More handsets in a particular cell sector means that the cell is transmitting a much greater percentage of the time on the various signaling and traffic channels that would be quiet without calls. GSM has multiple channels. Some of them are "broadcast" channels that continuously transmit the GSM cell ID and other info. Other channels only transmit when paging a handset or signaling with a particular handset. More calls means the occupancy of these channels is much higher. Then there are the traffic channels which carry the "bearer" voice or data for the duration of a call. If there are 100 simultaneous conversations then you are transmitting voice on 100 separate frequencies. CDMA (3G UMTS/4G LTE/CDMA 2G/CDMA-2000) radio is different in this respect. It uses "spread spectrum" techniques where additional calls add to a single wide band signal. From the perspective of each handset, the calls on all the other handsets look like noise. But the principal is simlar....additional calls means more power consumption at the tower.
And what they didn't say is that power use is directly proportional to the number of handsets and the distance of those handsets. A 25W amplifier will require 25W of power....Talking to 1000 handsets is different than talking to 1 handset.
What should I do if I purchased the HP TouchPad outside of the 14-day return policy and would like to return it?
Best Buy is extending its return/exchange policy on the HP TouchPad and all HP TouchPad accessories to 60 days. Come into a Best Buy store and we will help you find another tablet to fit your needs or issue you a refund.
So it sounds like everybody who bought a touchpad from day 1 can return it for a full refund.
I am guessing the guy's strategy will work....march up to the counter, demand a refund, and then ask to re-purchase the item at the clearance price.
No, SMS is not free, and they don't piggyback on spare bandwidth.
Each Mobile Originated SMS requires the similar signaling channel setup as a voice call including mobile authentication, encryption key exchanges and connection state messaging. A Mobile Terminated SMS also requires paging channel to find the Mobile in a similar fashion to a Mobile Terminated voice call.
In addition, all the back end processing of the messaging (store and forward, billing, etc.) need to be maintained as well.
The major advantage of SMS over something like an IM data app is that your phone doesn't need to maintain constant data session in order to receive messaging. Big savings on battery life.
That being said, $0.20 per message is a huge ripoff...when my 12 year old first discovered messaging, I learned it the hard way with a $150 bill...
Its amazing that: "Hi", "Hi", "Whatcha doin", "nothin", "kewl" cost me $1.....but T-Mobiles $10 per month unlimited SMS on a family plan solved that problem.
I agree that they were a once proud company. I interviewed with them in 1981, when they were regarded as one of the best places to work. But I think they took their eye off the ball and started screwing their customers with shoddy products that they wouldn't even support.
I had the misfortune of purchasing one of their DV9000 laptops...with the overheating left hinge problem which freezes and then cracks the case when you try to open it. Typical design problem that HP knew about pretty early in the game...lots of frustruation with them and CompUSA (their authorized service center) trying to get a repair out of them....even during the warrenty period when they told me it was because I dropped the laptop.
When it happened a second time 4 years after I bought the laptop, I called HP customer support, and was told they have dropped all support for that product...can't even order the parts.
Together with other stories of non-support to their consumer grade customers, I think they are gettting what they deserve.
While the TFA didn't mention it, I am guessing that whoever wants the boxes of paper aren't going to get them for free...and the fee probably isn't going to be the sum of paper+ink...
I totally miss your point about why you would rather live in Taiwan than the UK or Sweden. Are you assuming you will have the same income in all three places and will live better in Taiwan? I think if you are a Janitor, you may prefer to live in Sweden....its all about income and where you fall in the social hierarchy and how the society treats people at each one of the rankings. Somebody has to be the janitor in every society, and I think that the society will be better off and more stable if those guys don't think they are getting screwed everytime they turn around.
I would choose to live in Haiti given enough cash...I could probably get myself a nice tropical beach house, maids, drivers, and cooks (and a few security guys).
Obviously the other extreme is when all regulation disappears and the sharks feast on the small fish. The rich get richer and the gap between rich and poor grows enormously. As a student of history you also understand what happens next.....The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and today the Arab Spring....Don't think for a moment that any of those societies ended up better off.
Unfortunately those who want to cut all the social programs which attempt to equalize society, also want to spend the most on big brother technologies to keep the masses in line. I would rather pay my share to make sure people are not hungry, and have at least adequate medical care. Go visit India sometime if you want to see a society that has no social safety net....not a pretty sight seeing kids grow up under underpasses.
That is exactly the problem. This is no different from the tragedies frequently encountered in coal mines. They cut corners and costs in the name of greater profits. And then when bad things happen, they say "whoops! This is an isolated incident. And we will fire someone for doing what we encouraged and even told them to do!"
The problem is in most cases nobody is explicitly told to cut safety. What they are told is "Here is your budget, do everything". Most mid level managers don't have the balls to reply "Sorry can't do everything with that budget", and instead bounce it downstairs to where it finally gets to the team responsible for execution. They're given tasks which take 36 hours per day, and when they don't get done in the timeframe alotted everybody shrugs and says "we will get to it next week".
When bad things happen everybody starts pointing fingers.....guys upstairs saying "I told them to do it", guys downstairs saying "didn't have enough time/people/resources", and the lawyers saying "isolated incident".
Something this dangerous should not be in the hands of profit making corporations...the budgets are always set so the profit margin is there. As the plants age the budgets for maintenance need to increase eroding overall profit. Today nobody worries about profit in 30 years.
What you don't mention is how many times those A/V programs actually protected the users from something. My company forces A/V on my laptop but I never get any hits...I have A/V on my kids' computers and have re-imaged 5 times in the past 2 years....They click on just about everything.
It is the behaviour that determines the risk of infection. Trying to use a condom with holes in it won't get you very far in the long run.
The ability to preview a book, movie, song, and reject it if it is crap, or otherwise un-desirable.
In the bookstore and I can spend time with a book to decide if I want to purchase it. I can even return it later if I decide it is crap after getting it home.
When I lived in Europe in the 80's, I could preview any album in the record store and decide if I wanted to purchase it (never could do this in the USA).
Just the other night my wife and I watched a movie we got from the library, and we both remarked: "Glad we didn't pay for that one".
The comparison to national health care doesn't quite fit though, because the question there is whether the US federal government has lawful authority under the Constitution to order people to buy things. It definitely does not, if the Constitution is still a meaningful limit on federal power.
The comparison to national health care is a perfect fit. There are certain services, in a civilized society, that require contribution from the entire population so that all may benefit equally when they need it. Fire, Police, Military and Health care should never be "opt-in" services...they are all equivalent in that they are services that you cannot predict when you will need them, and paying on the spot for service performed is ridiculous.
Social Security and Medicare are also not "opt-in" and history has shown that without them our society would be in worse shape. Where in the Constitution does it state that at age 65 you should be treated differently? Yet the some people who scream about health care are the ones whining about cuts to the Medicare Plus benefits....
I cannot for a reason think why any logical person would think society would be better if Fire services, or Health services should be "opt in"....
Are you hoping your children get these childhood diseases in their childhood? What happens if they don't? Many diseases strike adults with greater impact. Your children are growing up in a society where these diseases are infrequent and the chances of making it through childhood with out them are pretty good. They should at least consider getting themselves vaccinated when they reach adulthood.
Rubella during pregnancy, Mumps as an adult, and the increased morbidity of Chicken Pox in adults are all reasons your children should consider vaccination when they reach adulthood.
I am really tired of hearing about Linux and it's "Fewer Viruses". The only reason that there are fewer viruses for Linux is that the bad guys have not found a good reason to write a virus for it. Current Linux users tend to be a little more aware of the dangers of installing unknown software, but if Linux should ever gain traction on the desktop of what might be known "a typical windows user", the exact same issues regarding viruses will surface.
Some of the other points in the parent are BS as well:
Lower cost of ownership? -- I have spent hours trying to get a video capture card to work with the BTTV driver....my time should be worth something. In the early days just getting X11 to work on my video card was a couple of days work....that is a lot better now.
Drivers for most hardware? -- That BTTV driver never worked with my card...card now enjoys a home in a windows box. Hardware manufacturers should be the ones writing the drivers...not someone who reverse engineers a windows driver. Unfortunately more than a few of the Linux drivers appear to be reverse engineered hacks rather than written from hardware specs.
No blue screen of death? -- debug a kernel panic sometime...
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it daily. A couple of things that should be on the list:
Package management -- If I want to know what a particular file is needed for, a linux package manager can tell me....windows is a nightmare in trying to decipher the processes that are running.
Automation -- While it can be done, automating something in Windows is a pain in the a--. Most Linux programs come with enough command line options that you can do stuff without the need to go into a GUI....ever try to script a GUI?
Does the typical windows/mac user care about these? No.
I am a proud user of Linux, but I fear that the day it goes mainstream, I will need to start looking for something else.
I would find it hard to believe that every subscriber could simultaneously use 100% of his/her bandwidth in Scandinavia. Telecom networks are just not engineered that way.
I do believe that the "incentives" may be different.....if the Scandinavian network finds itself in congestion often, then they may be more prepared to throw equipment at it, than to limit bandwidth to get out of congestion.
There's some interest in small cars with small engines in the US, but you've got to admit that it isn't that substantial. Small cars sell in Europe and Japan, but larger cars sell in the US. A large part of this is due to perceptions of safety; your family will be perfectly safe if they're encased by a 4-ton steel cage.
A large part of that is the price of gasoline. Safety is a convenient excuse, but money talks....Europe and Asia have had gasoline selling for over US $6.00 per gallon (EUR 1.30 per liter) for years. Witness what happened last year when gasoline touched US $4.00 in the USA: small cars were flying off the shelf. This year gas is back down to $2.50 and the small cars aren't so hot any more.
Government policy/taxation is what drives the small/large car decision.
This is a mergers and acquisitions problem. Having worked for a large company and gone through more than one merger/divestiture/early retirement buyout/staff cutting/staff building/etc. I have seen a lot of history and knowledge walk out the door.
When projects get shuffled around and re-organized it is inevitable you end up with people who are out of their depth trying to make sense of the previous work and in many cases just redoing it because they don't understand it.
Not a case of incompetance on the developers part....just too much to learn in too short of time.
I can't speak for iPhone but I have AT&T 3G service, using an 8525 (HTC something or other).
I similarly think the rendering in the phone sucks. It is painful if I try to use the Windows Mobile 5 with the phone's built-in MSIE.
However, if I tether the my laptop to my phone via USB, I am delighted with the 3G speeds. I connect to a corporate network via VPN and speeds seem almost as fast as my DSL at home. I've used it for hours this way.
WWW pages that take minutes to load on the phone are pretty swift on the laptop. Same quantities of data.
If you are in a place where everybody is subject to download caps this would be literally stealing. You use up your neighbor's bandwidth cap and they have to pay extra.
There are countries where the entire population accesses the rest of the world through just a few fibers. Just a few big users could actually block millions of others.
Infrastructure takes time to build....its coming, but until it arrives bandwidth caps are the only way to ensure that all users get access.
Slashdot Mirror
They also need a law that will ding the credit agencies when they get it wrong....
More handsets in a particular cell sector means that the cell is transmitting a much greater percentage of the time on the various signaling and traffic channels that would be quiet without calls. GSM has multiple channels. Some of them are "broadcast" channels that continuously transmit the GSM cell ID and other info. Other channels only transmit when paging a handset or signaling with a particular handset. More calls means the occupancy of these channels is much higher. Then there are the traffic channels which carry the "bearer" voice or data for the duration of a call. If there are 100 simultaneous conversations then you are transmitting voice on 100 separate frequencies. CDMA (3G UMTS/4G LTE/CDMA 2G/CDMA-2000) radio is different in this respect. It uses "spread spectrum" techniques where additional calls add to a single wide band signal. From the perspective of each handset, the calls on all the other handsets look like noise. But the principal is simlar....additional calls means more power consumption at the tower.
And what they didn't say is that power use is directly proportional to the number of handsets and the distance of those handsets. A 25W amplifier will require 25W of power....Talking to 1000 handsets is different than talking to 1 handset.
What should I do if I purchased the HP TouchPad outside of the 14-day return policy and would like to return it?
Best Buy is extending its return/exchange policy on the HP TouchPad and all HP TouchPad accessories to 60 days. Come into a Best Buy store and we will help you find another tablet to fit your needs or issue you a refund.
So it sounds like everybody who bought a touchpad from day 1 can return it for a full refund.
I am guessing the guy's strategy will work....march up to the counter, demand a refund, and then ask to re-purchase the item at the clearance price.
Each Mobile Originated SMS requires the similar signaling channel setup as a voice call including mobile authentication, encryption key exchanges and connection state messaging. A Mobile Terminated SMS also requires paging channel to find the Mobile in a similar fashion to a Mobile Terminated voice call.
In addition, all the back end processing of the messaging (store and forward, billing, etc.) need to be maintained as well.
The major advantage of SMS over something like an IM data app is that your phone doesn't need to maintain constant data session in order to receive messaging. Big savings on battery life.
That being said, $0.20 per message is a huge ripoff...when my 12 year old first discovered messaging, I learned it the hard way with a $150 bill...
Its amazing that: "Hi", "Hi", "Whatcha doin", "nothin", "kewl" cost me $1.....but T-Mobiles $10 per month unlimited SMS on a family plan solved that problem.
I agree that they were a once proud company. I interviewed with them in 1981, when they were regarded as one of the best places to work. But I think they took their eye off the ball and started screwing their customers with shoddy products that they wouldn't even support. I had the misfortune of purchasing one of their DV9000 laptops...with the overheating left hinge problem which freezes and then cracks the case when you try to open it. Typical design problem that HP knew about pretty early in the game...lots of frustruation with them and CompUSA (their authorized service center) trying to get a repair out of them....even during the warrenty period when they told me it was because I dropped the laptop. When it happened a second time 4 years after I bought the laptop, I called HP customer support, and was told they have dropped all support for that product...can't even order the parts. Together with other stories of non-support to their consumer grade customers, I think they are gettting what they deserve.
While the TFA didn't mention it, I am guessing that whoever wants the boxes of paper aren't going to get them for free...and the fee probably isn't going to be the sum of paper+ink...
I totally miss your point about why you would rather live in Taiwan than the UK or Sweden. Are you assuming you will have the same income in all three places and will live better in Taiwan? I think if you are a Janitor, you may prefer to live in Sweden....its all about income and where you fall in the social hierarchy and how the society treats people at each one of the rankings. Somebody has to be the janitor in every society, and I think that the society will be better off and more stable if those guys don't think they are getting screwed everytime they turn around.
I would choose to live in Haiti given enough cash...I could probably get myself a nice tropical beach house, maids, drivers, and cooks (and a few security guys).
Obviously the other extreme is when all regulation disappears and the sharks feast on the small fish. The rich get richer and the gap between rich and poor grows enormously. As a student of history you also understand what happens next.....The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and today the Arab Spring....Don't think for a moment that any of those societies ended up better off.
Unfortunately those who want to cut all the social programs which attempt to equalize society, also want to spend the most on big brother technologies to keep the masses in line. I would rather pay my share to make sure people are not hungry, and have at least adequate medical care. Go visit India sometime if you want to see a society that has no social safety net....not a pretty sight seeing kids grow up under underpasses.
That is exactly the problem. This is no different from the tragedies frequently encountered in coal mines. They cut corners and costs in the name of greater profits. And then when bad things happen, they say "whoops! This is an isolated incident. And we will fire someone for doing what we encouraged and even told them to do!"
The problem is in most cases nobody is explicitly told to cut safety. What they are told is "Here is your budget, do everything". Most mid level managers don't have the balls to reply "Sorry can't do everything with that budget", and instead bounce it downstairs to where it finally gets to the team responsible for execution. They're given tasks which take 36 hours per day, and when they don't get done in the timeframe alotted everybody shrugs and says "we will get to it next week".
When bad things happen everybody starts pointing fingers.....guys upstairs saying "I told them to do it", guys downstairs saying "didn't have enough time/people/resources", and the lawyers saying "isolated incident".
Something this dangerous should not be in the hands of profit making corporations...the budgets are always set so the profit margin is there. As the plants age the budgets for maintenance need to increase eroding overall profit. Today nobody worries about profit in 30 years.
What you don't mention is how many times those A/V programs actually protected the users from something. My company forces A/V on my laptop but I never get any hits...I have A/V on my kids' computers and have re-imaged 5 times in the past 2 years....They click on just about everything. It is the behaviour that determines the risk of infection. Trying to use a condom with holes in it won't get you very far in the long run.
The ability to preview a book, movie, song, and reject it if it is crap, or otherwise un-desirable.
In the bookstore and I can spend time with a book to decide if I want to purchase it. I can even return it later if I decide it is crap after getting it home.
When I lived in Europe in the 80's, I could preview any album in the record store and decide if I wanted to purchase it (never could do this in the USA).
Just the other night my wife and I watched a movie we got from the library, and we both remarked: "Glad we didn't pay for that one".
The comparison to national health care doesn't quite fit though, because the question there is whether the US federal government has lawful authority under the Constitution to order people to buy things. It definitely does not, if the Constitution is still a meaningful limit on federal power.
The comparison to national health care is a perfect fit. There are certain services, in a civilized society, that require contribution from the entire population so that all may benefit equally when they need it. Fire, Police, Military and Health care should never be "opt-in" services...they are all equivalent in that they are services that you cannot predict when you will need them, and paying on the spot for service performed is ridiculous.
Social Security and Medicare are also not "opt-in" and history has shown that without them our society would be in worse shape. Where in the Constitution does it state that at age 65 you should be treated differently? Yet the some people who scream about health care are the ones whining about cuts to the Medicare Plus benefits....
I cannot for a reason think why any logical person would think society would be better if Fire services, or Health services should be "opt in"....
Are you hoping your children get these childhood diseases in their childhood? What happens if they don't? Many diseases strike adults with greater impact. Your children are growing up in a society where these diseases are infrequent and the chances of making it through childhood with out them are pretty good. They should at least consider getting themselves vaccinated when they reach adulthood. Rubella during pregnancy, Mumps as an adult, and the increased morbidity of Chicken Pox in adults are all reasons your children should consider vaccination when they reach adulthood.
Some of the other points in the parent are BS as well:
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it daily. A couple of things that should be on the list:
Does the typical windows/mac user care about these? No.
I am a proud user of Linux, but I fear that the day it goes mainstream, I will need to start looking for something else.
I would find it hard to believe that every subscriber could simultaneously use 100% of his/her bandwidth in Scandinavia. Telecom networks are just not engineered that way. I do believe that the "incentives" may be different.....if the Scandinavian network finds itself in congestion often, then they may be more prepared to throw equipment at it, than to limit bandwidth to get out of congestion.
There's some interest in small cars with small engines in the US, but you've got to admit that it isn't that substantial. Small cars sell in Europe and Japan, but larger cars sell in the US. A large part of this is due to perceptions of safety; your family will be perfectly safe if they're encased by a 4-ton steel cage.
A large part of that is the price of gasoline. Safety is a convenient excuse, but money talks....Europe and Asia have had gasoline selling for over US $6.00 per gallon (EUR 1.30 per liter) for years. Witness what happened last year when gasoline touched US $4.00 in the USA: small cars were flying off the shelf. This year gas is back down to $2.50 and the small cars aren't so hot any more. Government policy/taxation is what drives the small/large car decision.
This is a mergers and acquisitions problem. Having worked for a large company and gone through more than one merger/divestiture/early retirement buyout/staff cutting/staff building/etc. I have seen a lot of history and knowledge walk out the door. When projects get shuffled around and re-organized it is inevitable you end up with people who are out of their depth trying to make sense of the previous work and in many cases just redoing it because they don't understand it. Not a case of incompetance on the developers part....just too much to learn in too short of time.
I can't speak for iPhone but I have AT&T 3G service, using an 8525 (HTC something or other). I similarly think the rendering in the phone sucks. It is painful if I try to use the Windows Mobile 5 with the phone's built-in MSIE. However, if I tether the my laptop to my phone via USB, I am delighted with the 3G speeds. I connect to a corporate network via VPN and speeds seem almost as fast as my DSL at home. I've used it for hours this way. WWW pages that take minutes to load on the phone are pretty swift on the laptop. Same quantities of data.
If you are in a place where everybody is subject to download caps this would be literally stealing. You use up your neighbor's bandwidth cap and they have to pay extra. There are countries where the entire population accesses the rest of the world through just a few fibers. Just a few big users could actually block millions of others. Infrastructure takes time to build....its coming, but until it arrives bandwidth caps are the only way to ensure that all users get access.