Re:how is this better then ISPs?
on
Houses With Tails
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Correct. The HOA is not interested in meeting your demands as an individual homeowner. The HOA's purpose is to meet the demands of the majority that show up to the monthly meetings. And guess who shows up to those meetings? The most anal and controlling homeowners. The result is an inefficient corporation that has no customers yet maintains books and funds that rarely benefit the actual homeowners.
However when you have a customer and business relationship, the business has an interest in keeping you a paying customer. Even if you do sign contracts, the contracts will only apply till the end of the term. When you do have a legal issue with the business you have a contract with, you can take them to court and potentially get reasonable recovery. But if you sue an HOA you are technically suing yourself. The business also receives pressure from competitors in a well regulated market (yes this is not true for monopolies). So theoretically you should always have a second choice. With the HOA your only choice is to sell your property and move elsewhere.
Some HOAs might be okay in terms of purposes served and not being run down by anal homeowners. But in my experience, even then the HOA provides little services that you can't manage yourself better. For example consider the common "pool/spa" arrangement. Suppose you pay the HOA $50 a month for this cost to maintain a pool and spa for the facility. The pool will probably be very small and outdoors. Meanwhile if you sign up at a local club at say $40 a month, you can get an indoor pool and access to other facilities. When you no longer need to access the club or are unsatisfied with the service, you can terminate your membership and/or find a new club. Any HOA run service is generally more expensive to maintain and you are stuck with it forever. When you allow a business to fill in this role, however, you will often get better service at cheaper rates or at least varying options of service at different rates. The only advantage the HOA has is that the facilities are located conveniently.
Another example is HOA provided cable TV service. I know someone that has one of these and the contract basically states he can only use the HOA tv service, and he cannot order his own. This means he is stuck with the quality of service the HOA provides. Even if you live in an area where you only have 1 option for TV service, you can at least have options within that service to get access to other services like special channels or different packages. With the HOA this is not the case.
I believe the implementation of HOAs is flawed in the US. HOAs have too much power and are beginning to grow outside of their purpose which was to basically force people to keep their property is decent order. Technically, the local government should be in charge of enforcing rules maintaining reasonable condition of properties, not HOAs. Unfortunately, HOAs are becoming too popular and people would never vote to pay taxes or allow the government to enforce such rules. Which is somewhat contradictory since the HOA dues are often more than what you would pay in taxes as well as more restrictive.
You have to be careful because unless you really understand how the laws work, you can get into trouble for just following advice even from a lawyer. For example there's something known as "piercing the corporate veil" which gets around setting up fictitious corps for the purpose of insulating another entity. In order to do this, one must prove that the corporation in question does not act as a corporation should (have a board, have a corporate account and books, have records of board meetings, etc).
Also keep in mind that lawyers often operate as partnerships so they too are businesses. Their duty as an agent is to of course act in your best interest but as a business they're hired to "win". So of course they might say that you can do such and such but it all depends on how good of a lawyer they are and how well their experience or advice will hold up against the competition's lawyers.
Sure, you should speak to a lawyer but if you really want to play dirty you'd better take a business law class and understand the rules of the game yourself. To do otherwise is just like walking through a gauntlet blind.
This advice is for the OP. You, the parent, may have had experience with this already and know what you're doing to get away with it.
I doubt your eye could perceive the extra detail at a sensible viewing distance anyway.
He wants about 300dpi which is starting to get into printer resolution range. That would enable serif fonts (like times) to look better than sans serif fonts (arial, helvetica). You would also find smaller point fonts more readable thanks to the additional pixels. So viewing a webpage might finally make sense on a device that small that is commonly held in your hand like a book or a sheet of paper. If we could get to OLED contrast ratios and that dpi, your display would basically look almost like a printed photograph. With current displays at around 90 to 100dpi, everything looks pixely (windows) or blurred because of the low dpi of the display.
Today 300dpi might be unreasonable for a color display. I think e-ink displays get to about 300 dpi but they can't display color or refresh quickly. My 9" eee pc lcd screen is at about 130 dpi. So I think lcd manufacturers should be able to get that up to 150 dpi or so.
I'd like to see the more expensive electronics manufacturers (sony, apple) demand high dpi displays because everything would really start to look sharp without anti aliasing or sub pixel lcd tricks. For example just imagine going from 100 dpi to 200 dpi. That means in the same pixel on 100 dpi you now have 4 dots instead of 1 to render it. If the font is adjusted for the higher dpi, curved or diagonal lines would look super sharp.
I'm not sure why the compiler would be a problem. I compile perl modules on an HP-UX system at work that has an HP compiler and libraries. GCC does not exist on these HP systems and I can install perl modules (with C code and XS) just fine. Most perl modules don't even need the compiler but only use make to run the tests, create the man pages, and install the files. If for some reason you don't have make available and the module is written only in perl you can even just copy the libraries yourself. The man pages won't install but it would still work.
It sounds like you were either using a module that purposely had a dependency on an external library. But that wouldn't make much sense for a street address parsing library unless there is some GNU C lib that I don't know about that happens to do all of that.
Wait so if Microsoft implements copy protection measures in their OS it is bad and evil, but when Apple decides to have DRM in iTunes/iPod, lock down iPhones to a single provider, and now implement HDCP preventing you from playing DRM'ed content you purchased legally on your own hardware, it is business as usual?
Why should they cater to 4% of the total market share especially when a large portion of that 4% believes that software should be open and not proprietary/closed?
Memo to slashdot nerds in special target market with unique buying constraints: the rest of the world doesn't care about linux.
The second people get their ipod, hook it up to the machine, and realize itunes won't work or something similar, they're returning the machine to the store. If a retailer and manufacturer is going to go through the tax of shipping inventory back and forth they're in the business to go bankrupt. That's why linux isn't on the shelves.
The target market is not slashdot nerds, the target market is netbook users which probably contains more people who are not linux nerds than are.
You want this year to be the year of linux on the desktop? Pour money into marketing not just open source ideologies. And here's a hint: the customer wants his current devices and his current software to run on the machine regardless of what it is. If that's not a big enough clue, just pour all of the resources into getting Wine perfected.
I don't care about the optical drive because they're becoming useless and you can always attach an external one through USB.
I do care about HDMI and the ability of the cpu/gpu to handle 1080p h264 video decoding.
I would also like to see a wider selection of small wireless keyboards (num-pad-less) with integrated track pads or pointing devices. They can use an FN key to simulate the numpad but please put the FN key between the ctrl+alt keys, not on the corner. This applies to netbooks and laptops too.
I almost think that they would have done a lot better in terms of "profitability" if they used a BSD instead of Linux.
The problem with linux is you're stuck with one model: give the product away for free and charge for support. The problem with the consumer desktop market is people don't want to be tied in support contracts. They want to be able to go to the store, buy the product, and expect some reasonable amount of support as the result of the purchase for the lifetime of the product.
So if they were able to use only BSD licensed code and work on top of that, then eventually they could pull an Apple and start selling the product for profit in addition to support. They could even start mixing proprietary stuff and supporting hardware through deals with the manufacturers while allowing the manufacturer to keep their drivers closed. Sure, this does nothing for "free software" but what do you want? Purely "Free software" or competition? I think most people don't care about free software and just want competition.
Of course there are issues with BSD. It doesn't get as much attention as linux does and it can mix almost any type of open source software so you'd have to be careful about what you distribute and what you don't in a "for profit" product. But I think the base is there to build a profitable "productize-able" desktop OS based on BSD.
It's my main machine and I don't have problems other than the ATI video driver crapping out every now and then but vista is able to restart just the video driver and keep running whereas XP will just blue screen.
You don't have to mention a contract for a contract to exist. Verbal contracts are made all the time and can be enforced by law. But as you might guess, proving that the verbal contract existed in the first place may be much harder than had you had a written contract.
There are exceptions like for the sale of real estate. But to my knowledge (I am not a lawyer but I am taking a law class) this is not one of them. That doesn't mean that you can't find a way out of it--just that it might be reason enough for the other side to take you to court and win or at least sink you in lawyer expenses.
Honestly, If Dell made a laptop that was near the macbook pro caliber in build they would sell just as well and cost as much.
Dell may not make parts that have attractive designs but they do make parts that are very easy to take apart and put back together. For example my inspiron 600m I'm typing on right now bought 3 years ago at under the current macbook price has a battery that can be removed with a single lever and the same for the dbay for a cdrom or a secondary battery. In desktops this is even more useful, a single lever is pulled and the case can come off. All drives have some sort of tab you pull to remove the drive and same for internal expansion cards. In the newer low end lines I hear dell is starting to use screws but the mid end and up still have the nice tool-less features.
Dell also makes some of the most energy efficient PCs. If you go to 80plus.org you'll see a lot of their power supplies listed and if you dig deep enough you can even find dell system power specifications on their website.
Now Dell does try to play games with you to get you to buy a machine at a higher price on the never-ending promotions but personally I like going to the refurbs. I think Dell products are actually very good products, even though they may be a little bit of an eye sore. They do get all of the functionality pieces right and offer the most configurations at reasonably low and competitive prices.
Well I won't comment (I don't build cars and I am not a physicist) but here's an old clip of one of their first prototypes being driven around the parking lot.
The information stored in a computer is more valuable than being able to flip a light bulb on and off. In a computer you have the possibility of getting access to documents and personal information like social security numbers and credit card numbers. With a light bulb you play a prank on your neighbor and that's pretty much it.
Now I agree that not everything needs an IP address and the example to date (light bulb, toaster) are somewhat useless. What will likely make use of being connected to the net are consumer electronics (think DVRs and such) and to some degree appliances. Also while the device doesn't need to accept inputs, it can be useful for giving outputs. For example it would be useful if each light bulb was able to report if it was on or off so you don't have to run back in an physically check. It is much like how the car detects that your door is open but doesn't automatically close it for you.
For the record, my system pulls 120 W idle, 230 running CoHOF, and 5 in S3. It is extremely overclocked and mostly older components which tends to skew things, but I'm looking to upgrade and wouldn't mind saving a few bucks in energy costs in the long term.
5 watts in S3 is pretty bad in my book. Disconnect all USB devices and check again what your S3 power consumption is. If it is still high, most likely the PSU you have is not efficient. It could also come from other things like the motherboard, but most of the time it is the PSU. If your system idles at 120w, and 230w during load, you might be able to run with as low as a good 350w rated PSU. For example if your current PSU was around 70% efficient and you replaced it with an 80% efficient one, then during load your 230w draw would drop to around 201w. But you'll have to check and see if you can find the efficiency numbers for your current PSU.
How do you tell how much power a component is going to pull before you buy it?
There's no single source, but there are some useful websites.
80plus.org Silent PC Review They generally provide both noise and power consumption measurements in their reviews Silent PC Review Forums More anecdotal but at this point it is still good data. Many users post their own tests and measurements on the boards. It helps you get an idea of what's achievable and what isn't. There are also some nicely compiled charts that combine data from difference sources. I find the numbers are sometimes inaccurate but not too far off.
Even though 480p might be good enough for single player games and the graphics detail the Wii is aiming for, I still think there are other benefits to having a higher resolution. For example the text for games and apps could be much clearer. That would make the web browser and game interfaces much easier to read and cram more information into. Also when you play split screen games like mariokart the resolution could help make each player's view much clearer. Right now it is still really crappy.
IN the US the top 4 metros NY (18 Million), LA (12 Million), Chicago (8 Million), and Dallas (5 Million) together contain just 15% in those ares who's mean distance apart is far greater than Finland..
Finland's population as a country is 5.3 million. So New York city has more than 3 times the population of Finland yet Finland has better broadband service? I know, Finland is a country not a city. But if you examine the cities you'll find the numbers still don't favor the US.
Going by your cited area in your post, Helsinki has a population density of 3,060/km^2 while New York City has a density of 10,482/km^2. A large US city with similar population density to Helsinki is Los Angeles with 3,168/km^2. So Los Angeles has similar population density, yet 6 times more population (larger market) yet Finland still has better broadband? Furthermore New York City has more than 3 times the population density?
Why are more and more countries consistently beating the US in information technology infrastructure even in similarly populated areas? Clearly it isn't a population or density issue. I'd say a better answer is large corporations using monopolistic power and litigation to prevent smaller guys and even municipalities from improving or building their own infrastructure to compete in lucrative service areas.
Now I do get your general point. It is too hard for a single company (even a large one) to roll out nationwide high speed information infrastructure for a country the size of the US. I agree with that. But I don't see why the rules cannot be changed to allow smaller companies or municipalities from building their own infrastructure to provide for the needs of their local population whether it be a rural area out in the middle or nowhere or a high density area like New York.
I think this is a good thing because it will show that there is a demand for using phones with custom apps and hopefully make it harder for carriers to control the market (lock cell phone functionality).
Because if a company isn't willing to stand behind their product 100%, it just means on the first catastrophic failure they will blame it on being a "beta". This is just more BS to get away with less responsibility. I know this trick because I purposely left an app in "beta" so that when the managers found something they didn't like or something that didn't work I always had the "it's a beta" card. When people talk about Google's beta policy they really want Google to "man up" and take responsibility for the quality of all their apps when they release them to the general public.
My 2004 LG cell phone has a note taking program built-in. Sure, it isn't a text editor or anything but from time to time I do write a few words or a number in there if I have to.
Sometimes I browse around to see what I might come up with for new modules. The documentation is awesome because not only is it formatted, but you also can link directly to a specific version, see the installation test report for various OSes for that version, see submitted bugs, other comments and module dependencies.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct. The HOA is not interested in meeting your demands as an individual homeowner. The HOA's purpose is to meet the demands of the majority that show up to the monthly meetings. And guess who shows up to those meetings? The most anal and controlling homeowners. The result is an inefficient corporation that has no customers yet maintains books and funds that rarely benefit the actual homeowners.
However when you have a customer and business relationship, the business has an interest in keeping you a paying customer. Even if you do sign contracts, the contracts will only apply till the end of the term. When you do have a legal issue with the business you have a contract with, you can take them to court and potentially get reasonable recovery. But if you sue an HOA you are technically suing yourself. The business also receives pressure from competitors in a well regulated market (yes this is not true for monopolies). So theoretically you should always have a second choice. With the HOA your only choice is to sell your property and move elsewhere.
Some HOAs might be okay in terms of purposes served and not being run down by anal homeowners. But in my experience, even then the HOA provides little services that you can't manage yourself better. For example consider the common "pool/spa" arrangement. Suppose you pay the HOA $50 a month for this cost to maintain a pool and spa for the facility. The pool will probably be very small and outdoors. Meanwhile if you sign up at a local club at say $40 a month, you can get an indoor pool and access to other facilities. When you no longer need to access the club or are unsatisfied with the service, you can terminate your membership and/or find a new club. Any HOA run service is generally more expensive to maintain and you are stuck with it forever. When you allow a business to fill in this role, however, you will often get better service at cheaper rates or at least varying options of service at different rates. The only advantage the HOA has is that the facilities are located conveniently.
Another example is HOA provided cable TV service. I know someone that has one of these and the contract basically states he can only use the HOA tv service, and he cannot order his own. This means he is stuck with the quality of service the HOA provides. Even if you live in an area where you only have 1 option for TV service, you can at least have options within that service to get access to other services like special channels or different packages. With the HOA this is not the case.
I believe the implementation of HOAs is flawed in the US. HOAs have too much power and are beginning to grow outside of their purpose which was to basically force people to keep their property is decent order. Technically, the local government should be in charge of enforcing rules maintaining reasonable condition of properties, not HOAs. Unfortunately, HOAs are becoming too popular and people would never vote to pay taxes or allow the government to enforce such rules. Which is somewhat contradictory since the HOA dues are often more than what you would pay in taxes as well as more restrictive.
You have to be careful because unless you really understand how the laws work, you can get into trouble for just following advice even from a lawyer. For example there's something known as "piercing the corporate veil" which gets around setting up fictitious corps for the purpose of insulating another entity. In order to do this, one must prove that the corporation in question does not act as a corporation should (have a board, have a corporate account and books, have records of board meetings, etc).
Also keep in mind that lawyers often operate as partnerships so they too are businesses. Their duty as an agent is to of course act in your best interest but as a business they're hired to "win". So of course they might say that you can do such and such but it all depends on how good of a lawyer they are and how well their experience or advice will hold up against the competition's lawyers.
Sure, you should speak to a lawyer but if you really want to play dirty you'd better take a business law class and understand the rules of the game yourself. To do otherwise is just like walking through a gauntlet blind.
This advice is for the OP. You, the parent, may have had experience with this already and know what you're doing to get away with it.
I doubt your eye could perceive the extra detail at a sensible viewing distance anyway.
He wants about 300dpi which is starting to get into printer resolution range. That would enable serif fonts (like times) to look better than sans serif fonts (arial, helvetica). You would also find smaller point fonts more readable thanks to the additional pixels. So viewing a webpage might finally make sense on a device that small that is commonly held in your hand like a book or a sheet of paper. If we could get to OLED contrast ratios and that dpi, your display would basically look almost like a printed photograph. With current displays at around 90 to 100dpi, everything looks pixely (windows) or blurred because of the low dpi of the display.
Today 300dpi might be unreasonable for a color display. I think e-ink displays get to about 300 dpi but they can't display color or refresh quickly. My 9" eee pc lcd screen is at about 130 dpi. So I think lcd manufacturers should be able to get that up to 150 dpi or so.
I'd like to see the more expensive electronics manufacturers (sony, apple) demand high dpi displays because everything would really start to look sharp without anti aliasing or sub pixel lcd tricks. For example just imagine going from 100 dpi to 200 dpi. That means in the same pixel on 100 dpi you now have 4 dots instead of 1 to render it. If the font is adjusted for the higher dpi, curved or diagonal lines would look super sharp.
I'm not sure why the compiler would be a problem. I compile perl modules on an HP-UX system at work that has an HP compiler and libraries. GCC does not exist on these HP systems and I can install perl modules (with C code and XS) just fine. Most perl modules don't even need the compiler but only use make to run the tests, create the man pages, and install the files. If for some reason you don't have make available and the module is written only in perl you can even just copy the libraries yourself. The man pages won't install but it would still work.
It sounds like you were either using a module that purposely had a dependency on an external library. But that wouldn't make much sense for a street address parsing library unless there is some GNU C lib that I don't know about that happens to do all of that.
Wait so if Microsoft implements copy protection measures in their OS it is bad and evil, but when Apple decides to have DRM in iTunes/iPod, lock down iPhones to a single provider, and now implement HDCP preventing you from playing DRM'ed content you purchased legally on your own hardware, it is business as usual?
I told him that he should consider downgrading to XP or moving to a Mac
FYI: Apple is starting to implement HDCP/DPCP DRM as well.
Why should they cater to 4% of the total market share especially when a large portion of that 4% believes that software should be open and not proprietary/closed?
Memo to slashdot nerds in special target market with unique buying constraints: the rest of the world doesn't care about linux.
The second people get their ipod, hook it up to the machine, and realize itunes won't work or something similar, they're returning the machine to the store. If a retailer and manufacturer is going to go through the tax of shipping inventory back and forth they're in the business to go bankrupt. That's why linux isn't on the shelves.
The target market is not slashdot nerds, the target market is netbook users which probably contains more people who are not linux nerds than are.
You want this year to be the year of linux on the desktop? Pour money into marketing not just open source ideologies. And here's a hint: the customer wants his current devices and his current software to run on the machine regardless of what it is. If that's not a big enough clue, just pour all of the resources into getting Wine perfected.
I don't care about the optical drive because they're becoming useless and you can always attach an external one through USB.
I do care about HDMI and the ability of the cpu/gpu to handle 1080p h264 video decoding.
I would also like to see a wider selection of small wireless keyboards (num-pad-less) with integrated track pads or pointing devices. They can use an FN key to simulate the numpad but please put the FN key between the ctrl+alt keys, not on the corner. This applies to netbooks and laptops too.
What you are describing is called "marketing". Why are you afraid to use that term?
I almost think that they would have done a lot better in terms of "profitability" if they used a BSD instead of Linux.
The problem with linux is you're stuck with one model: give the product away for free and charge for support. The problem with the consumer desktop market is people don't want to be tied in support contracts. They want to be able to go to the store, buy the product, and expect some reasonable amount of support as the result of the purchase for the lifetime of the product.
So if they were able to use only BSD licensed code and work on top of that, then eventually they could pull an Apple and start selling the product for profit in addition to support. They could even start mixing proprietary stuff and supporting hardware through deals with the manufacturers while allowing the manufacturer to keep their drivers closed. Sure, this does nothing for "free software" but what do you want? Purely "Free software" or competition? I think most people don't care about free software and just want competition.
Of course there are issues with BSD. It doesn't get as much attention as linux does and it can mix almost any type of open source software so you'd have to be careful about what you distribute and what you don't in a "for profit" product. But I think the base is there to build a profitable "productize-able" desktop OS based on BSD.
It's my main machine and I don't have problems other than the ATI video driver crapping out every now and then but vista is able to restart just the video driver and keep running whereas XP will just blue screen.
You don't have to mention a contract for a contract to exist. Verbal contracts are made all the time and can be enforced by law. But as you might guess, proving that the verbal contract existed in the first place may be much harder than had you had a written contract.
There are exceptions like for the sale of real estate. But to my knowledge (I am not a lawyer but I am taking a law class) this is not one of them. That doesn't mean that you can't find a way out of it--just that it might be reason enough for the other side to take you to court and win or at least sink you in lawyer expenses.
Honestly, If Dell made a laptop that was near the macbook pro caliber in build they would sell just as well and cost as much.
Dell may not make parts that have attractive designs but they do make parts that are very easy to take apart and put back together. For example my inspiron 600m I'm typing on right now bought 3 years ago at under the current macbook price has a battery that can be removed with a single lever and the same for the dbay for a cdrom or a secondary battery. In desktops this is even more useful, a single lever is pulled and the case can come off. All drives have some sort of tab you pull to remove the drive and same for internal expansion cards. In the newer low end lines I hear dell is starting to use screws but the mid end and up still have the nice tool-less features.
Dell also makes some of the most energy efficient PCs. If you go to 80plus.org you'll see a lot of their power supplies listed and if you dig deep enough you can even find dell system power specifications on their website.
Now Dell does try to play games with you to get you to buy a machine at a higher price on the never-ending promotions but personally I like going to the refurbs. I think Dell products are actually very good products, even though they may be a little bit of an eye sore. They do get all of the functionality pieces right and offer the most configurations at reasonably low and competitive prices.
Well I won't comment (I don't build cars and I am not a physicist) but here's an old clip of one of their first prototypes being driven around the parking lot.
The information stored in a computer is more valuable than being able to flip a light bulb on and off. In a computer you have the possibility of getting access to documents and personal information like social security numbers and credit card numbers. With a light bulb you play a prank on your neighbor and that's pretty much it.
Now I agree that not everything needs an IP address and the example to date (light bulb, toaster) are somewhat useless. What will likely make use of being connected to the net are consumer electronics (think DVRs and such) and to some degree appliances. Also while the device doesn't need to accept inputs, it can be useful for giving outputs. For example it would be useful if each light bulb was able to report if it was on or off so you don't have to run back in an physically check. It is much like how the car detects that your door is open but doesn't automatically close it for you.
Get over the paranoia and go see the world.
You do realize that most people have lived in their parent's basement for their entire lives.... right? Riiiight?
For the record, my system pulls 120 W idle, 230 running CoHOF, and 5 in S3. It is extremely overclocked and mostly older components which tends to skew things, but I'm looking to upgrade and wouldn't mind saving a few bucks in energy costs in the long term.
5 watts in S3 is pretty bad in my book. Disconnect all USB devices and check again what your S3 power consumption is. If it is still high, most likely the PSU you have is not efficient. It could also come from other things like the motherboard, but most of the time it is the PSU. If your system idles at 120w, and 230w during load, you might be able to run with as low as a good 350w rated PSU. For example if your current PSU was around 70% efficient and you replaced it with an 80% efficient one, then during load your 230w draw would drop to around 201w. But you'll have to check and see if you can find the efficiency numbers for your current PSU.
How do you tell how much power a component is going to pull before you buy it?
There's no single source, but there are some useful websites.
80plus.org
Silent PC Review They generally provide both noise and power consumption measurements in their reviews
Silent PC Review Forums More anecdotal but at this point it is still good data. Many users post their own tests and measurements on the boards. It helps you get an idea of what's achievable and what isn't. There are also some nicely compiled charts that combine data from difference sources. I find the numbers are sometimes inaccurate but not too far off.
Anyone want to subscribe to my newsletter?
That depends on whether or not I have to pass or fail a CAPTCHA to subscribe.
Even though 480p might be good enough for single player games and the graphics detail the Wii is aiming for, I still think there are other benefits to having a higher resolution. For example the text for games and apps could be much clearer. That would make the web browser and game interfaces much easier to read and cram more information into. Also when you play split screen games like mariokart the resolution could help make each player's view much clearer. Right now it is still really crappy.
IN the US the top 4 metros NY (18 Million), LA (12 Million), Chicago (8 Million), and Dallas (5 Million) together contain just 15% in those ares who's mean distance apart is far greater than Finland..
Finland's population as a country is 5.3 million. So New York city has more than 3 times the population of Finland yet Finland has better broadband service? I know, Finland is a country not a city. But if you examine the cities you'll find the numbers still don't favor the US.
Going by your cited area in your post, Helsinki has a population density of 3,060/km^2 while New York City has a density of 10,482/km^2. A large US city with similar population density to Helsinki is Los Angeles with 3,168/km^2. So Los Angeles has similar population density, yet 6 times more population (larger market) yet Finland still has better broadband? Furthermore New York City has more than 3 times the population density?
Why are more and more countries consistently beating the US in information technology infrastructure even in similarly populated areas? Clearly it isn't a population or density issue. I'd say a better answer is large corporations using monopolistic power and litigation to prevent smaller guys and even municipalities from improving or building their own infrastructure to compete in lucrative service areas.
Now I do get your general point. It is too hard for a single company (even a large one) to roll out nationwide high speed information infrastructure for a country the size of the US. I agree with that. But I don't see why the rules cannot be changed to allow smaller companies or municipalities from building their own infrastructure to provide for the needs of their local population whether it be a rural area out in the middle or nowhere or a high density area like New York.
I think this is a good thing because it will show that there is a demand for using phones with custom apps and hopefully make it harder for carriers to control the market (lock cell phone functionality).
Because if a company isn't willing to stand behind their product 100%, it just means on the first catastrophic failure they will blame it on being a "beta". This is just more BS to get away with less responsibility. I know this trick because I purposely left an app in "beta" so that when the managers found something they didn't like or something that didn't work I always had the "it's a beta" card. When people talk about Google's beta policy they really want Google to "man up" and take responsibility for the quality of all their apps when they release them to the general public.
My 2004 LG cell phone has a note taking program built-in. Sure, it isn't a text editor or anything but from time to time I do write a few words or a number in there if I have to.
Specifically search.cpan.org.
Sometimes I browse around to see what I might come up with for new modules. The documentation is awesome because not only is it formatted, but you also can link directly to a specific version, see the installation test report for various OSes for that version, see submitted bugs, other comments and module dependencies.