That may be a goal... but I suspect it more effective (and definitely more polite) to display a "please don't block my ads, bro" message.
I run ad-block and have seen such messages from time to time. Basically, above the news or whatever it'll say "Hey, we noticed you're running ad-block. We can't stop you, but would you consider turning it off to support our sponsors or signing up for a subscription to our site, where you'll see no such adds displayed?"
Based on the tone, I've certainly paused block on certain sites I frequent every day, such as Slashdot. I trust them not to run shitty ads that will annoy me, and I help throw a few pennies their way. Granted, Slashdot doesn't nag you to turn ad-block off, but I do it anyways.
This decline in readership would explain why I seem to get a piece of junk snail mail every two weeks or so from the NY Times, asking me, no... BEGGING me to renew my subscription, offering up very deep discounts for me to do so.
I subscribed to them a few years ago for about 6 months for the Monday-Friday delivery service, because I genuinely like reading a physical paper in the morning, while I eat lunch, etc. However, it was expensive and just not worth it, since all the same content is online, so I canceled. I now read it every day on my iPhone.
I wonder, once papers get over the need to physically print and deliver papers, could they re-route that money to paying for more quality reporters? I imagine the paper, presses, operators, and delivery people needed for physical distribution add up to a sizable chunk of money... imagine not having to support that cost, and diverting the money normally spent on that to another part of your operations.
Pretty much all of the so-called "educational" channels have degenerated into non-stop conspiracy factories
Yeah, tell me about it. I don't give a rip about ghosts, demons, Jesus, or any of that other stuff. Give me science and engineering shows! Things like "Monster Machines", "Biggest Suspension Bridges Ever Constructed", "World's Largest Skyscrapers" etc. are at least mildly entertaining and teach me about something real and tangible that I didn't know much about before.
I'm a noob I s'pose; geocities was my entry into the internet.
Same here... I opened a Geocities account in 7th grade (after getting my parents to dump Compuserve and go with a local dial-up ISP) and started learning HTML on my own. In highschool, I made a Hexen II (ha) Geocities site, and later wound up working for some larger video game news sites and actually getting paid to do post news... certainly beat having to work at McDonalds during highschool.
Now that I'm a "grown up", my time spent being a nerdy kid has paid off... I work for a manufacturing/sales company as the marketing director (or drone, your choice), and one of my many tasks is keeping our website up to date with new products, technical datasheets, manuals, and other documentation, as well as making sure our shopping cart is up and running 24/7. Not hard work, but knowing HTML and CSS certainly makes it easier, and it was nothing I was ever taught in classes... it was all due to dinking around on the Internet while a young lad.
The answer is "so what?" People are entertained. What other form of entertainment has at least a chance of winning money back?
Exactly. It's just like ANY other form of entertainment: you pay for it. Granted, some people become addicted and lose everything because of it, but too much of anything can be bad.
When I go to Vegas, I don't expect to become rich. I'm not a very good gambler. I take a few hundred dollars and play it slow over the course of 2-3 days. Basically, I get 24/7 entertainment and as many drinks as I can handle for the price. Seems good to me.
Although the hardware is lackluster, WebOS is pretty nice. I really wouldn't call the Pre a disappointment at all.
Yeah, I have an iPhone but the Pre is nice too (the one thing I dislike about the iPhone is no multitasking). I just didn't care for the little slide out keyboard, personally. With another release or two I think we'll start to see the Pre really shine, just like with the iPhone. It needs time for the App ecosystem to develop further as well, but that will happen with time.
As others have mentioned, this "blank-killer!" mentality is sort of stupid. There is so much room for growth in the smart phone market as they become cheaper and people with normal cellphones switch to smart phones, there is plenty of room for multiple brands to co-exist, just as with normal cellphones.
Funilly enough, no-one I know has an iPod, or any other Apple-based MP3 Player.
Most of the people I know have an iPod of some form of another, from the old Nano up to the new iTouch. Personally, I have an old-school 20 gig iPod with the scrollwheel and black/white screen that lives in my car serving as a way to feed my stereo with all my music. I also have an iPhone that I'll keep a few favorite albums on, but mostly I use it to podcast these days while at work.
I worked in a Print Shop for several years. Don't give me any of that dark room crap please.
Good for you. My late father owned his own commercial photo studio and print lab for about 23 years, in which I spent a great deal of time. I have also shot photography professionally, so I know good and well about "darkroom crap" as well as clever tricks that can be pulled off during the photo shoot itself, without any after-manipulation.
Here is how I see it: yes, it's gross and dishonest when advertisers try and use these tricks to pull a fast one on consumers. However, I think the problem is that we need to redefine what a photograph is.
Only in print journalist (and not even there sometimes) is a photograph a literal slice of a moment in time. Most every other photograph needs to not be look upon as literal truth, but as an idealized version of reality.
Think of all those photos of friends and family smiling, posing for a photograph. Is that how life is all the time? No, it's a posed photo, an idealized version of that point in time. I personally see photography much the same way, and try not to take it personally when a hamburger in an ad looks different than the one on my plate. It's fucked up, but that's how it is, in my view.
Because, you can't, you know... type it into a web browser. They could also implement a QR barcode you could take a picture with using your phone. Seems like a semi-reasonable idea to me.
The U.S. Congress should ban the use of Photoshop and other digital manipulation for photos used in advertising.
I don't know how easy it would be to do. You shouldn't just have a blanket banning of Photoshop, because it can be used to reproduce a lot of valid darkroom techniques, such as color adjustments, contrast, levels, dodge and burn, etc... things that are legitimate and need to be done to most photos.
It is awful the digital manipulation like this is used, however... and it just looks flat out FAKE. You can tell when someone has been over-Photoshopped because they just look "off" somehow.
So, without the the $400-off special, a 15" Dell cost only around $100 less than a 17" Mac? You don't think the extra 2" of screen real estate on a notebook is worth at least $100?
No, I think with the $500 total discount straight off of the list price, not including the value of the extended 3 year warranty (I have no idea how much Applecare would cost for that long) makes that extra 2" of screen real estate a tad expensive.
Same here. Two years ago my shitty HP bit the dust and I needed a new computer. I REALLY wanted a Mac Book Pro 17", but I couldn't justify the price tag at over $2k. I was able to purchase a fully-loaded Dell XPS 15" with a 3 year warranty for around $1,500 because Dell was running a nice $400-off special, with almost identical specs in terms of speed and memory (and same video card if I remember) as the Mac I wanted.
I would have have just put Windows on it anyways as a dual boot... there is no way I'm shelling out for a second copy of Adobe CreativeSuite.
You can get one of these, or a try a more do-it-yourself option
That first link is pretty cool, I've never seen that before. I have considered getting one of those cases with a built-in supplemental battery for longer bike rides.
I feel there already is a tradeoff. I have an iPhone 3GS, and I know that if I surf the internet or play games for 3-4 hours I'll all but kill the battery. A 2 hour bike ride with the GPS turned on and my route-tracking app running will suck nearly 50% of the battery life from it.
If I'm going to be out of the house or away from the office all day without a chance to charge the devices, I know I need to limit the amount of needless browsing or playing I do with the phone, in order to make sure I have enough power to actually use it when I need to, you know, make a phone call.
It could be "for the kids"! but I understand. I'm in my lake 20's a feel weird now going into a gaming store, but I only do so once or twice a year for the really hot Wii titles, like Metroid or Super Mario Galaxy.
Evidently the Mac Stores outside my area are quite different than the ones here. Here they are rather pretentious sterile cubes with one or two employees willing to show you why you really need that $3000 loaded macbook pro rather than the $999 macbook so junior can do his homework faster.
That is interesting to hear. Here in my city, the local Apple store at the mall downtown is PACKED every time I go in, like there is some sort of amazing new release going on, even when there isn't. I went in last month to get a new case for my iPhone and I practically had to shove people out of the way in front of the case display wall so I could consider my choices. The employees don't have time to be pushy because there are just so many damn customers, or at least people just playing with crap that have no real intent of purchasing anything.
I also visited the Apple store in the Ginza district of Tokyo earlier this month, which was laid out the same way as my local store and was just as packed.
I do regularly hear about people getting ticketed for blowing stop signs in Portland on their bikes
I have a friend who received a $200 ticket for failing to stop a sign on his bicycle. You gotta stop, otherwise the cops will nail you if they see you.
Not in this town. Not near the campus where I see most of the bikes and flagrant violations.
Give me a break and present some stats.
http://bikeportland.org/2008/12/09/city-auditors-survey-less-cars-more-bikes-and-safer-streets/ According to this article the City Auditor says that just 8% of people in Portland commute by bicycle, and that among people commuting to work downtown, that number drops to 4% for their primary mode and 8% for their secondary mode. I don't know what your definition of "many, many more" is, but to me a 12% vs 88% constitutes "many, many more".
Here is another article with data from a 2006 ODOT survey: http://velocommuter.org/blog/?p=76 there were on average 11,109 bike commuters vs. 197,632 car drivers, city wide. So yes, EVEN in this town, EVEN near "the campus" (PSU? UP? I'm assuming downtown by PSU).
Ahhh, yes, the ubiquitous "drivers break the law too" excuse that makes bicyclists as pure as the driven snow. Doesn't work that way.
It doesn't make cyclists as pure as snow, it just deflates the argument that "ZOMG so many bikers break the law, if drivers did that it would be INSANE!" argument that seems to persist.
As if bicyclists never speed.
It's true, they do, but it's a lot harder to speed on a bike. My last ride, on Sunday, my average speed for the ride over 13 miles was approximately 8.5 MPH, calculated by my GPS. I might have broken some laws there.
As if there wasn't an order of magnitude difference between a driver going five over on an interstate where everyone is going the same speed and the road was designed for twenty over the current limits
Doesn't make it any less illegal. Last time I checked the speed limits were pretty much set, not flexible based on perceived outdated limits. Hell, I just received a speeding ticket two months ago, and everyone else WAS going my speed, but I was the lucky person that got picked out. Damn, I should have used everyone else as an excuse to my actions when the cop stopped me. I'm sure he would have understood that breaking the law was OK, since the 35 MPH speed limit on Mclaughlin blvd is outdated. I could have also told him cyclists break the speed limit, too.
As if the driver of that 3000 pound vehicle is just looking for ways to kill you.
No, they aren't, but if I fuck up while biking, I stand a much greater chance of dying and they (maybe) have a dent in their vehicle. I'd like to live, and I ride with the assumption that people won't see me.
Stop spouting nonsense and stop trying to excuse the vast majority of your fellow bike riders who simply refuse to obey a simple law, instead expecting every car on the road to protect them from themselves and demanding special rights to pick and choose what laws they will obey.
I'll stop spouting when you go on a bike ride with me and see how it is on the other side and stop spouting nonsense yourself, like your arguments are any more valid than mine. I'm a driver too, but as far as I can tell you're not a cyclist. You're ignoring all the law violating that drivers do in order to push your anti-cyclist points, which as far as I can tell aren't backed up by anything other than your opinion.
Oh I forgot, we're talking about Oregon, the state where cyclists (who pay nothing)
Since this is flat out wrong, everyone should disregard every other sentence of your post as just as flawed. Fair warning to the legitimacy of your opinion since you are working from a fundamentally flawed set of "facts".
If as many cars simply ignored as many stop signs as bicyclists do, there would be cop cars monitoring every intersection just waiting to write tickets
And since there are many, many times the number of cars on the road than cyclists, I'm sure more cars every day pull "California stops", which are illegal, than the total number of bicyclists that commit a similar infraction or just blow the stop sign flat out. And how many drivers change lanes the required distance from an intersection? Not to mention speeding, which is illegal but EVERYONE does it anyways. The constant whining from "car advocates" who have it out for cyclists is just silly. Even in bike-crazy Portland, bike commuters still account for a very small percentage of overall trips taken each day.
I'm a car driver and a cyclist. I pay all my car-related taxes (on my new car), and take advantage of the beautiful cycling opportunities that Portland offers. I also try and be a good cyclist and follow the rules when I'm biking around motor vehicles, because I don't want to get killed by something that weighs 3,000 lbs more than me.
Given that there are incredibly strong cultural taboos in Japan against using a mobile phone on public transport
Indeed, I was just in Tokyo and the surrounding cities for 8 days and I saw all of *two* people actually talking on cellphones while on the Metro or JR. Everyone had iPods or some sort of other music player crammed into their ears, and spent the whole train ride texting, it seemed.
I really think when you have something like 12 million people jammed into a city, following the rules does a fair bit of good in ensuring that everyone gets along fine.
Ha, I've gotten a very similar letter to this from the Bluetooth trade group, Bluetooth SIG.
My company manufactures a Bluetooth product and we had used their trade dress slightly wrong. They were VERY serious about us using it to the T.
For example, when writing about Bluetooth, the word Bluetooth is always supposed to be bold, italic, or in some other way made different than the rest of the text.
And don't you DARE put the word Bluetooth under the Bluetooth logo, it is only to be placed BESIDE the logo!
Slashdot Mirror
Goodnight.
but there are certainly deer in KY
Ah, animal bi-products! THAT explains why it glides so smooth!
That may be a goal... but I suspect it more effective (and definitely more polite) to display a "please don't block my ads, bro" message.
I run ad-block and have seen such messages from time to time. Basically, above the news or whatever it'll say "Hey, we noticed you're running ad-block. We can't stop you, but would you consider turning it off to support our sponsors or signing up for a subscription to our site, where you'll see no such adds displayed?"
Based on the tone, I've certainly paused block on certain sites I frequent every day, such as Slashdot. I trust them not to run shitty ads that will annoy me, and I help throw a few pennies their way. Granted, Slashdot doesn't nag you to turn ad-block off, but I do it anyways.
This decline in readership would explain why I seem to get a piece of junk snail mail every two weeks or so from the NY Times, asking me, no... BEGGING me to renew my subscription, offering up very deep discounts for me to do so.
I subscribed to them a few years ago for about 6 months for the Monday-Friday delivery service, because I genuinely like reading a physical paper in the morning, while I eat lunch, etc. However, it was expensive and just not worth it, since all the same content is online, so I canceled. I now read it every day on my iPhone.
I wonder, once papers get over the need to physically print and deliver papers, could they re-route that money to paying for more quality reporters? I imagine the paper, presses, operators, and delivery people needed for physical distribution add up to a sizable chunk of money... imagine not having to support that cost, and diverting the money normally spent on that to another part of your operations.
Pretty much all of the so-called "educational" channels have degenerated into non-stop conspiracy factories
Yeah, tell me about it. I don't give a rip about ghosts, demons, Jesus, or any of that other stuff. Give me science and engineering shows! Things like "Monster Machines", "Biggest Suspension Bridges Ever Constructed", "World's Largest Skyscrapers" etc. are at least mildly entertaining and teach me about something real and tangible that I didn't know much about before.
I'm a noob I s'pose; geocities was my entry into the internet.
Same here... I opened a Geocities account in 7th grade (after getting my parents to dump Compuserve and go with a local dial-up ISP) and started learning HTML on my own. In highschool, I made a Hexen II (ha) Geocities site, and later wound up working for some larger video game news sites and actually getting paid to do post news... certainly beat having to work at McDonalds during highschool.
Now that I'm a "grown up", my time spent being a nerdy kid has paid off... I work for a manufacturing/sales company as the marketing director (or drone, your choice), and one of my many tasks is keeping our website up to date with new products, technical datasheets, manuals, and other documentation, as well as making sure our shopping cart is up and running 24/7. Not hard work, but knowing HTML and CSS certainly makes it easier, and it was nothing I was ever taught in classes... it was all due to dinking around on the Internet while a young lad.
The answer is "so what?" People are entertained. What other form of entertainment has at least a chance of winning money back?
Exactly. It's just like ANY other form of entertainment: you pay for it. Granted, some people become addicted and lose everything because of it, but too much of anything can be bad.
When I go to Vegas, I don't expect to become rich. I'm not a very good gambler. I take a few hundred dollars and play it slow over the course of 2-3 days. Basically, I get 24/7 entertainment and as many drinks as I can handle for the price. Seems good to me.
Although the hardware is lackluster, WebOS is pretty nice. I really wouldn't call the Pre a disappointment at all.
Yeah, I have an iPhone but the Pre is nice too (the one thing I dislike about the iPhone is no multitasking). I just didn't care for the little slide out keyboard, personally. With another release or two I think we'll start to see the Pre really shine, just like with the iPhone. It needs time for the App ecosystem to develop further as well, but that will happen with time.
As others have mentioned, this "blank-killer!" mentality is sort of stupid. There is so much room for growth in the smart phone market as they become cheaper and people with normal cellphones switch to smart phones, there is plenty of room for multiple brands to co-exist, just as with normal cellphones.
Funilly enough, no-one I know has an iPod, or any other Apple-based MP3 Player.
Most of the people I know have an iPod of some form of another, from the old Nano up to the new iTouch. Personally, I have an old-school 20 gig iPod with the scrollwheel and black/white screen that lives in my car serving as a way to feed my stereo with all my music. I also have an iPhone that I'll keep a few favorite albums on, but mostly I use it to podcast these days while at work.
I worked in a Print Shop for several years. Don't give me any of that dark room crap please.
Good for you. My late father owned his own commercial photo studio and print lab for about 23 years, in which I spent a great deal of time. I have also shot photography professionally, so I know good and well about "darkroom crap" as well as clever tricks that can be pulled off during the photo shoot itself, without any after-manipulation.
Here is how I see it: yes, it's gross and dishonest when advertisers try and use these tricks to pull a fast one on consumers. However, I think the problem is that we need to redefine what a photograph is.
Only in print journalist (and not even there sometimes) is a photograph a literal slice of a moment in time. Most every other photograph needs to not be look upon as literal truth, but as an idealized version of reality.
Think of all those photos of friends and family smiling, posing for a photograph. Is that how life is all the time? No, it's a posed photo, an idealized version of that point in time. I personally see photography much the same way, and try not to take it personally when a hamburger in an ad looks different than the one on my plate. It's fucked up, but that's how it is, in my view.
Have fun clicking that link in print. :P
Because, you can't, you know... type it into a web browser. They could also implement a QR barcode you could take a picture with using your phone. Seems like a semi-reasonable idea to me.
The U.S. Congress should ban the use of Photoshop and other digital manipulation for photos used in advertising.
I don't know how easy it would be to do. You shouldn't just have a blanket banning of Photoshop, because it can be used to reproduce a lot of valid darkroom techniques, such as color adjustments, contrast, levels, dodge and burn, etc... things that are legitimate and need to be done to most photos.
It is awful the digital manipulation like this is used, however... and it just looks flat out FAKE. You can tell when someone has been over-Photoshopped because they just look "off" somehow.
So, without the the $400-off special, a 15" Dell cost only around $100 less than a 17" Mac? You don't think the extra 2" of screen real estate on a notebook is worth at least $100?
No, I think with the $500 total discount straight off of the list price, not including the value of the extended 3 year warranty (I have no idea how much Applecare would cost for that long) makes that extra 2" of screen real estate a tad expensive.
I did this 2 years ago when I bought my dell.
Same here. Two years ago my shitty HP bit the dust and I needed a new computer. I REALLY wanted a Mac Book Pro 17", but I couldn't justify the price tag at over $2k. I was able to purchase a fully-loaded Dell XPS 15" with a 3 year warranty for around $1,500 because Dell was running a nice $400-off special, with almost identical specs in terms of speed and memory (and same video card if I remember) as the Mac I wanted.
I would have have just put Windows on it anyways as a dual boot... there is no way I'm shelling out for a second copy of Adobe CreativeSuite.
You can get one of these, or a try a more do-it-yourself option
That first link is pretty cool, I've never seen that before. I have considered getting one of those cases with a built-in supplemental battery for longer bike rides.
I feel there already is a tradeoff. I have an iPhone 3GS, and I know that if I surf the internet or play games for 3-4 hours I'll all but kill the battery. A 2 hour bike ride with the GPS turned on and my route-tracking app running will suck nearly 50% of the battery life from it.
If I'm going to be out of the house or away from the office all day without a chance to charge the devices, I know I need to limit the amount of needless browsing or playing I do with the phone, in order to make sure I have enough power to actually use it when I need to, you know, make a phone call.
It could be "for the kids"! but I understand. I'm in my lake 20's a feel weird now going into a gaming store, but I only do so once or twice a year for the really hot Wii titles, like Metroid or Super Mario Galaxy.
How would they know that those email addresses belong to someone in Idaho?
Perhaps they are able to figure it out based on the location of the ip address that is connecting to your email accounts...
Evidently the Mac Stores outside my area are quite different than the ones here. Here they are rather pretentious sterile cubes with one or two employees willing to show you why you really need that $3000 loaded macbook pro rather than the $999 macbook so junior can do his homework faster.
That is interesting to hear. Here in my city, the local Apple store at the mall downtown is PACKED every time I go in, like there is some sort of amazing new release going on, even when there isn't. I went in last month to get a new case for my iPhone and I practically had to shove people out of the way in front of the case display wall so I could consider my choices. The employees don't have time to be pushy because there are just so many damn customers, or at least people just playing with crap that have no real intent of purchasing anything.
I also visited the Apple store in the Ginza district of Tokyo earlier this month, which was laid out the same way as my local store and was just as packed.
I do regularly hear about people getting ticketed for blowing stop signs in Portland on their bikes
I have a friend who received a $200 ticket for failing to stop a sign on his bicycle. You gotta stop, otherwise the cops will nail you if they see you.
Not in this town. Not near the campus where I see most of the bikes and flagrant violations.
Give me a break and present some stats.
http://bikeportland.org/2008/12/09/city-auditors-survey-less-cars-more-bikes-and-safer-streets/ According to this article the City Auditor says that just 8% of people in Portland commute by bicycle, and that among people commuting to work downtown, that number drops to 4% for their primary mode and 8% for their secondary mode. I don't know what your definition of "many, many more" is, but to me a 12% vs 88% constitutes "many, many more".
Here is another article with data from a 2006 ODOT survey: http://velocommuter.org/blog/?p=76 there were on average 11,109 bike commuters vs. 197,632 car drivers, city wide. So yes, EVEN in this town, EVEN near "the campus" (PSU? UP? I'm assuming downtown by PSU).
And just for fun, one last set from the Portland Business Alliance http://bikeportland.org/2008/06/13/business-alliance-reports-uptick-in-bike-commuting/
Ahhh, yes, the ubiquitous "drivers break the law too" excuse that makes bicyclists as pure as the driven snow. Doesn't work that way.
It doesn't make cyclists as pure as snow, it just deflates the argument that "ZOMG so many bikers break the law, if drivers did that it would be INSANE!" argument that seems to persist.
As if bicyclists never speed.
It's true, they do, but it's a lot harder to speed on a bike. My last ride, on Sunday, my average speed for the ride over 13 miles was approximately 8.5 MPH, calculated by my GPS. I might have broken some laws there.
As if there wasn't an order of magnitude difference between a driver going five over on an interstate where everyone is going the same speed and the road was designed for twenty over the current limits
Doesn't make it any less illegal. Last time I checked the speed limits were pretty much set, not flexible based on perceived outdated limits. Hell, I just received a speeding ticket two months ago, and everyone else WAS going my speed, but I was the lucky person that got picked out. Damn, I should have used everyone else as an excuse to my actions when the cop stopped me. I'm sure he would have understood that breaking the law was OK, since the 35 MPH speed limit on Mclaughlin blvd is outdated. I could have also told him cyclists break the speed limit, too.
As if the driver of that 3000 pound vehicle is just looking for ways to kill you.
No, they aren't, but if I fuck up while biking, I stand a much greater chance of dying and they (maybe) have a dent in their vehicle. I'd like to live, and I ride with the assumption that people won't see me.
Stop spouting nonsense and stop trying to excuse the vast majority of your fellow bike riders who simply refuse to obey a simple law, instead expecting every car on the road to protect them from themselves and demanding special rights to pick and choose what laws they will obey.
I'll stop spouting when you go on a bike ride with me and see how it is on the other side and stop spouting nonsense yourself, like your arguments are any more valid than mine. I'm a driver too, but as far as I can tell you're not a cyclist. You're ignoring all the law violating that drivers do in order to push your anti-cyclist points, which as far as I can tell aren't backed up by anything other than your opinion.
Oh I forgot, we're talking about Oregon, the state where cyclists (who pay nothing)
Since this is flat out wrong, everyone should disregard every other sentence of your post as just as flawed. Fair warning to the legitimacy of your opinion since you are working from a fundamentally flawed set of "facts".
If as many cars simply ignored as many stop signs as bicyclists do, there would be cop cars monitoring every intersection just waiting to write tickets
And since there are many, many times the number of cars on the road than cyclists, I'm sure more cars every day pull "California stops", which are illegal, than the total number of bicyclists that commit a similar infraction or just blow the stop sign flat out. And how many drivers change lanes the required distance from an intersection? Not to mention speeding, which is illegal but EVERYONE does it anyways. The constant whining from "car advocates" who have it out for cyclists is just silly. Even in bike-crazy Portland, bike commuters still account for a very small percentage of overall trips taken each day.
I'm a car driver and a cyclist. I pay all my car-related taxes (on my new car), and take advantage of the beautiful cycling opportunities that Portland offers. I also try and be a good cyclist and follow the rules when I'm biking around motor vehicles, because I don't want to get killed by something that weighs 3,000 lbs more than me.
Given that there are incredibly strong cultural taboos in Japan against using a mobile phone on public transport
Indeed, I was just in Tokyo and the surrounding cities for 8 days and I saw all of *two* people actually talking on cellphones while on the Metro or JR. Everyone had iPods or some sort of other music player crammed into their ears, and spent the whole train ride texting, it seemed.
I really think when you have something like 12 million people jammed into a city, following the rules does a fair bit of good in ensuring that everyone gets along fine.
Ha, I've gotten a very similar letter to this from the Bluetooth trade group, Bluetooth SIG.
My company manufactures a Bluetooth product and we had used their trade dress slightly wrong. They were VERY serious about us using it to the T.
For example, when writing about Bluetooth, the word Bluetooth is always supposed to be bold, italic, or in some other way made different than the rest of the text.
And don't you DARE put the word Bluetooth under the Bluetooth logo, it is only to be placed BESIDE the logo!