On Mon, 17 Jul 2006, rwh wrote: > The economics of cell phones are such that you can't sell a phone if you > can't find a carrier to support it. If the carriers don't want 802.11x, > Palm won't put it into their product line. Just look at the extent to > which Verizon cripples their phone to prevent you from loading up your > own ring tones or transferring pictures by means other than their upload > service. > > I really can't see them getting too upset about using voip over EVDO but > I can see them wanting to force you into a data contract rather than > using 802.11. Just look at some of the threads on folks trying to use > their Blue Tooth phones as modems for MacBooks - Verizon wants an extra > $15/month, in addition to the data service, to use the phone as a dial > up modem. Sheesh! Sprint is doing the same thing with extra fees for laptop connectivity. Is there any problem in computing today that isn't being caused by corporate interests? With the hardware engineering we have and the programmers willing to write for us, we should have much more amazing stuff right now. Unfortunately, if it isn't of sufficient benefit to the major superpowers of high-tech, it's going to be slowed way down. Look at what Microsoft has accomplished with their $500-billion-plus corporation and compare that with Linux/FOSS and their $0 approach -- that observation alone proves to me that Microsoft is crushing advances in computing, not creating them. Mike