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12/09/09
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12/10/09
Android has about 1/10th the apps of iPhone, which sounds tiny, but when you consider how many repeat apps, BS apps, and 'lite' apps there are on the iPhone, the difference isn't as staggering.
But, yea, I can imagine if you already paid to use some apps on one particular platform, it would be difficult to move on. They don't say "Till death do us part" for nothing.
12/09/09
AT&T (the greedy bastards) made over $12 BILlION in NET profits last year and this year (as of Q3) they had made almost $10 BILLION in NET profits.
They have the money to fix this problem. They just don't give a fuck about their customers.
Check it out for yourself at [www.att.com] - look at the top of page 3 for the financial summary.
12/09/09
12/09/09
I'm in Buffalo, NY, and have gleefully flawless AT&T service for miles in any direction, including rural.
Why on earth would NYC or SF be worse than this economically depressed area? In NYC the return per cell tower/antenna has got to far outstrip whatever they might get in this area of minimal service plans...
In light of absolutely costly marketing embarassments, why wouldn't they blitzkrieg NYC and SF with network and antenna updates?
I mean... as long as they don't do it by stealing our towers.
12/09/09
Which doesn't excuse AT&T for not blanketing the city with enough receptors to make it worthwhile, incidentally.
12/09/09
But - if Verizon can do it...
12/09/09
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12/10/09
Remember when it was true that the "Sole purpose of Government is to protect the rights of the People"?
Yeah, me neither.
12/11/09
You'd have an easier time making your agument in the realm of private business, where it's considered legitimate for collective entities to be established for the benefit of few to the possible detriment of many. And you'd be right that it's considered legitimate, and I don't dispute that. As a user, what I dispute is the usefulness of a system that exists to serve it's owner first and it's users second.
12/11/09
However, I disagree with your statement "The sole purpose of any government is to codify direction for collective effort that can provide infrastructure, rights, and other similar support that goes beyond what an individual can achieve working on their own."
The sole(only) purpose of government is to protect the RIGHTS of the people.
Not to protect the people. Not to ensure the peoples wealth. Not to do anything other than ensure our rights.
Governments tend to do a lot more, and sometimes, do the opposite (taking away the right to marry?WTF???).
12/11/09
I resubmit that a system designed to serve it's owner before it's users is, by definition, not a system worth using.
12/11/09
This is exactly what I am referring to.
"I resubmit that a system designed to serve it's owner before it's users is, by definition, not a system worth using"
Theoretically, the users, and the owners, are the same people.
We the people...
12/11/09
It's a great concept! Just imagine a world where a concept that fundamental is applied across the board... that's what I love about science fiction, all those wondrous what-ifs.
12/09/09
It's a pity as I adore the phone itself, but I'm sick as all hell of worrying about calls dropping, data service cuts, etc.; when I was on Verizon I always thought it sucked b/c of the limited phone selection, but the past 18 months have taught me and a couple million other people that it's the network that really counts. When Cingular ran those "fewest dropped calls" ads a couple years back, I remember thinking that I'd never experienced a dropped call in my life, and wondered if it was really a problem. Ironically, now that I'm with AT&T nee Cingular, it's a constant of my existence.
I think AT&T is going to have a mass exodus next year, and hope they go broke because of it. But as a 27-year fan of Apple, I only hope they have a backup plan when they start to lose all of that business.
12/09/09
Which is...? Verizon?
12/09/09
12/09/09
Weed?
12/09/09
12/09/09
As AmphetamineCrown pointed out AT&T has invested heavily in the last two years in expanding and making better their coverage. If there was another provider interested in being bought out you can bet AT&T would be all over it.
12/09/09
Also with wcdma as more calls and data fill up open ports the nature of the technlogy actually shortens it's range radius from the tower so depending on load on the 3g spectrum the signal will be weaker until More ports open for voice and data then the range will open out further.
12/09/09
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To say nothing of the difference between water and electricity usage and bandwidth. Suffice to say, they may not exactly be comparable.
12/09/09
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12/09/09
Thank god for Google for actually putting some effort into a mobile phone platform. I have a feeling with the pace they are going with the OS releases and the market that Android will probably ring the death bell for Windows Mobile. Microsoft doesnt own the marketplace like they do on computers so they were mistaken to think they can just sit on a crappy, old OS.
12/09/09
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12/09/09
If you want an idea of how big MS is in the commercial space, go to an Apple store. Those little handheld card scanners they carry around... those are running a version of Windows Mobile. You have to assume that Apple would have gone with anyone other than Microsoft if there was anyone other than Microsoft... there wasn't and still isn't.
12/09/09
Basically, are these two separate issues?
I read somewhere (probably Giz) about the question of whether bandwidth hogs really exist or are a fabrication of the carriers to justify a move to a new pricing model. Has AT&T given any data to back up the statement that 3% of smartphone users push 40% of data? Is this a lie, a damn lie, or a statistic?
12/09/09
Slots available on a cell tower are truly limited.
Basically, the easiest way you can test this is simply go to a sporting event and try to make a call or send a message. You will often get call or message failures.
12/09/09
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12/09/09
1% use 20% of the capacity, 5% use 50%, 20% use 80% (Cable Labs). 1% create 20% of traffic, 10% create 60% (Cisco). 1% use 17%, 5% use 41%, 10% use 57% (AT&T landline).
12/09/09
That 3% using 40% of data are called early adopters, meaning that soon everyone will be consuming just as much and those early adopters and those early adopters will have moved on to consume even more data.
That stat is just a red herring used by ATT to divert attention away from the fact that their 3G network sucks. Every day there will be more people using apps on more smartphones. Embrace the future and upgrade the networks!
12/09/09
This, in some ways, is the essence of net neutrality. If you look at all of those presentations, you see that they all note congestion issues and the need to adopt means of addressing congestion. By and large, they all seem to advocate deep packet inspection to determine packet latency priority and honoring quality of service requirements through gateways from provider to provider. They are quite interesting. All packets are not the same.