Mount Everest Gets 3G Service 150
bossanovalithium writes "It's what every mountaineer wants when they reach the summit of Mount Everest: a 3G high-speed communication. Those who have trekked to the top will soon able to call their mates, go on Facebook or Twitter, and boast that they got there thanks to TeliaSonera and its subsidiary in Nepal, Ncell, which have brought 3G to the Mount Everest area. Climbers who reached Everest's 8,848-meter-high peak previously depended on expensive and erratic satellite phone coverage and a voice-only network set up by China Mobile in 2007 on the Chinese side of the mountain."
Of course. (Score:3, Insightful)
Peak Hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, another dimension to advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we're going to have to endure stupid TV ads that incorporate Everest:
Verizon: The largest and TALLEST 3G network!
ATT: The fastest and HIGHEST 3G network!
Then the lawyers will file suit, and we'll have interviews on CNN with a bunch of middle-American jury candidate idiots trying to decide whether highest == tallest ("well, ya see, ah looked it up een mah dictionary, and ah guess who eyver wrote English decided the two words ahr diff-rent, so they must nawt be the same!")
Meanwhile, T-Mobile will remind everyone that "Stick Together" is good advice for mountaineering, especially since they don't have coverage there. Verizon will eventually phase out "Rule the Air" to "Rule the Entire Atmosphere!"
Eventually, Apple will release a new iPhone or something and people will move on to talk about that instead and still not be able to find Everest on a map.
Re:It's true! (Score:5, Insightful)
You joke, but I remember when I watched an IMAX documentary on Mt. Everest. One of the guys had climbed it several times, but he messed up and got stuck somewhere halfway up where he would definitely freeze or starve to death. He left behind his pregnant wife, and they played some of their last conversation. After the final conversation, the narrator called the guy a hero. I remember that pissing me off even as a kid. How can someone who pointlessly risks his life when he has responsibilities to a wife and child be called a hero? People who climb Mt. Everest aren't heroes, they're thrillseekers who border on suicidal. Which is fine, but let's be honest about it.
Re:It's true! (Score:2, Insightful)
He left behind his pregnant wife, and they played some of their last conversation. After the final conversation, the narrator called the guy a hero. I remember that pissing me off even as a kid. How can someone who pointlessly risks his life when he has responsibilities to a wife and child be called a hero?
Am a I heartless bastard if the first thought that crossed my mind was "Damn, he successfully passed on his genes before dying of gross stupidity"? I'd suggest a Darwin award but the idiot managed to reproduce before he kicked the bucket.
Kind of a shame (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, everybody and their dog is doing it. Helicopters land on it. Discovery Channel had a reality show about it. The mountain is heavily littered with garbage. And now you can surf the web from your iPhone up there. I realize this is all inevitable eventually with better technology. But I am a little jealous of our forebearers, for whom there existed unknown frontiers. And solitude is extinct.
Re:It's true! (Score:5, Insightful)
We do that all the time. We call slain police officers and soldiers "heroes", when really they aren't. They have dangerous jobs and working a dangerous job means that you run a higher than normal risk of injury or death. They get extra pay and extra benefits (police pension, G.I. bill education, etc) to help compensate for the additional risk. Sure, their deaths are tragic and sad and usually unnecessary, but that doesn't make them heroes.
I only consider someone to be a hero when they go above and beyond. For example, a guy off the street who runs into a burning building to save someone is showing heroism in my book.
I find the overuse of the word "hero" just as annoying as every time there's a natural disaster and thousands of people die, but one child survives, everyone starts calling it a "miracle". A miracle would be if we never had natural disasters. Or if we had a giant earthquake and *not one person* died.
Re:It's true! (Score:4, Insightful)
They ARE heroes. They know that they could die in the line of duty, and they do what has to be done anyways (extra pay does not matter). We need policemen and firemen (anybody who suggests otherwise just needs to look no further than Somalia). We do NOT have to have mountain climbers to function as a society. I admire their bravery, but mountain climbers are doing it for themselves and as such are not heroes.
Re:It's true! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, these are people that want to probe the boundaries and limits of their world, want to explore, excel and stretch their own limitations. These are most likely the types that actually will become true heroes if the situation would call for it.
If the guy climbed mt Everest several times than he and his wife were fully aware of the risks involved. About 1 in 10 climbers die on that mountain I think. So if she got pregnant she was fully aware that her husband had a decent chance of never returning.
They made choice, who are you to judge them about that?
Re:It's true! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's true! (Score:5, Insightful)
Am a I heartless bastard if the first thought that crossed my mind was "Damn, he successfully passed on his genes before dying of gross stupidity"? I'd suggest a Darwin award but the idiot managed to reproduce before he kicked the bucket.
Let's see, the physical strength and stamina to climb one of the toughest mountains on earth several times, not to mention the mental fitness, flexibility and willpower one needs in large quantities in order to do something like that.
I'd say his genes were top of the bill really
Funny you mention Darwin though.. .
The guy traveled around the world, visiting remote deserted places for years at a time in a era where such voyages were still the equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Also gross stupidity?
Re:It's true! (Score:2, Insightful)
These are most likely the types that actually will become true heroes if the situation would call for it.
And you know this how? 'Probing the boundaries of reality'? Please. His single motivating factor was pride, plain and simple. He wasn't probing the boundaries of reality any more than the woman who died from water poisoning in an attempt to win a Wii game console.
They made choice, who are you to judge them about that?
Wait, I'm confused. You just got done telling me that this guy is a hero because he recklessly risked his life. But you're telling me not to judge him? Yes, he made a choice: a terrible choice that had tragic consequences for himself and his family. Again, not unlike the woman who died drinking too much water in order to win a Wii. Why isn't she a hero?
Re:It's true! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's true! (Score:2, Insightful)
A miracle would be if we never had natural disasters. Or if we had a giant earthquake and *not one person* died.
Isn't that what happened with the Chilean miners? I don't think there were any deaths... that's pretty miraculous.
Re:It's true! (Score:3, Insightful)
How can someone who pointlessly risks his life when he has responsibilities to a wife and child be called a hero?
I'm not comfortable deciding what is "pointless" for someone else. I wonder what his wife and child thought of it? Some would say that sending men to the moon was a pointless risk.
Re:It's true! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think strength and stamina can be considered 'fit' traits anymore. The caveman days are over.
The best definition of Darwinian 'fitness' I have ever come across is the expected value of the total fitness in one's offspring. This is defined recursively, until the heat death, Armageddon, Resurrection, or however else life as we know it will end, you take your pick, much like a search tree for a game of checkers. As a consequence, in any Western society, where death is increasingly rare before sexual maturity, the only real measure of fitness, other than some sort of fatal gene, is how much offspring one wants to produce. Strength, stamina, mental fitness, flexibility and willpower are barely factors anymore.
The scary part is given that most developed countries have birthrates below replacement, there may be something inherently unfit about Western society as a whole. Haredi Jews [wikipedia.org] are the most fit people in the world.