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Comment Unifi Video and Grandstream (Score 1) 118

Ubiquity has been mentioned already; I've had good experience with the cameras as well as the management software. You don't need their appliance, you can run the recorder on a Debian-based Linux install easily, and the software is free of charge. However, the cameras only work with their software and vice versa.

I've also had good experience with Grandstream cameras, esp. the GVX3610v2 FHD. Very good image quality, OK web interface, and ONVIF compatible, so you can use ZoneMinder.

One concern with many of the network cameras on offer is what their firmware will do on top of what you want it to do. The super-cheap off-brand ones often phone home etc. This is one area where I'm happy to pay a little bit more to a vendor with a reputation, and a chance that they will update their firmware. Ubiquity has a good track record and updates their firmware regularly, Grandstream is OK.

Comment Here's what I've been doing the past 10 years (Score 1) 142

I feel you. My wife and I travel to the US once or twice a year, and do want continuous connectivity. My experience: pay-as-you-go for data sucks in the US. Coverage is a problem. Americans can't call non-US numbers. If you want to use your cell connection as a broadband replacement, expect to pay through the nose.

Since some of our family live in the boondocks, T-Mobile and Sprint are not really an option, and even AT&T coverage is spotty. Having driven extensively through "fly over" country, Verizon seems to be the only provider with close to full coverage. As others have pointed out here, if you're mostly staying in cities (100k+), you might be OK with the others as well.

For the last four years, we had a Mifi on contract ($50/month), with 5G of data. Until this year, Verizon allowed suspending the contract when we were out of the country, and re-activating it just before we got to the US again. Unfortunately, the suspension is now limited to a max. of 90 days per year. Since most of our friends and family don't have international calls enabled on their contracts, they can't call our European numbers. So we did continue to have an AT&T Go SIM ($100/year to keep the account active). As others have pointed out, the pay-as-you-go options don't have international roaming enabled, or might not even offer it (boo AT&T), so dealing with that from abroad can be a pain. Before that, we tried various options, including VirginMobile (uses Sprint) and T-Mobile.

We've now convinced a friend to get us on his family plan with Verizon, and we have one iPhone (incl. tethering) on there for $15/month. We're sharing his 12GB data, which is good enough for our purposes. Since the phone is on contract, international roaming is available. We did buy the phone, so there's no SIM lock on it, and we can use it with other SIMs.

While in the US, we use about 1GB per week. Most nights, we're somewhere where we have Wifi, so it's mostly on the move usage (navigation in the car, music, FB posts, etc.) Hotel wifi mostly sucks, so when we're staying in a hotel, we're using the cell data. For large downloads or uploads, we try and wait until we're back on Wifi, but I've been syncing my photos and videos with iCloud and Dropbox as I'm taking them, so we're not completely constraining ourselves.

Comment Re:The State of Bavaria Holds the Copyright? (Score 4, Informative) 462

The Federal Republic is the successor to the Weimar Republic, so the state was not "destroyed". Apparently, when an estate goes to the state, it goes to the state (Bundesland) where the deceased was last registered to live, not Germany; Hitler was registered as living in Munich. That's why it's Bavaria.

Comment Re:Signage? Lighting? (Score 1) 90

Their train signals are mostly decoration, as well, even though the system controlling the trains follows similar rules to real-world trains, and could easily control signals as well.

On the other hand, the immersive qualities are really amazing. I bet you a good German beer that you won't hold the missing lighting and signage against them after having been there even just five minutes.

Comment Annoying, but maybe a silver lining? (Score 1) 451

Unless Oracle steps up and makes Mac OS X a primary platform for JDK releases, this might be rather annoying. Ultimately, I might be forced to do development on Linux or Windows. That would blow.

But maybe this decision encourages some group to package a kick ass JDK, and have more timely updates and developer snapshots... one can dream.

WIth the App store and Flash removal, I'm not keeping my hopes up though.

Comment Harder than you think (Score 4, Insightful) 443

The truth of the matter is that it is very hard to support random other languages on VMs written for certain languages.

All these dynamic languages do one thing or another that puts a hole in your plan. Ruby with it's continuations is right up there but Python with "modify anything fundamental anytime" isn't much better. The native environment has a huge headstart.

We should all move to LLVM.

Comment Re:Avoid non-carrier providers! (Score 4, Informative) 153

I would only consider Vodafone and T-Mobile as your options, these two have established cell networks, all the others borrow on these networks and as such tend to be at the bottom of the traffic prioritization.

Nonsense. There's four network operators in Germany: T-Mobile, Vodafone, E-Plus, and O2 Germany. While T-Mobile and Vodafone have a larger buildout (higher density, more towers in rural areas), E-Plus and O2 are not that far behind. I find that O2's network works really well in cities, with no noticable degradation compared to T-Mobile.

All four operators have their own "value" brands, and there's a couple of MVNOs, and as far as I can tell, no priorisation is in effect for any user. If you do have coverage, chances are that you will have excellent throughput. Nothing like certain US operators...

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