm under active court supported suspicion, they don't have a right to 'follow' me around, 'just in case'.
See my earlier comment for more detail, but HPD and many other major cities don't just send helicopters into the air when something big is going on. Many cities keep them up all the time just to look around. It's just an arial patrol. It's been going on for decades. For some reason now that it's an unmanned aircraft it's considered sinister by the underinformed tinfoil hat crowd.
The difference here is that a police helicopter is extremely expensive, and is therefore reserved for only the most serious of crimes.
Maybe you don't live in a big city, so you don't know how it works, but many cities maintain helicopters in the air at all times.
When I lived in Houston, the police department and the Harris County Sheriff's Department each maintained a helicopter in the air 24/7/365. This was from 1999 to 2003. Sometimes there were two HPD choppers in the air. But there was always at least two from the combined agencies. I heard shortly after I left that they grounded the helicopters at night because of cost, so this program just sounds like the same police surveilance that was going on before just with cheaper unmanned vehicles.
It's no big deal. It's been going on for years. All they've done is reduce the risk of killing someone (in the helicopter).
I do believe that under certain circumstances you can get an N95 for free- AT&T would never do that.
Why would you say that? Not that long ago people were paying $500 for a RAZR and people on/. were saying that RAZRs would never be free. Now I don't think there's a single cell phone company in America that doesn't offer the RAZR for free with a contract.
Unless you have some kind of time machine, I don't think you can say what any company would "never" do.
Second, there are no "branded" phones that artificially limits what you can do to it.
That may be true in Denmark, but not elsewhere in Europe. For example, Vodaphone heavily branded the SonyEricsson M600i and disabled some of the features. From what I've read, it locked up the phone to the point that it couldn't even be reflashed to a clean generic version of the firmware -- people had to wait for the Vodaphone version to come out.
It depends on where you live. In some states any number of people can be fired at any time for any reason. In other states, a few people can be fired at any time for any reason. But in still other states (Illinois is one), any time you fire more than a certain number of people, you have to give the state and the employees 30 days notice.
Some companies are also bound by union contracts that require notice before large layoffs. And some people have personal employment contracts that require notice, or payment. I had one of those and got fired -- the company was so eager to get rid of me it cut a check for $11 grand just to get me out the door. I must have been a really bad employee back then.
Nice, but that Aspen project wasn't the first time this sort of thing has been done. Municipalities, insurance companies, and real estate firms have been doing this for decades. Since at least the 60's in some places. Probably longer.
For years you've been able to look at street-level pictures of every property in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) on the internet through the Assessor's web site.
Just because Google's doing it, people pretend like this is something new.
Because beautiful women aren't as scary as the average Slashdotter would like to believe. Yes, there are a million jerks out there, but a certain percentage (10-15% in my estimation) are just normal people with the same insecurities as everyone else. Keep trying and you'll find a gorgeous blonde with a hot body that actually likes you for who you are. It worked for me. It just takes persistance. And often a change of geography. That helps a lot.
Phones could replace the greeting card, and really make social networks work.
Or you could... you know... talk to people. Pretty much the same thing -- you have ten seconds to impart some information that is of interest to the other person and if she doesn't like you, she puts you on "ignore."
It's like socal networking... except that it's actually social.
Either reports of open wireless networks all over the place are greatly exaggerated or the people of Sheffield are unusually security conscious.
People on Slashdot who rarely leave their parents' basements like to tell people in the real world that there are open wifi points everywhere. The fact of the matter is, there aren't.
They'll drive through a neighborhood and see all the access points that aren't WEP or otherwise obviously protected and assume that they're all clear. But they're not. If they actually bothered trying to connect to the internet through those points they'd know that most are locked to a particular set of MAC addresses or use other access prevention methods.
In my apartment, walking from one end to the other my laptop can see about 40 unqiue wifi points. About 10 are "open." Only one can actually be used to get to the internet.
If half of the Slashdot griefers and whiners got off their Twinky-filled butts and actually did something with technology besides use it to complain and look at porn, the world would be a different, likely better, place for everyone to live.
I'm in no way a hippie, socialist, commie, or whatever. I'm just tired of people complaining about the government all the time becuase they feel entitled to gigabit ethernet drips pumped into their arms. Hey, Lazyasses, remember "of the people, by the people, for the people?" YOU'RE the government! Change it, or do like the guy above and take responsibility for your own life and do something with it.
If you think the government should give away internet access for "free" (nothing is free), then your priorities are out of whack.
If we're going to have governments give away services for free, let's start with a service that actually matters: clean water. Then branch out from there to free sewers, free steam/heat, free electricity.
THEN you can have your taxpayer-paid for "free" internet and ponies.
When the city of Chicago abandoned its citywide wifi network plans a couple of weeks ago, the thing I found most interesting was that it was dropped it mostly because of power issues.
The city (via AT&T) planned to put the access points on light poles. But it turns out that in most neighborhoods when the lights go "out" they don't just switch themselves off -- they're actually cut off from power entirely at some central point that controls hundreds or thousands of lights by pretty much pulling the plug on them.
To a techie, this seems silly because instead of a central sensor, you can have individual light sensors on the poles that can determine when to be on or off. But from a city-building standpoint, it makes total sense. It's completely simple, and there are far fewer parts to break. It's like yanking the plug on a string of Christmas lights. Low-tech brilliance.
All I want is a freaking phone that allows me to play music and videos (podcasts), install 3rd party apps, has 3G connectivity & wifi, has gmail and push-email support, syncs with an ical feed, has an IM client that works with all the major networks, allows me to teather my laptop via bluetooth to the phone, has A2DP, and a web browser that renders like a web browser should (WITH FLASH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.) Make your own MP3/AAC ringtones. Oh, and it needs to be on more than one carrier.
Slashdot Mirror
The communication skills of the college students applying for jobs these days is terrible.
On an August afternoon, all of Houston glows IR.
Photographers do it all the time. Whether it's paparazzi or your local news. It happens. If you were more interesting, you might find out first hand.
When I lived in Houston, the police department and the Harris County Sheriff's Department each maintained a helicopter in the air 24/7/365. This was from 1999 to 2003. Sometimes there were two HPD choppers in the air. But there was always at least two from the combined agencies. I heard shortly after I left that they grounded the helicopters at night because of cost, so this program just sounds like the same police surveilance that was going on before just with cheaper unmanned vehicles.
It's no big deal. It's been going on for years. All they've done is reduce the risk of killing someone (in the helicopter).
Unless you have some kind of time machine, I don't think you can say what any company would "never" do.
It depends on where you live. In some states any number of people can be fired at any time for any reason. In other states, a few people can be fired at any time for any reason. But in still other states (Illinois is one), any time you fire more than a certain number of people, you have to give the state and the employees 30 days notice.
Some companies are also bound by union contracts that require notice before large layoffs. And some people have personal employment contracts that require notice, or payment. I had one of those and got fired -- the company was so eager to get rid of me it cut a check for $11 grand just to get me out the door. I must have been a really bad employee back then.
Nice, but that Aspen project wasn't the first time this sort of thing has been done. Municipalities, insurance companies, and real estate firms have been doing this for decades. Since at least the 60's in some places. Probably longer.
For years you've been able to look at street-level pictures of every property in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) on the internet through the Assessor's web site.
Just because Google's doing it, people pretend like this is something new.
In fact, a previous poster looked at the data stream and it does appear that the IMEI number is hashed or salted or something.
(Mmmmm.... salty hash browns.)
But the helpful internet ad says my computer is broadcasting an IP address! We're all doomed!
Because beautiful women aren't as scary as the average Slashdotter would like to believe. Yes, there are a million jerks out there, but a certain percentage (10-15% in my estimation) are just normal people with the same insecurities as everyone else. Keep trying and you'll find a gorgeous blonde with a hot body that actually likes you for who you are. It worked for me. It just takes persistance. And often a change of geography. That helps a lot.
It's like socal networking... except that it's actually social.
They'll drive through a neighborhood and see all the access points that aren't WEP or otherwise obviously protected and assume that they're all clear. But they're not. If they actually bothered trying to connect to the internet through those points they'd know that most are locked to a particular set of MAC addresses or use other access prevention methods.
In my apartment, walking from one end to the other my laptop can see about 40 unqiue wifi points. About 10 are "open." Only one can actually be used to get to the internet.
+9 Absoshitly.
If half of the Slashdot griefers and whiners got off their Twinky-filled butts and actually did something with technology besides use it to complain and look at porn, the world would be a different, likely better, place for everyone to live.
I'm in no way a hippie, socialist, commie, or whatever. I'm just tired of people complaining about the government all the time becuase they feel entitled to gigabit ethernet drips pumped into their arms. Hey, Lazyasses, remember "of the people, by the people, for the people?" YOU'RE the government! Change it, or do like the guy above and take responsibility for your own life and do something with it.
If you think the government should give away internet access for "free" (nothing is free), then your priorities are out of whack.
If we're going to have governments give away services for free, let's start with a service that actually matters: clean water.
Then branch out from there to free sewers, free steam/heat, free electricity.
THEN you can have your taxpayer-paid for "free" internet and ponies.
When the city of Chicago abandoned its citywide wifi network plans a couple of weeks ago, the thing I found most interesting was that it was dropped it mostly because of power issues.
The city (via AT&T) planned to put the access points on light poles. But it turns out that in most neighborhoods when the lights go "out" they don't just switch themselves off -- they're actually cut off from power entirely at some central point that controls hundreds or thousands of lights by pretty much pulling the plug on them.
To a techie, this seems silly because instead of a central sensor, you can have individual light sensors on the poles that can determine when to be on or off. But from a city-building standpoint, it makes total sense. It's completely simple, and there are far fewer parts to break. It's like yanking the plug on a string of Christmas lights. Low-tech brilliance.