Mobile Broadband | Pay as You Go

Mobile Broadband | Pay as You Go

Arguments about available mobile broadband bandwidth have little relevance to residential and commercial fixed broadband. In these applications, the number of providers is limited and they are attempting to use price discrimination to capture a greater portion of available profits from the content providers. Network neutrality isn't an issue solely for mobile services.

All the carries and ISPs have to do is charge for download instead of straight bandwidth. That's it, problem solved. No government involvement, no new regulations, and "neutral".

Broadband Swindle?

What's that? The carriers would rather be allowed to throttle specific services in the background so I don't know I'm not getting the bandwidth I paid for?

I am one of the people who thinks that they should just allow me to do what ever I want with the service that I purchase (assuming it is legal). I wouldn't mind usage-based pricing - pay as you go mobile broadband for example.

Usage-based pricing = the end of spam mail! Yay!

Not yay. Spam originates overseas and if they don't have to pay per megabyte, they'll still send it. Usage-based pricing = more money spent on spam.

File Share Abusers Cut Off?

Why not limit access to the part of the internet that they abused? A first step would be blocking ports used by the file sharing programs and limiting their daily/weekly/monthly download and upload volume at the ISP. If they continue to find ways to abuse the system, then limit them at the ISP level to a few thousand approved web sites and download of email.

Charity Shops - Charity Gifts and Christmas Cards

One of my obsessions is the objectionable way that some charity shops are run.

There's something very fishy in the charity shop model. Indeed, it is even the case that a charity shop is only required ot hand over 15% of its turnover to charity. Hence the vast proliferation of charity shops on the high street.

Charity Gifts

Where are the profits going? 'Area managers', company cars, huge middle-management wages, re-shop fittings and the like - charity gifts - for those in most need?

In the past week charity shops UK has had a refit. Every three years, as routine, wether it's needed or not, which has necessitated every single one of them being closed for a week..

Our local Charity Shop was beatifully laid out and excellently run. Its refit has left it exactly the same as before except for a new laminate floor.

Charity Christmas Cards

I am deeply suspicious of charity shops. And such as the Christmas charity cards, who only return 5p in the pound to the charities. Talk about a scam! What a fabulous marketing idea - 'we're a charity supporting mental health, or the homeless, or people in Africa or whatever' - which brings people eager to help flooding into the shops. And yet they give a tiny proportion of the income from charity Christmas cards to the charity in question.

Are charity shops just big business with a fabulous business model: free stock, great image, perfect marketing angle - and unfettered capitalism behind the scenes?

PS3 FAIL - XBox 360 vs Playstation 3 Modern Warfare

Is the PS3 flopping so badly?

This is a bit of an overstatement. I don't have the time to check, but I believe worldwide ps3 is doing fine to say the least and possibly doing better than Xbox 360 overall.

A price cut is absolutely needed to get hardware ownership numbers comparable to 360.

The PS3's big bonus is not necessarily the Blu-Ray player, its the fact that once you have it, at most all you need to buy is a 2nd controller. Once you add in the cost of a wireless adapter, hard-drive, making the controller rechargeable, online play, and other things, Microsoft's product comes across as deceptively cheap in my opinion. PS3 may want to consider a similar approach to stay competitive rather than offer an "expensive" and "more expensive" option. The comparison should really be made between the Xbox Pro/Premium unit vs. the PS3, not the Arcade unit.

Aside from Modern Warfare 2, both platforms "exclusive" offerings seem fairly weak this season.

This is my opinion as someone who has and likes both systems but it sounds like this article was written by someone that may only have an XBox 360 :-)

In Reply

Spoken like a true fanboy! Why do people keep writing complete drivel in such a way as to make it appear like they are informed and knowledgeable on the subject. This article fails on so many levels it's laughable!

Here are some FACTS on the so-called "failing" PS3:

• In the last 12 months PS3 sales have improved 69% compared to the previous 12 months sales.
• In the last 12 months Xbox 360 sales have improved by just 35% (largely due to the price cut)
• The console install base of the PS3 since the start of 2008 has increased by 98%
• The console install base of the 360 since the start of 2008 has increased by just 53%
• The average global monthly sales for the PS3 based on the number of months available in each region is 780,000 units a month
• The average global monthly sales for the 360 based on the number of months available in each region is 672,000 units month
• Comparing Global lifecycle adjusted sales shows that the PS3 has outsold the 360.

Even ignoring the 360's large headstart the PS3 has already overtaken it in Europe and Japan despite it's early lack of games and relatively high price. The PS3 has outsold the 360 by 300,000 units in Europe and outsold it in Japan by 1.74M units.

Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2

Also the 360 received an artificial boost in Nov thanks to Modern Warfare 2 (people buy 360's for two things - Halo sequels and Gears sequels) and also from their recent 3rd year price cut.

PS3 numbers will not be boosted by a 3rd year price cut until next November, it's unlikely MS will have any counter to this as they have already played all their cards (short of repeat their XBox strategy and just bring out their next model)

It amazes me what can be spread on the net...

Dresses For Models Only

Designing dresses for less

Reports of soap dodging Karl Largerfeld making proposterous claims about the dresses he "designs" are only fir for thin models - Nice one Carl

It's quite simple. Yes, this is fuelled by misogyny but it's also clearly motivated by sheer laziness. It is far simpler to design dresses for a human clothes hanger than it is to spend the effort necessary to design something for a woman who, God forbid, has some womanly curves. The 'ideal' woman used to be 36-24-36 or an hourglass not an ironing board. What is so scary about curves?

Precisely: "the world of fashion" has nothing to do with the reality of most peoples' lives but merely peddles dreams and illusions for idiots with too much money to indulge in.

Why do these fashionistas believe that anyone in their right mind wants to see women with legs and arms like sticks? With skinny hips and no bums - their dresses loosly fitng like a bad bandage?

What lot of complete nonesense from Lagerfeld !

Women choose dresses for themselves

Contrary to what a lot of men on here may think, how many women view themselves may be more about how they view themselves and their dresses rather than how a man views them. This may be as much influenced by other women as by men. Sorry but it is not all about the male gaze. This of course may be hard for many men to accept, poor dears. Otherwise, we would see a lot more thigh boots and microminis about town.


However, as some other contributers have hinted this debate isn't really about sexual attraction and what looks 'sexy' to men; it's about selling clothes, dresses and sexy lingerie to women.

If there is one thing for sure most people want to remain young, and the size zero figure is a figure normally naturally found on an adolescent girl... this is what size zero is about; flogging a dream of flawless everlasting youth - not really about what looks 'sexy'.

Apps - Good Old Print Rules

Media organisations turn to mobile phone applications to raise revenue

Mobile phones are going through the same cycle as PCs went through ten or more years ago - for apps read the idea of dedicated clients like AOL/Compuserve and 'portals' being able to generate a 'loyal' following that can generate revenue.

Mobile suppliers have been reluctant to follow the ISP route to be generic comms providers and insisted on 'walled gardens' for far longer than was healthy.

It's not going to last. The real function of these 'apps' is to overcome the current limitations on processor power that make a more generalised solution slow. That and because the general purpose web site has drifted into high bandwidth content for broadband users which is a poor design for the mobile screen. A fully functional caching browser and websites that are designed for the smaller format will make all these content based 'apps' obsolete.

Much as I love my iPhone, it's not the best device to read text - and certainly not a lot of it. The apps I use most often have small amounts of useful data such as Mint, the Weather Channel app or a currency converter. Even apps with large amounts of data such as iPod navigate down to what you're after pretty quickly. A netbook or a tablet would be better, but when I'm on the move, I find the best journal format is the good old print print edition.