“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 per MB – or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”
$800/GB is what the world record holder is able to get. If you use a different text messaging plan or none at all the cost is higher still:
1500 at $15/month = $75,000/GB
200 at $5/month = $192,307/GB
Non-plan per message = $1,533,742/GB at $0.20 per message
I lasted exactly 1 month as a smartphone owner before caving in and buying a data plan. It more than doubles my monthly cell phone bill, which is depressing…but on the up side, now I can ditch my text messaging plan by using my Google Voice number.
The Google Voice app for Android suspiciously doesn’t have push notifications, but the Gmail app does and you can easily forward GV texts to your Gmail account and then receive and reply to texts within Gmail. It’s not optimal, because when I do actually open up Google Voice it can’t tell that I’ve already read messages in Gmail. But for now it’s fine. Hopefully push notifications (and maybe an option to switch to white-on-black text) will come in an update soon, just like pinch-to-zoom did.
I also enjoyed Quorn nuggets for the first time which is suspiciously delicious.
I spent a lot of time in airports. Why does this obvious airport security loophole still exist? Also, how do those full body scanners go through your clothes, but stop short of your underwear?
In California I noticed a lot of cashiers say “Can I help the next guest?” instead of “Can I help the next customer?” I wonder if it is recent trend and will be slowly spreading across the country, or if it is a West Coast thing, or if it happens everywhere and I just never noticed before.
I like Slate’s information visualization of jobs lost since 2007, but I wish you could do a text search for specific county names, and drag a time slider instead of using the arrow or play/pause buttons. I am spoiled by the New York Times.
Many of my classes post all of our readings online. Then I have to decide whether to print them out so I can annotate them and avoid eyestrain, or save paper + time spent printing and collating, and read them on my computer. Neither option is that great.
Thus, I have been more obsessed than ever with my dream gadget: a combination tablet/e-book reader. It seemed like an obvious idea, but since I never saw reader-writer devices advertised, I assumed that it must be prohibitively expensive or technologically impossible to combine E-Ink screens with a touch screen.
But I was wrong! First while browsing the E-Ink website I came across the iRex iLiad, which has actually been around for awhile but is quite expensive and apparently doesn’t have such a great interface.
It would be nicer to have a larger screen, colors, no visible lags when using the stylus (an inherent quality of the E-ink screen), and better contrast. But it still looks totally awesome, considering that it is half the price of the iRex products and looks like it has a better interface.
Later, she received a call from a friend, asking about a strange e-mail message that the patient had sent the caller the previous night. She had no memory of having done so. When the patient checked the computer and looked at a folder containing her sent messages, she discovered that three that had gone out within eight minutes the previous night while she was asleep, all with unusual capitalization, punctuation and language. “!HELP ME P-LEEEEESE” was the subject of one message, an invitation for “dinner & drinks,” and the message also implored the recipient to “come TOMORROW AND SORT THIS HELL HOLE Out!!!!!!”
Dr. Siddiqui told me that the patient had come to a sleep clinic, deeply concerned about what other regrettable things she might be capable of doing while sleepwalking. Dr. Siddiqui was surprised by the patient’s somnambulant ability; while staying at a relative’s house, she started the computer, used a password to log on to the operating system, loaded software to reach the e-mail service and then used her username and password to access the e-mail system.
The article also touches on Mail Goggles, a Gmail feature Google introduces to prevent users from emailing while drunk. As a teetotaller this has never been a problem for me, but I could definitely use a prompt that makes me reflect on whether I really want send certain emails sometimes.
The chain has managed to sustain its momentum even as the economy and the restaurant industry as a whole are struggling. Month after month, McDonald’s has surprised analysts by posting stronger-than-expected sales in the United States and abroad.
As of November, the latest data available, the company had delivered 55 consecutive months of increases in global same-store sales. During a year when the stock market lost a third of its value — its worst performance since the Great Depression — shares of McDonald’s gained nearly 6 percent, making the company one of only two in the Dow Jones industrial average whose share price rose in 2008. (The other was Wal-Mart.)
Takeaway point: McDonald’s isn’t just successful because it serves cheap, greasy food.
I’ve been watching the news all morning, like everyone else – and i keep hearing about the issues related to ‘teen pregnancy’- It’s all related to Sarah Palin and her 17 year old unmarried pregnant daughter. Well, I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences.
I am concerned with the fact that Sarah Palin brought the attention to her daughter’s pregnancy, rather than all world issues and what she believes she could possibly do to change them-if elected. I get Sarah Palin’s views against abortion, but i would much prefer to hear more about what she can do for our country rather than how her daughter is going to have a child no matter what.
Maybe focus on delivering some words and policy with stronger impact like Joe Biden.
The company employs what it calls a “package flow” software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).
Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.
But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.
The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five – a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.
The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam’s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. “That’s our idea of fresh milk,” Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.
