Well, slowing down is pretty much the same issue as speeding up. When you get about halfway there, you turn around and fire the engines in the opposite direction.
The debris issue? Well, first, you have this thing called radar, which can detect fairly big chunks from a distance. You could use chemical engines to maneuver so you avoid hitting these rocks. Remember that, assuming you're on a collision course, it wouldn't take a whole lot of propellant to change your course a fraction of a degree so that it misses you, and to change it back to what it was when it has passed.
Little tiny chunks are something else and could be a problem. You're never going to have a shield that could withstand a hit from one of these. Of course, to borrow a phrase, "Space is big." The chances of hitting/being hit by a micro-meteor in such a way that the rocket is destroyed are probably less likely than an airplane crashing. Do you not fly on an airplane?
I bike a lot, but I tend to get fed up with the bicyclists who feel "share the road" means, "I get to do what I want and you have to watch out for me."
I don't care that it's inconvenient for you to stop because you're clipped to your bicycle. If you're riding on the road, that means you're going to have to stop from time to time. If the toe clips make that a problem, ditch them. The road is not your private training track. You must share it with others.
I appreciate that it is physically impossible for you to travel the posted speed limit. But you don't have the right to block traffic. Here in California, you are legally required to pull over if you are unable to drive the posted speed limit and there are 5 or more cars behind you. This is true whether you're driving an antique car or a broken car or a bicycle. If you must ride so that you block traffic, do so briefly. If you reach a stop light, let the traffic that you blocked go past you when it turns green.
Signalling does not give you the right of way. Again, the variation of the "I can't stop", I've seen bicyclists who will stick their arm out and merge into traffic when the lane they are riding in is blocked, expecting the cars to "let them in." Nope. You wait for traffic to clear--just like you were a car. If that means you have to stop and wait, then you have to stop and wait. You have no more rights to the road than anyone else.
One, who's to say that there was no one in the capsule. This is one of the questions I always have: Which missions were fake? Just the landings (ie, Apollo 11-17)? The ones that left earth (ie, Apollo 8, 10, 11-17)? All of the manned Apollo missions (ie, Apollo 7-17)?
Suppose you put the actual astronauts in capsule and they commented on what they were seeing the people do at Area 51? Thus, the astronauts are orbiting the moon. They receive pictures and they "speak their lines" and the mix is what goes back to Earth?
The problem with this, of course, is that sometimes the capsule is behind the moon. I don't really have a good answer for this. Obviously, a communications satellite would work, but how do you get it to the moon?
But assuming you do that, then you have sent men into space. The people on launch pad don't need to know. The people on the recovery team don't need to know. So you've reduced a lot of people right there. So the only people who would know would be the people at Area 51 who assembled the moon set, the actors, and the communication guys. Assuming you double-up duties, you could probably easily keep it to 10 to 20 people.
Yes, I believe the moon landings happened. Still, it's fun to consider.
Did anyone ever point a laser at the Apollo landing sites before the Apollo missions allegedly landed? How do you know that wasn't a natural occurrence (some shiny rock) that NASA took advantage of?
Again, as the parent points out, no one is saying NASA was unable to land things on the moon. I'm pretty sure everybody believes, for example, that the Surveyor missions weren't faked. So I'd imagine that NASA would be able to land something on the moon that would reflect laser beams back to Earth.
As for the communications, I would assume that the transmissions were sent from the site of the fake moon landing (Area 51) to the Moon and then back. Why? Because that's obviously the first thing that the Russians would check--are these signals coming from the moon?
The tracking? Remember, these guys tracked a capsule that went to the Moon. Again, nobody has any doubts that capsules went to the moon. Were there people on board these capsules? We heard radio transmissions from the capsules, but much like above, there's no reasons the capsules couldn't have sent back voices from the US.
Moon rocks? What was the big thing we learned from the moon rocks? That they had many of the same qualities as Earth rocks! What a coincidence! So NASA got some pretty exotic rocks from Earth and stuck them in orbit for a year or so to soak up all the various cosmic rays that our atmosphere protects us from. One of astronauts from the Gemini missions picked them up during a spacewalk or some such and you have instant moon rocks--rocks from Earth that have been exposed to cosmic rays.
As I have said, I believe that men walked on the moon. But I do think it's a fun question: Could the moon landings have been faked--not were the moon landings faked. Could an individual mission--like Apollo 11--have been faked?
I no longer live in the northeast (US), but when I did, I kind of liked having plowed roads. If it does some damage to the roads, well, that's why we have these taxes so we can get them fixed.
So if everybody goes out and buys a Chevy Volt or a Tesla, where does the money come from to fix the damage?
This is my beef. Yeah, you can point the blame elsewhere. "It's not me! It's those SUVs, tractor-trailers, snow plows, winter storms, spring floods, tectonic plates, etc." The reality is, we all use roads. Roads need to be repaired. Money has to come from somewhere to pay for it.
One nice thing about the GPS idea is that it removes much of the politics from distributing the taxes received. If I live in Vermont and work in New Hampshire and I drive 4 miles in Vermont and 2 miles in New Hampshire, there's no question of where my fees should go. If all that is known is that I drove 6 miles, the politicians can start playing games as to where the money goes.
So you encourage electric cars, which is a good thing. So everybody switches to an electric car--again, a good thing.
But then who pays for the road to be repaired?
Yes, an electric car will certainly cause less wear-and-tear than a Hummer. But the value is not 0. Normal wear-and-tear, not to mention environmental conditions, will cause roads to degrade whether the car is 3000 pounds or 6000 pounds. Heck, I ride some bike paths that are in pretty bad shape and they only have bicycles and pedestrians.
Well, it is illegal to eavesdrop on protected frequencies. But it is not illegal to modify a radio set to do so.
You can do whatever you want with an electronic device you own. But if you do something illegal with said modified device, you'll get in trouble for doing the illegal thing. Not for modifying the device.
There is no new technology required to deliver electric cars. Just retool the factories and get started. Now that the government owns a big part of GM why not have a cheap electric car for 2010?
Well, there's the Chevy Volt, which is looking to cost about $40K.
There's more to it than just taking an electric engine, sticking it in a car, and calling it done. Remember when American car companies did that during the oil embargoes of the 1970s? They end up with a bunch of cars that couldn't get out of their own way because all they did was drop a 4 or 6 cylinder engine where there had been an eight cylinder engine. Consumers hated it and went and bought Japanese cars. So just sticking an electric engine in a car will give you crappy range and battery life, which will create an electric car that people don't want to buy.
For example, one of the issues they ran into with the Chevy Volt was the windshield wipers. How would you feel if, say, you only got 75 miles, versus say, 100, from a charge because it was raining and you were silly enough to run the windshield wipers? You'd then be complaining about how stupid GM was for thinking they could get away with this.
You can probably blame insurance companies for this one.
Actually, blame the government and car companies for it. It's actually kind of a fun story.
Way back when, the government mandated that the auto industry come up with some kind of "passive restraint system" for cars. Well, of course, the auto industry didn't like this. So the deal was made--the auto industry wouldn't have to have some kind of "passive restraint system" if the states that made up 80% passed a mandatory seatbelt law.
With that, auto industry lobbyists went to work getting all the states to pass a mandatory seatbelt law. The problem is that it actually was a pretty tough sell. The solution was to make it a "secondary enforcement"--the police cannot stop you for not wearing a seatbelt. But if they stop you for something else and notice you don't have a seatbelt on, they can give you a fine. There's usually no insurance issues, points on your license, or anything like that. So as long as you were a "good driver" (and remember that more than 50% of all Americans consider themselves 'above average drivers'), you didn't have much to fear. But it still fit the criteria of "seat belt law", so it counted.
Now the courts eventually threw out this "deal" and said the auto industry had to provide a passive restraint system anyway. Of course, the laws were already passed and it's tough to get a law repealed--especially a law that "saves lives."
No. But about the only one person who speaks for Apple is Steve Jobs. Other than that, everyone else has their own opinions on what's cool and what isn't.
Last week at WWDC, I spoke to someone at Apple who was interested in an App I'm working on. The problem is, parts of it need to run in the background for the best user experience. He agreed with me. That does not mean if I submit said app, it would be approved. What that means is that one person agrees with me--that my App would be better if it could run in the background.
Where would I go from here? Well, I need to find out from that one person who I would talk to about getting my app approved--the person I talked to wasn't the one person who gets to decide these things. I would need to talk to that person and see if there was a way for my app to be approved. Perhaps fly to Cupertino, CA, and demonstrate the usefulness of my app and the benefits of it being able to run in the background. Discuss the deficits of my App running in the background in regards to reduced battery life and general slowness and how I can ameliorate these issues.
In other words, I need to work my ass off playing politics with Apple.
Now, let's say Apple "seemed really excited." Apple may have seen this as a development tool. Let's say I wrote a C64 game. I could conceivably buy this guy's software, package it up with my game, and sell it in the iTunes Store. That may be why Apple "seemed really excited" about this--not as an App but as a tool for BASIC programmers to develop iPhone apps.
If you believe what is the the article then "Apple seemed really excited".
Apple is a corporation. It doesn't get excited.
People at Apple get excited about certain things. Other people at Apple don't.
To say, "Apple seemed really excited" means that someone at Apple seemed to think this was interesting. If it's 1 person in 10, that's not much help. What this guy should do is get in touch with the person at Apple who was really excited and find out why the app was rejected.
Frankly, it may be that they were excited about this not as an App, but as a development environment. If I wrote a C64 game years ago, I could buy their software and port that game to the iPhone with little effort. This gives the iPhone more apps which makes it look better.
Hear hear. If you want to write an AIM client that runs in the background you can do so. If you want to buy an iPhone, take it apart, and put it back together in a Kindle, that's fine. No problem. Do whatever you want to do. Apple isn't stopping you from doing whatever you want to do with your iPhone.
Just don't expect Apple to distribute it for you. Just don't expect Apple to make it convenient for you to distribute it. Just don't expect any support from Apple after you've done these things.
Basically, if you do these things, you're on your own. That doesn't preclude you from doing it. It just means nobody is going to help you out if you turn your iPhone into a very expensive brick. It means that if your battery won't hold a charge because you wrote an app that drained the battery in 20 minutes and you now have to send your phone in for battery replacement 4 years earlier than expected, don't blame Apple.
But, you see, this doesn't preclude subsidized phones.
Look, I have no problem with AT&T saying, "Hey, join our network for two years and we'll give you an iPhone for $199!" That's a fine way to get business and I have no problem with it. I don't even have a problem with Apple making this deal exclusive with AT&T.
Where I have the problem is when that's the only way. If I want to spent $700 on an iPhone and use it on T-Mobile, Commnet, Indigo Wireless, Smartcall, or Union Wireless, that's fine, too. If any of the above companies want to support Visual Voicemail, they should be able to get the specs from Apple and implement it as well.
This way, I can sit down and determine what kind of plan I want. Do I want a contract where I'm locked in for x years, but I have less immediate out-of-pocket expenses, a subsidized phone, and more predictable bills? Do I want a pay-as-I-go plan which may mean some really heavy months but some really light months, too? Must I have an iPhone? Is it better to spend $700 for the iPhone and $50/month for my plan, or spend $200 for iPhone and $70/month for my plan. Have I gotta have the latest/greatest phone and I'll want to switch every year? Am I the kind of person who keeps a cellphone for three or four years?
[...] innovation must happen at the phone maker level. To support this, operating system vendors need to also be innovative. And to make sure that innovative operating systems can run, advanced chips are necessary.
But none of that involves the carriers. Carriers are merely the pipes: A necessary component, but a wholly replaceable part.
Not entirely true.
Consider the iPhone, as an example. What did AT&T bring to the table, besides their network? Visual Voicemail. My friend has an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile and he's switching to AT&T and getting the iPhone 3G S (his employer will pay for it). And the the most exciting thing for him is that he finally has Visual Voicemail.
I'll agree that so far, I haven't seen anything really great. Sprint's turn-by-turn directions, maybe. Verizon's V CAST looks ridiculous. But to say that the carriers are "just pipes" isn't 100% true.
Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel?
Solutions:
The service is only available for $29.99 per month for those who sign a three year contract. So if you cancel, they still get their $1080.
Files downloaded from the site have an appropriate MP3 tag saying so. Before you can cancel your contract, you must download and run appropriate program which will delete all MP3s with the appropriate tag. Don't want to run it? Then you can't get out before the end of your contract.
Slashdot Mirror
I never should have had that trendy laser surgery. It was great at first but, you know, at the ten-year mark your eyes fall out.
Well, slowing down is pretty much the same issue as speeding up. When you get about halfway there, you turn around and fire the engines in the opposite direction.
The debris issue? Well, first, you have this thing called radar, which can detect fairly big chunks from a distance. You could use chemical engines to maneuver so you avoid hitting these rocks. Remember that, assuming you're on a collision course, it wouldn't take a whole lot of propellant to change your course a fraction of a degree so that it misses you, and to change it back to what it was when it has passed.
Little tiny chunks are something else and could be a problem. You're never going to have a shield that could withstand a hit from one of these. Of course, to borrow a phrase, "Space is big." The chances of hitting/being hit by a micro-meteor in such a way that the rocket is destroyed are probably less likely than an airplane crashing. Do you not fly on an airplane?
Share the road.
You, too.
I bike a lot, but I tend to get fed up with the bicyclists who feel "share the road" means, "I get to do what I want and you have to watch out for me."
I don't care that it's inconvenient for you to stop because you're clipped to your bicycle. If you're riding on the road, that means you're going to have to stop from time to time. If the toe clips make that a problem, ditch them. The road is not your private training track. You must share it with others.
I appreciate that it is physically impossible for you to travel the posted speed limit. But you don't have the right to block traffic. Here in California, you are legally required to pull over if you are unable to drive the posted speed limit and there are 5 or more cars behind you. This is true whether you're driving an antique car or a broken car or a bicycle. If you must ride so that you block traffic, do so briefly. If you reach a stop light, let the traffic that you blocked go past you when it turns green.
Signalling does not give you the right of way. Again, the variation of the "I can't stop", I've seen bicyclists who will stick their arm out and merge into traffic when the lane they are riding in is blocked, expecting the cars to "let them in." Nope. You wait for traffic to clear--just like you were a car. If that means you have to stop and wait, then you have to stop and wait. You have no more rights to the road than anyone else.
Well, let's think about this.
One, who's to say that there was no one in the capsule. This is one of the questions I always have: Which missions were fake? Just the landings (ie, Apollo 11-17)? The ones that left earth (ie, Apollo 8, 10, 11-17)? All of the manned Apollo missions (ie, Apollo 7-17)?
Suppose you put the actual astronauts in capsule and they commented on what they were seeing the people do at Area 51? Thus, the astronauts are orbiting the moon. They receive pictures and they "speak their lines" and the mix is what goes back to Earth?
The problem with this, of course, is that sometimes the capsule is behind the moon. I don't really have a good answer for this. Obviously, a communications satellite would work, but how do you get it to the moon?
But assuming you do that, then you have sent men into space. The people on launch pad don't need to know. The people on the recovery team don't need to know. So you've reduced a lot of people right there. So the only people who would know would be the people at Area 51 who assembled the moon set, the actors, and the communication guys. Assuming you double-up duties, you could probably easily keep it to 10 to 20 people.
Yes, I believe the moon landings happened. Still, it's fun to consider.
Did anyone ever point a laser at the Apollo landing sites before the Apollo missions allegedly landed? How do you know that wasn't a natural occurrence (some shiny rock) that NASA took advantage of?
Again, as the parent points out, no one is saying NASA was unable to land things on the moon. I'm pretty sure everybody believes, for example, that the Surveyor missions weren't faked. So I'd imagine that NASA would be able to land something on the moon that would reflect laser beams back to Earth.
As for the communications, I would assume that the transmissions were sent from the site of the fake moon landing (Area 51) to the Moon and then back. Why? Because that's obviously the first thing that the Russians would check--are these signals coming from the moon?
The tracking? Remember, these guys tracked a capsule that went to the Moon. Again, nobody has any doubts that capsules went to the moon. Were there people on board these capsules? We heard radio transmissions from the capsules, but much like above, there's no reasons the capsules couldn't have sent back voices from the US.
Moon rocks? What was the big thing we learned from the moon rocks? That they had many of the same qualities as Earth rocks! What a coincidence! So NASA got some pretty exotic rocks from Earth and stuck them in orbit for a year or so to soak up all the various cosmic rays that our atmosphere protects us from. One of astronauts from the Gemini missions picked them up during a spacewalk or some such and you have instant moon rocks--rocks from Earth that have been exposed to cosmic rays.
As I have said, I believe that men walked on the moon. But I do think it's a fun question: Could the moon landings have been faked--not were the moon landings faked. Could an individual mission--like Apollo 11--have been faked?
Agreed. So your solution is...?
I no longer live in the northeast (US), but when I did, I kind of liked having plowed roads. If it does some damage to the roads, well, that's why we have these taxes so we can get them fixed.
So if everybody goes out and buys a Chevy Volt or a Tesla, where does the money come from to fix the damage?
This is my beef. Yeah, you can point the blame elsewhere. "It's not me! It's those SUVs, tractor-trailers, snow plows, winter storms, spring floods, tectonic plates, etc." The reality is, we all use roads. Roads need to be repaired. Money has to come from somewhere to pay for it.
One nice thing about the GPS idea is that it removes much of the politics from distributing the taxes received. If I live in Vermont and work in New Hampshire and I drive 4 miles in Vermont and 2 miles in New Hampshire, there's no question of where my fees should go. If all that is known is that I drove 6 miles, the politicians can start playing games as to where the money goes.
That's about the only advantage I see to it.
So you encourage electric cars, which is a good thing. So everybody switches to an electric car--again, a good thing.
But then who pays for the road to be repaired?
Yes, an electric car will certainly cause less wear-and-tear than a Hummer. But the value is not 0. Normal wear-and-tear, not to mention environmental conditions, will cause roads to degrade whether the car is 3000 pounds or 6000 pounds. Heck, I ride some bike paths that are in pretty bad shape and they only have bicycles and pedestrians.
...Unless, of course, it was Apollo 11 which was faked and the other ones are real.
Well, it is illegal to eavesdrop on protected frequencies. But it is not illegal to modify a radio set to do so.
You can do whatever you want with an electronic device you own. But if you do something illegal with said modified device, you'll get in trouble for doing the illegal thing. Not for modifying the device.
As it should be.
Well, then, pick another celebrity who has managed a persevere during hardship. How about Farrah Fawcett? Now there's a survivor!
I know this is off topic, but I saw this cartoon today in a similar vein. But it took my a few seconds to get it...
Oh My!
Actually, there are only two groups: Us and Them.
There is no new technology required to deliver electric cars. Just retool the factories and get started. Now that the government owns a big part of GM why not have a cheap electric car for 2010?
Well, there's the Chevy Volt, which is looking to cost about $40K.
There's more to it than just taking an electric engine, sticking it in a car, and calling it done. Remember when American car companies did that during the oil embargoes of the 1970s? They end up with a bunch of cars that couldn't get out of their own way because all they did was drop a 4 or 6 cylinder engine where there had been an eight cylinder engine. Consumers hated it and went and bought Japanese cars. So just sticking an electric engine in a car will give you crappy range and battery life, which will create an electric car that people don't want to buy.
For example, one of the issues they ran into with the Chevy Volt was the windshield wipers. How would you feel if, say, you only got 75 miles, versus say, 100, from a charge because it was raining and you were silly enough to run the windshield wipers? You'd then be complaining about how stupid GM was for thinking they could get away with this.
You can probably blame insurance companies for this one.
Actually, blame the government and car companies for it. It's actually kind of a fun story.
Way back when, the government mandated that the auto industry come up with some kind of "passive restraint system" for cars. Well, of course, the auto industry didn't like this. So the deal was made--the auto industry wouldn't have to have some kind of "passive restraint system" if the states that made up 80% passed a mandatory seatbelt law.
With that, auto industry lobbyists went to work getting all the states to pass a mandatory seatbelt law. The problem is that it actually was a pretty tough sell. The solution was to make it a "secondary enforcement"--the police cannot stop you for not wearing a seatbelt. But if they stop you for something else and notice you don't have a seatbelt on, they can give you a fine. There's usually no insurance issues, points on your license, or anything like that. So as long as you were a "good driver" (and remember that more than 50% of all Americans consider themselves 'above average drivers'), you didn't have much to fear. But it still fit the criteria of "seat belt law", so it counted.
Now the courts eventually threw out this "deal" and said the auto industry had to provide a passive restraint system anyway. Of course, the laws were already passed and it's tough to get a law repealed--especially a law that "saves lives."
...or sell the additional games through the App Store so that Apple can make money off of them/make sure they will do no harm.
No. But about the only one person who speaks for Apple is Steve Jobs. Other than that, everyone else has their own opinions on what's cool and what isn't.
Last week at WWDC, I spoke to someone at Apple who was interested in an App I'm working on. The problem is, parts of it need to run in the background for the best user experience. He agreed with me. That does not mean if I submit said app, it would be approved. What that means is that one person agrees with me--that my App would be better if it could run in the background.
Where would I go from here? Well, I need to find out from that one person who I would talk to about getting my app approved--the person I talked to wasn't the one person who gets to decide these things. I would need to talk to that person and see if there was a way for my app to be approved. Perhaps fly to Cupertino, CA, and demonstrate the usefulness of my app and the benefits of it being able to run in the background. Discuss the deficits of my App running in the background in regards to reduced battery life and general slowness and how I can ameliorate these issues.
In other words, I need to work my ass off playing politics with Apple.
Now, let's say Apple "seemed really excited." Apple may have seen this as a development tool. Let's say I wrote a C64 game. I could conceivably buy this guy's software, package it up with my game, and sell it in the iTunes Store. That may be why Apple "seemed really excited" about this--not as an App but as a tool for BASIC programmers to develop iPhone apps.
If you believe what is the the article then "Apple seemed really excited".
Apple is a corporation. It doesn't get excited.
People at Apple get excited about certain things. Other people at Apple don't.
To say, "Apple seemed really excited" means that someone at Apple seemed to think this was interesting. If it's 1 person in 10, that's not much help. What this guy should do is get in touch with the person at Apple who was really excited and find out why the app was rejected.
Frankly, it may be that they were excited about this not as an App, but as a development environment. If I wrote a C64 game years ago, I could buy their software and port that game to the iPhone with little effort. This gives the iPhone more apps which makes it look better.
Hear hear. If you want to write an AIM client that runs in the background you can do so. If you want to buy an iPhone, take it apart, and put it back together in a Kindle, that's fine. No problem. Do whatever you want to do. Apple isn't stopping you from doing whatever you want to do with your iPhone.
Just don't expect Apple to distribute it for you. Just don't expect Apple to make it convenient for you to distribute it. Just don't expect any support from Apple after you've done these things.
Basically, if you do these things, you're on your own. That doesn't preclude you from doing it. It just means nobody is going to help you out if you turn your iPhone into a very expensive brick. It means that if your battery won't hold a charge because you wrote an app that drained the battery in 20 minutes and you now have to send your phone in for battery replacement 4 years earlier than expected, don't blame Apple.
But, you see, this doesn't preclude subsidized phones.
Look, I have no problem with AT&T saying, "Hey, join our network for two years and we'll give you an iPhone for $199!" That's a fine way to get business and I have no problem with it. I don't even have a problem with Apple making this deal exclusive with AT&T.
Where I have the problem is when that's the only way. If I want to spent $700 on an iPhone and use it on T-Mobile, Commnet, Indigo Wireless, Smartcall, or Union Wireless, that's fine, too. If any of the above companies want to support Visual Voicemail, they should be able to get the specs from Apple and implement it as well.
This way, I can sit down and determine what kind of plan I want. Do I want a contract where I'm locked in for x years, but I have less immediate out-of-pocket expenses, a subsidized phone, and more predictable bills? Do I want a pay-as-I-go plan which may mean some really heavy months but some really light months, too? Must I have an iPhone? Is it better to spend $700 for the iPhone and $50/month for my plan, or spend $200 for iPhone and $70/month for my plan. Have I gotta have the latest/greatest phone and I'll want to switch every year? Am I the kind of person who keeps a cellphone for three or four years?
There would always be people at the bottom, no matter how educated everyone was.
The real benefit would be that they would actually be able to make change if their cash registers crashed.
...and, more importantly, did the Mars lake have a monster?
[...] innovation must happen at the phone maker level. To support this, operating system vendors need to also be innovative. And to make sure that innovative operating systems can run, advanced chips are necessary.
But none of that involves the carriers. Carriers are merely the pipes: A necessary component, but a wholly replaceable part.
Not entirely true.
Consider the iPhone, as an example. What did AT&T bring to the table, besides their network? Visual Voicemail. My friend has an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile and he's switching to AT&T and getting the iPhone 3G S (his employer will pay for it). And the the most exciting thing for him is that he finally has Visual Voicemail.
I'll agree that so far, I haven't seen anything really great. Sprint's turn-by-turn directions, maybe. Verizon's V CAST looks ridiculous. But to say that the carriers are "just pipes" isn't 100% true.
Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel?
Solutions:
It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
Michigan unemployment is currently at 12.7% Hopefully, they'll have plenty of manpower to do this.