I don't get why everyone thinks this is going to be such an issue - on either side. Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.
Two things to note, which I have said before:
Local Number Portability (LNP - the wireline equivalent to WNP) has about a 30% failure rate according to agencies such as PUCO (Ohio's regulatory body) and the CPUC (California's regulatory body). Essentially, what happens is that the port does not work, and in most cases, rather than wait for the local telcos to get their ducksinaro, people just accept a new telephone number, one from the pool of numbers assigned to their new telco. I don't foresee this ratio being any better with WNP.
Local Exchanges - Surely you have noticed by now that a carrier normally does not have numbers in each rate centre in an area code. T-Mobile, for example, have numbers in the 310 area code only in Gardena and Santa Monica. If WNP follows the lead of LNP, the only requirement is that they port your existing number IF YOU ARE IN THE SAME RATE CENTRE. If you have a Cingular telephone in the Mar Vista rate centre, or an AT&T phone in the Beverly Hills rate centre, and you skip to T-Mobile, I assume your old provider would not be required to port your old number.
Finally, nowhere does it say that WNP is required to be a FREE service. I could see them charging your new company a fee for the service, and there is no doubt in my mind that the cost will be passed directly to the consumer.
I assume he meant 102ÂF, not 102ÂC. 102ÂF, while quite warm, is not exactly scalding temperature (after all, hundreds of thousands of yuppies regularly dunk their meat and two veg in hot tubs that are heated to 105ÂF and suffer no burns). 102ÂC would be a hell of a lawsuit.
I'm reminded of a Dilbert episode (yes, from that lousy TV show) where Dilbert has a voice-activated shower.
Dogbert: Tell me about the Gruntmaster 9000. Dilbert: You mean '6000'. Dogbert: What? Dilbert: I SAID, YOU MEAN 'SIX THOUSAND'! Shower:...six thousand... Dilbert: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
It seems obvious that you don't travel on business much. When you are a tourist, the idea is to take in the sights, hit the nightclubs, &c. When you are a business traveller, you want one of two things: to not have to leave the hotel room (because you won't be in there very long), or to continue working.
I like to work in the evenings when on business trips, because the more I work, the sooner I get done, and the sooner I can go home.
It should have been plain that this hotel room in El Segundo was not meant for tourists... a tourist with that kind of dough wouldn't stay at the fucking Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo, he'd stay at Le Meridien or the W or something, in a place with some nightlife and some interesting things to see. (El Segundo's a nice enough place but it's not exactly a tourist mecca.)
...which oftentimes is more lucrative than selling the product in the first place. I know a number of non-OSS companies that practise this model as well.
Good point though.
I suspect that if he wanted to release an entire app into the OSS pool, his company would insist that it be an app from which they would derive little money from the sale.
Neat little code tricks, functions, etc., OTOH, could very easily be released OSS.
Remember that open-source is not necessarily free-as-in-beer. Your company can charge for the source code and the binaries if it wants, it just needs to use an open-source license (insert heavily-compressed flamewar here).
Also you can make quite clear that you will only support YOUR version of the product and that if they choose to modify the source they're on their own.
If you're just talking about donating code snippets, well, then you need someone with more experience in that than I.
Why bother? It's not like it's going to improve my (incredibly bad) mail service by giving the guy yet another thing to think about in his badly-overloaded head.
(We've gotten our mail at 21:30, and there are many, many days where we don't get it at all.)
This is exactly how Hotmail works with the Junk Mail filter set to Exclusive. It's a whitelist system. It reminds you to add people to your whitelist when you send them mail, and it filters everything not on your whitelist to the Junk Mail folder. You can allow entire domains, or entire blocks of IPs. I check mine every other day just to make sure nothing slips through, but other than the once-every-two-months or so "Member Services" e-mail touting their ridiculous pay-for-use service, I haven't had a spam in my Hotmail inbox since I started.
Look at the RATP's metro map. Unless they're planning to include all of the RER stations in that, Paris will not be totally covered by Wi-Fi. Even given a 300-metre radius, which is probably being hopelessly optimistic, you won't have full coverage the way you do with GSM wireless coverage - the stations are usually more than 300m apart, not to mention the 'shadows' created by buildings, etc. in the path of the signal.
Now, if they mounted transmitters on each wireless tower or minitower or microtower, you'd have 100% coverage of the city.
The law has just been changed, and newly made cell phones must have GPS units and be able to transmit them to emergency authorities.
GSM telephones do not have analog capability. Almost all other telephones sold in the US do. As in Finland, in the US, any telephone, if it is able to receive a usable signal, must make 911 calls free of charge regardless of the network it is on.
The US is covered very well with analog AMPS systems. That's why I take my old tri-mode Sprint phone with me when I go out into the wilderness... my GSM phone is a brick.
I've done this too... but with weirder excuses, esp. given that I'm male, not female.
"Is $MY_NAME home?" "I'm sorry, I'm having sex with him right now."
"I'd like to offer you $PRODUCT!" "I'm sorry, I'm a lesbian."
"Are you interested in $NEWSPAPER?" "No, I'm sorry, my religion forbids me to consume hot dog buns, and it's well known that your paper contains recycled hot dog buns."
It's plain to see that you live in a mid-size or smaller city. Here where I live, if you call and make a complaint like that, they'll laugh at you. I'd rather sue the telemarketers myself and let the LAPD deal with gangbangers, drug dealers, and murderers.
In most cases, internet service provision, which includes in every case e-mail service, is already taxed at the federal and often the local level. Hence why I pay that extra $2.17 a month.
The euro is more or less equivalent to a dollar... generally worth a bit more than a dollar...he's talking about a tax of $8.86 at today's wholesale exchange rate.
And before anyone else asks, that's CDN$12.78, A$14.24, and £5.56... other conversions available here.
Answer: Congress will have the major role in resolving any privacy issues that result from TIA research. All TIA research complies with all privacy laws, without exception. In addition, the oversight boards that the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics has established will ensure that TIA develops its products and disseminates them in a manner consistent with public policy concerns....so, uh, I'm supposed to trust my Congresscritters, including Her Holiness Dianne Feinstein, as well as the Department of Defense, to keep the DoD from prying into my life?
Also, in California (oh, WHY am I telling you people this?) if the speed limit is set artificially low (for example, if neighbourhood residents complain and the limit is reduced from 35mph to 25mph), and you are ticketed for going above the posted limit but below the actual 85th percentile limit, there is precedent for having the ticket dismissed.
For this reason, most communities either keep to the 85th percentile speed limits or put other traffic slowing devices (called "traffic calming" in Alhambra, CA) in place such as series of traffic lights that are timed for the posted limit (cf. Beverly Glen Rd. between Sunset Blvd. and Mulholland Dr. in Los Angeles, where signs inform you that the lights are timed for 30mph.)
And any true New Yorker knows that avenue traffic lights are timed for 38 mph.
As long as you have some kind of audio and video out, and a phone line handy, and your DishNet box has an IR remote, you can use it... now granted, you may end up connecting with yucky coax, but you can do it. (Don't know what the back of a DishNet box looks like.) The Tivo accepts coax and RCA in, and gives coax, RCA, and s-vid out.
California already bans telemarketing to mobile phones (easily recognisable by their exchange numbers, i.e., 310-245-XXXX), even by groups outside the state - and this is a comprehensive ban, including political messages, newspapers, volunteer organisations, etc.
I rarely get telemarketing calls on my landline, and when I do they're normally from the bloody L.A. Times. If our landline rings twice a month it's a lot. It exists primarily as the catalyst for DSL.
My old AT&T cell phone had a number in the Beverly Hills rate centre - it was the "local exchange" available for West Los Angeles subscribers.
Now, let's say I want to switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile have numbers in the Santa Monica rate centre and in the Gardena rate centre ONLY.
Since the rule says that you can only port within a rate centre, I would still not be able to port my number from AT&T to T-Mobile.
This will mean two things: 1) people who want to switch to carriers with less-than-total market penetration (here that would mean Nextel and T-Mobile) will not be able to port their numbers, and 2) more and more numbers will be used up (thousands-block allocation notwithstanding) as the smaller carriers scramble to get numbers in each rate centre within an area code.
Rich executives are not going to want to use $30 disposable phones. All the executives with whom I have worked have either the serviceable mainstream type with a brand-name service such as AT&T or Verizon or Cingular, or they have a top-of-the-line model, often Japanese or European, with a similar service and global roaming.
They aren't going to want to change their phone numbers every 60 minutes.
No, it will be used as pay-in-advance phones are always used, by people who want them for emergencies only, and by people for whom traceable phone numbers would be Very Embarrassing.
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I don't get why everyone thinks this is going to be such an issue - on either side. Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.
Two things to note, which I have said before:
Local Number Portability (LNP - the wireline equivalent to WNP) has about a 30% failure rate according to agencies such as PUCO (Ohio's regulatory body) and the CPUC (California's regulatory body). Essentially, what happens is that the port does not work, and in most cases, rather than wait for the local telcos to get their ducksinaro, people just accept a new telephone number, one from the pool of numbers assigned to their new telco. I don't foresee this ratio being any better with WNP.
Local Exchanges - Surely you have noticed by now that a carrier normally does not have numbers in each rate centre in an area code. T-Mobile, for example, have numbers in the 310 area code only in Gardena and Santa Monica. If WNP follows the lead of LNP, the only requirement is that they port your existing number IF YOU ARE IN THE SAME RATE CENTRE. If you have a Cingular telephone in the Mar Vista rate centre, or an AT&T phone in the Beverly Hills rate centre, and you skip to T-Mobile, I assume your old provider would not be required to port your old number.
Finally, nowhere does it say that WNP is required to be a FREE service. I could see them charging your new company a fee for the service, and there is no doubt in my mind that the cost will be passed directly to the consumer.
I assume he meant 102ÂF, not 102ÂC. 102ÂF, while quite warm, is not exactly scalding temperature (after all, hundreds of thousands of yuppies regularly dunk their meat and two veg in hot tubs that are heated to 105ÂF and suffer no burns). 102ÂC would be a hell of a lawsuit.
...six thousand...
I'm reminded of a Dilbert episode (yes, from that lousy TV show) where Dilbert has a voice-activated shower.
Dogbert: Tell me about the Gruntmaster 9000.
Dilbert: You mean '6000'.
Dogbert: What?
Dilbert: I SAID, YOU MEAN 'SIX THOUSAND'!
Shower:
Dilbert: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
It seems obvious that you don't travel on business much. When you are a tourist, the idea is to take in the sights, hit the nightclubs, &c. When you are a business traveller, you want one of two things: to not have to leave the hotel room (because you won't be in there very long), or to continue working.
I like to work in the evenings when on business trips, because the more I work, the sooner I get done, and the sooner I can go home.
It should have been plain that this hotel room in El Segundo was not meant for tourists... a tourist with that kind of dough wouldn't stay at the fucking Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo, he'd stay at Le Meridien or the W or something, in a place with some nightlife and some interesting things to see. (El Segundo's a nice enough place but it's not exactly a tourist mecca.)
...which oftentimes is more lucrative than selling the product in the first place. I know a number of non-OSS companies that practise this model as well.
Good point though.
I suspect that if he wanted to release an entire app into the OSS pool, his company would insist that it be an app from which they would derive little money from the sale.
Neat little code tricks, functions, etc., OTOH, could very easily be released OSS.
Remember that open-source is not necessarily free-as-in-beer. Your company can charge for the source code and the binaries if it wants, it just needs to use an open-source license (insert heavily-compressed flamewar here).
Also you can make quite clear that you will only support YOUR version of the product and that if they choose to modify the source they're on their own.
If you're just talking about donating code snippets, well, then you need someone with more experience in that than I.
Why bother? It's not like it's going to improve my (incredibly bad) mail service by giving the guy yet another thing to think about in his badly-overloaded head.
(We've gotten our mail at 21:30, and there are many, many days where we don't get it at all.)
It's a ZIP only. I don't even know my ZIP+4.
This is exactly how Hotmail works with the Junk Mail filter set to Exclusive. It's a whitelist system. It reminds you to add people to your whitelist when you send them mail, and it filters everything not on your whitelist to the Junk Mail folder. You can allow entire domains, or entire blocks of IPs. I check mine every other day just to make sure nothing slips through, but other than the once-every-two-months or so "Member Services" e-mail touting their ridiculous pay-for-use service, I haven't had a spam in my Hotmail inbox since I started.
Look at the RATP's metro map. Unless they're planning to include all of the RER stations in that, Paris will not be totally covered by Wi-Fi. Even given a 300-metre radius, which is probably being hopelessly optimistic, you won't have full coverage the way you do with GSM wireless coverage - the stations are usually more than 300m apart, not to mention the 'shadows' created by buildings, etc. in the path of the signal.
Now, if they mounted transmitters on each wireless tower or minitower or microtower, you'd have 100% coverage of the city.
Nevertheless, it is a good idea.
The law has just been changed, and newly made cell phones must have GPS units and be able to transmit them to emergency authorities.
GSM telephones do not have analog capability. Almost all other telephones sold in the US do. As in Finland, in the US, any telephone, if it is able to receive a usable signal, must make 911 calls free of charge regardless of the network it is on.
The US is covered very well with analog AMPS systems. That's why I take my old tri-mode Sprint phone with me when I go out into the wilderness... my GSM phone is a brick.
I've done this too... but with weirder excuses, esp. given that I'm male, not female.
"Is $MY_NAME home?"
"I'm sorry, I'm having sex with him right now."
"I'd like to offer you $PRODUCT!"
"I'm sorry, I'm a lesbian."
"Are you interested in $NEWSPAPER?"
"No, I'm sorry, my religion forbids me to consume hot dog buns, and it's well known that your paper contains recycled hot dog buns."
It's plain to see that you live in a mid-size or smaller city. Here where I live, if you call and make a complaint like that, they'll laugh at you. I'd rather sue the telemarketers myself and let the LAPD deal with gangbangers, drug dealers, and murderers.
In most cases, internet service provision, which includes in every case e-mail service, is already taxed at the federal and often the local level. Hence why I pay that extra $2.17 a month.
Depends. Two beers per spindle if you're at a club, four beers per spindle if you're at a VFW hall, and two cases of cheap watery beer at a Kwik Trip.
And people complain Slashdotters don't have any hobbies!
The euro is more or less equivalent to a dollar... generally worth a bit more than a dollar...he's talking about a tax of $8.86 at today's wholesale exchange rate.
And before anyone else asks, that's CDN$12.78, A$14.24, and £5.56... other conversions available here.
Question 6: How will privacy issues be resolved?
...so, uh, I'm supposed to trust my Congresscritters, including Her Holiness Dianne Feinstein, as well as the Department of Defense, to keep the DoD from prying into my life?
Answer: Congress will have the major role in resolving any privacy issues that result from TIA research. All TIA research complies with all privacy laws, without exception. In addition, the oversight boards that the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics has established will ensure that TIA develops its products and disseminates them in a manner consistent with public policy concerns.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Also, in California (oh, WHY am I telling you people this?) if the speed limit is set artificially low (for example, if neighbourhood residents complain and the limit is reduced from 35mph to 25mph), and you are ticketed for going above the posted limit but below the actual 85th percentile limit, there is precedent for having the ticket dismissed.
For this reason, most communities either keep to the 85th percentile speed limits or put other traffic slowing devices (called "traffic calming" in Alhambra, CA) in place such as series of traffic lights that are timed for the posted limit (cf. Beverly Glen Rd. between Sunset Blvd. and Mulholland Dr. in Los Angeles, where signs inform you that the lights are timed for 30mph.)
And any true New Yorker knows that avenue traffic lights are timed for 38 mph.
As long as you have some kind of audio and video out, and a phone line handy, and your DishNet box has an IR remote, you can use it... now granted, you may end up connecting with yucky coax, but you can do it. (Don't know what the back of a DishNet box looks like.) The Tivo accepts coax and RCA in, and gives coax, RCA, and s-vid out.
Oh my God! They killed Cthulhu! YOU BASTARDS!
California already bans telemarketing to mobile phones (easily recognisable by their exchange numbers, i.e., 310-245-XXXX), even by groups outside the state - and this is a comprehensive ban, including political messages, newspapers, volunteer organisations, etc.
I rarely get telemarketing calls on my landline, and when I do they're normally from the bloody L.A. Times. If our landline rings twice a month it's a lot. It exists primarily as the catalyst for DSL.
I see one enormous problem with this.
My old AT&T cell phone had a number in the Beverly Hills rate centre - it was the "local exchange" available for West Los Angeles subscribers.
Now, let's say I want to switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile have numbers in the Santa Monica rate centre and in the Gardena rate centre ONLY.
Since the rule says that you can only port within a rate centre, I would still not be able to port my number from AT&T to T-Mobile.
This will mean two things: 1) people who want to switch to carriers with less-than-total market penetration (here that would mean Nextel and T-Mobile) will not be able to port their numbers, and 2) more and more numbers will be used up (thousands-block allocation notwithstanding) as the smaller carriers scramble to get numbers in each rate centre within an area code.
The limits of the narrative style are many, especially because every novel would have to start with "If I were a $OBJECT, I'd be..."
Great, so every time you buy a new phone (and let's take GSM as an example) and a new SIM card and now you have to get a new area code.
What a fucking brilliant idea. We don't have enough area code problems already, let's give people disposable phones!
This message brought to you by an Angeleno who is sick of area code bullshit and will happily gore anyone who deliberately hastens the changes.
Oh, please.
Rich executives are not going to want to use $30 disposable phones. All the executives with whom I have worked have either the serviceable mainstream type with a brand-name service such as AT&T or Verizon or Cingular, or they have a top-of-the-line model, often Japanese or European, with a similar service and global roaming.
They aren't going to want to change their phone numbers every 60 minutes.
No, it will be used as pay-in-advance phones are always used, by people who want them for emergencies only, and by people for whom traceable phone numbers would be Very Embarrassing.