All posts by kirsch

Reality Distortion Field

Why AT&T’s new data plans suck

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By now you must have heard about AT&T’s new data plan pricing: Instead of paying $30 for unlimited data, you can pay:

  • $15 per month for 200MB or
  • $25 per month for 2GB

AT&T claims that 95% (but I can’t find the source) of their data users use less than 2 GB anyway, so most people will see savings! Sounds like a good deal, right?

Wrong. The problem with the new data plans is that, although most users will be fine with 2 GB a month today, they won’t be ok with it tomorrow. This explains the timing of the announcement: make it seem like they are loweing the prices, fully knowing that data intensive phones are right around the corner. Next week Apple is expected to release iPhone OS 4.0, which supports background services. Yes, people will be using Skype and Pandora for hours on their phone. And they are also expected to release a new iPhone model that will likely support video conferencing. These are data intensive applications that will eat through 2 GB very quickly. We should expect other smartphones to similarly steer toward more data intensive applications. It’s a ripoff: customers will be paying over $25 or will have to start carefully watching their habits.

And don’t get me started on that $20 charge to allow tethering (without providing any additional data)…

Falafel and more

The Flotilla

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A lot is being written about the Gaza Aid Flotilla and Israel’s terribly botched attempt at stopping it. There is no excuse: there should not have been any deaths whatsoever in this operation.

However, the true intentions of the organizers of this “humanitarian” fleet were not exactly humanitarian. For example, they declined to carry out a message from the Shalit family. Many of the people on board have known ties with Jihadist groups included Al-Qaeda. And the soldiers boarding the ship were brutally attacked even before they set foot on board.

Israel deserves blame for what happened. They were not ready at all for the kind of violence encountered. Had they been properly prepared and equipped, the soldiers would not have been lowered one by one only to be lynched, and they would not have been put in a situation in which they were forced to protect themselves through force. It was a failure of logistics and of intelligence.

But the organizers of the flotilla deserve equal or greater blame, and this is not what I read in the press. A supposedly peaceful demonstration to bring humanitarian aid should not have members or terrorist organizations nor people who support violence against Israel on board. They should not have brutally attacked anyone. It was clear they were looking for a confrontation when Israel offered to transfer all aid cargo on the ships into Gaza as long as the flotilla agreed to first dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod for a weapons inspection before-hand… but it was not clear they were looking for such level of violent confrontation and blood.

Foreign reports fail to mention knives found on ship (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit). Source: YNet

Israel was clumsy, unprepared, and fell for a clear trap. The loss of life is regretful, and so is the lack of honesty with properly assigning the blame on the events. And remember, it’s not Israel who is impeding the lifting of the blockade in Gaza. It is Hamas who needs to meet the demands of the international community to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Once they do it, the blockade will be open.

But I don’t think anyone in that flotilla has the desire of reminding Hamas of that little fact.