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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (5437)	10/23/2002 4:52:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12235

<I love my all you can eat weekend and evening minutes [after 8::00] for data access on my cell phone. Laying there on the couch cruising beats TV or car washing. I LOVE my all you can eat Internet access through my wired service providers. I would drastically cut back if I was charged for all of the time I waste on line. I'd find other ways to productively waste my time. Maybe that would be doing me a big favor? > Hi M. But would you love it if you desperately wanted to get or give some information and you got "Sorry, system busy. Please try again some other time"? When things are going along fine, people are happy enough. It's when things go wrong, which is maybe only once in a lifetime, that they really understand the desirability of long range planning. People in Europe hadn't seen floods like it, but I bet they wish they hadn't built their house right there. Forest fires come along once in a blue moon, but they sure do make a mess when the forest lights the house. Better to build above the highest sea level likely in the life of the house and better to keep the forest well clear of the front door. People don't very often get into brain-smashing car crashes, but when they do, they are very glad to have a seat belt on and an air bag to keep their face separate from the steel. It's the unusual circumstances which have very high costs which we need to include in our plans. Anyone can sing happily on a sunny day. It's the rainy day and the failed harvest which make for misery. Now if we could not only have the safety against the unusual events, but save money in the process, that's great! By paying for what you use, your actual monthly costs could be half what they are. So cheap that you would just use it anytime you like, just as you probably use a ball point pen any time you like, although you are using up the ink and will have to buy another pen when it's empty. When the cost of metering is near zero [including the cost of the time of the people who have to monitor their bills to see that they aren't being ripped off], people just use what they like, but don't actually waste it by leaving it running. I used to just leave my computer connected even though I wasn't using it, just so I could check something and avoid the dial up time [that was in the early 1990s]. But that meant others had to wait for a clear line and the company had to charge more overall to provide sufficient connections. So the total bill was higher, but my share of it was tiny. It's called the Tragedy of the Commons - each person knows it's being ruined, but they get a benefit so they might as well just grab that little benefit because others will. You wouldn't drastically cut back if the price was half what you pay each month, or even less. You would love it that you don't get a "Sorry, we're busy" signal in an emergency. When something happens and cyberspace locks up with a netileptic fit, watch everyone whine like a fleet of Koreans that something ought to be done to avoid such things and make sure it never happens again. It is pitiful that people say "Make sure it never happens again" because the thing they are whining about is always very predictable and avoidable. I expect people will whine when cyberspace has a fit. I expect there will be demands to make sure it never happens again. The government little Hitlers will jump into gear and make all sorts of stupid rules [like you can only log on every second day or something equally ridiculous, as they did during the oil crises of the 1970s]. Same for cellphone calls - Wacky Wireless is the way to go. Mqurice