I take it you've never had a conversation with a German bureaucrat. Come to think of it, neither have I... a conversation would imply a two-way exchange of information.
From another article I read a while back about this case, it went more like this (paraphrasing for brevity and (hopefully) comedic effect).
Officer: Can you show me the contents of your hard drive.
Idiot: No problem, only legit porn on this hard drive. (Types encryption password).
0: What do we have here?
I: Lolita flick. I get off on girls that look younger than they are.
O: Nope, this one is really underaged.
I: This niche market is really convincing. I assure you that...
O: Nope, I'm booking you, perv!
I: (aside) OH CRAP!
The point being that the cooperative victim (according to his side of the story) was convinced he was showing legit files to the officer, and only when the officer disagreed did the victim want to invoke his rights. In my opinion, we're probably dealing with a straight-and-narrow law enforcement officer who has no idea that there's an entire sleaze market to make girls look underage.
And really, if I were put in the victim's position, and I was suddenly faced with defending the legality and authenticity of some random file I got from a torrent (with the penalty of jail time if I were wrong) OR simply trying to hide the evidence, I think I would react in the same way.
For those of you whose eyes glazed over after realizing this 'analysis' was drivel, I'll highlight a superb quote which disinclines me to believe anything Bennett says:
Suppose a security company were to discover an exploit in Internet Explorer that could reveal your real name (as entered in your personal computer's Control Panel settings at setup time)...
Your 'real name'?!?! Who the fuck EVER puts their real names on any Microsoft product registration (excluding your basic, non-slashdot reading, use-the-computer-to-download-the-internets user). I think that the MAJORITY of machines that I've seen have some variant of "FUCK BILL GATES/FUCK M$" for registration names. His naivety is worth a chuckle. Enjoy!
I've always been skeptical about how I've heard that the Thai people are very fond of their king. How do you confirm a statement like this when anyone saying they aren't fond of the king could be jailed? True, they probably won't be jailed, but there's a risk, and that's going to bias results.
I don't have a statistically significant number of Thai friends (and those I know are Americans of Thai heritage (2nd gen., mostly)), but anyone I talked to when the YouTube foot+king video broke didn't really care one way or another about the insult to the king. However, if my friends were in Thailand and someone asked, I'm damn sure what their responses would be.
In short, I don't know any way verify whether the people of Thailand are fond of their king... and as unreliable info (more or less by definition of circumstances), I exclude it from consideration.
Ok, I'll bite. Sequestration has nothing to do with 'when we produce carbon'. Sequestration technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and it isn't picky about where or when it happens (your post seems to imply sequestration at the time of production, which is viewed as highly impractical). There's a former Slashdot article summarizing a study that regardless of where you put the CO2 sequestration plants, the local concentration at various points around the globe equilibrate rapidly... you can look it up though.
Second, read the article... no no no, not the news summary, the PNAS article! Solomon is NOT saying that once/if we stop all carbon production, the oceans will continue to ABSORB carbon dioxide. Solomon IS saying that once/if we stop all carbon production, the oceans will keep RELEASING carbon dioxide for much longer than previously expected.
Third, this isn't an either/or proposition with cutting emissions and carbon sequestration. Any reasonably informed expert would recommend a multi-pronged approach. Reduce/quit emitting on some time scale and use sequestration to clean up the damage.
Fourth, CO2 in the oceans doesn't directly absorb much heat. Its stored mostly as carbonic acid and the frequencies/cross section are completely different.
Whew... alot of misrepresentations in a single sentence, however, I think I've addressed all of them. So, to piece together a more coherent scenario than the one put forth to grab headlines using what I just went over... 1) we reduce or eliminate carbon emissions 2) we implement carbon sequestration to reduce the CO2 still in the atmosphere but 3) the lowered CO2 concentration in the atmosphere prompts release of CO2 from the oceans (as Solomon acknowledged) so we 4) keep running sequestration until the carbon sink from the oceans is depleted. Clear?
Well, I probably just biased you into thinking I'm a climate change denier with the title, but guess what... I buy into science.
However, there is such a ridiculous, self-reinforcing feedback loop of grandiose speech and groupthink within the climate research community that its no wonder quacks out there are encouraged towards disbelief. If you attend lectures by some of these researchers (personally, its been mostly atmospheric chemists for me), you'll see that nearly every one of them thinks they're some sort of Messiah trying to spread the holy message. This article (the original, not the fluff news summary) is no exception.
In order to secure a newspaper headline title (once again, in order to get THE MESSAGE out), Solomon completely ignores a range of facts and potential solutions.
First fact, she admits in the article that people have previously predicted the consequences to last centuries. Apparently, when you increase the timescale from 200 years to 1000 years, you pass her arbitrary distinction between 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. How about we agree to refer to this as possibly reversible on a really long time scale, huh? And instead of Solomon saying that she was the one to discover global warming was 'irreversible', instead say that it will take longer than expected to return to normal?
Second, Solomon DELIBERATELY turns a blind eye to research already in the literature that contradicts her model. This surpasses vanity and enters into the realm of negligence on the level of an ethical violation. I'm talking about the emerging field of carbon sequestration here. Anyone in the field of climate research WILL know about the branch of research focused on removing and confining CO2 from the atmosphere. While any implementation is still a long way from large scale deployment or commercial viability, if you're going to make predictions on a 1000 year time scale, you might want to take into account technology advances in this field! However, that would destroy Solomon's pretty newspaper headline and reduce it to the following:
Global warming might last five times as long as previously expected assuming we don't find a way to fix the problem first
.
Does that sound front-page newsworthy to you? Ok, I support the theory of man-made global warming. However, if we want to persuade the skeptics and nuts out there, climate researchers should start approaching the issue honestly and responsibly. Half truths will only undermine further discussion!
if that's what it takes to finally come up with the funding to appease European rights holders. I loved Pandora in the States, but I've had to cut back since there is no legal way to get Pandora in Germany (I'm assuming proxies to mask country of origin for the purpose of accessing region-restricted media is a legal grey area I shouldn't get into at work).
I did every report and presentation in OpenOffice and saved MS Word and Power Point compatible versions of my files when it came time to submit my work. The instructors never knew the difference...
Then you were lucky. Files written in OO regularly come up with distorted formatting when opened in MS Word. Tables and figures (in nearly any Word-supported image format) will usually trigger some garbling... and if you type an equation object in OO, you KNOW its going to look like gibberish in Word. For serious applications (like a peer-reviewed journal article), you either need Word or an app that outputs PDF's directly (Tex). Relying on OO files to open properly in Word just won't cut it!
If you read the article, you get the impression that Dvorak thinks the spreadsheet is recent invention (30 years old). You'd think an old-timer like him would realize that spreadsheets have been around as long as the practice of accounting, and that they were going strong back at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The only difference was, you paid for an employee instead of a computer to crunch the numbers. Yes, the speed gain in spreadsheet usage definitely increased its influence, but really... spreadsheets are older than John McCain (and that's old!)!
If you would have read the article, you would have seen that it agrees with your opinion, going as far as to suggest that the best way to shut down this activity would be to utilize anonymity. Infiltrating these recruiter networks to sow confusion and discord, as suggested in TFA, would be highly effective to curtail recruitment in an anonymous environment where little trust exists to begin with.
Given Jobs' track record as a completely ruthless businessman, I'd guess someone on the Expo side of things stepped out of line. Don't want to do things Jobs' way? Fine, Jobs is outta here.
Wait, has anyone on this forum ever talked to Nobel Laureates in any sciences? Or read about them?
The vast majority (I'd ballpark it at 80% from completely non-scientific, anecdotal experience) of Nobel Prize winners IN SCIENCE are ego-driven megalomaniacs that are addicted to prestige and influence (since salary rarely goes into 7 digits for professors, its rarely the largest motivator). As such, they've dedicated their lives to feeding their addiction, working their way up from assistant professor to Director of [Weighty Gov. Funding Cash Cow], and navigating the political landscape comes as easily as breathing.
This is no surprise. In nearly any field, there are many more workers whose merit-based achievement qualifies them for advancement than open positions for advancement, so its the self-promoters who actually land the boss's job. Sometimes the value of the work is so strong it outweighs political maneuvering, but its the exception more than the rule. The fact is, every year there are a very limited number of Nobels to hand out, and MANY researchers who have done science of a caliber to deserve them.
The fact that Chu has a Nobel AND is a Director of a Gov. Cash Cow should indicate strongly enough his political experience. The only question remaining is whether he can transplant himself into a wholly new network of players in the politic game.
P.S. I've met Chu. He's a nice guy, and from my inexperienced scientist viewpoint, he's got what it takes to play with the big boys in Washington.
Yeah, I agree there's definitely a contingent of folks in the Linux camp who are snide and condescending (and proud of it). Personally, though, I classify the main division as a dichotomy between Free Software adherents with Stallman as mascot on one end of the spectrum, and Open Source Software more centered around Torvald and Co at the other end. One group considers themselves revolutionaries for liberty (and have the personalities necessary to fill this role), and the other group is fascinated with pushing the development of technology to the limit like any good hacker, scientist or engineer. The blog post was clearly written by one of the revolutionaries. Which approach is "better" is a can of worms I don't want to open, but the Open Source community seems to have more, friendly people involved, who might be more capable of interacting with a layperson.
that the used game market is affecting price and quality, my first response is GREAT! Market forces at work are driving new game prices down and quality up as developers are forced to compete with a robust substitute good: the used game.
Then I realize its more of the same FUD campaign put on by the mega-corporations to prep us for invasive mechanisms inserted into games with the end goal of bilking us for more $$$. I think I'll avoid supporting this industry and stick to indie games until they have an attitude shift.
After scanning the article, I think it would have been better to couch the discussion in the following context:
Given China's (and I'm talking the Chinese government here, not Chinese script kiddies, scammers, fraudsters) recent forays into cyber espionage, would their hacking skills provide an edge in a hypothetical future war.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that, if a war broke out, superior technology could tip the scales. An edge in information gathering (reconnaissance) and possible disruption of enemy infrastructure could be a powerful tool, depending on the extent of penetration. The documented (and undocumented, I'm sure) attacks on US networks demonstrate the capability of the Chinese to engage in these tactics in a time of war.
This brings me to my next point, the use of the word "losing". The word implies that someone else is ahead of the US in the cyber-abilities category. While the article, and any other that I've seen to date, does a respectable job outlining US vulnerability to network-based attacks in the event of a future war, it in no means outlines the capabilities of the US to retaliate using network-based attacks (a point I expect to be notably absent from the public version of the government report). You would have a tough time convincing me that the US is "losing" anything if it has equal capabilities to the Chinese, and the data to make that assessment simply doesn't seem to exist in a public forum.
However, we can attempt to extrapolate some meaning from the statements of those privy to all the classified information. If any of the military folks in the to-be-released report describe the situation in terms of us losing the war, we might want to be concerned... unless they're just feigning weakness for their own motives (disinformation, more funding/power, etc.). Seems like pointless speculation given the info available to the layman.
I agree with your assessment of the Obama administration. I expect some gradual changes in a new direction. I'm happy he got elected.
What annoys me is the Obama zealots who presume that he is perfect i.e. all of his political policies will agree with every political position the zealot holds, despite statements/votes/actions that indicate otherwise. This oversimplified thinking is particularly prominent in Germany (where I live), where the average citizen assumes (without being able to give a concrete reason if pressed) that John McCain was a carbon copy of GWB and Obama is the perfect socialist candidate with no weaknesses. In short, I was just venting at optimists.
Obama voted FOR the telco amnesty bill. The man is not infallible, and I don't think anyone can count on him sticking up for our rights in this particular context given his voting record.
Well, perhaps Senator Kohl doesn't understand that newly evolving technology and expanding markets (and yes, wireless communication still (barely) falls in this category, imo) often produce highly unstable prices for goods and services. Unless he can find a smoking gun indicating collusion from his "inquiry" (a proposition that nearly demands a goodluckwiththat tag), the providers can respond that market forces are at work (i.e. rising demand, which has little to do with the supplier's costs). Over here in Germany, the average customer happily bends over and pays 9-19 cents per text, and I'm guessing the German big-dog T-Mobile wouldn't mind introducing its business model to the American consumer base. The Senator should find more productive things to do than rattle sabres to grab headlines... after all, only presidential candidate senators are allowed to do that full time instead of work.
Once again, I believe the old farts (sorry all/any of you elder readers) might be holding us back. Loosely, rate of new technology adoption is inversely correlated with age (i.e. the elderly of any generation have a higher percentage of Luddites). America has a spike in the age distribution of people over 50, thanks to the baby boomers. Europe (excepting Britain) and Asia never had a baby boom and a more typical proportion of elderly citizens.
Now, I've never actually crunched the numbers to see exactly how much less the elevated elderly population could conceivably drag down our average, and its very possible that this effect is dwarfed by other factors, but I've always been suspicious that baby boomers play a part. Does anyone have some more concrete, numerical insight into this?
Regardless, I moved to Germany last month and can attest to the broadband difference. Everyone has broadband, and my current 4Mbps DSL connection costs the same as my old 768kbps DSL connection in the states. What's up with that, SBC?!
Slashdot Mirror
... most of them are dead.
You've never been to Bavaria, have you?
I take it you've never had a conversation with a German bureaucrat. Come to think of it, neither have I... a conversation would imply a two-way exchange of information.
Officer: Can you show me the contents of your hard drive.
Idiot: No problem, only legit porn on this hard drive. (Types encryption password).
0: What do we have here?
I: Lolita flick. I get off on girls that look younger than they are.
O: Nope, this one is really underaged.
I: This niche market is really convincing. I assure you that...
O: Nope, I'm booking you, perv!
I: (aside) OH CRAP!
The point being that the cooperative victim (according to his side of the story) was convinced he was showing legit files to the officer, and only when the officer disagreed did the victim want to invoke his rights. In my opinion, we're probably dealing with a straight-and-narrow law enforcement officer who has no idea that there's an entire sleaze market to make girls look underage.
And really, if I were put in the victim's position, and I was suddenly faced with defending the legality and authenticity of some random file I got from a torrent (with the penalty of jail time if I were wrong) OR simply trying to hide the evidence, I think I would react in the same way.
You see that's posted AC? You just bought the troll-bait: hook, line and sinker.
Your 'real name'?!?! Who the fuck EVER puts their real names on any Microsoft product registration (excluding your basic, non-slashdot reading, use-the-computer-to-download-the-internets user). I think that the MAJORITY of machines that I've seen have some variant of "FUCK BILL GATES/FUCK M$" for registration names. His naivety is worth a chuckle. Enjoy!
Talk like that just gets you shot!
You're thinking of lying BY Congressmen... that's business as usual.
I've always been skeptical about how I've heard that the Thai people are very fond of their king. How do you confirm a statement like this when anyone saying they aren't fond of the king could be jailed? True, they probably won't be jailed, but there's a risk, and that's going to bias results.
I don't have a statistically significant number of Thai friends (and those I know are Americans of Thai heritage (2nd gen., mostly)), but anyone I talked to when the YouTube foot+king video broke didn't really care one way or another about the insult to the king. However, if my friends were in Thailand and someone asked, I'm damn sure what their responses would be.
In short, I don't know any way verify whether the people of Thailand are fond of their king... and as unreliable info (more or less by definition of circumstances), I exclude it from consideration.
Ok, I'll bite. Sequestration has nothing to do with 'when we produce carbon'. Sequestration technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and it isn't picky about where or when it happens (your post seems to imply sequestration at the time of production, which is viewed as highly impractical). There's a former Slashdot article summarizing a study that regardless of where you put the CO2 sequestration plants, the local concentration at various points around the globe equilibrate rapidly... you can look it up though.
Second, read the article... no no no, not the news summary, the PNAS article! Solomon is NOT saying that once/if we stop all carbon production, the oceans will continue to ABSORB carbon dioxide. Solomon IS saying that once/if we stop all carbon production, the oceans will keep RELEASING carbon dioxide for much longer than previously expected.
Third, this isn't an either/or proposition with cutting emissions and carbon sequestration. Any reasonably informed expert would recommend a multi-pronged approach. Reduce/quit emitting on some time scale and use sequestration to clean up the damage.
Fourth, CO2 in the oceans doesn't directly absorb much heat. Its stored mostly as carbonic acid and the frequencies/cross section are completely different.
Whew... alot of misrepresentations in a single sentence, however, I think I've addressed all of them. So, to piece together a more coherent scenario than the one put forth to grab headlines using what I just went over... 1) we reduce or eliminate carbon emissions 2) we implement carbon sequestration to reduce the CO2 still in the atmosphere but 3) the lowered CO2 concentration in the atmosphere prompts release of CO2 from the oceans (as Solomon acknowledged) so we 4) keep running sequestration until the carbon sink from the oceans is depleted. Clear?
Well, I probably just biased you into thinking I'm a climate change denier with the title, but guess what... I buy into science.
However, there is such a ridiculous, self-reinforcing feedback loop of grandiose speech and groupthink within the climate research community that its no wonder quacks out there are encouraged towards disbelief. If you attend lectures by some of these researchers (personally, its been mostly atmospheric chemists for me), you'll see that nearly every one of them thinks they're some sort of Messiah trying to spread the holy message. This article (the original, not the fluff news summary) is no exception.
In order to secure a newspaper headline title (once again, in order to get THE MESSAGE out), Solomon completely ignores a range of facts and potential solutions.
First fact, she admits in the article that people have previously predicted the consequences to last centuries. Apparently, when you increase the timescale from 200 years to 1000 years, you pass her arbitrary distinction between 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. How about we agree to refer to this as possibly reversible on a really long time scale, huh? And instead of Solomon saying that she was the one to discover global warming was 'irreversible', instead say that it will take longer than expected to return to normal?
Second, Solomon DELIBERATELY turns a blind eye to research already in the literature that contradicts her model. This surpasses vanity and enters into the realm of negligence on the level of an ethical violation. I'm talking about the emerging field of carbon sequestration here. Anyone in the field of climate research WILL know about the branch of research focused on removing and confining CO2 from the atmosphere. While any implementation is still a long way from large scale deployment or commercial viability, if you're going to make predictions on a 1000 year time scale, you might want to take into account technology advances in this field! However, that would destroy Solomon's pretty newspaper headline and reduce it to the following:
Global warming might last five times as long as previously expected assuming we don't find a way to fix the problem first
.
Does that sound front-page newsworthy to you? Ok, I support the theory of man-made global warming. However, if we want to persuade the skeptics and nuts out there, climate researchers should start approaching the issue honestly and responsibly. Half truths will only undermine further discussion!
if that's what it takes to finally come up with the funding to appease European rights holders. I loved Pandora in the States, but I've had to cut back since there is no legal way to get Pandora in Germany (I'm assuming proxies to mask country of origin for the purpose of accessing region-restricted media is a legal grey area I shouldn't get into at work).
Then you were lucky. Files written in OO regularly come up with distorted formatting when opened in MS Word. Tables and figures (in nearly any Word-supported image format) will usually trigger some garbling... and if you type an equation object in OO, you KNOW its going to look like gibberish in Word. For serious applications (like a peer-reviewed journal article), you either need Word or an app that outputs PDF's directly (Tex). Relying on OO files to open properly in Word just won't cut it!
If you read the article, you get the impression that Dvorak thinks the spreadsheet is recent invention (30 years old). You'd think an old-timer like him would realize that spreadsheets have been around as long as the practice of accounting, and that they were going strong back at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The only difference was, you paid for an employee instead of a computer to crunch the numbers. Yes, the speed gain in spreadsheet usage definitely increased its influence, but really... spreadsheets are older than John McCain (and that's old!)!
If you would have read the article, you would have seen that it agrees with your opinion, going as far as to suggest that the best way to shut down this activity would be to utilize anonymity. Infiltrating these recruiter networks to sow confusion and discord, as suggested in TFA, would be highly effective to curtail recruitment in an anonymous environment where little trust exists to begin with.
Given Jobs' track record as a completely ruthless businessman, I'd guess someone on the Expo side of things stepped out of line. Don't want to do things Jobs' way? Fine, Jobs is outta here.
Wait, has anyone on this forum ever talked to Nobel Laureates in any sciences? Or read about them?
The vast majority (I'd ballpark it at 80% from completely non-scientific, anecdotal experience) of Nobel Prize winners IN SCIENCE are ego-driven megalomaniacs that are addicted to prestige and influence (since salary rarely goes into 7 digits for professors, its rarely the largest motivator). As such, they've dedicated their lives to feeding their addiction, working their way up from assistant professor to Director of [Weighty Gov. Funding Cash Cow], and navigating the political landscape comes as easily as breathing.
This is no surprise. In nearly any field, there are many more workers whose merit-based achievement qualifies them for advancement than open positions for advancement, so its the self-promoters who actually land the boss's job. Sometimes the value of the work is so strong it outweighs political maneuvering, but its the exception more than the rule. The fact is, every year there are a very limited number of Nobels to hand out, and MANY researchers who have done science of a caliber to deserve them.
The fact that Chu has a Nobel AND is a Director of a Gov. Cash Cow should indicate strongly enough his political experience. The only question remaining is whether he can transplant himself into a wholly new network of players in the politic game.
P.S. I've met Chu. He's a nice guy, and from my inexperienced scientist viewpoint, he's got what it takes to play with the big boys in Washington.
Yeah, I agree there's definitely a contingent of folks in the Linux camp who are snide and condescending (and proud of it). Personally, though, I classify the main division as a dichotomy between Free Software adherents with Stallman as mascot on one end of the spectrum, and Open Source Software more centered around Torvald and Co at the other end. One group considers themselves revolutionaries for liberty (and have the personalities necessary to fill this role), and the other group is fascinated with pushing the development of technology to the limit like any good hacker, scientist or engineer. The blog post was clearly written by one of the revolutionaries. Which approach is "better" is a can of worms I don't want to open, but the Open Source community seems to have more, friendly people involved, who might be more capable of interacting with a layperson.
Really, you can't win people over by being snide and condescending.
I along with many others tried Linux during college...
LSD, pot, Linux... ah, those crazy college days!
that the used game market is affecting price and quality, my first response is GREAT! Market forces at work are driving new game prices down and quality up as developers are forced to compete with a robust substitute good: the used game.
Then I realize its more of the same FUD campaign put on by the mega-corporations to prep us for invasive mechanisms inserted into games with the end goal of bilking us for more $$$. I think I'll avoid supporting this industry and stick to indie games until they have an attitude shift.
Given China's (and I'm talking the Chinese government here, not Chinese script kiddies, scammers, fraudsters) recent forays into cyber espionage, would their hacking skills provide an edge in a hypothetical future war.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that, if a war broke out, superior technology could tip the scales. An edge in information gathering (reconnaissance) and possible disruption of enemy infrastructure could be a powerful tool, depending on the extent of penetration. The documented (and undocumented, I'm sure) attacks on US networks demonstrate the capability of the Chinese to engage in these tactics in a time of war.
This brings me to my next point, the use of the word "losing". The word implies that someone else is ahead of the US in the cyber-abilities category. While the article, and any other that I've seen to date, does a respectable job outlining US vulnerability to network-based attacks in the event of a future war, it in no means outlines the capabilities of the US to retaliate using network-based attacks (a point I expect to be notably absent from the public version of the government report). You would have a tough time convincing me that the US is "losing" anything if it has equal capabilities to the Chinese, and the data to make that assessment simply doesn't seem to exist in a public forum.
However, we can attempt to extrapolate some meaning from the statements of those privy to all the classified information. If any of the military folks in the to-be-released report describe the situation in terms of us losing the war, we might want to be concerned... unless they're just feigning weakness for their own motives (disinformation, more funding/power, etc.). Seems like pointless speculation given the info available to the layman.
I agree with your assessment of the Obama administration. I expect some gradual changes in a new direction. I'm happy he got elected.
What annoys me is the Obama zealots who presume that he is perfect i.e. all of his political policies will agree with every political position the zealot holds, despite statements/votes/actions that indicate otherwise. This oversimplified thinking is particularly prominent in Germany (where I live), where the average citizen assumes (without being able to give a concrete reason if pressed) that John McCain was a carbon copy of GWB and Obama is the perfect socialist candidate with no weaknesses. In short, I was just venting at optimists.
Obama voted FOR the telco amnesty bill. The man is not infallible, and I don't think anyone can count on him sticking up for our rights in this particular context given his voting record.
Well, perhaps Senator Kohl doesn't understand that newly evolving technology and expanding markets (and yes, wireless communication still (barely) falls in this category, imo) often produce highly unstable prices for goods and services. Unless he can find a smoking gun indicating collusion from his "inquiry" (a proposition that nearly demands a goodluckwiththat tag), the providers can respond that market forces are at work (i.e. rising demand, which has little to do with the supplier's costs). Over here in Germany, the average customer happily bends over and pays 9-19 cents per text, and I'm guessing the German big-dog T-Mobile wouldn't mind introducing its business model to the American consumer base. The Senator should find more productive things to do than rattle sabres to grab headlines... after all, only presidential candidate senators are allowed to do that full time instead of work.
Once again, I believe the old farts (sorry all/any of you elder readers) might be holding us back. Loosely, rate of new technology adoption is inversely correlated with age (i.e. the elderly of any generation have a higher percentage of Luddites). America has a spike in the age distribution of people over 50, thanks to the baby boomers. Europe (excepting Britain) and Asia never had a baby boom and a more typical proportion of elderly citizens.
Now, I've never actually crunched the numbers to see exactly how much less the elevated elderly population could conceivably drag down our average, and its very possible that this effect is dwarfed by other factors, but I've always been suspicious that baby boomers play a part. Does anyone have some more concrete, numerical insight into this?
Regardless, I moved to Germany last month and can attest to the broadband difference. Everyone has broadband, and my current 4Mbps DSL connection costs the same as my old 768kbps DSL connection in the states. What's up with that, SBC?!