New Yorkers Get a Taste of Digital Restrictions
InfoMinister writes "From SiliconValley.com, another peek into the future of Digital Rights Manglement. A software conflict at the set-top invoked copy restrictions on all unscrambled digital TV programming delivered to Cablevision's 3 million subscribers in metropolitan New York."
Oh No, I won't be able to steal things that don't belong to me so easily anymore. This is terrible.
`I heard a bang on the roof, and when I went outside to look, I saw it was a plastic bag full of human waste,' she said, gesturing toward her dwelling in the slums of Nairobi. `You might just be relaxing in your house, then you hear a noise on your roof and someone has thrown a bag of sewage up there,' said Njoki, 27, wrinkling her nose with disgust.
There are only five toilets for the more than 2,000 people living in the slum known as Ghetto - a fetid labyrinth of claustrophobic dirt lanes and streams of stinking effluent.
For most people here, the flying toilets are the only way of answering nature's call: you simply use a plastic bag, then fling it as far out of sight as possible.
Walk into Ghetto, or any one of scores of slum settlements housing two million people in the Kenyan capital, and the scale of the task for one African city alone seems staggering. At almost every turn, a sickly sweet stench of urine wafts from between the huts. Barefoot children play by trenches frothing with scum. The edges are strewn with telltale bags.
`First thing in the morning, the flying toilets are rampant,' said Njoki, as a gaggle of other women in a courtyard nodded in agreement. `Sometimes you are walking down the path and you see human waste, people have just thrown it there.'
Consider that Njoki and her neighbors are just a handful of 2.4 billion people worldwide who lack access to decent sanitation, and the scale seems even more mind-boggling.
In Njoki's neighborhood, the only sign of hope comes not from the government - who consider much of the slums a virtual no-go zone - but from residents determined to help themselves. On the edge of the sea of rusting iron roofs stands the only public toilet around. Four women got together to build the facility three years ago - paying off their investment with the two shillings ($0.02) a time paid by 50 or so visitors each day. On Sundays, when the toilet attendants say many residents decide to treat themselves, the number of users rises to 100."
You've just discovered that all governements on this planet have sold out to big corporations. You may now go out and drink a glass of champagne.
You would figure after 9-11 people in congress would get their priorities straighten out.
Sure! And after WWII everyone was friends for ever! Come on, man, wake up.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Shut up, you goddamn vanilla eating, butterscoth hating terrorist!
You should get some proper pudding, and then maybe you'll have the right to comment on DRM systems!