"About the only thing the iPhone did for AT&T was allow them to sell voice/data plans at the subsidized price for unsubsidized phones! "
What did the cell phone market look like before the iPhone came out? Where was Android? Nowhere. What was the big thing in 2006? Oh yeah, RAZRs. LOL
In 2006 everyone had the same selection of crappy phones that are pretty good at making calls and SMS with T9 but little else. Everyone also had two-year contracts, which made it really hard to pick up market share from other carriers. Nobody cared if some other carrier had the latest, fanciest Blackberry model, they just renewed their contract with whatever handsets their current carrier had. The iPhone changed all that. It was radically better than anything else available at the time, and the first Android handset wouldn't drop until over a year later. Millions of customers flocked to the iPhone and AT&T was the only one selling it. That's what the iPhone did for AT&T.
"More to the point, when you look at the total number of handsets sold, smartphones are a drop in the bucket."
It's more like a 40/60 split. And growing. More importantly, they cost more and have data plans attached to them.
Is T-mobile actually under any threat of going under, or did you just make that up? This is the first time I've ever heard about it, and I've paid close attention to the merger attempt. I've read statements from both companies and neither ever mentioned any risk of failure.
Did you read the summary, or even the title? They left T-mobile for the iPhone. Until earlier this year the only company that you could get an iPhone with was AT&T.
In the cell phone business most customers are locked in to two-year contracts that prevent them from easily switching carriers, so the carriers are pretty much stuck with whatever market share they currently have. It's very difficult for them to jockey for market advantage, especially when they all offer essentially the same selection of handsets. Before the iPhone there weren't any smartphones to speak of. You had flip-phones and Blackberries. (Remember how big of a deal the RAZR was? It's kind of embarrassing to think about now, like bell bottoms.) Smartphones were really clunky and no one bought them, sort of like the non-iPad tablet market today. Android didn't exist.
So when Apple wanted to develop an iPhone everyone (except Verizon apparently) knew it would be game-changing, and a unique opportunity to pick up market share in a very inelastic industry, which is exactly what happened. T-mobile tried the same tactic with the first Android phone over a year later but they were too late and it wasn't nearly as popular, and of course soon every carrier had an Android phone anyway, with Verizon soon dominating the Android market.
I was a loyal and happy T-mobile customer since the Voicestream days, just before they became T-mobile. I waited as long as I could for them to get the iPhone, I considered the G2 and myTouch phones, but ultimately my job (iPhone app development) required that I own an iPhone, so I could wait no longer. So yeah, I'm one of those who left T-mobile to get an iPhone.
Learn to understand? Everyone says something different, and when someone says something falsifiable, it's almost always easily debunked. For example, this is the first time I've heard your specific complaint. And I find it far from compelling. First of all, you have no idea the range of technological advances that everyday society uses that NASA is responsible for. Of course I'm sure your "acceptable ratio" is either unrealistic or nonexistent and you wouldn't be satisfied even if you knew about them. Secondly, the amount of money spent on NASA is peanuts compared to what we spend on other things such as our senseless wars or bailing out the banks. The bank bailout is bigger than everything that's been spent on NASA *ever*! Did you realize that? So I think that your perspective is incredibly skewed.
That you can only come up with Tang on your own shows that either you're too cynical or too lazy. You couldn't even think of cordless power drills? The GPS system? Communication satellites?
www.google.com - anyone can do it! You'll find lots of technologies and advancements we use every day that came from NASA. I never knew that we also have NASA to thank for today's water filters and the first smoke detectors.
I wish that everyone who complained about how much money NASA "wastes" remembers just how many wildly successful programs like this one that it's accomplished. They've extended this mission something like half a dozen times. It's been on Mars for eight freaking years and it's still going!
What you call "painfully obvious" others would rightfully call "zero evidence". These people gathered data, aka evidence, that backs up what we all knew but could never prove - until now. Well, I guess we still can't since they won't tell us who is doing the throttling.
Obviously it's hyperbole, but it ignores the distinction between carbon and diamonds. Diamonds here on Earth are relatively rare. And if you count this star or remnant as a single diamond, then they are still rare. Unless parent can explain his point about De Beers tricking everyone or whatever.
More bandwidth is great, it's awesome, really. But the problem is really bandwidth creep and a bigger pipe doesn't solve that. It's the same problem hardware manufacturers and highway builders have, the capacity gets filled uselessly. Those workarounds are always janky and require technical expertise, time, and don't always work, and inevitably become unrealistic as you try harder to cling to what becomes your more and more outdated notions of what is enough bandwidth.
A more generalized approach is needed, more generalized in the way that urban planning has mitigated the problem with highways, and I'm not sure how it's been solved for hardware.
Slow Internet is not the problem. The problem is that we (or rather, our applications) demand more and more data. When 480p video used to suffice, now 1080p is all-important, and soon some 3D variation of that. Where text used to be just fine now it's necessary to watch a Youtube video. Where you used to get animated GIF banner ads now you get full video ads. Where before our preferred content format was local files saved on our hard drives and distributed via home networks, now we store everything in "the cloud" and stream it through our Internet connections. It would be nice if Google tried to do something about that. (I know, I know, get off my lawn and all that. But still, each of those trends irritate me for various reasons, more irritating and bandwidth-consuming ads, less ownership of your stuff, being forced to watch videos when text would be faster to load and read, and not require speakers or interrupt your music.)
Because they are altering the product between when they receive it and when they sell it, which is likely a major violation of the distribution agreement with their distributor or the manufacturer.
Imagine if you got an air conditioner from Sears, got it home, installed it, and plugged it in, and found out that when you turn it on it announces "Thank you for shopping at Sears!" It would be no different than if they opened every box and removed all the warranty cards or accessories that supported certain window frames or something like that. The manufacturer/distributor would most definitely have a solid civil case against the retailer for altering their product before sale and then misrepresenting it to their customer as unaltered/new.
I think the idea is that the current US government is as much a part of the problem and that you must replace it with one that appreciates science, like the one that built a space program from scratch and got us on the moon in less than ten years, in order to have a decent flag-bearer for human civilization.
"Nerds" usually love science. And as someone one who loves science I care about dogmatic attacks against it.
In fact, it was always my personal opinion that one of the defining and universal things about nerds was a love of science, like enjoying science fiction, or growing up with Legos. Strange that you don't share it. But that's just my opinion of what a nerd is.
Don't get so arrogant. Most likely they will just pay the government enough money to let them keep it secret, then they'll start using it near your ground water.
It would be negligence if it were actually possible to frack without contaminating groundwater. It sounds like that's impossible, so the negligence isn't in the fracking process but the decision to frack in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Duh. By the money, of the money, for the money.
"About the only thing the iPhone did for AT&T was allow them to sell voice/data plans at the subsidized price for unsubsidized phones! "
What did the cell phone market look like before the iPhone came out? Where was Android? Nowhere. What was the big thing in 2006? Oh yeah, RAZRs. LOL
In 2006 everyone had the same selection of crappy phones that are pretty good at making calls and SMS with T9 but little else. Everyone also had two-year contracts, which made it really hard to pick up market share from other carriers. Nobody cared if some other carrier had the latest, fanciest Blackberry model, they just renewed their contract with whatever handsets their current carrier had. The iPhone changed all that. It was radically better than anything else available at the time, and the first Android handset wouldn't drop until over a year later. Millions of customers flocked to the iPhone and AT&T was the only one selling it. That's what the iPhone did for AT&T.
"More to the point, when you look at the total number of handsets sold, smartphones are a drop in the bucket."
It's more like a 40/60 split. And growing. More importantly, they cost more and have data plans attached to them.
Source: http://www.mobiletor.com/2011/09/03/nielsen-reports-40-percent-users-own-smartphone-in-the-us/#
Is T-mobile actually under any threat of going under, or did you just make that up? This is the first time I've ever heard about it, and I've paid close attention to the merger attempt. I've read statements from both companies and neither ever mentioned any risk of failure.
Did you read the summary, or even the title? They left T-mobile for the iPhone. Until earlier this year the only company that you could get an iPhone with was AT&T.
In the cell phone business most customers are locked in to two-year contracts that prevent them from easily switching carriers, so the carriers are pretty much stuck with whatever market share they currently have. It's very difficult for them to jockey for market advantage, especially when they all offer essentially the same selection of handsets. Before the iPhone there weren't any smartphones to speak of. You had flip-phones and Blackberries. (Remember how big of a deal the RAZR was? It's kind of embarrassing to think about now, like bell bottoms.) Smartphones were really clunky and no one bought them, sort of like the non-iPad tablet market today. Android didn't exist.
So when Apple wanted to develop an iPhone everyone (except Verizon apparently) knew it would be game-changing, and a unique opportunity to pick up market share in a very inelastic industry, which is exactly what happened. T-mobile tried the same tactic with the first Android phone over a year later but they were too late and it wasn't nearly as popular, and of course soon every carrier had an Android phone anyway, with Verizon soon dominating the Android market.
I was a loyal and happy T-mobile customer since the Voicestream days, just before they became T-mobile. I waited as long as I could for them to get the iPhone, I considered the G2 and myTouch phones, but ultimately my job (iPhone app development) required that I own an iPhone, so I could wait no longer. So yeah, I'm one of those who left T-mobile to get an iPhone.
Learn to understand? Everyone says something different, and when someone says something falsifiable, it's almost always easily debunked. For example, this is the first time I've heard your specific complaint. And I find it far from compelling. First of all, you have no idea the range of technological advances that everyday society uses that NASA is responsible for. Of course I'm sure your "acceptable ratio" is either unrealistic or nonexistent and you wouldn't be satisfied even if you knew about them. Secondly, the amount of money spent on NASA is peanuts compared to what we spend on other things such as our senseless wars or bailing out the banks. The bank bailout is bigger than everything that's been spent on NASA *ever*! Did you realize that? So I think that your perspective is incredibly skewed.
That's not true, as evidenced by every other anti-NASA comment. Just from this thread alone:
Opportunity was a boondoggle - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2408986&cid=37281984
Too much money wasted overall compared to whatever results this person finds worthwhile - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2408986&cid=37282056
Martian soil is a handful of shit, or maybe NASA is too socialistic? - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2408986&cid=37282776
NASA doesn't produce any technology that's useful to everyday society - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2408986&cid=37288030
Apparently you need to have a little pow-wow with your fellow NASA-haters.
That you can only come up with Tang on your own shows that either you're too cynical or too lazy. You couldn't even think of cordless power drills? The GPS system? Communication satellites?
www.google.com - anyone can do it! You'll find lots of technologies and advancements we use every day that came from NASA. I never knew that we also have NASA to thank for today's water filters and the first smoke detectors.
I wish that everyone who complained about how much money NASA "wastes" remembers just how many wildly successful programs like this one that it's accomplished. They've extended this mission something like half a dozen times. It's been on Mars for eight freaking years and it's still going!
What you call "painfully obvious" others would rightfully call "zero evidence". These people gathered data, aka evidence, that backs up what we all knew but could never prove - until now. Well, I guess we still can't since they won't tell us who is doing the throttling.
It would be worth exactly what you can get someone to pay for it. No less, no more.
Ask a stupid question...
Obviously it's hyperbole, but it ignores the distinction between carbon and diamonds. Diamonds here on Earth are relatively rare. And if you count this star or remnant as a single diamond, then they are still rare. Unless parent can explain his point about De Beers tricking everyone or whatever.
Obligatory: My god, you monster! Why didn't you warn them about the financial collapse, and the Japanese quake?
More bandwidth is great, it's awesome, really. But the problem is really bandwidth creep and a bigger pipe doesn't solve that. It's the same problem hardware manufacturers and highway builders have, the capacity gets filled uselessly. Those workarounds are always janky and require technical expertise, time, and don't always work, and inevitably become unrealistic as you try harder to cling to what becomes your more and more outdated notions of what is enough bandwidth.
A more generalized approach is needed, more generalized in the way that urban planning has mitigated the problem with highways, and I'm not sure how it's been solved for hardware.
Slow Internet is not the problem. The problem is that we (or rather, our applications) demand more and more data. When 480p video used to suffice, now 1080p is all-important, and soon some 3D variation of that. Where text used to be just fine now it's necessary to watch a Youtube video. Where you used to get animated GIF banner ads now you get full video ads. Where before our preferred content format was local files saved on our hard drives and distributed via home networks, now we store everything in "the cloud" and stream it through our Internet connections. It would be nice if Google tried to do something about that. (I know, I know, get off my lawn and all that. But still, each of those trends irritate me for various reasons, more irritating and bandwidth-consuming ads, less ownership of your stuff, being forced to watch videos when text would be faster to load and read, and not require speakers or interrupt your music.)
Because they are altering the product between when they receive it and when they sell it, which is likely a major violation of the distribution agreement with their distributor or the manufacturer.
Imagine if you got an air conditioner from Sears, got it home, installed it, and plugged it in, and found out that when you turn it on it announces "Thank you for shopping at Sears!" It would be no different than if they opened every box and removed all the warranty cards or accessories that supported certain window frames or something like that. The manufacturer/distributor would most definitely have a solid civil case against the retailer for altering their product before sale and then misrepresenting it to their customer as unaltered/new.
It's amazing what a little competition will do for your motivation.
America: Not quite as bad as China. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
I think the idea is that the current US government is as much a part of the problem and that you must replace it with one that appreciates science, like the one that built a space program from scratch and got us on the moon in less than ten years, in order to have a decent flag-bearer for human civilization.
"Nerds" usually love science. And as someone one who loves science I care about dogmatic attacks against it.
In fact, it was always my personal opinion that one of the defining and universal things about nerds was a love of science, like enjoying science fiction, or growing up with Legos. Strange that you don't share it. But that's just my opinion of what a nerd is.
Is Harrison Ford getting older? Has anyone confirmed this?
Epic, huh? Really? Did it destroy Troy, or get lost at sea for ten years? Is it anywhere near that epic level of magnitude? I don't think so.
Don't get so arrogant. Most likely they will just pay the government enough money to let them keep it secret, then they'll start using it near your ground water.
It would be negligence if it were actually possible to frack without contaminating groundwater. It sounds like that's impossible, so the negligence isn't in the fracking process but the decision to frack in the first place.
"The absolute last thing I want at this point is to add yet one more device I would have to keep charged and haul around."
Are you sure you don't need something to go with that hot sauce?