But you just said that you are not charged when you talk on a landline. And you said that if you call from a payphone to a landline, you pay for it. Why doesn't the receiver pay for it? Because you never pay for any calls on a landline, incoming or outgoing. Talking on a landline is free; talking on a cell phone is not free. (Pay phones are the exception: incoming calls are free when they're available at all.)
Actually, there are some unfortunate parts of the country where landlines are billed per minute - and the receiver does pay for incoming calls there.
But it's still one country. The geographical size of that country is 100% irrelevant. There really is no difference if you go from one end of USA to the other end of USA, as opposed of me going from one end of Finland to the other end of Finland. The geographical size is relevant to the extent that it means most of our travel is done inside the country. If you go on vacation to Italy, and I go to Florida, you're paying roaming charges but I'm not.
Well, you already kinda have that with cell-phones. You pay a fixed amoutn for certain amount of minutes. But for some reason incoming calls are treated differently, why? They're not treated any differently. When I'm talking on the phone, I'm charged for airtime, regardless of why I happen to be talking on it.
Receiving calls when roaming does cost money for some reason. [...] So the caller pays whatever he normally pays for his call, and the receiver pays on top of that. Aha. Here, I can take my phone anywhere in the US--covering the area of several European countries--and it works the same as when I'm at home, for everyone involved.
The carriers used to offer regional and local plans, where you'd get a lot more minutes for the same monthly price, but have to pay roaming when you left your region (e.g. Washington, Oregon, and Idaho). They don't seem to exist anymore, though, except for things like Cricket and MetroPCS, where you get unlimited airtime as long as you stay within about 40 miles of home.
Yeah, the trouble with that is it doesn't work in the car. I originally thought about getting an internet radio setup in my car, but the data usage would've cost a fortune. Sirius works in the car and anywhere with an internet connection - road trips are a lot more tolerable with it.
Do you pay for incoming calls on landline? If you do not, why should you pay for incoming calls on a cell-phone? I don't pay for any calls on a landline; a flat monthly fee covers everything. (Well, I don't actually have one myself, but that's how they work.) Does that mean I should expect not to pay for any calls on a cell phone?
Depends on the plan, but yes, 6.9c/minute is quite common price. And that includes calls to ALL operators. Interesting. Well, that's cool. I guess we are paying a lot.
One more thing - how does roaming work? Do you just keep the same SIM in your phone and use it in any country, paying the same rate as you would at home, or does something change when you travel?
And in USA they charge both the caller and the receiver? So how exactly is that cheaper? In the USA, the caller pays according to his plan, and the receiver pays according to his own. If the caller is using a landline, and your number is local to him, he pays nothing for the call - local landline service is almost always unmetered. If he's on a cell phone, he uses his own minutes. If he's at a pay phone, he pays the same 50 cents he'd pay to call anyone else, and so on.
In Europe, only the caller pays. You make the call, you pay for the call. Someone does pay: the caller. You might try to rationalize paying for incoming calls, but fact is that you are getting ripped off. Big time. Not really. The caller in Europe is paying twice as much, because he has to cover both ends of the call. If you call someone whose carrier has decided to charge $1/minute for incoming calls, you're stuck with that, right? You have to pay according to the plan your friend chose, instead of the one you chose yourself.
I pay for my own calls, why should I pay for phone-calls my friends make on their own phones? they make the decision to call me, they should pay for it. They're making the call on your phone too. You're the one who decided to get a cell phone - why shouldn't you pay for the convenience of receiving calls wherever you are? Why should your friends have to pay more because of a choice you made?
It's their phone and their service-operator and their decision, why should I pay for it? You shouldn't. That's exactly what I'm saying. I don't pay for other people's phone usage, I pay for my own. No one forces me to answer calls or even to get a cell phone in the first place. If I want to do those things, I pay for it.
The usual price here is aroung 6.9 euro-cents, for outgoing calls only. Incoming calls are free. You pay the same rate no matter who you call? Perhaps something has been explained incorrectly to me in the past.
US seem to be about those deals where you get certain amount of minutes for fixed amount of money. And on the surface they might seem "cheap". But what if you use more minutes than there are on your plan? Those extra minutes cost quite a bit, no? So the price goes up. And what if you use less minutes? You still pay the agreed sum, so the price per used minute can get very high. Yeah... but there's something to be said for knowing that you can talk for an extra hour and it won't cost you any more, and being able to budget for your phone usage. Most of those plans give you free airtime at night and on weekends and holidays, too. My bill usually comes out to around 9 cents per minute overall, which seems reasonable (certainly cheaper than any prepaid plan I've seen), and I only use 1/2 to 3/4 of my plan minutes.
So those package-deals might be "cheap" only if you use exactly the amount of minutes that are included in the plan. Use less or more, and the price goes up. And are incoming calls still counted against your plan? I honestly don't know. Yes, airtime is counted whether the call is incoming or outgoing, but the flip side of that is all outgoing calls cost the same. Someone has to pay for airtime - European carriers just charge your callers instead of you. You make the purchasing decision, but you aren't the one who has to pay, which probably means your friends are overcharged when they call you (and vice versa).
Most of europe had gone to an all digital network in the early 90s - I believe you can still find areas of the US that still only have analog service. Nationwide 3G is still a pipe dream. The only areas you might only find analog-only service are remote forests, etc. - the kind of place where I doubt you'd be able to get service in Europe at all. The existing digital service can't reach because of power or timing issues, but it doesn't make sense to build extra towers where they'll hardly ever get any use.
it's easier to keep clean This one always makes me laugh. How difficult do you think it is - could it possibly be more complicated than washing behind your ears or between your toes? And would you really turn down an excuse to spend an extra two seconds touching yourself in the shower?;)
I feel no sense of loss or deprivation, and although I'll willingly admit that I don't know what I'm missing, I don't much care either. As another poster pointed out, many women who were "circumcised" feel the same way. They don't know what they're missing, and they don't care. That's hardly an excuse for doing it, though - if you had been blinded at birth, you wouldn't know what you're missing either, but you still wouldn't be experiencing your full potential.
Female circumcision I'm against because I don't know of any valid reasons for it, medical or otherwise - aesthetic tastes are irrelevant until at least adolescence. The justifications for male circumcision are also irrelevant until at least adolescence, or until a problem actually presents itself. There's no valid reason to perform it at birth instead of (at the very least) waiting until the patient can express an opinion first.
I know in US it is not much of a problem but here in Europe 3G is happening right now and don't even think about Asia. Oh, it's happening in the US too. Verizon has a lot of happy customers now that their EVDO rollout has made it out of the huge cities.
It just isn't happening with Cingular or T-Mobile, which could explain Apple's problem. If they want to release a 3G phone in the US, it'd only make sense to release a CDMA phone, but then they wouldn't be able to sell it in Europe. This way, they can sell it to a bunch of Americans out of the gate who don't know any better, and then sell it in Europe once they have 3G support ready.
Have you ever heard of something called a 'user interface'? Apple knows how to build a good one, and Motorola, LG, Nokia, and the rest of them do not. Actually, LG interfaces are pretty good. I've owned two LG phones and I'm getting another in a couple weeks. No complaints.
You're saying GSM, which means that you, like me, are European. You have no idea what kind of technological dark age exists here in the US. You've got it backwards. GSM isn't technologically superior to CDMA. The advantage of the European networks is that they're all interoperable because of government mandates... but if those governments had waited a few years and mandated CDMA instead of GSM, you'd be even better off than you are now.
My life does not revolve around finding new music and programming it into my iPod. I listen to Sat Radio so I don't have to do that. Exactly. I had an MP3 player in my car for years before I got Sirius... but listening to the same songs over and over gets old. It's worth $12.95 a month to have someone else pick out music in the genres I like.
For the price of Sirius, I can buy a CD a month. In 4 months, I have a bigger variety then what they play anyhow. If you only listen to one station, maybe. They have something like 75 music channels, though - why are you subscribing if you only like one of them?
I subscribe to Sirius because it takes the work out of finding new music. I can put on a station that I like, tag the songs I especially like, and then every so often, download a track or buy a CD from one of the artists I found.
I paid $250 for my 27" SDTV, and it's still working fine. Until I can replace it with an equivalently-sized HDTV for about the same price (remember, a widescreen set has to be about 32" to be as tall), I'm not getting rid of it, so I'm not going to care about 1080p or BluRay support in any piece of electronic equipment - and 90% of American consumers are in the same boat as me.
Weight matters in everything I do. I spend over twice as much on carbon fiber tripods & monopods for their reduced weight. [...] I need performance desperately, so the 2.0 would hurt a lot. [...] I use it professionally, and I can't find any cheaper hardware to RUN WINDOWS ON to meet what my job demands of it. Then I contend you are not an average consumer, you're one of the 1% who actually use all the features of the MBP. Congratulations, but your personal situation does nothing to disprove my point.
If you want to try something fun, try to find a cheaper workstation than the Mac Pro for anywhere close to that price, same hardware spec. Nah, I found the last one. I have a fun activity for you now, but it's a really simple one: try to find a Mac laptop with a 15" screen and a C2D for anywhere near the dv6000t's price. Those are the hardware specs I'm interested in.
On the student discount, while I don't know anyone who hasn't gotten a friend to edu-discount them their MBP, I guess it's possible it could happen. Yeah, it is possible... because, you know, your friends still have to be students or teachers; they don't get a discount just for being your friends. Perhaps your group of friends includes students and teachers, but once again, you are not the average consumer.
If you don't buy a notebook with those features, you're not buying a competing model - you're buying a lesser model. Fair enough. You're buying a different model, one which offers all the features you need (for most values of "you") at a much lower price.
Did I mention the 2.16Ghz 1Gig of ram MBP is $1800 with the edu discount? Unless they extend that discount to everybody, it isn't worth mentioning.
If you can spec out a comparable notebook at anywhere near the $1800 pricepoint, you'll be much closer to the beginnings of a valid argument. Look at the HP dv6000 series. It has all the key features of the MBP, including a 15" screen, Core 2 Duo processor, built-in mic/camera and remote control, with dimensions within 0.5" and weight within 0.5 lb.
It doesn't have the extra nickel-and-dime features like the lighted keyboard, and the CPU is slower by a negligible 160 MHz. Instead of a useless FireWire port, you get an extra USB port. Its screen is the same size but runs at a standard resolution, which is slightly lower than the MBP's odd resolution. Overall, it costs 25% less than the MBP while providing 95% of the value.
I am sorry that you feel the need to insult me. I'm not attacking you, only your misleading remark which tortures the very meaning of the word "cheapest".
It's more like saying "the bmw m3 is the cheapest car in its class". However even then it's flawed, because you're accusing the MBP of being a luxury brand. Alienware sells a $5000 notebook - go take a look at it if you want to see what a luxury brand computer is. Yes, because the MBP is a luxury model. $2000 is a luxury price point (nearly $3000 for the high-end MBP), and the MBP is full of luxury features that most people have no use for. Alienware's $5000 model is for gamers with way too much money, the MBP is for fanboys with only slightly too much money, but they're both luxury models.
If you want a non-luxury notebook, look at HP or Dell, where you can get a notebook nearly as good as the MBP for 1/2 to 3/4 the price by giving up one or two features you'll probably never use anyway.
Macs are the cheapest hardware available. No, you're not fooling anyone with this lie. "Macs are the cheapest hardware available" literally means "there is no cheaper hardware than the Mac", but that's obviously false, as anyone can prove by spending five minutes at a computer store or web site.
Macs are only cheaper if you want exactly the features that they offer. If you don't need FireWire, or DVI, or a lighted keyboard, or a 2.16 GHz processor, then you can save hundreds of dollars by buying a competing model.
Your time would be better spent writing letters to your legislators and the media execs than stealing/borrowing/pirating (or whatever you want to call it) content that you have no legitimate right or need to access. My right to access a song or movie is every bit as "legitimate" as my right to access the digits of pi or the speed of light. It's information. I don't need it, I won't die if I can't have it, but no one else has a right to tell me that information is off-limits. Not even the heirs of the people who calculated the digits of pi or the speed of light can prevent me from using that information; why should the people who recorded a song or movie be any different?
Everyone says macs are expensive hardware, but it's not true. It's the cheapest hardware available, it's just high-end only. What a ridiculous argument. That's like saying BMWs are the cheapest cars available, because if you upgrade a $12,000 Honda to have the same specs as a $60,000 BMW, it'll end up cost more than buying the BMW in the first place. It ignores the very meaning of the word "cheapest".
If you want a 15" screen in your Mac laptop, you have to spend at least $2000. You can get a 15" screen in a competing laptop for $1000 or less. Other brands are a much better deal for anyone who doesn't need all the pointless features of the MacBook Pro, and just needs the essentials like screen size, CPU, RAM, and drives (and maybe even a few extras like built-in camera and mic).
You still believe that Mossad/CIA fairy tale? That's just a story The Man puts out to appease the people who are too smart to believe the Bin Laden hoax, but not smart enough to question anything else.
Open your eyes and see the truth, man! 9/11 was executed by the International Male Models' Union working in conjunction with Major League Baseball. It's so obvious you probably overlooked it at first, but dig deeper. It checks out.
It doesn't need to capture the whole body. Waist-up is adequate for ASL and probably most other sign languages. That's what I meant. If the camera is far enough away that it captures you from the waist up, that's pretty far. Holding my cell phone at arm's length, it only sees me from the top of my head to just above the bottom of my ribcage.
I suppose you could fit the camera with a special lens to give it more vertical range... but that leads to another issue: if you're holding the cell phone at arm's length, how are you going to sign with two hands? If you need to set it down on a tripod or something, then you can't just use it like a cell phone - is it really any more convenient than carrying around a TTY keyboard?
But there's another problem with using sign language via cell phone. Look at the screen mock-up on that page - it shows the signers from the waist up. If your phone is far enough away that it can capture your whole body, how are you going to see the screen?
Also, they claim "The current wireless telephone network has inadvertently excluded over one million deaf or hard of hearing Americans", but it's easy to get a cell phone that supports TDD, just like a wired phone.
Buying the product does not make you an owner of a copy of the work. Yes, it does. You're mistaken: that's exactly what owning a copy means.
When you buy a book, you own a copy of the story; when you buy an audio CD, you own a copy of the songs stored on it; when you buy a data CD, you own a copy of the programs stored on it. "Copy" refers to a tangible medium on which the information is stored. Whether or not you have the rights to make any further copies (which would be governed by the EULA, or in this case by an exemption to copyright law), you still own a copy.
So if you have 3 emachines and one failed over 7 years, you're doing about average. We have about 8-10 cheap PCs (mostly eMachines with a couple Compaqs). The one system failure didn't result in any data loss, and I'm pretty sure the fact that a mouse crawled inside the machine and electrocuted himself can't be blamed on the vendor. The one data loss incident we've had involved drives that were purchased and installed separately, not the original equipment.
Anyway, your argument seems to be that Apples are more expensive than Dells because they use higher quality parts. But this directly contradicts all the other claims that Apples aren't actually more expensive than competing systems with the same specs; the Apples just have higher specs.
The problem I've encountered is not that a MacBook Pro costs more than an HP laptop with exactly the same features, it's that I can't get the one feature I absolutely need (a 15" screen) without paying 33% more than the cost of a satisfactory HP model, and the extra features I'd get with the MBP hold no attraction whatsoever. I believe a lot of potential customers are in exactly the same position.
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Actually, there are some unfortunate parts of the country where landlines are billed per minute - and the receiver does pay for incoming calls there. But it's still one country. The geographical size of that country is 100% irrelevant. There really is no difference if you go from one end of USA to the other end of USA, as opposed of me going from one end of Finland to the other end of Finland. The geographical size is relevant to the extent that it means most of our travel is done inside the country. If you go on vacation to Italy, and I go to Florida, you're paying roaming charges but I'm not.
The carriers used to offer regional and local plans, where you'd get a lot more minutes for the same monthly price, but have to pay roaming when you left your region (e.g. Washington, Oregon, and Idaho). They don't seem to exist anymore, though, except for things like Cricket and MetroPCS, where you get unlimited airtime as long as you stay within about 40 miles of home.
Yeah, the trouble with that is it doesn't work in the car. I originally thought about getting an internet radio setup in my car, but the data usage would've cost a fortune. Sirius works in the car and anywhere with an internet connection - road trips are a lot more tolerable with it.
One more thing - how does roaming work? Do you just keep the same SIM in your phone and use it in any country, paying the same rate as you would at home, or does something change when you travel?
It just isn't happening with Cingular or T-Mobile, which could explain Apple's problem. If they want to release a 3G phone in the US, it'd only make sense to release a CDMA phone, but then they wouldn't be able to sell it in Europe. This way, they can sell it to a bunch of Americans out of the gate who don't know any better, and then sell it in Europe once they have 3G support ready.
I subscribe to Sirius because it takes the work out of finding new music. I can put on a station that I like, tag the songs I especially like, and then every so often, download a track or buy a CD from one of the artists I found.
I paid $250 for my 27" SDTV, and it's still working fine. Until I can replace it with an equivalently-sized HDTV for about the same price (remember, a widescreen set has to be about 32" to be as tall), I'm not getting rid of it, so I'm not going to care about 1080p or BluRay support in any piece of electronic equipment - and 90% of American consumers are in the same boat as me.
It's a shame the tagging system doesn't allow numeric tags. I had to tag this story "fourtwenty" instead.
It doesn't have the extra nickel-and-dime features like the lighted keyboard, and the CPU is slower by a negligible 160 MHz. Instead of a useless FireWire port, you get an extra USB port. Its screen is the same size but runs at a standard resolution, which is slightly lower than the MBP's odd resolution. Overall, it costs 25% less than the MBP while providing 95% of the value. I am sorry that you feel the need to insult me. I'm not attacking you, only your misleading remark which tortures the very meaning of the word "cheapest".
If you want a non-luxury notebook, look at HP or Dell, where you can get a notebook nearly as good as the MBP for 1/2 to 3/4 the price by giving up one or two features you'll probably never use anyway. Macs are the cheapest hardware available. No, you're not fooling anyone with this lie. "Macs are the cheapest hardware available" literally means "there is no cheaper hardware than the Mac", but that's obviously false, as anyone can prove by spending five minutes at a computer store or web site.
Macs are only cheaper if you want exactly the features that they offer. If you don't need FireWire, or DVI, or a lighted keyboard, or a 2.16 GHz processor, then you can save hundreds of dollars by buying a competing model.
If you want a 15" screen in your Mac laptop, you have to spend at least $2000. You can get a 15" screen in a competing laptop for $1000 or less. Other brands are a much better deal for anyone who doesn't need all the pointless features of the MacBook Pro, and just needs the essentials like screen size, CPU, RAM, and drives (and maybe even a few extras like built-in camera and mic).
You still believe that Mossad/CIA fairy tale? That's just a story The Man puts out to appease the people who are too smart to believe the Bin Laden hoax, but not smart enough to question anything else.
Open your eyes and see the truth, man! 9/11 was executed by the International Male Models' Union working in conjunction with Major League Baseball. It's so obvious you probably overlooked it at first, but dig deeper. It checks out.
I suppose you could fit the camera with a special lens to give it more vertical range... but that leads to another issue: if you're holding the cell phone at arm's length, how are you going to sign with two hands? If you need to set it down on a tripod or something, then you can't just use it like a cell phone - is it really any more convenient than carrying around a TTY keyboard?
But there's another problem with using sign language via cell phone. Look at the screen mock-up on that page - it shows the signers from the waist up. If your phone is far enough away that it can capture your whole body, how are you going to see the screen?
Also, they claim "The current wireless telephone network has inadvertently excluded over one million deaf or hard of hearing Americans", but it's easy to get a cell phone that supports TDD, just like a wired phone.
When you buy a book, you own a copy of the story; when you buy an audio CD, you own a copy of the songs stored on it; when you buy a data CD, you own a copy of the programs stored on it. "Copy" refers to a tangible medium on which the information is stored. Whether or not you have the rights to make any further copies (which would be governed by the EULA, or in this case by an exemption to copyright law), you still own a copy.
Anyway, your argument seems to be that Apples are more expensive than Dells because they use higher quality parts. But this directly contradicts all the other claims that Apples aren't actually more expensive than competing systems with the same specs; the Apples just have higher specs.
The problem I've encountered is not that a MacBook Pro costs more than an HP laptop with exactly the same features, it's that I can't get the one feature I absolutely need (a 15" screen) without paying 33% more than the cost of a satisfactory HP model, and the extra features I'd get with the MBP hold no attraction whatsoever. I believe a lot of potential customers are in exactly the same position.