Category Archives: Society
Protected: Interview 1
Meeting? Yeah!
If you know me well enough, I expect you to be surprised by this post as I am not keen on meetings, but earlier this week I read an article about meetings and yeah, written by Sarah B. Weir. You should read it before proceeding to the following text.
This article is pleasant to read, isn’t it? If you were here with me, I would expect you to say “yeah!”.
I have to say that I admire those articles where authors manage to use simple English without dumbing their content down. I wish I could write finer content; I’ll keep trying until I can replace the word wish by will.
(Oh sorry), let me get back on track… In fact I’m happy to see the evolution of meetings from the (old) formal, stressful, useless and one-way communication moment into something more casual. As I earned a degree in physics, I usually try to find an explanation to everything and the the one I’ve found for this study is linked to social networks (e.g. +1).
However, according to the article, body language hadn’t been taken in account by the study; for instance if I say yeah (monotone with an extended a sound) or yeah (brief and raising tone), the meaning is opposite. But I doubt that people would say normally say a negative yeah and would remain silent instead. Also, I’m wondering how attendees in international and multicultural environments would react if I kept saying yeah: no matter what, I will try.
Had I had some spare time, I would have read the complete study, which isn’t list on Improbable Research, a Web site publishing all kind of useless research, and therefore won’t be a candidate for the Ig Nobel prize. Looks like it’s useful.
In my humble opinion, we should have meetings on a couch, share some food, or enjoy outdoors, while walking on an alameda to the restaurant. That’s an utopia. Yeah! Can I please grab a bite before the next meeting? No! That’s a dystopia.. Yeah!
Internet in Kazakhstan
I found a topic onars technica about The Internet in Kazakhstan, so I looked at it…
Here in Luxembourg, I spend about $150 monthly for one of my broadband flat rate Internet access, which is about 2% of my gross income.
In Kazakhstan, unlimited Internet access is far from being affordable, especially with an average monthly salary of $400. For example, a flat rate 2 Mbit/s ADSL price is over $4500, per month, and does include neither the 14% tax, the activation fee nor the modem. The alternative solution, using cable, provides a 10 Mbit/s access that is about a thousand times higher than in Western Europe: over $35,000. Of course taxes, activation and modem are excluded.
A report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe explains more about Internet governance in Kazakhstan (seek to page 119).
IP over SMS could be cheaper
The picture below is an invoice from my cellphone operator.
If you open it, you’ll notice that I underlined one of the data transfer while I was in Germany: 0.5945 Euros (excl. VAT) for 3 kB transferred, charging a price up to 233 EUR per MB transfered (incl. VAT) (~300 USD). To compare, local data connections can be charged as 3 EUR/GB if used within one day.
In this example (using the worst roaming condition and best local price), roaming charges are up to about 80 000 times more than local connections.
Operators are making a so huge fortune with data roaming that they’ll never want to change the system; and European members states will support them as they collect the VAT (between 15% and 25%, depending on the states). Since the European commission somewhat managed to limit roaming charges for voice calls, will they increase their data charges in order keep their profit as high as possible?
I think there will not be any real Europe as long as it’s based on national operators that are not willing to deploy a European-wide network. On the other hand, what would people think in Australia if they were charged for roaming charges between states? That would definitely kill or damage many businesses.
As a user and consumer, I prefer to switch a wifi network (either public, available in a café or on the Fon community) where I can even use a Voice over IP client on my phone and pay only a few symbolic cents/minute instead of Euros. How will operators react when massive people switch to an alternative like those? Will they file for bankruptcy or attempt to make wifi illegal?
In addition to this, the Luxembourg based cellphone operator Tango launched a special offer named unlimited surf pack: it includes 5GB of data. So how unlimited is it? It’s available 24/7, so marketing people described it as unlimited. Nice joke!
As a summary, this Eurobarometer study on roaming says a lot, despite it is not focused on data roaming.