Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
No - that would be Telus. The area of Alberta where I lived - a new landline waiting list was over 2 years. Well, that was when a time was quoted or you weren't told unequivocally "no." Customer service is a joke.
Now, after moving to Toronto, my experience is vastly different. Rogers is giving me 10mbs at home for prices comparable to what I paid in the US, respectable speed and 6gb tethering with mobile... 50 mbps available (if you want to pay). Plus, a healthy bit of competition has the major companies (Rogers, Telus, and Bell) competing for subscribers with phone, mobile, TV, and internet packages - and a corresponding increase in quality of customer service here.
It all comes down to location when dealing with these corps in Canada.
To elaborate further -
It comes down to whether you are perceived as "business professionals" or technicians.
Increasingly IT is being seen as less of a strategic resource and more or a cost of doing business. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than by the disappearance of the CIO from the executive board. More and more often, this role is being relegated to reporting to the CFO.
If the helpdesk consists of technical school types or computer science trained with a career track that leads towards system administration or development, then uniforms are not unreasonable.
If, however the helpdesk workers are business-college grads that are looking to be moved into corporate or IT management, then I would strongly resist the change. The uniform shirts are more likely to create the perception of "techie guy" that might hurt when applying for non-technical promotion.
The good news is that GSM encryption lasted 21 years (more or less).
And in truth, the effort was probably really exceptional. There is really little chance that criminals could reproduce his work, because they are all uneducated and stupid. Plus it is illegal in Britain and the US, so that should discourage potential snoopers.
Again, it's not any different than a restaurant declining to take a reservation because they're full. Respectable businesses do this all the time. It's perfectly reasonable.
Well, if the the restaurant is required to find some place for you to sit or stand quietly while ordering what you want and eating it, then this is an accurate analogy.
In the US, cell phone providers are not allowed to refuse service - even for creditworthiness - unless you already owe them money. Since the iPhone is the biggest reason for AT&T subscriber growth over the past year or so, this is simply their way to cope with a drastically overloaded network and limit the number of new subscribers in NYC.
Bentham's panopticon is all about deterrence - stopping unwanted "user" (prisoners) actions. Google, however, makes money based on users continuing to behave normally while they watch, and then taking additional (purchasing) actions based on what Google knows.
The evil governments of conspiracy theories also aren't interested in deterring individual behavior - but instead want to identify the way users think. They can then identify those users and make interventions to stop them from infecting others.
Google's experience with the Patriot act and Yahoo's (and Google's) run-ins with China should have taught him a lesson about the need for privacy.
but this Canadian case seems to be about "the evil scum didn't commit an offence! We must create one so that in future similar evil scum can be charged with something!"
Did you read TFA? The man had cybersex and phone sex with a 12 year old girl. He was acquitted because he said he hadn't made plans to meet her (yet?). That definitely does not qualify as not committing an offence - the question at hand was "which offence."
The original judge took a narrow view of the law, which I'm a fan of. Upon review, the appeals court clarified the need for concrete plans to meet.
The discussion on conversations not needing to be sexual in nature is taken from one of the Justice's comments that non-sexual conversations are often the precursor to trust and a physical meeting. Justice Fish specifically stated that an "intent to meet" must also exist in these situations.
From one of the video links in TFA:
It doesn't matter what age the child actually is, but instead on what age is claimed. This was a direct request from the police - it ensures the continued ability to run sting operations.
So, no - you can't get hauled in for not knowing, unless you are trolling the age specific (ie. 10-13) chat rooms.
Of course, the best solution would still be parents actually doing their job - parenting their kids instead of placing them in front of nanny PC unsupervised and training them in the fine art of bullshit detection. But that's way too much of a hassle...
Indeed - because sitting at the family computer is the only place that kids chat online, these days.
Cell phones, laptops, media players, game consoles, kindle... Not to mention the abundance of public access available at schools and libraries.
Young teens (that seem to be the target, here) would not be able to function socially or educationally in the US or Canada with only supervised internet access.
Having gone through the research/submission/revision/publication process of science multiple times, I can vouch for the fact that Science is indeed done by consensus. Research will be conducted on a topic until the same conclusion has been reached by multiple authors, likely using multiple methods. The later verifications most likely will try to give some sort of "value added" by integrating complementary theories, but those previous conclusions will be tested often.
Science is done by showing your work so that others can see it and confirm that your data and methods make sense...
That aspect of your argument is definitely true. That is one of the ways that consensus is built - repeated analysis and conclusions that verify the validity of the initial findings.
One thing that is often lost in the CRU scandal is that there have been many independent researchers that are coming to the same conclusion using different methods. Mann and Jones' behavior is the result of the politicized environment and partisanship that exists around climate change science - an environment they definitely helped create (chicken or the egg?). Given the number of climate change proponents that jumped to justify the leaked emails as perfectly innocent and refused to see anything damning in them, it makes it difficult to give the rest of the (nearly uniformly) honest scientists the benefit of doubt.
I'll agree that Ender's Game and the subsequent books are great, but for the purpose of a class you should look at Card's "Maps in a Mirror."
It is an anthology of short stories that cover most of his writing career. The biggest benefit for this particular edition is that includes forwards for each story about what he was thinking, going through, and aiming for when he wrote the stories. This offers an awesome insight into what the author intended, and can be a great introduction to the desired analytic skills.
100%? Hardly. Have you actually read the "privacy" policies for Google products? It amounts to "your data is ours, and we can share it."
Couple that with the fact that Google toolbar and even Google Desktop now comes on most consumer laptops and you have now have an uninformed public sharing all of their information with a corporate Big Brother.
Google has been getting a bit of a free ride so far, and it is about time a few more people noticed.
You'd be surprised at how secure Nigeria actually is. In fact, it's so secure I'm currently having difficulties getting money out of the country. You may be able to help, though - I'll send you an email with details.
the goverment decides who gets the money from this. However, isn't that what's happening now?
Well, in a word.... No. Our legal systems rests on the theory of one-rule. That is, the law is applied consistently for everyone. For a citation, see the Magna Carta circa 1215. The point is, if the courts choose to make an exception for one, then they are obliged to make the exception for subsequent claims. Thus, it's the threat of court action that is the enabler.
You are failing to consider the fact that people would *still* be free to create, and even to make money without the assistance of the government.
So, assuming that there is no copyright, how will people make money? Lets go with literature, for an example.
1. Bob the Author writes: My Brilliant New Book and I want to read it.
2. Bob offers to sell me one of the 3000 that he had printed.
3. I say "Gee, Bob, somebody already used OCR to scan your book and I can download it for free. Good job, on that though, maybe I'll buy one from you next time!"
4. Bob has no income for his year-long endeavor.
5. Bob gets a job and has no time to write another masterpiece.
If you expect people to pay artists because "it's the right thing to do" then you should ask young artists trying to "break in" how well that goes.
As far as people being able to use the material immediately, that won't matter because without sufficient motivation (ie. financial) there won't be enough material being created to matter.
As far as replacements, an alternative would be government grants to artists in lieu of the money copyright gives. I consider the BBC to be a prime example of this not only working, but giving better quality material than what a more capitalist copyright-based system can give.
If done correctly, I suppose it could replace the "ends" perspective.
Just to make sure I understand you, though: Are you really saying that it would be preferable to allow government to decide who gets to create the fabric of our cultural expression?
How much funding do you think Elvis, the Beatles, or Russell Simmons would have gotten?
Now, I'm not anti-government or libertarian, but that thought scares me.
Of course iPods aren't capital. At what point did anybody (other than you) insinuate they were?
iPods are goods. To acquire them you need some sort of wealth to trade. Where does wealth come from?
Capital. Whoa!
And if you claim that you aren't talking about 19th century economists, then keeping your definition of capital as 'the means for production' is pretty limiting. I'd think that over.
Seriously, comparing capitalists to Nazis? My comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I said it so I'll clarify.
For economic exchange to take place, there must be things that people with some sort of wealth want.
My comment comes from an old economics argument. The maximum amount of labor a capitalist could employ (given population = n) is (n/2)-1.
Briefly:
Conceptually, you need at least two people to trade, and both must want what the other has. The relative scarcity of the goods provided determines the price. Over time, the scarcity (and increase in value) of the product that has the lowest work force drives drives demand for additional workers up. The equilibrium becomes half of the population, minus the capitalist driving it.
It is, obviously, an overly simplistic scenario. However, other than the assumption that the two products are both necessary and sufficient for survival, it is theoretically feasible.
Consumer goods are not necessarily capital. In fact, they often are NOT capital.
And your point is? Look up the definition of capital, try it here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capital
Just to keep things simply, I'll summarize a working definition: Capital is any wealth that can be used to accumulate or produce more wealth.
Whether in the form of money, goods to trade, or production machinery, it's capital. In the statement above, "stuff" would equate to your "consumer goods."
Do you have any understanding at all of Political Economy??
Considering that political economists (such as Smith or Locke) believed that labor was the main source of capital, and the original proposition was that we would be working for free, I think the question is do you understand political economy.
If you'd like a further explanation of economics then let me know and I'll take some time to have a discussion with you.
all business leaders must see to it that we're all working down in the coal mine for nothing. Anything less would be a perversion of capitalism.
Oh, c'mon. Trying to be funny or not, if you're going to try to use economic rational, at least get the basic assumptions covered. Capitalism doesn't exist unless people can buy stuff - that is, they have capital. Business leaders know that it wouldn't do any good to have all of us down in the coal mines because then there would be nobody to buy their "stuff."
GPS will be fine... the article notes that "the last 60 years" have had more activity than ever before. In addition, the last 20 years have been fairly consistent.
Since the GPS system was finished in 1993, everything will remain to work as before unless things get remarkably more intense (can CO2 cause solar warming?;-) )
If you want to blame anyone for Bush part two, blame the Democrats. Look at the list of democratic presidential nominations over the last 20 years
1. John Kerry (I'm not sure even the democrats believed anything he said)
2. Al Gore (Does he actually have a pulse?)
3. Clinton (Sure he won, but it was a fluke)
4. Dukakis
5. Mondale
6. Carter (Another lucky win for a southern governor)
7. McGovern
8. Hubert Humphrey
That's forty years of long shots. At some point, the Democratic party will need to nominate someone that people will vote for, rather than concentrating on letting the populace vote against the Republican. In my rather conceited opinion, that is.
Read the article - 8 to 12 inches during the twentieth century. Do you really think we caused this starting in 1900?
Given that there hasn't been an equal increase in sea levels everywhere (or even in countries near Tuvalu) it's more than likely this is a result of one tectonic plate sinking under another. So, we're supposed to believe that humans are causing the sea to rise and the land to sink?
Slashdot Mirror
Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
No - that would be Telus. The area of Alberta where I lived - a new landline waiting list was over 2 years. Well, that was when a time was quoted or you weren't told unequivocally "no." Customer service is a joke.
Now, after moving to Toronto, my experience is vastly different. Rogers is giving me 10mbs at home for prices comparable to what I paid in the US, respectable speed and 6gb tethering with mobile... 50 mbps available (if you want to pay). Plus, a healthy bit of competition has the major companies (Rogers, Telus, and Bell) competing for subscribers with phone, mobile, TV, and internet packages - and a corresponding increase in quality of customer service here.
It all comes down to location when dealing with these corps in Canada.
To elaborate further - It comes down to whether you are perceived as "business professionals" or technicians.
Increasingly IT is being seen as less of a strategic resource and more or a cost of doing business. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than by the disappearance of the CIO from the executive board. More and more often, this role is being relegated to reporting to the CFO.
If the helpdesk consists of technical school types or computer science trained with a career track that leads towards system administration or development, then uniforms are not unreasonable.
If, however the helpdesk workers are business-college grads that are looking to be moved into corporate or IT management, then I would strongly resist the change. The uniform shirts are more likely to create the perception of "techie guy" that might hurt when applying for non-technical promotion.
The good news is that GSM encryption lasted 21 years (more or less).
And in truth, the effort was probably really exceptional. There is really little chance that criminals could reproduce his work, because they are all uneducated and stupid. Plus it is illegal in Britain and the US, so that should discourage potential snoopers.
Whew - catastrophe narrowly avoided!
I have to admit that knocks a pretty big hole in my argument.
Nah - your argument is spot on: this is a responsible move by AT&T to discourage further stress on an over-capacity network.
It simply removes the possibility of implementing your solution.
Again, it's not any different than a restaurant declining to take a reservation because they're full. Respectable businesses do this all the time. It's perfectly reasonable.
Well, if the the restaurant is required to find some place for you to sit or stand quietly while ordering what you want and eating it, then this is an accurate analogy. In the US, cell phone providers are not allowed to refuse service - even for creditworthiness - unless you already owe them money. Since the iPhone is the biggest reason for AT&T subscriber growth over the past year or so, this is simply their way to cope with a drastically overloaded network and limit the number of new subscribers in NYC.
Bentham's panopticon is all about deterrence - stopping unwanted "user" (prisoners) actions. Google, however, makes money based on users continuing to behave normally while they watch, and then taking additional (purchasing) actions based on what Google knows.
The evil governments of conspiracy theories also aren't interested in deterring individual behavior - but instead want to identify the way users think. They can then identify those users and make interventions to stop them from infecting others.
Google's experience with the Patriot act and Yahoo's (and Google's) run-ins with China should have taught him a lesson about the need for privacy.
but this Canadian case seems to be about "the evil scum didn't commit an offence! We must create one so that in future similar evil scum can be charged with something!"
Did you read TFA? The man had cybersex and phone sex with a 12 year old girl. He was acquitted because he said he hadn't made plans to meet her (yet?). That definitely does not qualify as not committing an offence - the question at hand was "which offence."
The original judge took a narrow view of the law, which I'm a fan of. Upon review, the appeals court clarified the need for concrete plans to meet.
The discussion on conversations not needing to be sexual in nature is taken from one of the Justice's comments that non-sexual conversations are often the precursor to trust and a physical meeting. Justice Fish specifically stated that an "intent to meet" must also exist in these situations.
From one of the video links in TFA:
It doesn't matter what age the child actually is, but instead on what age is claimed. This was a direct request from the police - it ensures the continued ability to run sting operations.
So, no - you can't get hauled in for not knowing, unless you are trolling the age specific (ie. 10-13) chat rooms.
Of course, the best solution would still be parents actually doing their job - parenting their kids instead of placing them in front of nanny PC unsupervised and training them in the fine art of bullshit detection. But that's way too much of a hassle...
Indeed - because sitting at the family computer is the only place that kids chat online, these days.
Cell phones, laptops, media players, game consoles, kindle... Not to mention the abundance of public access available at schools and libraries.
Young teens (that seem to be the target, here) would not be able to function socially or educationally in the US or Canada with only supervised internet access.
Science is not done by consensus.
Having gone through the research/submission/revision/publication process of science multiple times, I can vouch for the fact that Science is indeed done by consensus. Research will be conducted on a topic until the same conclusion has been reached by multiple authors, likely using multiple methods. The later verifications most likely will try to give some sort of "value added" by integrating complementary theories, but those previous conclusions will be tested often.
Science is done by showing your work so that others can see it and confirm that your data and methods make sense...
That aspect of your argument is definitely true. That is one of the ways that consensus is built - repeated analysis and conclusions that verify the validity of the initial findings. One thing that is often lost in the CRU scandal is that there have been many independent researchers that are coming to the same conclusion using different methods. Mann and Jones' behavior is the result of the politicized environment and partisanship that exists around climate change science - an environment they definitely helped create (chicken or the egg?). Given the number of climate change proponents that jumped to justify the leaked emails as perfectly innocent and refused to see anything damning in them, it makes it difficult to give the rest of the (nearly uniformly) honest scientists the benefit of doubt.
I'll agree that Ender's Game and the subsequent books are great, but for the purpose of a class you should look at Card's "Maps in a Mirror." It is an anthology of short stories that cover most of his writing career. The biggest benefit for this particular edition is that includes forwards for each story about what he was thinking, going through, and aiming for when he wrote the stories. This offers an awesome insight into what the author intended, and can be a great introduction to the desired analytic skills.
100%? Hardly. Have you actually read the "privacy" policies for Google products? It amounts to "your data is ours, and we can share it." Couple that with the fact that Google toolbar and even Google Desktop now comes on most consumer laptops and you have now have an uninformed public sharing all of their information with a corporate Big Brother. Google has been getting a bit of a free ride so far, and it is about time a few more people noticed.
You'd be surprised at how secure Nigeria actually is. In fact, it's so secure I'm currently having difficulties getting money out of the country. You may be able to help, though - I'll send you an email with details.
1. Bob the Author writes: My Brilliant New Book and I want to read it.
2. Bob offers to sell me one of the 3000 that he had printed.
3. I say "Gee, Bob, somebody already used OCR to scan your book and I can download it for free. Good job, on that though, maybe I'll buy one from you next time!"
4. Bob has no income for his year-long endeavor.
5. Bob gets a job and has no time to write another masterpiece.
If you expect people to pay artists because "it's the right thing to do" then you should ask young artists trying to "break in" how well that goes.
As far as people being able to use the material immediately, that won't matter because without sufficient motivation (ie. financial) there won't be enough material being created to matter.
Just to make sure I understand you, though: Are you really saying that it would be preferable to allow government to decide who gets to create the fabric of our cultural expression?
How much funding do you think Elvis, the Beatles, or Russell Simmons would have gotten?
Now, I'm not anti-government or libertarian, but that thought scares me.
Of course iPods aren't capital. At what point did anybody (other than you) insinuate they were?
iPods are goods. To acquire them you need some sort of wealth to trade. Where does wealth come from? Capital. Whoa!
And if you claim that you aren't talking about 19th century economists, then keeping your definition of capital as 'the means for production' is pretty limiting. I'd think that over.
Now, this is fun and all, but quite off-topic.
Seriously, comparing capitalists to Nazis? My comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I said it so I'll clarify. For economic exchange to take place, there must be things that people with some sort of wealth want. My comment comes from an old economics argument. The maximum amount of labor a capitalist could employ (given population = n) is (n/2)-1.
Briefly:
Conceptually, you need at least two people to trade, and both must want what the other has. The relative scarcity of the goods provided determines the price. Over time, the scarcity (and increase in value) of the product that has the lowest work force drives drives demand for additional workers up. The equilibrium becomes half of the population, minus the capitalist driving it.
It is, obviously, an overly simplistic scenario. However, other than the assumption that the two products are both necessary and sufficient for survival, it is theoretically feasible.
If you'd like a further explanation of economics then let me know and I'll take some time to have a discussion with you.
Oh, c'mon. Trying to be funny or not, if you're going to try to use economic rational, at least get the basic assumptions covered. Capitalism doesn't exist unless people can buy stuff - that is, they have capital. Business leaders know that it wouldn't do any good to have all of us down in the coal mines because then there would be nobody to buy their "stuff."
At most they would put half of us down there.
Oh, that's right... it's better to have half a million people in Washington DC with no voting representation in our federal government.
It must be a political ploy!
Oooh... mod down -5 for calling Fox a "news" channel, even in jest! I've hear less slanted coverage from the White House!
GPS will be fine... the article notes that "the last 60 years" have had more activity than ever before. In addition, the last 20 years have been fairly consistent.
;-) )
Since the GPS system was finished in 1993, everything will remain to work as before unless things get remarkably more intense (can CO2 cause solar warming?
Point of order, sirs...
How can we know we're at the peak if we're also at the highest level we've been? Won't we have to wait until we dip for a while?
If you want to blame anyone for Bush part two, blame the Democrats. Look at the list of democratic presidential nominations over the last 20 years
1. John Kerry (I'm not sure even the democrats believed anything he said)
2. Al Gore (Does he actually have a pulse?)
3. Clinton (Sure he won, but it was a fluke)
4. Dukakis
5. Mondale
6. Carter (Another lucky win for a southern governor)
7. McGovern
8. Hubert Humphrey
That's forty years of long shots. At some point, the Democratic party will need to nominate someone that people will vote for, rather than concentrating on letting the populace vote against the Republican. In my rather conceited opinion, that is.
Read the article - 8 to 12 inches during the twentieth century. Do you really think we caused this starting in 1900?
Given that there hasn't been an equal increase in sea levels everywhere (or even in countries near Tuvalu) it's more than likely this is a result of one tectonic plate sinking under another. So, we're supposed to believe that humans are causing the sea to rise and the land to sink?
Wow, we've got skill!