I agree. The issue I have is the hypocrisy of Verizon insisting that it needs data caps because a few people will suck up all the bandwidth and slow down service for everyone else and then turn around and offer a service that sucks up all the bandwidth and slows down service for everyone else.
...and, as someone pointed out, would it be better if using Verizon Video ignored your data caps, yet using Hulu didn't?
Don't get me wrong--the whole, "We need these data caps to make sure the network doesn't get saturated by these bandwidth hogs streaming video!" followed by "Hey! Pay us $10 per month and be a bandwidth hog!" is a bit hypocritical.
Yeah. I'm waiting for some FEMA money to come up so I can say, "It serves those idiots right for living someplace where there are Earthquakes! My tax dollars should not help people who make dumb decisions about where to buy a house!"
I fully expect to hear that the Russians will use that tunnel to invade the good ol' USA.
Let's see. Russian division in the tunnel, nuclear torpedo fired from submarine... Ooh! Messy!
I'm no military strategist, but I'd have an issue depending on one tunnel to supply enough troops to fight their way through Alaska and Canada to get at "America's Heartland."
On the other hand, it does make a great set-up for the next Red Dawn movie.
Can the railroad handle a significant increase in traffic that comes from all of East Asia and wants to reach all of North America? Pretty sure not.
Probably not. On the other hand, you create the demand and someone will create the supply. If a tunnel to East Asia appeared in Cape Prince of Wales and the railroad couldn't handle it, that would show that we need a better railroad there and it would make it easier to get the funding to do so. Hell, at that point, the railroads would also be screaming to Congress for some of that free taxpayer money. Heck, even Canada might kick in some cash.
I'll admit, though, I'm just hoping they throw a bone to the green-types and put a bike trail in there...:^D
#1 It involves Russia. There are too many people who will be worried about pinko-commies invading the American Heartland.
Uh, 21st Century, Dude. The Cold War is over. Also, for them rooskies to invade the American Heartland, they have to go through this country called "Canada." You may have heard of it: second largest land mass, first nation of hockey, best part of North America? Yeah, that place. Pretty big buffer before you get to the "American Heartland."
#2 it involves rail. Yes, freight-rail primarily, which has some presence in the US. But there's no way that the US will build the kind of rail network that will link a tunnel on the far-western side of Alaska with the rest of the US in order to import Russian goods.
There are rail networks in Alaska already, including a 2000km railroad which connects Prince of Wales (where they're planning one end of the tunnel) to Fort Nelson in Canada (yes, that 'C' word again. Really, check it out. Lots of nice people up there)
#3 It will cost money. Considering that our lovely congress-critters are willing to blow up the US over money that has already been spent on previously approved projects, I can't see how the US government will spend even a penny on this completely pie-in-the-sky project.
Hm...Let's see...an oil pipeline that goes from Alaska to Siberia and links with other oil pipelines could transport oil to places like China. But it's not like the oil companies have any sway with Congress...
A railroad which could deliver goods to America? If it's cheaper than sending them by ship (and that's a big 'if', I'll admit), I wonder how many businesses would be interested in that? Of course, it's not like stuff is built on the other side of oceans and shipped to the US for resale. But if it were, and the transport was cheaper than doing it via the Pacific Ocean, I would imagine businesses would be quite interested. But it's not like businesses have any sway with Congress...
#4 It requires significant infrastructure projects in Alaska to link a tunnel ending at an uninhabited point in Alaska with places that can actually use all the stuff coming through. Not gonna happen, for the reasons listed above.
True. Fortunately, they're sending it somewhere where there's already people and transportation available.
Then evil Apple created a phone that ultimately allowed users to bypass the phone companies and load music and trivially create and load custom ringtones at no charge and browse the web without telco interference.
Huh? Try again.
First, if you wanted to add a ringtone to your phone, you had to buy the complete track from the iTunes Store for 99 cents. Then you were allowed to edit that song and send it to your phone as a ringtone for an additional 99 cents. Total charge: $1.98.
Yes, this was certainly cheaper than what the music industry was asking for. But the argument that the music industry deserves money for ringtones of songs you have already purchased is complete rubbish. Of course, Apple doesn't want to offend the music industry, so they go along with the charade.
Once Apple opened their own music store, they became a pawn of the music companies. Remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? You'll never see anything like that ever again from Apple.
I've heard all sorts of horror stories from bicyclists about cars. But, you know, I've never experienced it myself. I've been yelled at once or twice. Gotten a few cat-calls while wearing my bike shorts. I've been merged into and cut off. But that's about it.
I hear this comment from time to time: The real problem is the automobiles and their entitled belief the road was built for them. Of course, I usually hear it from those who believe that bicyclists are allowed to do whatever they want on the road and the cars just need to put up with it. The reality is that the road is a shared resource. Cars don't own it but neither do bicyclists. It is up to all of us to get along.
For example, the route I take to work has no bike lane. It is a three lane road with parking in the far right lane. As a bicyclist, I will "take" the right hand lane since there are cars parked along the side so it isn't a popular place for cars to drive in because while there may be a stretch with no cars parked, the driver will eventually encounter a parked car and have to try to merge back over. That said, I do find people coming up the right hand lane and getting stuck behind me. But when I get to an intersection, I will pull over and let them pass. Sometimes that means I actually stop and wait 30 seconds until all of the cars have gone past me before I continue on my way.
I know, shocking, right? Being courteous to other users of the road? Why am I doing that? After all, I have a right to take that lane and if those people behind me don't like it, well too fucking bad for them! They should get out of their damn SUVs and bike!
Here in California, "Share the Road" applies to both bicyclists and motorists. Consider your behavior on your bicycle and how you would feel if you were a motorist. Consider your behavior in your car and how you would feel if you were on a bicycle. Adjust your behavior appropriately.
Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way [...]
I don't know the route, but I'd probably be a bit surprised if that was the case.
I have a four year old Specialized Allez Elite. It ain't the fastest bike on the road but it's not bad. I went for a ride today and averaged 14.8 MPH. 30 Miles took me a little over 2 hours. Even if you figure in about 30 minutes for stop signs, stop lights, and a rest break, you're still about an hour and three-quarters.
It's one of those "surprising" things. My roomate told me a similar thing--she works about 20 miles away and there was no way she could ride to work--it's just too far and would take too long. We went for ride and got home in about an hour-and-a-half. When we got home, I pointed out that the ride we just did was three miles longer than her trip to work. She insisted that it wasn't until she looked at the odometer. A few weeks later, we took a Saturday and rode to her office. Sure enough--a little over an hour-and-a-half (it's a hillier route).
Don't get me wrong--don't want to bike to work? I can understand it. It's a tough habit to get into--you usually have to get up a bit earlier in the morning. I am not a morning person and the concept of exercising first thing in the morning is enough to turn anybody off. You also have to have a pretty straight schedule--need to hang out a bit later at work than usual because something came up? Then you're either biking home in the dark, you're annoying people by saying, "Sorry, I have to leave now," or you're paying for a minivan cab to take you home (which may be pricey.) And I agree with the weather thing--you wouldn't catch me out there in cold weather. I don't live where there's snow, but I do visit it in the winter-time and I've seen people out bicycling in the snow. I think they're nuts.
I don't know what state you live in, but check out Bike To Work Day/Week/Month come May of next year. No, you don't have to bike for a whole month--they have the day option. Lots of municipalities have special events on Bike to Work Day. Here in LA, you get free rides on the Metro and various groups set up free snacks and water/gatorade/random promotional stuff. But even if there aren't any special events, it's still kind of fun to do one day a year. And if it works out well, you might decide that it's kind of a fun way to get to work during the summer months.
And this is in an area with good cell phone coverage. I even get 4G.
Keep in mind that those may be two different things.
For Verizon and Sprint customers, 4G is a completely different set of radios. Voice calls continue to use CDMA. So it's quite conceivable that you could have spotty voice and awesome data.
At some point in the future, Verizon plans to support voice calls on their 4G LTE network and, ideally, phones can shut off the CDMA radio until they're out of 4G range. In the meantime, though, you're running two radios on different frequencies.
My GSM iPhone on AT&T has a very hard time in Vermont at my Mom's house. I'll pick it up and look at the signal strength and it shows five bars and 3G. So I fire up Safari and go to a website. And I'll just watch it go from five bars to four bars, then three bars, then two bars, then one bar, then "Searching..." then "No Signal."
If I leave it sit overnight unplugged, I'll wake up in the morning and find it's battery has died.
If I explicitly turn off 3G, everything is fine. The phone stays charged and it will consistently show "No Signal" (which is accurate).
True. If they decide they want to crash their own airplane, they certainly don't need a bomb or anything like that.
The issue brought up by Bruce Schneier is that all you have to do is figure out how to impersonate a pilot. I'd also point out that, if they're not being checked, what's to stop a pilot from bringing things for other people? So the pilot brings a gun and passes it on to someone else on the other side of security.
Is it because of Jobs' deteriorating health their product/innovation pipeline is shortening ?
I'm not sure I'd go for Steve's deteriorating health.
Some of it is just plain ol' competition. When the iPhone first came out, everybody was in awe. This was seen as being head-and-shoulders above everybody else. By the time the iPhone 3G came out, Android was getting started and was a bit flaky but the hardware parts had been figured out. By the time the iPhone 4 came out, the Android hardware was easily there and the software was catching up fast. When the next generation iPhone comes out, it will sport hardware that has been in Android phones for the last six months and "Ice Cream Sandwich" will be more than a match for iOS 5.
That's what happens when you have lots of companies competing. Apple goes it's own way in it's own time and customers have to sit and wait. Meanwhile, HTC comes out with a good phone, Motorola comes out with great phone, Samsung comes out with an awesome phone, HTC comes out with the awesomest phone, Motorola comes out with a more awesomest phone, etc. Meanwhile Apple is sitting in it's own little pond plodding along and delivering updates once a year.
I'm a long-time Macintosh developer. When looking at job postings and the like, if I saw an advertisement looking for a MAC developer, I knew the company "didn't get it" and it's probably not a company I'd like to work for. If I saw "Mac" or "Macintosh," they were worth checking out.
It's like calling it "Mac Oh-Ess-Ex" instead of "Mac Oh-Ess-Ten" or, arguably, "lynux" instead of "linux."
if all the aiming is done in the boost phase then you're probably aiming at something the size of a city, while this thing could hit a city block or maybe a house.
Well, in theory, we have exceedingly accurate ICBMs.
But you mentioned something important: Moving targets. Part of the problem with an ICBM is that it's good at hitting military installations which don't move around very much. But suppose you have a mobile launcher? Something like this could conceivably be launched and have it's course corrected.
But even ignoring that for a moment, I see nothing but good things coming from this research and the money spent thereupon. If they can figure it out for a missile (with government assistance), perhaps they can use this money to develop actual human transportation systems.
My first thought was that carmakers just need to leave the sensitive/important control elements of a car decoupled from those which are network-enabled. I believe that airliners are designed similarly
And you would think that car manufacturers would feel the same way. However, car manufacturers produce more cars than airplane manufacturers produce airplanes. And saving, say, $10 per car by having one network that handles everything is a good thing. Besides, it makes it easier to do things like starting your car from your iPhone which is cool.
A number of explanations have been proposed for the far side's highlands, including one suggesting that gravitational forces were the culprits rather than an impact from Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but are they suggesting that Francis Nimmo and his colleagues hit the moon?
True, but they weren't sure how it would all turn out.
Well, you never know how these things are going to turn out. Yes, Amazon is going to tell you what a great idea it is. Heck, I'll send you an e-mail telling you that I have hundreds of twitter followers and if you give me a free copy of your app and I like it, I'll promote it. It might work out. It might not.
There might be times when this is a good idea. If you're planning on shipping version 2--a paid upgrade--in six months, then it might be worthwhile to take the hit and make some money in upgrade fees. If you're trying to promote the company ("Look what cool stuff we do!") or other products ("If you like this game, you'll love Whizzo!") in the hope of creating buzz, then it might be worthwhile. Obviously, if you make your money on in-app purchases or advertising, this is a good idea.
It depends on your business plan. If your plan is the solid, conventional, "I sell you software, I make money"-type of thing, then giving away the thing you're trying to sell isn't a good idea. But the one example that Amazon gave were "Angry Birds Rio", which is a free game to promote a movie and, I believe, uses in-app purchases for different levels.
About the only issue I have is that Amazon implies that the developer is getting something to customers whereas they are getting squat.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, that port is currently tied up with PMA2, the now-unneeded shuttle docking adapter.
Just out of curiosity, couldn't they get rid of the shuttle docking adopter? Or is there an "old docking interface" behind it?
I agree. The issue I have is the hypocrisy of Verizon insisting that it needs data caps because a few people will suck up all the bandwidth and slow down service for everyone else and then turn around and offer a service that sucks up all the bandwidth and slows down service for everyone else.
...and, as someone pointed out, would it be better if using Verizon Video ignored your data caps, yet using Hulu didn't?
Don't get me wrong--the whole, "We need these data caps to make sure the network doesn't get saturated by these bandwidth hogs streaming video!" followed by "Hey! Pay us $10 per month and be a bandwidth hog!" is a bit hypocritical.
Yeah. I'm waiting for some FEMA money to come up so I can say, "It serves those idiots right for living someplace where there are Earthquakes! My tax dollars should not help people who make dumb decisions about where to buy a house!"
I fully expect to hear that the Russians will use that tunnel to invade the good ol' USA.
Let's see. Russian division in the tunnel, nuclear torpedo fired from submarine... Ooh! Messy!
I'm no military strategist, but I'd have an issue depending on one tunnel to supply enough troops to fight their way through Alaska and Canada to get at "America's Heartland."
On the other hand, it does make a great set-up for the next Red Dawn movie.
Can the railroad handle a significant increase in traffic that comes from all of East Asia and wants to reach all of North America? Pretty sure not.
Probably not. On the other hand, you create the demand and someone will create the supply. If a tunnel to East Asia appeared in Cape Prince of Wales and the railroad couldn't handle it, that would show that we need a better railroad there and it would make it easier to get the funding to do so. Hell, at that point, the railroads would also be screaming to Congress for some of that free taxpayer money. Heck, even Canada might kick in some cash.
I'll admit, though, I'm just hoping they throw a bone to the green-types and put a bike trail in there... :^D
#1 It involves Russia. There are too many people who will be worried about pinko-commies invading the American Heartland.
Uh, 21st Century, Dude. The Cold War is over. Also, for them rooskies to invade the American Heartland, they have to go through this country called "Canada." You may have heard of it: second largest land mass, first nation of hockey, best part of North America? Yeah, that place. Pretty big buffer before you get to the "American Heartland."
#2 it involves rail. Yes, freight-rail primarily, which has some presence in the US. But there's no way that the US will build the kind of rail network that will link a tunnel on the far-western side of Alaska with the rest of the US in order to import Russian goods.
There are rail networks in Alaska already, including a 2000km railroad which connects Prince of Wales (where they're planning one end of the tunnel) to Fort Nelson in Canada (yes, that 'C' word again. Really, check it out. Lots of nice people up there)
#3 It will cost money. Considering that our lovely congress-critters are willing to blow up the US over money that has already been spent on previously approved projects, I can't see how the US government will spend even a penny on this completely pie-in-the-sky project.
Hm...Let's see...an oil pipeline that goes from Alaska to Siberia and links with other oil pipelines could transport oil to places like China. But it's not like the oil companies have any sway with Congress...
A railroad which could deliver goods to America? If it's cheaper than sending them by ship (and that's a big 'if', I'll admit), I wonder how many businesses would be interested in that? Of course, it's not like stuff is built on the other side of oceans and shipped to the US for resale. But if it were, and the transport was cheaper than doing it via the Pacific Ocean, I would imagine businesses would be quite interested. But it's not like businesses have any sway with Congress...
#4 It requires significant infrastructure projects in Alaska to link a tunnel ending at an uninhabited point in Alaska with places that can actually use all the stuff coming through. Not gonna happen, for the reasons listed above.
True. Fortunately, they're sending it somewhere where there's already people and transportation available.
All you other Mark Zuckerbergs are just imitating.
Huh? Try again.
First, if you wanted to add a ringtone to your phone, you had to buy the complete track from the iTunes Store for 99 cents. Then you were allowed to edit that song and send it to your phone as a ringtone for an additional 99 cents. Total charge: $1.98.
Yes, this was certainly cheaper than what the music industry was asking for. But the argument that the music industry deserves money for ringtones of songs you have already purchased is complete rubbish. Of course, Apple doesn't want to offend the music industry, so they go along with the charade.
Once Apple opened their own music store, they became a pawn of the music companies. Remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? You'll never see anything like that ever again from Apple.
Yes. Apple could submit the videos as evidence. I'm sure they wouldn't doctor anything--after all, they're not like Microsoft...
Oh shit! The worlds going to end due to some NASA's guy subcompact automobile! Run for the hills!
I sometimes wonder about this.
I've heard all sorts of horror stories from bicyclists about cars. But, you know, I've never experienced it myself. I've been yelled at once or twice. Gotten a few cat-calls while wearing my bike shorts. I've been merged into and cut off. But that's about it.
I hear this comment from time to time: The real problem is the automobiles and their entitled belief the road was built for them. Of course, I usually hear it from those who believe that bicyclists are allowed to do whatever they want on the road and the cars just need to put up with it. The reality is that the road is a shared resource. Cars don't own it but neither do bicyclists. It is up to all of us to get along.
For example, the route I take to work has no bike lane. It is a three lane road with parking in the far right lane. As a bicyclist, I will "take" the right hand lane since there are cars parked along the side so it isn't a popular place for cars to drive in because while there may be a stretch with no cars parked, the driver will eventually encounter a parked car and have to try to merge back over. That said, I do find people coming up the right hand lane and getting stuck behind me. But when I get to an intersection, I will pull over and let them pass. Sometimes that means I actually stop and wait 30 seconds until all of the cars have gone past me before I continue on my way.
I know, shocking, right? Being courteous to other users of the road? Why am I doing that? After all, I have a right to take that lane and if those people behind me don't like it, well too fucking bad for them! They should get out of their damn SUVs and bike!
Here in California, "Share the Road" applies to both bicyclists and motorists. Consider your behavior on your bicycle and how you would feel if you were a motorist. Consider your behavior in your car and how you would feel if you were on a bicycle. Adjust your behavior appropriately.
Helmets are necessary only to the extent that other road users make them so [...]
Uh, shit can happen. I like my brain. I'd like to continue to be able to use it.
Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way [...]
I don't know the route, but I'd probably be a bit surprised if that was the case.
I have a four year old Specialized Allez Elite. It ain't the fastest bike on the road but it's not bad. I went for a ride today and averaged 14.8 MPH. 30 Miles took me a little over 2 hours. Even if you figure in about 30 minutes for stop signs, stop lights, and a rest break, you're still about an hour and three-quarters.
It's one of those "surprising" things. My roomate told me a similar thing--she works about 20 miles away and there was no way she could ride to work--it's just too far and would take too long. We went for ride and got home in about an hour-and-a-half. When we got home, I pointed out that the ride we just did was three miles longer than her trip to work. She insisted that it wasn't until she looked at the odometer. A few weeks later, we took a Saturday and rode to her office. Sure enough--a little over an hour-and-a-half (it's a hillier route).
Don't get me wrong--don't want to bike to work? I can understand it. It's a tough habit to get into--you usually have to get up a bit earlier in the morning. I am not a morning person and the concept of exercising first thing in the morning is enough to turn anybody off. You also have to have a pretty straight schedule--need to hang out a bit later at work than usual because something came up? Then you're either biking home in the dark, you're annoying people by saying, "Sorry, I have to leave now," or you're paying for a minivan cab to take you home (which may be pricey.) And I agree with the weather thing--you wouldn't catch me out there in cold weather. I don't live where there's snow, but I do visit it in the winter-time and I've seen people out bicycling in the snow. I think they're nuts.
I don't know what state you live in, but check out Bike To Work Day/Week/Month come May of next year. No, you don't have to bike for a whole month--they have the day option. Lots of municipalities have special events on Bike to Work Day. Here in LA, you get free rides on the Metro and various groups set up free snacks and water/gatorade/random promotional stuff. But even if there aren't any special events, it's still kind of fun to do one day a year. And if it works out well, you might decide that it's kind of a fun way to get to work during the summer months.
Keep in mind that those may be two different things.
For Verizon and Sprint customers, 4G is a completely different set of radios. Voice calls continue to use CDMA. So it's quite conceivable that you could have spotty voice and awesome data.
At some point in the future, Verizon plans to support voice calls on their 4G LTE network and, ideally, phones can shut off the CDMA radio until they're out of 4G range. In the meantime, though, you're running two radios on different frequencies.
It's also pretty fussy in a rural area.
My GSM iPhone on AT&T has a very hard time in Vermont at my Mom's house. I'll pick it up and look at the signal strength and it shows five bars and 3G. So I fire up Safari and go to a website. And I'll just watch it go from five bars to four bars, then three bars, then two bars, then one bar, then "Searching..." then "No Signal."
If I leave it sit overnight unplugged, I'll wake up in the morning and find it's battery has died.
If I explicitly turn off 3G, everything is fine. The phone stays charged and it will consistently show "No Signal" (which is accurate).
True. If they decide they want to crash their own airplane, they certainly don't need a bomb or anything like that.
The issue brought up by Bruce Schneier is that all you have to do is figure out how to impersonate a pilot. I'd also point out that, if they're not being checked, what's to stop a pilot from bringing things for other people? So the pilot brings a gun and passes it on to someone else on the other side of security.
Is it because of Jobs' deteriorating health their product/innovation pipeline is shortening ?
I'm not sure I'd go for Steve's deteriorating health.
Some of it is just plain ol' competition. When the iPhone first came out, everybody was in awe. This was seen as being head-and-shoulders above everybody else. By the time the iPhone 3G came out, Android was getting started and was a bit flaky but the hardware parts had been figured out. By the time the iPhone 4 came out, the Android hardware was easily there and the software was catching up fast. When the next generation iPhone comes out, it will sport hardware that has been in Android phones for the last six months and "Ice Cream Sandwich" will be more than a match for iOS 5.
That's what happens when you have lots of companies competing. Apple goes it's own way in it's own time and customers have to sit and wait. Meanwhile, HTC comes out with a good phone, Motorola comes out with great phone, Samsung comes out with an awesome phone, HTC comes out with the awesomest phone, Motorola comes out with a more awesomest phone, etc. Meanwhile Apple is sitting in it's own little pond plodding along and delivering updates once a year.
Depends on what you mean by offensive.
I'm a long-time Macintosh developer. When looking at job postings and the like, if I saw an advertisement looking for a MAC developer, I knew the company "didn't get it" and it's probably not a company I'd like to work for. If I saw "Mac" or "Macintosh," they were worth checking out.
It's like calling it "Mac Oh-Ess-Ex" instead of "Mac Oh-Ess-Ten" or, arguably, "lynux" instead of "linux."
if all the aiming is done in the boost phase then you're probably aiming at something the size of a city, while this thing could hit a city block or maybe a house.
Well, in theory, we have exceedingly accurate ICBMs.
But you mentioned something important: Moving targets. Part of the problem with an ICBM is that it's good at hitting military installations which don't move around very much. But suppose you have a mobile launcher? Something like this could conceivably be launched and have it's course corrected.
But even ignoring that for a moment, I see nothing but good things coming from this research and the money spent thereupon. If they can figure it out for a missile (with government assistance), perhaps they can use this money to develop actual human transportation systems.
Yes.
About 1 and a half barrels of oil.
Hm...maybe I can trade that Pippin in for a Mac Pro...
My first thought was that carmakers just need to leave the sensitive/important control elements of a car decoupled from those which are network-enabled. I believe that airliners are designed similarly
And you would think that car manufacturers would feel the same way. However, car manufacturers produce more cars than airplane manufacturers produce airplanes. And saving, say, $10 per car by having one network that handles everything is a good thing. Besides, it makes it easier to do things like starting your car from your iPhone which is cool.
A number of explanations have been proposed for the far side's highlands, including one suggesting that gravitational forces were the culprits rather than an impact from Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but are they suggesting that Francis Nimmo and his colleagues hit the moon?
Damn. That Francis Nimmo is so fat...
True, but they weren't sure how it would all turn out.
Well, you never know how these things are going to turn out. Yes, Amazon is going to tell you what a great idea it is. Heck, I'll send you an e-mail telling you that I have hundreds of twitter followers and if you give me a free copy of your app and I like it, I'll promote it. It might work out. It might not.
There might be times when this is a good idea. If you're planning on shipping version 2--a paid upgrade--in six months, then it might be worthwhile to take the hit and make some money in upgrade fees. If you're trying to promote the company ("Look what cool stuff we do!") or other products ("If you like this game, you'll love Whizzo!") in the hope of creating buzz, then it might be worthwhile. Obviously, if you make your money on in-app purchases or advertising, this is a good idea.
It depends on your business plan. If your plan is the solid, conventional, "I sell you software, I make money"-type of thing, then giving away the thing you're trying to sell isn't a good idea. But the one example that Amazon gave were "Angry Birds Rio", which is a free game to promote a movie and, I believe, uses in-app purchases for different levels.
About the only issue I have is that Amazon implies that the developer is getting something to customers whereas they are getting squat.