I just checked my carrier's (Elisa Finland, affiliated with Vodafone) roaming charges. If you transfer an average of 2 MB/day or more, 10 euros/day is actually cheap.
Oh you mean "patented" medicines? Where they patented the process to make the drug because the government wouldn't grant a monopoly on a chemical?
Even though those clone (counterfeit is misleading) medicines contain identical chemicals and work identically well? Nope, clone != counterfeit. For example, counterfeit malaria drugs are being sold in Africa. They look just like the real thing, are packaged just like the real thing, are sold for half the price, and cost a tenth to manufacture because they only contain a minuscule amount of the active chemical, if any. The result: somebody pockets the difference while people die of malaria.
Then get a job working with Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc. These still exist, you know.
While on the subject, I'm sure many people have told RMS to fsck off. Then again, thanks to his "stupid dogma" I've always been able to count on some excellent tools (such as bash, apache, perl...), which are nearly always much better than the vendor-supplied equivalent. The latter tend to be somewhat quirky and/or limited.
Oh yes, I've always been paid real money.
No, there's nothing wrong with conservation
on
Building a Green PC
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· Score: 1
Imagine one day you noticed your gas gauge read almost empty. You make a quick mental calculation: you know how far the nearest gas pump is, and you know approximately how far you can go with what gas you have left, and subtracting the former from the latter, the result is close to zero, if not slightly negative. Now, if you conserve by driving in a very economical manner, you may well get to the gas station with fuel to spare. Then again, if you drive in your usual aggressive style, you will certainly run out of gas and have to walk or get a tow truck.
In my opinion there are two very strong arguments against this whole censorship ordeal:
first, it's against the Constitution (see the statement made by the University of Turku Faculty of Law in this PDF). Second, it does nothing to serve the victims, i.e. those children who get abused. It has been stated outright that the only purpose of the law is to protect web surfers against accidental exposure to child porn. This amounts to nothing more than pulling a curtain in front of an unpleasant sight; burying our heads in the sand lest we see something frightening. It is a shame that even organizations whose only agenda is to advocate for children's rights have fallen for this.
I don't have an easy solution to the problem, other than things like allocating resources to criminal investigation, international co-operation, promoting good parenting, and other boring old things that have worked in the past. Censorship will never be a solution, because data can easily be encrypted and transported in a clandestine manner. This can be used for both good, like promoting democracy and openness within oppressive regimes, and evil, like smuggling child porn. Thus far it takes a human to distinguish between good and evil, and even then it's not always obvious.
OK, but one could make a whitelist of legit and responsible sites which would have none of the problems you outline to begin with. Just as one could make a "whitelist" of legit and responsible acts that are not criminal. No problems?
Every sound gig resembles the following: Find the boxen/buckets of mic/power/adapter cables, untangle the mess left by the wank the night before, make a bad band sound good then untangle all those same cables from their gear and the beverages they have spilled throughout the night and just early enough that it has begun to congeal and stick and properly wrap to try to be nice the next shmoe unlike said wank from the night before.
And the following night the next shmoe does the exact same routine, starting with untangling the mess left by the wank the night before.
Somehow the properly wrapped cables manage to turn themselves into a tangled mess when left alone overnight.
Thing is, in MANY/MOST jurisdictions, one could just go to the local POLICE/LAW ENFORCEMENT and LEAVE/FILE a REPORT/COMPLAINT for a THREAT/INTIMIDATION. Whether that would START/INITIATE an investigation is a different matter altogether.
Without objecting to the rest of what you said, organic waste isn't all that big a deal, it isn't bulky and it isn't very persistent. Better to burn it as vehicle fuel than have it rot into methane though. How about have it rot into methane and burn that as fuel? (It's being done, but could be done at a much larger scale.)
The former, in some regards. Some European countries may have some things better (not all countries and not all things, mind you.) Because then you might actually say: "You know, if they have this, that, and the other in France/Germany/Italy/Portugal/Slovakia/Estonia, couldn't we do the same or better?" instead of "Well, it's still better than Iran and Afghanistan..." How about some healthy ambition?
How about when the robot confuses identical (or nearly so) gas caps and puts gasoline into a diesel vehicle? The gas station gets a nice repair bill for an injection pump, nozzles, fuel filter, and system flush...
(Diesel cars are very common in central Europe. And if you put gas into a modern diesel engine, the injection pump and nozzles will very likely be destroyed, because gasoline doesn't lubricate like diesel fuel does.)
This doesn't fare well with anti-theft measures: as far as I know, all current European Fords have a lock on the flap. You need the ignition key to open it. I don't know about other makes, but I remember seeing gas caps with locks. Some cars' gas caps must be opened with a button on the dashboard.
So here's how it goes:
Pull up near robot.
Stop engine or produce spare key.
Step out and open the gas cap with the key.
As your only key is now in the gas cap, figure out how to get it off without relocking the gas cap.
Having struggled the key loose, start the car.
Panic as the car runs very roughly and the "check engine" light turns on, since your gas cap is not properly attached and leaks air, which disrupts the delicate balance of yin and yang within the engine management system.
With 20 drivers honking and swearing at you whilst ignoring the 10 vacant pumps, pull up to the robot anyway, having decided to look into this ASAP (when you have some money, or when the car dies, whichever comes first).
Watch in amazement as the robot first swiftly opens the flap, then starts turning your half-unlocked gas cap one way; when it stops, turns it the other way, whereupon it promptly locks. The car, which you have forgotten to stop, now runs perfectly smoothly, whilst the robot has a hard time figuring which way to turn your gas cap, which now refuses to budge, since it has gotten the idea that somebody is trying to steal your hideously expensive European gas, and it will fight to the very end to stop it.
As the robot finally gives up, pull up to a regular pump, letting the next sucker of the 35 in line repeat the excercise in futility.
Stop the car, take the key with you, walk to the gas cap, insert the key.
Attempt to open the gas cap, only to find that the robot has managed to wind it so tight that the lock won't open any longer.
Ask inside for a pipe wrench or some kind of a tool, getting only a blank stare in response.
Phone your mechanic to explain the situation.
After your mechanic has stopped laughing, ask for a price quote.
After you have stopped laughing, calculate whether the gas in the tank will cover the drive to the garage.
Having gotten the answer "just barely", start hypermiling your way there.
As you run out of gas 5 km before you reach the garage, phone the mechanic and ask to be towed.
Ask the mechanic if you can have a discount for bringing such amusement to his life.
Once at the garage, do not ask about the "check engine" light. It will bring about further hilarity and cost you dearly.
Having paid the mechanic a hefty premium for the seven drops of gas he put in your tank, pull up at the first gas station you see. Stay clear of all manner of robots.
It's not just visual voicemail, people. Jeez, if I had a dime for every time I heard that used as the only putative reason that Apple is tied to AT&T...
It's also having structured, simple unlimited data plans, which is really what makes the iPhone shine.
Er, I can have a structured, simple unlimited data plan from any one of several carriers, with any phone I want. I have a Nokia phone and a Huawei 3G modem. The phone has a plan with a fixed number of outbound minutes + SMS messages + amount of data for a fixed price / month. The 3G modem has an unlimited data plan (with a speed cap) for another fixed price / month. If I made voice calls on the modem SIM, they would cost a certain amount / minute. I don't know about the situation in the rest of Europe.
It's about doing things like setting your voicemail greeting all through a GUI on the phone, without having to call into some number and follow prompts. (Simple? Sure. Not a big deal? Sure. But still, one little detail among many.)
If the carriers and device manufacturers sat down for a couple of hours and agreed on a common interface for this, then any phone could have voicemail control on the menus. (And other small details.)
It's being able to walk out of a retailer with the iPhone sealed in a box (which itself probably has more attention to design than most handsets do), and then the ability to seamlessly activate via iTunes, with a simple selection of choices, in the comfort of one's own home in a fashion fully supported by Apple and the carrier.
Here's one thing I just don't understand. Exactly what needs to be "activated" and why does it need iTunes? Does it mean entering your name, address, etc. into the carrier's customer database? Over here you can do that online and have the SIM card delivered, unless you buy a prepaid SIM, in which case you need not bother (as you pay before making calls). Once the carrier has associated your details with a particular SIM, you can start making calls. You're free to set up the terminal (phone, 3G modem, HSDPA card...) just as you like it. (Ringtones, background images, screensavers, etc.)
It's about expanding the iTunes/iPod/iPhone/iTunes Store ecosystem with a carefully planned strategy.
It's the user experience from end-to-end (peoples' own individual gripes with AT&T or any other carrier aside).
That's the issue, and all of those things take a lot of backend work and cooperation between Apple and the carrier. It's not just a handset; it's a complete end-user experience from purchase, to activation, to use.
Yes, that much I understand.
And yes, some customers might not "care" about all of these things. The power users, the hackers, the cutting edge geeks. But normal customers are a much larger target, and those are the people reading reviews, and those are the people who will drive to Apple's goal of 10 million iPhones. With wildly varying user experience and differences from carrier to carrier, how will the iPhone be viewed in the eyes of the iPod-buying populace?
Since I'm firmly planted outside the North American market, could you please provide a couple of pointers to these wildly varying user experiences and differences between carriers? How do they affect the use of the phone? Over here the only difference I've been able to detect is the size of my phone bill. A GSM carrier service is pretty much a commodity here: they're all equal, and people just pick the cheapest one. The carriers compete by trying to match people's usage profiles.
Apple has also shown it does these sorts of things -- and going into the mobile handset business is a HUGE foray -- in baby steps. Is it any surprise that the stage we're at now has carrier exclusivity for a variety of reasons, even beyond what I've already articulated above? Just because YOU don't like it or some IT rag pundit waxes philosophic about
Seeing as submarine cables do occasionally get cut by forces of nature and the odd unfortunately laid anchor, it's hard to tell whether these go in the oops or "oops" category...
Then again, this certainly is no communications blackout. Slowdown, yes; troublesome and costly, yes, somewhat. Even though Internet Traffic Report indicates router1.iust.ac.ir as unreachable, www.iust.ac.ir is currently reachable, at least from northern Europe. I don't know about other connectivity, though.
The Benefon Esc was first released in 1999. It was a handheld GSM phone with an integrated GPS receiver and the capability of downloading maps over the air. I would think they'd have patented the relevant bits. (The company is now called GeoSentric.)
The Wal-Mart $200 Linux desktop sold out in no time, so I'd say if Linux is not on the average schmuck's radar, it's because of a lack of readily available targets, i.e. preinstalled Linux systems available at major retail chains. If the average schmuck wants a cheap computer to run a web browser, email, word processor, and instant messaging, then Linux will fit the bill just fine, as it makes efficient use of the hardware, enabling for example a $200 desktop machine to be sold. Then again, a machine that's barely adequate for Vista is blazingly fast on Linux.
But it's true that you can't get a $400 Apple laptop, because Apple don't make low-end laptops. All their laptops are midrange (MacBook) to high-end (MacBook Pro) or special-purpose (MacBook Air).
For the average schmuck walking around a Best Buy looking for the cheapest possible thing that passes as a computer, a Linux powered machine looks like a viable option these days - if somebody makes it available.
If it really is possible to throw a switch under a tram, then yes, it is a design flaw.
It's relatively easy to disable the switch mechanism while a vehicle is close to the points (the movable part). Then again, each track switch has two paths through it: straight through, which can be taken at a high speed, and diverging, which must be taken at a reduced speed to avoid derailment. At a street corner there may be an arrangement where the track turns left and right, the right turn being straight through the switch, and the left turn being the diverging track. In this case the tram may turn right at a higher speed than left. A derailment could have occurred if the tram driver had prepared to go straight (right), but the kid had thrown the switch in front of the tram, causing it to take the diverging track way too fast.
Please note that I don't know about the specifics of the network or the incidents, only speaking of general knowledge.
FWIW, many tram networks have switch actuators operated by under-car electromagnets or catenary contacts; these should be harder to hack...
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I just checked my carrier's (Elisa Finland, affiliated with Vodafone) roaming charges. If you transfer an average of 2 MB/day or more, 10 euros/day is actually cheap.
I'd still take a rotary dial car phone just for the amusement value.
Even though those clone (counterfeit is misleading) medicines contain identical chemicals and work identically well? Nope, clone != counterfeit. For example, counterfeit malaria drugs are being sold in Africa. They look just like the real thing, are packaged just like the real thing, are sold for half the price, and cost a tenth to manufacture because they only contain a minuscule amount of the active chemical, if any. The result: somebody pockets the difference while people die of malaria.
Then get a job working with Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc. These still exist, you know.
While on the subject, I'm sure many people have told RMS to fsck off. Then again, thanks to his "stupid dogma" I've always been able to count on some excellent tools (such as bash, apache, perl...), which are nearly always much better than the vendor-supplied equivalent. The latter tend to be somewhat quirky and/or limited.
Oh yes, I've always been paid real money.
Imagine one day you noticed your gas gauge read almost empty. You make a quick mental calculation: you know how far the nearest gas pump is, and you know approximately how far you can go with what gas you have left, and subtracting the former from the latter, the result is close to zero, if not slightly negative. Now, if you conserve by driving in a very economical manner, you may well get to the gas station with fuel to spare. Then again, if you drive in your usual aggressive style, you will certainly run out of gas and have to walk or get a tow truck.
Now, is there something wrong with conservation?
In my opinion there are two very strong arguments against this whole censorship ordeal: first, it's against the Constitution (see the statement made by the University of Turku Faculty of Law in this PDF). Second, it does nothing to serve the victims, i.e. those children who get abused. It has been stated outright that the only purpose of the law is to protect web surfers against accidental exposure to child porn. This amounts to nothing more than pulling a curtain in front of an unpleasant sight; burying our heads in the sand lest we see something frightening. It is a shame that even organizations whose only agenda is to advocate for children's rights have fallen for this.
I don't have an easy solution to the problem, other than things like allocating resources to criminal investigation, international co-operation, promoting good parenting, and other boring old things that have worked in the past. Censorship will never be a solution, because data can easily be encrypted and transported in a clandestine manner. This can be used for both good, like promoting democracy and openness within oppressive regimes, and evil, like smuggling child porn. Thus far it takes a human to distinguish between good and evil, and even then it's not always obvious.
Just as one could make a "whitelist" of legit and responsible acts that are not criminal. No problems?
And the following night the next shmoe does the exact same routine, starting with untangling the mess left by the wank the night before.
Somehow the properly wrapped cables manage to turn themselves into a tangled mess when left alone overnight.
Thing is, in MANY/MOST jurisdictions, one could just go to the local POLICE/LAW ENFORCEMENT and LEAVE/FILE a REPORT/COMPLAINT for a THREAT/INTIMIDATION. Whether that would START/INITIATE an investigation is a different matter altogether.
There may well be perfectly good reasons to hate inefficient services. However, the same thing can be done in many different ways. For example, see WHO/Europe Highlights on health, Finland 2004. In 2001, the total expenditure on health care in Finland was $1841 (purchasing power parity) per capita; in the US it was $4887. This includes both the private and public sectors. (Health expenditure trends in OECD countries, 1990-2001, p. 11; see also p. 4)
The former, in some regards. Some European countries may have some things better (not all countries and not all things, mind you.) Because then you might actually say: "You know, if they have this, that, and the other in France/Germany/Italy/Portugal/Slovakia/Estonia, couldn't we do the same or better?" instead of "Well, it's still better than Iran and Afghanistan..." How about some healthy ambition?
How about when the robot confuses identical (or nearly so) gas caps and puts gasoline into a diesel vehicle? The gas station gets a nice repair bill for an injection pump, nozzles, fuel filter, and system flush...
(Diesel cars are very common in central Europe. And if you put gas into a modern diesel engine, the injection pump and nozzles will very likely be destroyed, because gasoline doesn't lubricate like diesel fuel does.)
This doesn't fare well with anti-theft measures: as far as I know, all current European Fords have a lock on the flap. You need the ignition key to open it. I don't know about other makes, but I remember seeing gas caps with locks. Some cars' gas caps must be opened with a button on the dashboard.
So here's how it goes:
No, but for some strange reason citizens of other countries aren't allowed to vote at their nearest US embassy...
It's not just visual voicemail, people. Jeez, if I had a dime for every time I heard that used as the only putative reason that Apple is tied to AT&T...
It's also having structured, simple unlimited data plans, which is really what makes the iPhone shine.
Er, I can have a structured, simple unlimited data plan from any one of several carriers, with any phone I want. I have a Nokia phone and a Huawei 3G modem. The phone has a plan with a fixed number of outbound minutes + SMS messages + amount of data for a fixed price / month. The 3G modem has an unlimited data plan (with a speed cap) for another fixed price / month. If I made voice calls on the modem SIM, they would cost a certain amount / minute. I don't know about the situation in the rest of Europe.
It's about doing things like setting your voicemail greeting all through a GUI on the phone, without having to call into some number and follow prompts. (Simple? Sure. Not a big deal? Sure. But still, one little detail among many.)
If the carriers and device manufacturers sat down for a couple of hours and agreed on a common interface for this, then any phone could have voicemail control on the menus. (And other small details.)
It's being able to walk out of a retailer with the iPhone sealed in a box (which itself probably has more attention to design than most handsets do), and then the ability to seamlessly activate via iTunes, with a simple selection of choices, in the comfort of one's own home in a fashion fully supported by Apple and the carrier.
Here's one thing I just don't understand. Exactly what needs to be "activated" and why does it need iTunes? Does it mean entering your name, address, etc. into the carrier's customer database? Over here you can do that online and have the SIM card delivered, unless you buy a prepaid SIM, in which case you need not bother (as you pay before making calls). Once the carrier has associated your details with a particular SIM, you can start making calls. You're free to set up the terminal (phone, 3G modem, HSDPA card...) just as you like it. (Ringtones, background images, screensavers, etc.)
It's about expanding the iTunes/iPod/iPhone/iTunes Store ecosystem with a carefully planned strategy.
It's the user experience from end-to-end (peoples' own individual gripes with AT&T or any other carrier aside).
That's the issue, and all of those things take a lot of backend work and cooperation between Apple and the carrier. It's not just a handset; it's a complete end-user experience from purchase, to activation, to use.
Yes, that much I understand.
And yes, some customers might not "care" about all of these things. The power users, the hackers, the cutting edge geeks. But normal customers are a much larger target, and those are the people reading reviews, and those are the people who will drive to Apple's goal of 10 million iPhones. With wildly varying user experience and differences from carrier to carrier, how will the iPhone be viewed in the eyes of the iPod-buying populace?
Since I'm firmly planted outside the North American market, could you please provide a couple of pointers to these wildly varying user experiences and differences between carriers? How do they affect the use of the phone? Over here the only difference I've been able to detect is the size of my phone bill. A GSM carrier service is pretty much a commodity here: they're all equal, and people just pick the cheapest one. The carriers compete by trying to match people's usage profiles.
Apple has also shown it does these sorts of things -- and going into the mobile handset business is a HUGE foray -- in baby steps. Is it any surprise that the stage we're at now has carrier exclusivity for a variety of reasons, even beyond what I've already articulated above? Just because YOU don't like it or some IT rag pundit waxes philosophic about
The depressing thing is, as a man I can't really think of why we should be allowed to stick around.
Genetic diversity? I fail to see how dropping an entire chromosome from the gene pool could be a good thing.Seeing as submarine cables do occasionally get cut by forces of nature and the odd unfortunately laid anchor, it's hard to tell whether these go in the oops or "oops" category...
Then again, this certainly is no communications blackout. Slowdown, yes; troublesome and costly, yes, somewhat. Even though Internet Traffic Report indicates router1.iust.ac.ir as unreachable, www.iust.ac.ir is currently reachable, at least from northern Europe. I don't know about other connectivity, though.
The Benefon Esc was first released in 1999. It was a handheld GSM phone with an integrated GPS receiver and the capability of downloading maps over the air. I would think they'd have patented the relevant bits. (The company is now called GeoSentric.)
When your self-rewriting find-xargs-sed-awk commandline exceeds the shell's built-in length limit and you don't have time to recompile.
The Wal-Mart $200 Linux desktop sold out in no time, so I'd say if Linux is not on the average schmuck's radar, it's because of a lack of readily available targets, i.e. preinstalled Linux systems available at major retail chains. If the average schmuck wants a cheap computer to run a web browser, email, word processor, and instant messaging, then Linux will fit the bill just fine, as it makes efficient use of the hardware, enabling for example a $200 desktop machine to be sold. Then again, a machine that's barely adequate for Vista is blazingly fast on Linux.
But it's true that you can't get a $400 Apple laptop, because Apple don't make low-end laptops. All their laptops are midrange (MacBook) to high-end (MacBook Pro) or special-purpose (MacBook Air).
For the average schmuck walking around a Best Buy looking for the cheapest possible thing that passes as a computer, a Linux powered machine looks like a viable option these days - if somebody makes it available.
I don't think the Diebold machines are secure enough for Internet terminals...
It's relatively easy to disable the switch mechanism while a vehicle is close to the points (the movable part). Then again, each track switch has two paths through it: straight through, which can be taken at a high speed, and diverging, which must be taken at a reduced speed to avoid derailment. At a street corner there may be an arrangement where the track turns left and right, the right turn being straight through the switch, and the left turn being the diverging track. In this case the tram may turn right at a higher speed than left. A derailment could have occurred if the tram driver had prepared to go straight (right), but the kid had thrown the switch in front of the tram, causing it to take the diverging track way too fast.
Please note that I don't know about the specifics of the network or the incidents, only speaking of general knowledge.
FWIW, many tram networks have switch actuators operated by under-car electromagnets or catenary contacts; these should be harder to hack...