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Podcast for 19 May 2014

Started by MrBogosity, May 18, 2014, 03:59:42 PM

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May 18, 2014, 03:59:42 PM
[mp3]http://podcast.bogosity.tv/mp3s/BogosityPodcast-2014-05-19.mp3[/mp3]


Co-host: Charles Thomas

News of the Bogus:
32:44 - Biggest Bogon Emitter: Milwaukee County Deputy Joseph Quiles (nominated by Dave Turcotte) http://fox40.com/2014/05/02/sober-driver-arrested-for-dui-after-deputy-crashes-into-her/

38:54 - Idiot Extraordinaire: Matthew Yglesias (again), Benjamin Lockwood, Charles Nathanson, and Glen Weyl (nominated by BreadGod) http://www.vox.com/2014/4/20/5629904/study-tax-hikes-could-grow-the-economy

This Week's Quote: "I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights, human rights are all that I recognize." —Sarah Grimké
May 18, 2014, 05:57:56 PM #1
May 18, 2014, 08:25:53 PM #2
There are dual-SIM phones as well, but they're a minority of models and the cell phone business model used in the US (and supported by regulation) makes them extremely awkward to use in the US.
May 19, 2014, 08:12:00 AM #3
Quote from: evensgrey on May 18, 2014, 08:25:53 PM
There are dual-SIM phones as well, but they're a minority of models and the cell phone business model used in the US (and supported by regulation) makes them extremely awkward to use in the US.

Because it's heavily corporatized. One reason people want them is so they can put in an international SIM for when they travel, and not have to get a second phone or miss calls or texts on their existing number by replacing the SIM. But, of course, the carriers want you to buy THEIR international plan, or a plan from one of their partners.

It's one more way you get hit in the face with how the US is NOT the free market a lot of people say it is, and many other countries are freer than us.
May 19, 2014, 09:32:25 AM #4
Quote from: MrBogosity on May 19, 2014, 08:12:00 AM
Because it's heavily corporatized. One reason people want them is so they can put in an international SIM for when they travel, and not have to get a second phone or miss calls or texts on their existing number by replacing the SIM. But, of course, the carriers want you to buy THEIR international plan, or a plan from one of their partners.

It's one more way you get hit in the face with how the US is NOT the free market a lot of people say it is, and many other countries are freer than us.

Oh, I know this one rather well.  I used to do third-level phone support for Nokia (well before they decided to make a maximum-cost exit from the business by switching to Windows Phone, a decision that I recently learned was made by an exec hired away from Microsoft).
May 19, 2014, 10:38:19 AM #5
Quote from: evensgrey on May 19, 2014, 09:32:25 AM
Oh, I know this one rather well.  I used to do third-level phone support for Nokia (well before they decided to make a maximum-cost exit from the business by switching to Windows Phone, a decision that I recently learned was made by an exec hired away from Microsoft).

And then Microsoft bought Nokia.

And then Nokia started making Android phones again...
May 19, 2014, 03:43:06 PM #6
Quote from: MrBogosity on May 19, 2014, 10:38:19 AM
And then Microsoft bought Nokia.

And then Nokia started making Android phones again...

Actually, it wasn't again. Nokia had made some rather popular Symbian phones, including a line of touch-screen phones that were a direct response to the iPhones (and included a new generation of Symbian, IIRC it was the S90 series of the OS) but hadn't had any major Linux or Android products. They replaced their S60 phones with Windows phones, and kept the S40 phones (mostly sold in emerging markets). Their main money in the phone business came from the S60 phones.

Since nobody wanted Windows Phone phones (at one point mid-way through this excursion, a single app store for jail-broken iPhones recorded more hits from a single model of iPhone than the total of Nokia Windows Phone phones sold at the time) and Microsoft is somewhat desperate to not have the entire universe drop Windows Phone, they bought what I understand was just the Windows Phone business.

Symbian was in a really good position to compete with Android when the mistake was made: It was already Open Source, it was already popular, it already had a large and expanding developer base, and with the exception of the perpetual inclusion of the failed nGage console software and chronic problems with the GPS navigation software (neither of which are really serious issues for a smartphone, although we got kind of a lot of work fixing the license wackiness of the first two generations of GPS software) it was in an excellent position to compete with Android.

Then, the guy from Microsoft was allowed to decide to change the OS on the cash-cow middle level phones, leaving Nokia with no real phone products for about a year and then products nobody actually wanted, while alienating their customer and developer bases.  (I suspect he did it mostly to try and prop up the value of his stock options with Microsoft.)

Nokia has rather a lot of other lines of business (I recall one of my coworkers discovering that Nokia also makes tires, for instance), but the company was really weird when it came to digital products. There I was, the most junior of contract support workers, attending meetings about what development directions were being taken, and getting advanced access to the latest product prototypes (theoretically we were supposed to test them out, but when we reported problems, including ones that made certain features directly cause the phone to fail stupidly when used in combination, nothing was done about the problems until after the device hit the market). Very few Nokia phones worked properly when first marketed.

Nokia also had a bad habit of erratically lurching around. They discontinued or sold all their enterprise products and services (including their E-Series business-oriented phones) for no reason I was ever able to discern a couple of years before the idiocy of dropping all their popular phones for something everyone already knew nobody wanted. They also launched the infamous OVI Store, which is very much like Apple's app store except the launch was a complete fiasco because they launched it before it was finished and it crashed. The system that was supposed to report that kind of problem wasn't installed yet, so nobody noticed the problem for hours.

I love working there, but it was one crazy and often stupid place to be.  (Unlike when I worked at Dell, which was crazy, stupid, and mean, and thus no fun to work at.)
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