A bit more detail. Note that Blair Levin wants to take back the 2nd broadcast channel that the broadcasters received from the FCC in trade for going digital:
Based on past auctions, he figures the auction of some 300 Mhz of broadcast spectrum would bring in up to $75 billion. So, $75 billion is what 300MHz is worth. How much is the government willing to pay the TV broadcasters to go away? So far, no numbers. There are: 1,813 TV/Digital Stations 11,332 FM Stations 5,091 AM Stations 3,649 Low power FM and TV stations The TV stations take in about $21 billion per year in advertising revenue:
Assuming the FCC want to make a substantial profit on this auction, it would not make much sense for the broadcasters to sell. Also, if this is all about job creation, it's a funny way to do it by decimating broadcast jobs.
So, the broadcasters ummm... voluntarily contribute 300MHz. Where will the other 200MHz come from?
There are other ways to squeeze blood from a turnip: "President Proposes $4.8 Billion in Spectrum-user Fees"
Of course the buyers of all this spectrum are going to pass on the $75 billion in auction bids to the consumer. I can't wait to see how much this new mobile and fixed broadband service is going to cost the consumer.
The FCC has also been rather busy auctioning whatever they can find:
This lawsuit is marginally frivolous, but it wouldn't bother me at all if Apple decided that the best way out of this mess was simply to provide free cases. They'd likely be out a few dollars each (they're apparently a bit more complicated than the $.10 variety) but it would restore confidence.
By the way, Apple's claim that it's a signal-strength-"indication"-only issue is bogus. I can hold mine such that it not only drops the signal bars from full to maybe one, but will also drop calls. If it was just an issue with the indication, it wouldn't be dropping calls (something it won't do if the phone is left on a table, for example).
The other issue I have (which would likely be solved by a case) is that it's a really easy phone to drop (it's shape isn't very friendly to hold) and it slides across furniture, even fabric-covered, causing it to become one with the floor if you're not really careful.
Despite that, I have found it one of my best upgrades ever. It's got a camera that's actually useful, it's dramatically speedier than the old phone, its web browsing never hangs like my 3G frequently did, the battery lasts longer, and it's actually got voice dialing (which I discovered by accident).
Both my Lg and HTC phones woop the 4 phone on transmission and currently the few aps I use on my normal phones are free . no thanks apple it's a dud imho
they are claiming all sorts of stuff, including willful and malicious intent. it reads as if someone sat down and made a long giant list of every possible thing, just to see which ones stick and which are rejected.
that can happen with any phone. anandtech found that it held onto calls better than other phones, even with the drop in bars.
that's a different issue. one major drawback to the glass on both front and back is you can't tell which way it's facing by feel, whereas you can with the older iphone and just about every other phone.
It can, if both the client and server happen to share a common set of fields, have similar capabilities, handle all-day events similarly, handle timezones similarly, and never happen to get out of sync.
Since this never actually happens unless you happen to have a client and server written by the same folks, the real world is a bit messier.
Try supporting a Razr's native SyncML client on virtually any SyncML server out there to see what I mean.
Oh, and a restore of either side to a backup made before the most recent sync will result in a permanent out of sync situation unless the user understands how to perform a one-way sync, or is willing to live with (or fix) the duplicates created by a slow sync.
I had a friend down in the US try it. He can reproduce the signal drop problem fairly easily, but only when he's in an area with already marginal signal. Luckily his daily commute passes through just such an area so he's been able to test.
The only way he can get the iPhone 4 to drop a call is to keep driving until his other phone drops a call, then grab his iPhone 4 the "wrong" way.
If he leaves both sitting on the seat beside him, the iPhone 4 holds on to the call longer. If he holds it the "wrong" way, it's about 50/50 which call drops off first but they're very close.
Testing was done on a 3G Blackberry of some sort, I believe he's using a Bold these days.
Because the Sidekick had no PC (or internal) backup- it pulled data from the server after every reboot.
Depending on the device, that's easily handled, though. Regular backups solve it. When changing servers you simply back up PIM data, change servers, then restore, syncing the data back to the server.
I sort of like SyncML's nebulousness. The trick is to make one device the authority at the initial setup- for example, sync to the SyncML server from a single device or PC, then destructively sync (replace device data with server data) all other devices. Then you can sync everything from there out without major headaches.
It was both. There is no direct user backup with Danger/Sidekick- the server is the authoritative store, and only "backup." You're relying on the server to store your data.
Except Sidekick users don't have those options. They can't make their own backups, unless there are third party tools for that I'm unaware of.
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Huh?? The broadcasters don't own the frequencies they've been using since WW2. Those are all public airwaves. FCC doesn't need any permission as the broadcasters are slaves to the FCC, not the other way around....
I think it should be a Federal felony to SELL the public's airwaves to anyone or any entity. What the hell are they gonna sell next, Yellowstone National Park?!
With Microsoft frantically trying to associate its Danger fiasco with everyone else possible in the industry, and particularly upon its direct competitors Sun and Oracle, it failed to point out that an awful lot of enterprise datacenters are running Sun and Oracle, and yet there aren?t regular outages that last for weeks and announce having lost all their users? data. In fact, the losses Microsoft experienced (and its shoulder shrug response to T-Mobile?s million Sidekick users) are virtually unprecedented in the industry.
...
It was Microsoft management.
According to the source, the real problem was that a Microsoft manager directed the technicians performing scheduled maintenance to work without a safety net in order to save time and money. The insider reported:
?In preparation for this [SAN] upgrade, they were performing a backup, but it was 2 days into a 6 day backup procedure (it?s a lot of data). Someone from Microsoft (Roz Ho) told them to stop the backup procedure and proceed with the upgrade after assurances from Hitachi that a backup wasn?t necessary. This was done against the objections of Danger engineers.
?Now, they had a backup from a couple of months ago, but they only had the SAN space for a single backup. Because they started a new backup, they had to remove the old one. If they hadn?t done a backup at all, they?d still have the previous backup to fall back on.
?Anyway, after the SAN upgrade, disks started ?disappearing.? Logically, Oracle [software] freaked out and started trying to recover, which just made the damage worse.?
The problem with this report is that is places the blame, not on a complex Oracle deployment, not on bad SAN hardware or a firmware glitch, not a disgruntled employee with inappropriate levels of access to a mission critical service, but squarely upon Microsoft management.
This management decision was (allegedly) made by the same group within Microsoft that authorized spending $500 million to acquire Danger and take on accountability for its SLA with T-Mobile, botched the development of Pink, spent three years and untold sums developing the Zune brand so that users could sit through TV-style ads before launching Chess on a handheld, lost billions on Xbox and set a new ?low-water mark? in consumer device reliability, boondoggled Windows Mobile to the point where even Gartner can?t say nice things about it, and which has responded to the criticism of Apple?s App Store by launching its own software store with far more rules, significant new fees, and far fewer desirable offerings.
This latest report does not exactly fail to fit in with the general incompetence that emanates from Microsoft?s Entertainment and Devices Division. Rather, it seems entirely credible given the increasingly toxic relationship that has been brewing between Microsoft?s reality-challenged managers and its often frustrated engineers.
Perhaps those same folks were more recently working for BP. ;)
Welcome to the Peoples Republic of USA. All your bases belong to us.
In 1996, Nextwave won a digital cellular spectrum auction. They paid a down payment, and immediately defaulted on the remaining $4.7 billion. Nextwave never used the frequencies for anything. The FCC decided that non-payment was sufficient grounds for revoking their license. The issue went to the Supreme Court, which inexplicably ruled that Nextwave has some kind of right to the frequency and that the FCC could not revoke the license or re-auction the frequencies while Nextwave was in bankruptcy. Essentially, the Supremes gave Nextwave the right to resell the licenses for which they hadn't paid.
Roll forward to 2004, and Nextwave sells most of the spectrum to various cellular providers for a substantial profit. Some of the proceeds went to the FCC to pay off the 1996 spectrum auction.
Now, tell me again how the FCC can do anything they want with the peoples frequencies?
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