Mobile phones without towers coming soon (http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/mobile-phones-without-towers-coming-soon-20110901-1jmqr.html)

Great idea I said as I looked at the headline but buried deep in the article is the crunch, it will be possible to call each other for free under certain circumstances. So we can't have that can we? The capitalist world would collapse if services could be provided for free. But wait a moment I was called by someone yesterday that wanted to provide me with telephone calls for free except mobiles which were $0.35 a call, well almost free. Knowing they were calling from India, I declined.

It is just marvelous what innovation can do. If we keep going at this rate we won't need a phone

It doesn't really say how this new invention is going to work. It will probably be shot down by the greedy cell phone operators anyway. Or it's going to be so wifi all over the globe we'll all get cancer much quicker.

Nick Tesla did invent the wireless electricity but look what happened to him? His ideas stolen never to see the light of day. His system would have given the world free electricity and made all the fat cats of oil, electric generation, etc. poor.

It doesn't really say how this new invention is going to work. It will probably be shot down by the greedy cell phone operators anyway. Or it's going to be so wifi all over the globe we'll all get cancer much quicker.

Nick Tesla did invent the wireless electricity but look what happened to him? His ideas stolen never to see the light of day. His system would have given the world free electricity and made all the fat cats of oil, electric generation, etc. poor.

You know why it never saw the light of day, because their technology was so primitive they couldn't meter it and charge for it. No way of stopping free usage. It just needed a little lateral thinking they weren't capable of. I expect the anti trust laws would also have killed it off, there must be a monopoly in there somewhere, because to make it work they would have needed to own the distributor and the receptor. You should be glad we never got wireless electricity because we would be fried by now.This will die for the same reasons.

The vested interests will lose, I'll bet the farm on it. Or at least regroup and divide to avoid monopoly. We are moving in that direction with everything else. Free access, devices, software, and data, all paid for with ads. Blade Runner. Fine with me.

I don't pretend to know how all this works. I still don't know why the promises of decades past that we would be using satellites for all our communications didn't happen (too expensive? Like millions of miles of cable and all those cell towers are cheap?)

Look how people are ditching the TV package and using HDMI to get it off the net to the TV. Even just forcing those stupid bundled channels, don't they see that they are shooting themselves in both feet? The music moguls thought that they could keep getting rich off distribution control and died a big fat death too. Can't come soon enough. Credit card companies are dinosaurs too, left over from the days when money transfers were actually handled manually. I'm surprised it's taking so long to topple all of this.

The Serval Project | The Serval Project making commnications available anywhere, anytime (http://www.servalproject.org/)

For short ranges only. Would need many repeaters for a full mesh network. At best it would serve as an ad hoc network if towers go down. You'd need Android phones as iPhones are locked down.

The Serval Project | The Serval Project making commnications available anywhere, anytime (http://www.servalproject.org/)

For short ranges only. Would need many repeaters for a full mesh network. At best it would serve as an ad hoc network if towers go down. You'd need Android phones as iPhones are locked down.

Well there's the kill, it won't work with all technology but they will fix that no doubt

It would be excellent for setting up your own private localized cell network. That's where I see the usefullness.

The capitalist world would collapse if services could be provided for free.



Clete yeah great idea... there would be plenty of innovation if there was no profit motive.

Clete yeah great idea ...there would be plenty of innovation if there was no profit motive. I know you're being sarcastic but there is a thriving open source community for software that has absolutely no profit motive.

And of course they are only giving away their work for free... right ?

Yes, that is correct. They'll accept donations but it's not required.

I bet the "movement " is heavily weighed in favor of those who would use other's intellecutal property for free . It's piracy by a different name .

'"With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away. It terrifies me.'"http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/01/ebook.piracy/index.html

That would be completely incorrect.

Richard Stallman fought the open source battle starting over 30 years ago all by himself, and he explains over and over what the misconceptions are.

A hacker wants all software free... What a surprise!! He wants free access to others hard work and genious .
When there is a book I want to read I buy it .I don't steal it . When there is a product I want I buy it.

a hacker wants all software free ... What a suprise!!! He wants free access to others hard work and genious .
The word hacker has changed greatly over the years. At first it referred to a technically savvy person that loved to reverse engineer hardware and software and thrilled at gaining access to servers and networks for the sheer exploratory thrill. Now it's used as a pejorative and linked to people who write viruses and steal data for profit. This has absolutely nothing to do with the open source community. That's a coming together of skilled coders who write code together to make specific applications or the enhance existing applications. That's been going on since computers first saw the light of day.


When there is a book I want to read I buy it .I don't steal it . When there is a product I want I buy it. No need to steal books when there are plenty of free ones galore: 391 Places for Free Books Online (http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/50-places-free-books-online.htm)

There are plenty of free apps for phones and tablets and plenty of free software that replace commercial software. No pirates, no stealing involved at all.

My very first encounter with people who were called hackers were people who, as NeedKarma says, were technically savvy and thrilled.. and there I go even further back and say were... thrilled to work on something for the sheer pleasure of it. A good hack was a job well done that wasn't part of a course of a job description. And it had nothing to do with breaking in. That came years and years later.
Of course hackers were golfers and cabbies before that.

And I have no issue with those who of their own free will donate their hard work for public access .

I assume authors and publishers have cleared their books for free public consumption ,or all prior trademarks have expired... no ? If not it's theft.

I oppose clowns like Stallman who are against the very idea of trademarking your own invention or profitting from it.

Stallman is indeed old school and has become a bit of an anachronism. He is an incredibly accomplished software engineer and rightly has issues with patent trolls but he does take the "free software for all" activism a little too far.

Clete yeah great idea ...there would be plenty of innovation if there was no profit motive.

It wasn't perfect but the Soviet Union survived for seventy years without a personal profit motive. Today the US relies on the technology of that era for its space program so think Tom, capitalism is not essential to success and one day we will grow out of it.

The old joke in the Soviet Union was 'they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work'. Glad to see you admit that you see authoritarian statism as a viable alternative .

Yeah suppressing the profit motive that long was quite a feat. Look at them scramble now.
Besides the top .00001% got their percs and bennies and dachas anyway.

Back to Stallman, imagine if there were no GNU license at the bottom of every reference and map on wikipedia, and you had to subscribe or pay as you go. How about this site? Want to pay for this too?

This site is not free . I comply with the terms of the owners and in return I contribute to the Q&A and the discussions .

Wiki is the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.It gets revenue from other sources ;or do you think it really doesn't need funding ? It has had a revenue this year of $ 24.1 million .It collects revenues through donations and advertisers .
I have no problem with that ;but let's not pretend it is "free" It operates because someone is paying for it.

Edit

Perhaps one of the adminstrators can explain the funding for this site. I know it is owned by Advizo and Ram Prayaga is CEO .But I have not seen it's financials. Best guess is that we are a laboratory testing software that later gets sold for business functions .Again ,I'm perfectly fine with that They should make a profit.

the old joke in the Soviet Union was 'they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work'. Glad to see you admit that you see authoritarian statism as a viable alternative .

So what is the joke in America today "we pretend to have prosperity and they pretend to believe us"? Capitalism has bankrupted America because in a system of buyer beware everyone forgot to beware. The sad part is it doesn't stand alone and your losses are also my losses. We need a better model than has existed and does exist. It doesn't work where the government isn't free to stimulate and restrict through manipulation of taxation, subsidy and interest rates,

I don't see authoritarianism as an alternative but I do see a role for government enterprise. where government tackles the big ticket items because capital isn't prepared to do so or where government maintains an industry because of its strategic importance. You see Tom I don't like the private toll road model as a way of getting roads built because that will only build the most profitable highways and the example can be carried over into many other areas of activity

I never said wikipedia is free or even tried to define free (but I sent them $50 once).
But both that and this site are free in the sense of not requiring payment for answers. This site obviously sells ad spots. Wikipedia gets donations.
Complying with terms? Answering questions? That is your idea of not free? Come on.

I never said wikipedia is free or even tried to define free (but I sent them $50 once).
But both that and this site are free in the sense of not requiring payment for answers. This site obviously sells ad spots. Wikipedia gets donations.
Complying with terms? Answering questions? That is your idea of not free? Come on.

Hey I would like payment for answers but no takers