OK, I do answer phone when not in Finland. But not my private phone. Just my business phone, where the employer pays the bills and decides on the provider and plan. I just use the phone for work-purposes. How does this differ from a blanket no-answer statement I made before? Actually, it means that I know I have to answer the phone to keep business running and to achieve my business objectives. And that I don't value 24x7 availability as a private person enough to pay for others to get in touch with me.
Then there's of course the question about what does 'owner pays' mean? If it means "I pay my operator's charge, You pay Your's", all is good and dandy when calling within operator, or between two that have direct link. But when the call is routed via third operator (eg. long distance, also in roaming where the two networks don't have a physical overlap/linkpoint), who should pay the carrier fee to get the call from caller's op to callee's op?
Also, I'm now assuming that in US the phone works when You're on Your ops service area (where they have their own network or have service network with dialtone). If the phone works in other areas, it's roaming - You are on another ops service area but Your op has a roaming contract and thus You do get the dialtone of a third party which routes Your calls (incoming, outgoing) to Your op.
This would be analoguous to me being in Finland being elsewhere - I'm either on my ops service area or roaming. In Europe, we don't have ops with service available all over Europe, mostly it's one country and the rest is roaming. And if I'm roaming, my own ops fees are squat to the roaming fees (incl. call-termination). In that case, choosing between ops that have service in Finland doesn't really change much in roaming fees. Oh yes, if we assume that LD fee to call UK from Finland is composed of a local charge, LD carrier charge, and call-termination, and landline (and assuming call-termination in UK local net is the same 0.9c/min as the local net fee I'd have in Finland) LD carrier is 14c/min (call to UK from Finland: local network fee (0.9c/min) + UK LD fee (15c/min), that 14c/min LD carrier charge is actually as much as is a full local network cell call fee, so dismissing the intermediate network fees (carrier fees) as insignificant wont work.
So, I see roaming as call-termination fee when I answer the phone, and I already at that point know that I'm paying a lot more than I would for any call within my own ops area. So, I don't answer unless I believe the call is worth it - that is, it's a business call.
Oh yes, in my experience (and to even higher degree to those of my friends' who are routinely in contact with people in USA), it's a lot harder to have someone in US answer a call to mobile than it's to get the Europeans on the phone.. When calling US, call the landline - people there don't answer cells like people in Europe do.
OK, then to corollaries.. Do You pay call-termination when answering landline? I don't. Landline is a phone, as is cell. So, I don't pay call-termination for cell, either. Do You pay for incoming mail? I don't. Mail is communications, the sender pays. As with phone. However, I do pay if I want my mail redirected (eg. new address after moving) - like when I pay when I redirect my phone calls (I pay the fees from my number to whereever it's redirected), which roaming is (redirected to another network, the caller doesn't know this, but the callee does because he's on another net).
Oh yes, then there are the free minutes or free local calls issues.. We don't have those. We pay by the minute (actually by the second, so a 15 second call costs me one quarter of what a full minute call does). When operators were trying to get marketshare, they often had promos with "get a plan with 10 hours thrown in for free!", but people who took those usually used the free minutes, then took a new plan from another op that had similar promo. Customers that come and go, change ops at whim, are not really profitable unless they're charged up front the real costs of getting a plan and the expected call costs. OTOH, those that don't change ops are profitable because the op gets their money from routing the calls.
Now, I can take my phone bills and count my minutes. Because I call out very little but answer a lot, I could say that for my private use, a plan that costs me 20 euros a month isn't going to be good, even if calls are free. If the fees are raised so much that I'm going to pay more than 20 euros a month even if I don't use the phone, it's starting to become useless for me (it's not worth more than 20 euros a month for me for private reasons to be available), and I'll ditch the cell. After that, I'm available for business only.
I know lots of people who rack up 100 euro monthly phonebills. Quess what? Most of them are either teenagers (parents pay) or women who seem to be chatting without regard to the costs (an observation, and there are men, too, in that group, and no offense to women).. I get two broadband (cable and 10Mbps ether) internet connections, an ISDN landline, and a cell, with all usage costs, for a total of about 120 euros a month. And of these, I can deduct part of the internet and landline costs in taxes because they're used for work more than for private uses (home office, telecommuting).
There are people like me - those who have small phone bills, and mostly have cell for availability, and don't think availability is worth all that much money afterall. If these people (me included) ditched the cell because of costs, would the telecom market be more efficient? And would a new "availability service" become available? Like.. Pager:) How much did pager cost when it was in use? Or is it still in use as the basic "availability service" in US (in Finland, completely superceded by sells and SMS).
Yes, maximizing shareholder wealth should be a goal.
Well, I can agree on this - if we narrow it to maximizing overall long-term wealth.
A company that makes a hundred mil now is of course good to the shareholders. A company that makes 300 mil in 5 years is actually better. And one that makes ten billion in 50 years beats both.
How does the company live to make profit 50 years from now, and why is it better than making some extra now? A company lives by considering all aspects, not just next quarter bottom line. I totally condemn quarter-stockmarket valuations - they're not based on anything concrete anyway but are pure speculation, and thus can't be considered to be even a guideline for management practices. And why is it better to make lots more in the long run? As if making lots more wouldn't be enough, but basically anything that can be made NOW is based on fairly short term indicators - a few years but not much more - and long-term beats it every time (if there was any long-term viability to start with). Also, the intangible values derived from corporate culture and image come into the equation only when they've established - in the long term. Not on the balance sheet, though, so accountant-managers just can't see it.
Let's start with the basics. I have to use Finland as the example, as that's the only country in which I really know how things are.
There is a limited amount of bandwidth for cellphone networks. To operate on that band, a license from must be acquired. The license requires also that the telco operates on the full area they have license for (meaning countrywide license requires building countrywide physical network, which is costly when most of the money comes from perhaps 15% of the land area), and many other things (in national emergencies service must be provided to authorities in priority, and so on). All the usual telco requirements of course apply - including reimbursement for non-service ("You had faulty network? Your problem - pay the customers that didn't get service for the non-service").
So, no telco is going to get a new countrywide license without agreement that they may fullfill countrywide service by renting band from other telcos. That is, they want to get the big money from the 10% of the area (a few cities) and pay as little as possible for the rest of the requirements (the 90% of the area that is required but probably more expensive to provide than is generally reasonable). Oh yes, service must be provided for the same price in the licensed area - the whole country. No trying to sell cheap in the cities and charge arm and leg in the rural areas. And to top it all, they must provide service to service ops for a reasonable fee.. A separate license can of course be sought for a "cityphone" -style service where calls are cheap, but when it was available, very few took the plans, because the phone worked only in the city where the op had cityphone license..
Given all the requirements in the license, we're going to see only service ops who must buy service, rent band, or make roaming agreements with the telcos that have the physical networks. Given that the fees charged by telcos have been challenged a few times, and it seems that service ops now believe they get their service for reasonable fee, and that the service ops provide service for similar (even lower) price as the telcos, all looks good.
Finland is sparsely populated. Building a complete, countrywide cellphone network means burning 90% of the money on areas where the services are never going to cover the costs. So we can't really expect to get cheap calls compared to countries with denser populations.
So, I get a cell plan. 3.50 euros a month, includes all the basic stuff (voicemail, SMS, I don't really know as I don't care for most of the fluff, just voice calls, data, voicemail and SMS). If I don't call out, my bill is going to be that 3.50 a month, and I'll be available. I can answer my phone freely. I might be able to get a cheaper plan if I'm not planning to place outgoing calls, but as I am calling out from my cell, I haven't checked those options. I think 16 cents a minute isn't a bad price. I often call to areas that would be in-country long distance if I used the landlines. Oh yes, calling any Finnish phone number other than my operators, whether cell or land, costs 24c/min. (Note: prices are maximum prices, eg. longer calls are cheaper per minute, and calls outside business hours are that 16c/min even to other ops nets)
From a landline, a local area call is 12c+1c/min. Other than local area is 9c+8.3c/min. Monthly fee is 12 euros. (Again, these are max fees, outisde business hours is cheaper)
When comparing these, it seems that call termination (billed from caller) to cells (any operator) is roughly 7c/min - the same as any national long distance. With my calling habits, ~90% of my minutes are calls in. And most of the incoming calls are not from my friends, but other parties. So, if I had to pay for call termination, I'd be paying more for taking calls than making calls - and paying way more overall than I'm paying now. That is, if I'd be answering any more..
OK, who'd benefit the most and who'd lose the most if call termination was billed from the callee instead of the caller? The telcos would lose a lot, because people wouldn't use phones so much as they wouldn't answer the phone any longer. Of course that'd lead to price increases, as less calls in the network means more money per call is needed to make it pay at all. Most prive people would also lose, as more calls are placed from companies outwards than from private persons. Of course they could stop answering the phone, going back to "telcos lose" part. And the winners? Well, anyone who spends lots of time on the phone, calling out. That is, companies that do it.. More like: telemarketers, consumer research, and sales-oriented corps (ever notices that the marketroids spend a hell of a lot of time on phone, talking to customers?)..
What's with that equation? Gross simplification: More calls overall on the same phone network means the network infra (and general management overhead) has higher utilization and thus the income needed to cover the infra can be spread over larger number of calls (and minutes), meaning cheaper calls. And, if call termination was billed from callee, it would mean moving money from private persons to companies, with overall increase in prices.
So, how could billing call termination from callees make for more efficient (and thus cheaper) pricing? Just a gut feeling?
Oh yes, then there's the thing about roaming.. While in Finland, I'm using my provider's network and thus standard fees apply. However, if I'm outside Finland, where the provider doesn't own network but has roaming, I have to pay the roaming fee for answering. That's because anyone who calls my cell number can look up from the price charts what's the price of calling to that provider's cell numbers. And they pay exactly that. I pay for roaming call termination myself. However, when going abroad, I can first check which operators in my target country have roaming agreements, and what's the call termination with them. Then choose the cheapest roaming op there. What does that do to my cell use? It means that I don't answer to my private phone when not in Finland. I just check the text messages and voicemail, but I don't answer the phone. Because the call termination costs oftentimes more than making the call within Finland costs overall.
I can choose my provider and plan without any fees (except possibly a small fee for new plan or change of plan). That is, I can terminate my plan with just a notice to the provider, and don't need to pay them anything for that.
And, if a new provider comes up with a plan where calling the big provider's numbers doesn't cost any more than it would with the big provider's plan, the big provider will either lower the price or lose customers.
Now, if a carrier came in Finland with a plan that charges their part of an incoming call from the one who answers the phone, I wouldn't take their plan. Not even if it costs me very little to call from their account. Unless they plain and simple promised in written that I'd never have to pay more than a few euros a month for answering the phone, whoever calls me. I don't want to pay for answering the phone - it's the callers responsibility to bear the costs of getting to talk to me.
If I would have to pay for incoming calls, I wouldn't answer any calls except those from numbers I know and want to answer.
I have a landline - ISDN - but no phone on that. Just fax, analog modem and ISDN router (for emergencies and direct connections to some networks). I have two cellphones, one paid by my employer, the second for non-work use which I pay for myself. I don't pay for incoming calls on landline (eg. incoming faxes now that I don't have a phone on that line), and don't intend to pay for incoming calls on cellphone either.
Why is it so unfair that the caller has to pay? I pay for my calls, and have chosen my operator and plan because most of the people I call to have the same operator, and calls to the same operator's cellphones are always cheaper. I chose a plan that suits my calling habits. If someone wants to call me, he can pay. If he wants to make calls to me cheap, he can get a line from the operator I use.
Oh yes, calls cost about EUR 0.16/min + EUR 3.50/month. Calls to other operators' numbers costs a little more. I don't usually talk long on the phone, so I don't get high phonebills. If I wanted, I could be just available for incoming calls for that 3.50/month.
My registrar (ha! as if I'd own them) is OK, not that cheap but not the worst of the flock. Things work well, so I'm not going to change to save a few dollars a year.
However, when they couldn't charge my cc (apparently had old cc info), I got no notification. Then, later, DNS just stopped working. Still no info about something being wrong. I tried checking things on their domain management site, but nothing - all was green, all my settings as I wanted them.
It took me only two days to get the issue resolved, which I think is pretty good. However, I don't know if they have started working on the problem that I was never notified of failure in charge to my cc. Hopefully next time the renewal comes up I remember to check my cc info for correctness..
I haven't had trouble with amazon - I've received only their opt-in newsletters (which I really want to get) to the email address I have on my amazon account. The same holds true for most of the enterprises to whom I've given a brand-new email address. And in all cases where I've received "affiliate" email, it's been clearly marked as such, with the party to whom I gave the address noted on top.
I have to spoof my From: address in some cases to get a message through. Sometimes the recipient requires the message From: address to be something preconfigured, and no amount of Reply-To: will help.
Of course that's for the headers, I don't change anything in the envelope.
Oh yes, I use dozens of addresses, but mostly just one mail host (my own server), one account and one MUA. For mailing lists, I just send with appropriate From: address (whatever I used when subscribing). For most personal email I'll use my default (or something else, depending on where I want to direct the conversation).
No rewriting of headers is OK when You have one email account, or one per host only - eg. work and home. However, I have many, and there are reasons for that. I only spoof mail as coming from my own accounts.
Oh yes, then there's of course MTA header rewriting. Many organizations (those who know what they're doing) have MTA configured to rewrite internal email address to external when sending mail to outside the local organization. However, that's not spoofing, and is one of the legitimate reasons for header rewriting.
Yes, it is true that the International Space Station has taken a horrendous amount of money that could've been spent on real science.
As You noted Yourself, they're infrastructure. You can't equate infra with research.
Even if the costs are high, I think we need to keep at least one working, manned space station up and running, just to make way for further manned space exploration. ISS has had its share of problems, including budget and schedule. However, what we should be doing is trying to get every ounce of information we can from ISS, and plan for the next step.
If we drop the manned space station idea and spend the money on research (or other infra work), we're going to have to start from zero again the next time we're going to launch manned space missions. Also, any research that requires (or is much more efficient using) manned space station isn't going to happen unless we have one.
I use CD-RW instead of floppies. They're more reliable - I don't need a stack of them with the same content, hoping that one out of four works..
I don't use CD-RW in any other way. I use them as I did with floppies, and that's it. However, I have used a few (three, I think) discs as my normal mobile media which I can read and write for a while, and haven't had a single glitch. Perhaps some 10-20 writes per disc as of now, so I didn't expect them to fail, either. Standard Maxell 10-pack, 4x rewrite, 650MB.
I've tried recoding DVDs onto SVCDs, and have seen very good quality at about 1800kbps for video. Definitely better than VHS at least, and in many cases close enough to the original DVD that it doesn't matter. Also, if I ever have time to finish my projects (hobby, as in work-comes-first), I have ideas that would give me about 20% (estimate based on a few discs, and would not work on all types of video streams, but would work on most if not all anime) cut on the video bitrate for the same or possibly even a little better quality. At current rate (1800kbps video + 224kbps audio) I thus get about 50 minutes on an 80min CD-R. Which means that I'm not going to store movies on them, however TV series are OK (assuming episode length of about 40-45 minutes; 20-25 for anime).
However, recording analog signal and compressing that means that You'll first have to clean it up and then work on the compression. Unfortunately even the best magic provided by the encoding tools doesn't work without lots of human intervention. I can clean up and do all pre-encoding work in about 4 hours per ~45 minutes of material. Going for straight encoding from signal means that it's going to be crap or requires a high bitrate - on the order of 5+Mbps - thus leaving CD-R burning out of the equation..
If You want to replace VHS (which is crap anyway on Your 51" HDTV set) with optical media, go for DVD(-/+)R(W). Not only will it provide more capacity, but playable on standard DVD sets at high bitrates (SVCD is 2600kbps max - of course many DVDs support higher bitrate SVCD content, but then You're going for 20-30 minutes per CD).
Out of 139 countries, 17th means pretty good. Also, they apparently scored on a scale of 0-100, where the first 39 fit in 0-10, and the last 15 or so had scores of 50-100, median 23.50 ( Mozambique). US had a score of 4.75.
They have a page about the criteria and methodology. Namely, they sent out questionaires to jouranlists.
Note the last point in their criteria:
Neither is it an indicator of the quality of a country's media. Reporters Without Borders defends press freedom without regard to the content of the media, so any ethical or professional departures from the norm have not been taken into account.
Despite the expanding popularity of games like EverQuest and it's huge array of derivatives and competitors to suggest that the "economy" (and those quotes are deliberate; to suggest that any of these games has anything like a real economy is patently ludicrous) is in anyway comparable to that of real-world markets is... well, just wrong. Any Economic 101 student should be able to tell you that.
However, the author of this (and other) papers about virtual world economics is a Associate Professor of Economics who probably knows a little bit more than the average Economic 101 student..
Perhaps he's researching virtual world economics partially just for the reason that current economics theories don't cover MMORPGs well and thus aren't able to predict the amount of (real) money involved in the games.
Did You read the paper? It was interesting reading, although I admit that most slashdotters probably just can't take a 44-page paper on one sitting, as even short one-page articles go unread by many posters..
I think it's a reasonable assumption that the Internet has a maximum radius of max TTL of an IP packet, which excludes such close objects as Mars, let alone another galaxy.
So please, even if You were just a visitor, considering You're posting on slashdot You might as well forget the idea of returning and start living on slashdot. You're confined to the small space of 400 seconds from slashdot.
1. He doesn't say _why_ IP "belongs to the public and is in essence leased to authors and inventors." As a content creator, I'd like some explanation there.
Because without that specific granted monopoly, published works would be in the public domain, hence belong to the public. In case of published works there is no ownership. There is only authorship. If no monopoly (copyright) were granted, anyone would be free to copy the works.
2. To say that "Creative works incur over 90 percent of their economic reward within almost a few years of their release, often less" is just rubbish. A clue to the statement's status as rubbish lies in continuing demand.
While some, very few, works are sought after long since their initial publishing, most works really sell for one printing and that's it. Only big-name authors sell for a long time, and very few of them even become classics sought after fifty years.
In case of "continuing demand", ie. demand for more copies of the work after the initial demand (a few years, nowadays more like "the first christmas"), the author has already generated revenue from initial demand, and should be economically well off. Most works don't have continuing demand, unless You think selling a hundred copies in the first year, ten copies a year for the next three, and total of ten in the next thirty constitutes "continuing demand"..
Talk about lazy, noninformative writing. Rather than say that it requires 3-4 times more processing power, how about just giving a minimum 86 or powerpc processor speed that would support this format?
The fault here isn't with the person who wrote the summary. That vital piece of information isn't contained in the source article, either. Appalling.
That "vital" piece of information isn't relevant to most. Modern PCs (and Macs) are powerful enough to decode in realtime, no doubt, if the software implementation of the codec is even halfway decent. The statement is of much more importance to consumer electronics manufacturers, as they try to go with the cheapest possible chips in their products, and "3-4 times more" means "lots more $$$". When features are dropped due to too high processing speed requirements (in the "it'd take a CPU USD 3$ more expensive" -sense), the statement clearly says "in technofreak expensive products only".
No, You just cut all routing between USA and the rest of the world. No IP packets flowing means no-one can access the outside-USA evil internet so full of IP violations.. Then You can prosecute anyone who has illegal (in USA) content in the USA-internet, as all packets in the net originate and terminate within USA..
Of course if/. is hosted in the USA I'll lose that, but then again, it might benefit my employer..:)
I think that's how it's done in conventional physical goods case: ban import and/or export. Stop the goods at the border. So, go ahead and stop IP packets at the border, too. I think we Europeans will manage to get over it, and we'll just have to route around damage to get to the rest of the world. Slower, yes, but that'll be corrected with time.
For as long as man-pages stay, OK. I use man-pages, and where an application doesn't have a man-page, I'm first inclined to throw it out, but most often stay cool and start seaching for documentation. At least please package a man-page that points to the documentation with all software. Documentation shouldn't be X-dependant, but should be readable in text-only 80x25 screen.
Standard Config Files
Different programs have different needs from their config files. Trying to fit one model to all isn't really a good solution, as that model would have to cater for the extremely complex configuration some software might need, while still be very simple for the programs that just need five key-value pairs. Config files have to be human-readable and hand editable. I'm not going to use the various whiz-bang graphical configurators when I still have vi. At least regarding system config - configuring various all-graphical applications is another story, but that's not system-config.
However, requiring text-only configuration files and version control of the whole configuration hierarchy would be good. I have seen some ways to use eg. RCS for all of/etc, just haven't tried it yet myself. Of course this also means that there would have to be a hierarchy for configuration-only files, and any non-configuration files in/etc should have to find a new home. eg. RH73/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts has both configuration files (ifcfg-*) and programs (ifup*, ifdown*). Whether eg. init's rc-files are configuration or programs is of course questionable..
Perhaps configuration file hierarchy should be such where each package would use it's own directory, and where necessary, use symlinks.
The photographer does a lot more than take shots. He's the artist who arranges the situation, knows what he's doing, and gets it right, every time (well, nearly every time at least). Like a great programmer understands what is needed, gives a realistics tenative schedule, and gets the work done without additional hassles.
In programming, mostly what's needed is not the great programmer - an average one will do. He'll get something done, in some schedule. It's enough. And costs one tenth of what the great programmer would've cost. So if You don't think You need the perfect shots, don't get a great photographer. Get a cheap one, or make do with the photos Your family and friends get.
If You want the sourcecode from the great programmer, be ready to pay for the time he spent, and the tools he used, not just for the binary. If You want the negative, be ready to pay the photographer for his time and tools, not just the end result. And remember, the time includes not just time spent at the wedding, but also in the lab.
I don't really know how much it'd take to hire a great photographer and get the negatives. Actually, get the properly scanned images in a CD-ROM (remember, after film processing the negatives have to be scanned correctly, with good equipment, and the scans checked and possibly still color corrected). Could be some EUR 3-5k, with a result of tens of perfect shots. Someone mentioned that the film may cost even USD 15 per shot. In that case, assuming a gross 100 shots, the film would cost about USD 1500.. 3k sounds pretty small in that light.
How often have you called somewhere and to make sure you are you, they read your address to you and ask if it is correct?
Not often. Usually they ask for my name, date of birth, and address. Not AT&T (I'm not their customer), but other companies. Except that phone companies love obscure numbers ("It's Your phone line installation service code, in the right-upper corner of Your phone service contract" or whatever - anyway not the customer ID or alike) I can't remember and to get it, I first need to dive into a pile of papers.
Just a couple of days ago I received a call regarding a fax I had sent, and I was asked the usual basic information and whether I had sent the fax, and if I could verify the request I made by stating it (shortly) now on phone. After I stated my request on phone, it was OK'd, and later that day I had confirmation fax on my table.
I think that was pretty good. Of course, my request was somewhat unusual, so it might have triggered a "use the strong procedure" attitude.
Suppose someone illegally downloads a copy of Warcraft III just to "try it out", with the intention of buying it if they like it. They play it and don't like it because of the 90 food limit, or something like that. They delete the game and never play it again. Do they owe Blizzard $55 because they should have bought the game in the first place to "try it out"?
No. Assume they'd sell the game used, and got something like 40% of the pricetag back. So, in that case, they paid about $33 for the game, and someone else paid about $22. Now, that someone else probably wouldn't have bought the game for full price (he bought it used - most people who buy used wait for new game to be on the used market, or a "value" edition that's half the price). But, assuming that he'd bought it later as "value edition" for about $25, the question becomes, how much do the game companies get for those value-, platinum-, and so on editions?
I would guess that game, movie, and CD piracy doesn't really cost much money to the companies, as those who have a pirated copy would spend at most the price put to old games and so on - at least 40% off the release cover price (very few people pay the cover price - most new relases are available for "incredible discounts" of 10-25%).
I don't really pirate much nowadays. I don't actually know where to get the latest games and such.. So, my piracy is more like burning a copy from a friend who bought it. And even then, I most often buy it later when the initial high-price period is over. And if I don't get a copy from a friend when it's new, so what? I don't need to play the newest games - I don't think they're always the greatest. If I really want it, I buy it. If I'm just curious, I'll see if I can get a copy, and if it's good, buy it later when it's cheap.
I will - in about two hundred years when the islanders notice that they have been considered part of Europe for a while..
Remember that whatever happens, the pound, the mile, and the pint stay. (I don't remember the exact words, but that was the promise of the prime minister of UK some years ago.)
[...] then that someone is immediately either communist (the EU in general), fascist (anything to do with Germany) or incompetent (usually some comment on France)
But that's mostly correct! OK, Europe is not communist, but socialist. The various center-leftist socialist parties pretty much rule over Europe.. And fascism, right-wing neo-nazism, and such is on the rise in Europe - has been for a while. And the French are bloody incompetent idiots - that's a no-brainer.
have a fairly good record of not blowing too much money on things
And spending most of the EU budget to pay the French farmers. I eagerly await the shit-wars of French vs. Polish farmers - You can't imagine the amount of shit the French can drive on the EU Parliament house stairs..
No, the EU parliaments and cabinets definitely don't have a good record on using the tax-money wisely. Do You follow the news? How about the Italian budget? The French budget (and broken promises)? Even Germany has trouble keeping spending down when they lower the taxes (not that lowering the taxes is bad, but spending should go down as well).
However, on footing the bill of OSS developed in the future for the purposes proposed in the study, those bureaous that need software will pay. Whether proprietary or open source makes no difference in who pays, just that in time there should be a pool of software available which can be customized for the purposes of various bureaus instead of commissioning new, proprietary software written from scratch every time. I think it should lower costs for every party later on - it's the same as with any kind of software re-use (modularization, componentatization, and so on) done a little differently. And, as currently the software is written by hundreds or thousands of private companies which don't share source between eachother, even if the same companies continued to work on the programs required, having a source pool should speed up the development and thus make it a little cheaper.
Disclmaier: as a European I have all the rights to make fun of Europe and Europeans. But I still reserve the right to make fun of Americans, too;)
That sounds quite like SEND command of SMTP (ref. rfc 821).
The SEND command requires that the mail data be delivered to the user's terminal. If the user is not active (or not accepting terminal messages) on the host a 450 reply may returned to a RCPT command. The mail transaction is successful if the message is delivered the terminal.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I do answer phone when not in Finland. But not my private phone. Just my business phone, where the employer pays the bills and decides on the provider and plan. I just use the phone for work-purposes.
:) How much did pager cost when it was in use? Or is it still in use as the basic "availability service" in US (in Finland, completely superceded by sells and SMS).
How does this differ from a blanket no-answer statement I made before? Actually, it means that I know I have to answer the phone to keep business running and to achieve my business objectives. And that I don't value 24x7 availability as a private person enough to pay for others to get in touch with me.
Then there's of course the question about what does 'owner pays' mean? If it means "I pay my operator's charge, You pay Your's", all is good and dandy when calling within operator, or between two that have direct link. But when the call is routed via third operator (eg. long distance, also in roaming where the two networks don't have a physical overlap/linkpoint), who should pay the carrier fee to get the call from caller's op to callee's op?
Also, I'm now assuming that in US the phone works when You're on Your ops service area (where they have their own network or have service network with dialtone). If the phone works in other areas, it's roaming - You are on another ops service area but Your op has a roaming contract and thus You do get the dialtone of a third party which routes Your calls (incoming, outgoing) to Your op.
This would be analoguous to me being in Finland being elsewhere - I'm either on my ops service area or roaming. In Europe, we don't have ops with service available all over Europe, mostly it's one country and the rest is roaming. And if I'm roaming, my own ops fees are squat to the roaming fees (incl. call-termination). In that case, choosing between ops that have service in Finland doesn't really change much in roaming fees.
Oh yes, if we assume that LD fee to call UK from Finland is composed of a local charge, LD carrier charge, and call-termination, and landline (and assuming call-termination in UK local net is the same 0.9c/min as the local net fee I'd have in Finland) LD carrier is 14c/min (call to UK from Finland: local network fee (0.9c/min) + UK LD fee (15c/min), that 14c/min LD carrier charge is actually as much as is a full local network cell call fee, so dismissing the intermediate network fees (carrier fees) as insignificant wont work.
So, I see roaming as call-termination fee when I answer the phone, and I already at that point know that I'm paying a lot more than I would for any call within my own ops area. So, I don't answer unless I believe the call is worth it - that is, it's a business call.
Oh yes, in my experience (and to even higher degree to those of my friends' who are routinely in contact with people in USA), it's a lot harder to have someone in US answer a call to mobile than it's to get the Europeans on the phone.. When calling US, call the landline - people there don't answer cells like people in Europe do.
OK, then to corollaries..
Do You pay call-termination when answering landline? I don't. Landline is a phone, as is cell. So, I don't pay call-termination for cell, either.
Do You pay for incoming mail? I don't. Mail is communications, the sender pays. As with phone. However, I do pay if I want my mail redirected (eg. new address after moving) - like when I pay when I redirect my phone calls (I pay the fees from my number to whereever it's redirected), which roaming is (redirected to another network, the caller doesn't know this, but the callee does because he's on another net).
Oh yes, then there are the free minutes or free local calls issues..
We don't have those. We pay by the minute (actually by the second, so a 15 second call costs me one quarter of what a full minute call does). When operators were trying to get marketshare, they often had promos with "get a plan with 10 hours thrown in for free!", but people who took those usually used the free minutes, then took a new plan from another op that had similar promo.
Customers that come and go, change ops at whim, are not really profitable unless they're charged up front the real costs of getting a plan and the expected call costs. OTOH, those that don't change ops are profitable because the op gets their money from routing the calls.
Now, I can take my phone bills and count my minutes. Because I call out very little but answer a lot, I could say that for my private use, a plan that costs me 20 euros a month isn't going to be good, even if calls are free. If the fees are raised so much that I'm going to pay more than 20 euros a month even if I don't use the phone, it's starting to become useless for me (it's not worth more than 20 euros a month for me for private reasons to be available), and I'll ditch the cell. After that, I'm available for business only.
I know lots of people who rack up 100 euro monthly phonebills. Quess what? Most of them are either teenagers (parents pay) or women who seem to be chatting without regard to the costs (an observation, and there are men, too, in that group, and no offense to women).. I get two broadband (cable and 10Mbps ether) internet connections, an ISDN landline, and a cell, with all usage costs, for a total of about 120 euros a month. And of these, I can deduct part of the internet and landline costs in taxes because they're used for work more than for private uses (home office, telecommuting).
There are people like me - those who have small phone bills, and mostly have cell for availability, and don't think availability is worth all that much money afterall. If these people (me included) ditched the cell because of costs, would the telecom market be more efficient?
And would a new "availability service" become available? Like.. Pager
A company that makes a hundred mil now is of course good to the shareholders.
A company that makes 300 mil in 5 years is actually better.
And one that makes ten billion in 50 years beats both.
How does the company live to make profit 50 years from now, and why is it better than making some extra now?
A company lives by considering all aspects, not just next quarter bottom line. I totally condemn quarter-stockmarket valuations - they're not based on anything concrete anyway but are pure speculation, and thus can't be considered to be even a guideline for management practices.
And why is it better to make lots more in the long run? As if making lots more wouldn't be enough, but basically anything that can be made NOW is based on fairly short term indicators - a few years but not much more - and long-term beats it every time (if there was any long-term viability to start with).
Also, the intangible values derived from corporate culture and image come into the equation only when they've established - in the long term. Not on the balance sheet, though, so accountant-managers just can't see it.
Let's start with the basics. I have to use Finland as the example, as that's the only country in which I really know how things are.
There is a limited amount of bandwidth for cellphone networks. To operate on that band, a license from must be acquired. The license requires also that the telco operates on the full area they have license for (meaning countrywide license requires building countrywide physical network, which is costly when most of the money comes from perhaps 15% of the land area), and many other things (in national emergencies service must be provided to authorities in priority, and so on). All the usual telco requirements of course apply - including reimbursement for non-service ("You had faulty network? Your problem - pay the customers that didn't get service for the non-service").
So, no telco is going to get a new countrywide license without agreement that they may fullfill countrywide service by renting band from other telcos. That is, they want to get the big money from the 10% of the area (a few cities) and pay as little as possible for the rest of the requirements (the 90% of the area that is required but probably more expensive to provide than is generally reasonable). Oh yes, service must be provided for the same price in the licensed area - the whole country. No trying to sell cheap in the cities and charge arm and leg in the rural areas. And to top it all, they must provide service to service ops for a reasonable fee.. A separate license can of course be sought for a "cityphone" -style service where calls are cheap, but when it was available, very few took the plans, because the phone worked only in the city where the op had cityphone license..
Given all the requirements in the license, we're going to see only service ops who must buy service, rent band, or make roaming agreements with the telcos that have the physical networks. Given that the fees charged by telcos have been challenged a few times, and it seems that service ops now believe they get their service for reasonable fee, and that the service ops provide service for similar (even lower) price as the telcos, all looks good.
Finland is sparsely populated. Building a complete, countrywide cellphone network means burning 90% of the money on areas where the services are never going to cover the costs. So we can't really expect to get cheap calls compared to countries with denser populations.
So, I get a cell plan. 3.50 euros a month, includes all the basic stuff (voicemail, SMS, I don't really know as I don't care for most of the fluff, just voice calls, data, voicemail and SMS). If I don't call out, my bill is going to be that 3.50 a month, and I'll be available. I can answer my phone freely. I might be able to get a cheaper plan if I'm not planning to place outgoing calls, but as I am calling out from my cell, I haven't checked those options.
I think 16 cents a minute isn't a bad price. I often call to areas that would be in-country long distance if I used the landlines. Oh yes, calling any Finnish phone number other than my operators, whether cell or land, costs 24c/min. (Note: prices are maximum prices, eg. longer calls are cheaper per minute, and calls outside business hours are that 16c/min even to other ops nets)
From a landline, a local area call is 12c+1c/min. Other than local area is 9c+8.3c/min. Monthly fee is 12 euros. (Again, these are max fees, outisde business hours is cheaper)
When comparing these, it seems that call termination (billed from caller) to cells (any operator) is roughly 7c/min - the same as any national long distance. With my calling habits, ~90% of my minutes are calls in. And most of the incoming calls are not from my friends, but other parties. So, if I had to pay for call termination, I'd be paying more for taking calls than making calls - and paying way more overall than I'm paying now. That is, if I'd be answering any more..
OK, who'd benefit the most and who'd lose the most if call termination was billed from the callee instead of the caller?
The telcos would lose a lot, because people wouldn't use phones so much as they wouldn't answer the phone any longer. Of course that'd lead to price increases, as less calls in the network means more money per call is needed to make it pay at all.
Most prive people would also lose, as more calls are placed from companies outwards than from private persons. Of course they could stop answering the phone, going back to "telcos lose" part.
And the winners? Well, anyone who spends lots of time on the phone, calling out. That is, companies that do it.. More like: telemarketers, consumer research, and sales-oriented corps (ever notices that the marketroids spend a hell of a lot of time on phone, talking to customers?)..
What's with that equation? Gross simplification:
More calls overall on the same phone network means the network infra (and general management overhead) has higher utilization and thus the income needed to cover the infra can be spread over larger number of calls (and minutes), meaning cheaper calls. And, if call termination was billed from callee, it would mean moving money from private persons to companies, with overall increase in prices.
So, how could billing call termination from callees make for more efficient (and thus cheaper) pricing? Just a gut feeling?
Oh yes, then there's the thing about roaming.. While in Finland, I'm using my provider's network and thus standard fees apply. However, if I'm outside Finland, where the provider doesn't own network but has roaming, I have to pay the roaming fee for answering. That's because anyone who calls my cell number can look up from the price charts what's the price of calling to that provider's cell numbers. And they pay exactly that. I pay for roaming call termination myself. However, when going abroad, I can first check which operators in my target country have roaming agreements, and what's the call termination with them. Then choose the cheapest roaming op there.
What does that do to my cell use? It means that I don't answer to my private phone when not in Finland. I just check the text messages and voicemail, but I don't answer the phone. Because the call termination costs oftentimes more than making the call within Finland costs overall.
I can choose my provider and plan without any fees (except possibly a small fee for new plan or change of plan). That is, I can terminate my plan with just a notice to the provider, and don't need to pay them anything for that.
And, if a new provider comes up with a plan where calling the big provider's numbers doesn't cost any more than it would with the big provider's plan, the big provider will either lower the price or lose customers.
Now, if a carrier came in Finland with a plan that charges their part of an incoming call from the one who answers the phone, I wouldn't take their plan. Not even if it costs me very little to call from their account. Unless they plain and simple promised in written that I'd never have to pay more than a few euros a month for answering the phone, whoever calls me. I don't want to pay for answering the phone - it's the callers responsibility to bear the costs of getting to talk to me.
If I would have to pay for incoming calls, I wouldn't answer any calls except those from numbers I know and want to answer.
I have a landline - ISDN - but no phone on that. Just fax, analog modem and ISDN router (for emergencies and direct connections to some networks). I have two cellphones, one paid by my employer, the second for non-work use which I pay for myself. I don't pay for incoming calls on landline (eg. incoming faxes now that I don't have a phone on that line), and don't intend to pay for incoming calls on cellphone either.
Why is it so unfair that the caller has to pay? I pay for my calls, and have chosen my operator and plan because most of the people I call to have the same operator, and calls to the same operator's cellphones are always cheaper. I chose a plan that suits my calling habits. If someone wants to call me, he can pay. If he wants to make calls to me cheap, he can get a line from the operator I use.
Oh yes, calls cost about EUR 0.16/min + EUR 3.50/month. Calls to other operators' numbers costs a little more. I don't usually talk long on the phone, so I don't get high phonebills. If I wanted, I could be just available for incoming calls for that 3.50/month.
My registrar (ha! as if I'd own them) is OK, not that cheap but not the worst of the flock. Things work well, so I'm not going to change to save a few dollars a year.
However, when they couldn't charge my cc (apparently had old cc info), I got no notification. Then, later, DNS just stopped working. Still no info about something being wrong. I tried checking things on their domain management site, but nothing - all was green, all my settings as I wanted them.
It took me only two days to get the issue resolved, which I think is pretty good. However, I don't know if they have started working on the problem that I was never notified of failure in charge to my cc. Hopefully next time the renewal comes up I remember to check my cc info for correctness..
I haven't had trouble with amazon - I've received only their opt-in newsletters (which I really want to get) to the email address I have on my amazon account.
The same holds true for most of the enterprises to whom I've given a brand-new email address. And in all cases where I've received "affiliate" email, it's been clearly marked as such, with the party to whom I gave the address noted on top.
I have to spoof my From: address in some cases to get a message through. Sometimes the recipient requires the message From: address to be something preconfigured, and no amount of Reply-To: will help.
Of course that's for the headers, I don't change anything in the envelope.
Oh yes, I use dozens of addresses, but mostly just one mail host (my own server), one account and one MUA. For mailing lists, I just send with appropriate From: address (whatever I used when subscribing). For most personal email I'll use my default (or something else, depending on where I want to direct the conversation).
No rewriting of headers is OK when You have one email account, or one per host only - eg. work and home. However, I have many, and there are reasons for that. I only spoof mail as coming from my own accounts.
Oh yes, then there's of course MTA header rewriting. Many organizations (those who know what they're doing) have MTA configured to rewrite internal email address to external when sending mail to outside the local organization. However, that's not spoofing, and is one of the legitimate reasons for header rewriting.
Even if the costs are high, I think we need to keep at least one working, manned space station up and running, just to make way for further manned space exploration. ISS has had its share of problems, including budget and schedule. However, what we should be doing is trying to get every ounce of information we can from ISS, and plan for the next step.
If we drop the manned space station idea and spend the money on research (or other infra work), we're going to have to start from zero again the next time we're going to launch manned space missions. Also, any research that requires (or is much more efficient using) manned space station isn't going to happen unless we have one.
I use CD-RW instead of floppies. They're more reliable - I don't need a stack of them with the same content, hoping that one out of four works..
I don't use CD-RW in any other way. I use them as I did with floppies, and that's it. However, I have used a few (three, I think) discs as my normal mobile media which I can read and write for a while, and haven't had a single glitch. Perhaps some 10-20 writes per disc as of now, so I didn't expect them to fail, either. Standard Maxell 10-pack, 4x rewrite, 650MB.
I've tried recoding DVDs onto SVCDs, and have seen very good quality at about 1800kbps for video. Definitely better than VHS at least, and in many cases close enough to the original DVD that it doesn't matter. Also, if I ever have time to finish my projects (hobby, as in work-comes-first), I have ideas that would give me about 20% (estimate based on a few discs, and would not work on all types of video streams, but would work on most if not all anime) cut on the video bitrate for the same or possibly even a little better quality.
At current rate (1800kbps video + 224kbps audio) I thus get about 50 minutes on an 80min CD-R. Which means that I'm not going to store movies on them, however TV series are OK (assuming episode length of about 40-45 minutes; 20-25 for anime).
However, recording analog signal and compressing that means that You'll first have to clean it up and then work on the compression. Unfortunately even the best magic provided by the encoding tools doesn't work without lots of human intervention.
I can clean up and do all pre-encoding work in about 4 hours per ~45 minutes of material.
Going for straight encoding from signal means that it's going to be crap or requires a high bitrate - on the order of 5+Mbps - thus leaving CD-R burning out of the equation..
If You want to replace VHS (which is crap anyway on Your 51" HDTV set) with optical media, go for DVD(-/+)R(W). Not only will it provide more capacity, but playable on standard DVD sets at high bitrates (SVCD is 2600kbps max - of course many DVDs support higher bitrate SVCD content, but then You're going for 20-30 minutes per CD).
Also, they apparently scored on a scale of 0-100, where the first 39 fit in 0-10, and the last 15 or so had scores of 50-100, median 23.50 ( Mozambique). US had a score of 4.75.
They have a page about the criteria and methodology. Namely, they sent out questionaires to jouranlists.
Note the last point in their criteria:
However, the author of this (and other) papers about virtual world economics is a Associate Professor of Economics who probably knows a little bit more than the average Economic 101 student..
Perhaps he's researching virtual world economics partially just for the reason that current economics theories don't cover MMORPGs well and thus aren't able to predict the amount of (real) money involved in the games.
Did You read the paper? It was interesting reading, although I admit that most slashdotters probably just can't take a 44-page paper on one sitting, as even short one-page articles go unread by many posters..
I think it's a reasonable assumption that the Internet has a maximum radius of max TTL of an IP packet, which excludes such close objects as Mars, let alone another galaxy.
So please, even if You were just a visitor, considering You're posting on slashdot You might as well forget the idea of returning and start living on slashdot. You're confined to the small space of 400 seconds from slashdot.
In case of published works there is no ownership. There is only authorship. If no monopoly (copyright) were granted, anyone would be free to copy the works.
While some, very few, works are sought after long since their initial publishing, most works really sell for one printing and that's it. Only big-name authors sell for a long time, and very few of them even become classics sought after fifty years.
In case of "continuing demand", ie. demand for more copies of the work after the initial demand (a few years, nowadays more like "the first christmas"), the author has already generated revenue from initial demand, and should be economically well off. Most works don't have continuing demand, unless You think selling a hundred copies in the first year, ten copies a year for the next three, and total of ten in the next thirty constitutes "continuing demand"..
The statement is of much more importance to consumer electronics manufacturers, as they try to go with the cheapest possible chips in their products, and "3-4 times more" means "lots more $$$". When features are dropped due to too high processing speed requirements (in the "it'd take a CPU USD 3$ more expensive" -sense), the statement clearly says "in technofreak expensive products only".
No, You just cut all routing between USA and the rest of the world. No IP packets flowing means no-one can access the outside-USA evil internet so full of IP violations.. Then You can prosecute anyone who has illegal (in USA) content in the USA-internet, as all packets in the net originate and terminate within USA..
/. is hosted in the USA I'll lose that, but then again, it might benefit my employer.. :)
Of course if
I think that's how it's done in conventional physical goods case: ban import and/or export. Stop the goods at the border. So, go ahead and stop IP packets at the border, too. I think we Europeans will manage to get over it, and we'll just have to route around damage to get to the rest of the world. Slower, yes, but that'll be corrected with time.
For as long as man-pages stay, OK. I use man-pages, and where an application doesn't have a man-page, I'm first inclined to throw it out, but most often stay cool and start seaching for documentation. At least please package a man-page that points to the documentation with all software.
Documentation shouldn't be X-dependant, but should be readable in text-only 80x25 screen.
Different programs have different needs from their config files. Trying to fit one model to all isn't really a good solution, as that model would have to cater for the extremely complex configuration some software might need, while still be very simple for the programs that just need five key-value pairs.
Config files have to be human-readable and hand editable. I'm not going to use the various whiz-bang graphical configurators when I still have vi. At least regarding system config - configuring various all-graphical applications is another story, but that's not system-config.
However, requiring text-only configuration files and version control of the whole configuration hierarchy would be good. I have seen some ways to use eg. RCS for all of
Of course this also means that there would have to be a hierarchy for configuration-only files, and any non-configuration files in
Perhaps configuration file hierarchy should be such where each package would use it's own directory, and where necessary, use symlinks.
The photographer does a lot more than take shots. He's the artist who arranges the situation, knows what he's doing, and gets it right, every time (well, nearly every time at least).
Like a great programmer understands what is needed, gives a realistics tenative schedule, and gets the work done without additional hassles.
In programming, mostly what's needed is not the great programmer - an average one will do. He'll get something done, in some schedule. It's enough. And costs one tenth of what the great programmer would've cost.
So if You don't think You need the perfect shots, don't get a great photographer. Get a cheap one, or make do with the photos Your family and friends get.
If You want the sourcecode from the great programmer, be ready to pay for the time he spent, and the tools he used, not just for the binary.
If You want the negative, be ready to pay the photographer for his time and tools, not just the end result. And remember, the time includes not just time spent at the wedding, but also in the lab.
I don't really know how much it'd take to hire a great photographer and get the negatives. Actually, get the properly scanned images in a CD-ROM (remember, after film processing the negatives have to be scanned correctly, with good equipment, and the scans checked and possibly still color corrected). Could be some EUR 3-5k, with a result of tens of perfect shots.
Someone mentioned that the film may cost even USD 15 per shot. In that case, assuming a gross 100 shots, the film would cost about USD 1500.. 3k sounds pretty small in that light.
Just a couple of days ago I received a call regarding a fax I had sent, and I was asked the usual basic information and whether I had sent the fax, and if I could verify the request I made by stating it (shortly) now on phone. After I stated my request on phone, it was OK'd, and later that day I had confirmation fax on my table.
I think that was pretty good. Of course, my request was somewhat unusual, so it might have triggered a "use the strong procedure" attitude.
I will - in about two hundred years when the islanders notice that they have been considered part of Europe for a while..
Remember that whatever happens, the pound, the mile, and the pint stay. (I don't remember the exact words, but that was the promise of the prime minister of UK some years ago.)
I would agree about the pint.
OK, Europe is not communist, but socialist. The various center-leftist socialist parties pretty much rule over Europe..
And fascism, right-wing neo-nazism, and such is on the rise in Europe - has been for a while.
And the French are bloody incompetent idiots - that's a no-brainer. And spending most of the EU budget to pay the French farmers. I eagerly await the shit-wars of French vs. Polish farmers - You can't imagine the amount of shit the French can drive on the EU Parliament house stairs..
No, the EU parliaments and cabinets definitely don't have a good record on using the tax-money wisely. Do You follow the news? How about the Italian budget? The French budget (and broken promises)? Even Germany has trouble keeping spending down when they lower the taxes (not that lowering the taxes is bad, but spending should go down as well).
However, on footing the bill of OSS developed in the future for the purposes proposed in the study, those bureaous that need software will pay. Whether proprietary or open source makes no difference in who pays, just that in time there should be a pool of software available which can be customized for the purposes of various bureaus instead of commissioning new, proprietary software written from scratch every time. I think it should lower costs for every party later on - it's the same as with any kind of software re-use (modularization, componentatization, and so on) done a little differently. And, as currently the software is written by hundreds or thousands of private companies which don't share source between eachother, even if the same companies continued to work on the programs required, having a source pool should speed up the development and thus make it a little cheaper.
Disclmaier: as a European I have all the rights to make fun of Europe and Europeans. But I still reserve the right to make fun of Americans, too
Some multicast. I think NTP and RIP2, could be more.