4G with data-caps: pay for a month, hit your limit in under an hour

Public Knowledge’s Michael Weinberg, who wrote an outstanding paper on the law and 3D printing, has a new paper, this one on 4G networks with data-caps, and how weird it is to advertise that your network is a) very fast and suitable for video; and b) that you’d better not use it for data-intensive applications. He sez, “Wireless carriers have started to push their new 4G networks. The carriers say that these new networks are amazing, and will allow you to do more, faster, than ever before. What they do not tell you is that you will not be able to use the new 4G networks for very much. That is because the wireless carriers (with the exception of Sprint, which offers truly unlimited 4G connections) have imposed arbitrary limits on their 4G networks. For the average user, this limit is set at 2 GB per month. As a result, just about everything that you would use the 4G network for will put you over your limit. At full speed, you will hit a month’s worth of caps in under an hour. In that time, you might be able to download half an HD movie to watch for the rest of the month.”


This unfortunate fact is the result of a combination between fast 4G networks that deliver a lot of data and low limits on how much data you can use. The 4G speed means that you hit your cap even faster than you would on the existing 3G network. How much faster? Well, Verizon advertises its 4G network can deliver top speeds between 5 and 12 Mbps. AT&T claims it can deliver 6 Mbps. At those speeds, you will hit your monthly limit in less than one hour.

Of course, you may not think about your connection in terms of how long you can use it at full blast. Instead, you might think about it in terms of what you can actually do with the connection.

Under AT&T and Verizon’s 2 GB monthly limit, you could download half of an HD movie from iTunes before hitting your limit. Alternatively, you could download two 45-minute HD TV shows. If you shot some video you wanted to share with friends, you might be able to upload 2 ten-minutes videos. Keep in mind that any one of those things would essentially use up your data cap for the month, so you would not be able to do anything else with your smartphone (like get your email or get directions) without going over the limit.

Arbitrary Data Limits Make Wireless 4G A Waste of Money


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4G with data-caps: pay for a month, hit your limit in under an hour

Hitachi To Stop Producing TVs By Year-End

hitachi tv

After Pioneer decided to shut down its TV business in 2009, Hitachi yesterday announced they are ready to stop producing and outsourcing all production of TVs to makers in Taiwan and other Asian countries. And even though Hitachi said they will continue selling TVs in the future, this sounds very much like a long goodbye.

The move isn’t a big surprise, as it’s notoriously difficult to make money with TVs. Many of the big electronics makers have been struggling to bring their TV business into the black recently, i.e. Sony or market leader Samsung (Hitachi expects to lose money on that segment in the current fiscal year, too).

The company has just one flat panel production plant left in Japan, which it plans to close by year-end, according to reports in Japanese media.

It’s good timing to drop out of the TV business, five months after the March 11 earthquake in Japan (which hurt Hitachi’s sales), the switch in Japan from analog to digital TV broadcasting two weeks ago (which triggered a massive demand for new TVs that’s now ending), and five days after the company announced a 97% year-on-year drop in net profit for the quarter through June.

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Hitachi To Stop Producing TVs By Year-End

Microsoft Research’s .NET Gadgeteer steps out into the light, shoots daggers at Arduino (video)

Arduino, meet .NET Gadgeteer — your newest homebrew hacking rival. Born from Microsoft Research engineers’ desire to build prototypes quickly and easily, the two-and-a-half-years in the making ARM7-powered mainboard packs 4MB Flash, 16MB RAM, Ethernet, WiFi, an SD card interface and USB ports. Novice mods might wanna put the Netduino down because this homespun alternative also runs atop MS' .NET Micro Framework, and thanks to its IntelliSense feature, makes auto-coding a breeze for first-timers. If you're interested in what Ballmer & co. are offering, you can head to the project's site now to pre-order its GHI-made hardware: a $250 Spider Starter Kit and the $120 Spider Mainboard. Both will be available by the end of September, but if you need a preview of what this burgeoning open source community has to offer, peep the stop-motion making mod after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft Research’s .NET Gadgeteer steps out into the light, shoots daggers at Arduino (video)

Microsoft Research’s .NET Gadgeteer steps out into the light, shoots daggers at Arduino (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Teletype Printer Adapted to Send and Receive Text Messages

Kids these days, what with their “Internets” and doing the Twitters and whatnot. Why, you can send perfectly good long-distance messages with a teletype machine! That’s what a fellow named Mdziewie did. He rigged a 1963 model teletype printer to accept and transmit text messages. The site is in Polish, but Google Translate will give you a sense of how he wrote the software and modified a modem. You can watch a video of the machine at the link. Link (Google Translate) -via Geekosystem

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Teletype Printer Adapted to Send and Receive Text Messages

Wall Street Predicts Merge of OS X and iOS

gumbi west writes “One Wall Street analyst predicts what slashdot commenters have predicted for years, that iOS and OS X will merge into a single OS. However the analyst sees this happening because the iOS devices receive a substantial CPU boost from the quad core A6 which can power MBA and smaller devices while following 64-bit ARM processors can bring the remainder of the Apple lineup back to ARM under a single architecture.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wall Street Predicts Merge of OS X and iOS

ASUS’ next gen Eee Pad Transformer to pack NVIDIA’s quad-core Kal-El, launch this October?

Fan of ASUS’ affordable, yet competitively specced Eee Pad Transformer, but still haven’t committed your credit to its 10.1-inches? Well, if this bout of rumor-mongering proves true, you might want to put the wallet down until early fall. Harbinger of supply chain gossip Digitimes is reporting that the electronics maker has just enlisted Wintek to provide touch panels for its next gen tablet, slated to launch this October. The parts supplier is said to be working in tandem with HannStar Display to ramp up production should this iteration be met with its predecessor’s unforeseen popularity. Adding more ambiguity to the speculative fire, ASUS’ Chairman Jonney Shih recently confirmed to Forbes that an updated Transformer is on its way, saying only that it’d be very “impressive,” and would be available before CES. Jonney didn’t comment on the upcoming slate’s supposed use of NVIDIA’s quad-core Kal-El, but with the chip’s promised August launch date, we wouldn’t rule it out. While talks of a Transformer 2 are still just gossamer promise, you can always snag that Eee Pad Slider while you sit and wait.

ASUS’ next gen Eee Pad Transformer to pack NVIDIA’s quad-core Kal-El, launch this October? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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