This response is directed to the entire sub-thread, not just the post - it IS true that Star Wars opted to steer clear of explaining its sci-fi tech where Star Trek revolved around the tech itself. But I have to completely disagree about Star Wars not being sci-fi.
If Jules Verne wrote a book about a version of the 20th century where carriages were propelled without horses, but failed to explain some sort of combustion engine as being the driving force, would that have made his work less sci-fi? Much of good science fiction literature relies not on the explanation and believability of the science, but of the fiction. In The Time Machine my H.G. Wells, it was not explained exactly HOW the time machine traversed time, but that is surely science fiction.
What makes Star Wars great science fiction is that the technology used integrates smoothly with the worlds in which the story it set - the hover car on Tattouine fit in place mach as a normal car fits in on Earth, the technologies presented blended with the settings in which they existed and didn't seem forced or in need of explanation. By the 'science fiction equals explained science' definition, would Battlestar Galactica be science fiction?
As for the story - yes, Star Wars was story-driven (at least the originals). Sure a lot of the fundamental story ideas were borrowed from other source, that fact doesn't negate a story being present. But in truth there are very few works of fiction that are truly original - the fundamentals are fairly constant and reused in pretty much every story ever. What makes Star Wars work is the relatability of the story - the course of events made enough sense and the characters actions and reactions were those we could see ourselves or people we knew doing in such circumstances (something that Star Trek occasionally could have used a little more of).
I've wondered myself why the definition for a planet capable of sustaining life had to be so narrow. One should consider that leading theories about how life started here involve the Earth having had much more extreme conditions and an environment that would be caustic to the majority of life as we know it. Yet we see within our own Solar System a variety of less volatile environs that we assume could never be valid hosts.
If we are seeking other places in the universe where life could have originated under the same circumstances as they did here, then of course they are bound to find a limited number of matches - the universe is vast and seemingly random. But how can we be so sure that the formula for life on Earth is the only valid formula for life?
If history has taught us nothing else, it is that when we hold the world/universe to our conventional standards, we should be prepared to be proven wrong.
A graduated scale makes a hell of a lot more sense than the bell curve we've got now.
As long as we have poverty, extreme wealth is shameful.
I personally voted for Obama with the blessing of my 4-year-old daughter (she was outraged to hear that McCain doesn't plan to address the issue of equal pay). I'd rather not have to worry about the possibilities of losing my healthcare, paying higher taxes, or watching my kids educations suffer to fund more wars we shouldn't be fighting.
I'm more okay with socializing healthcare than the recent Wall St. bailout. I don't think government needs to stick their noses in everything, but it should be able to facilitate each of our efforts to reach our fullest potential.
If any of these views make me a Marxist, so be it.
Speaking of ad blocking, has anyone else noticed a fundamental flaw in their pop-up blocking?
Whenever a pop-up is blocked from loading, it shows a bar at the bottom of the screen that says "Pop-up Blocked". This bar, however, is the title bar of a window that contains the pop-up fully loaded. So in essence they are merely preventing it from being visible but not preventing any scripting from running on the resultant page.
This seems like an exploit that would be child's play to take advantage of.
So what you are saying is that even though we may all aspire to have a diamond, it is something you can't really hold onto because it will either overreact to something, burn out, or eventually become a stable graphite anyway (which is what we should have been looking for to begin with).
Man, how far can we drag out these relationship analogies?
I watched the video linked in the previous message and I have to say that this is really bad idea on their part. While I do work for a company that does internet advertising, I am not against this out of job preservation but because MS needs to realize they are going to shoot themselves in the foot with this.
First, what they are proposing with the InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscription features is equivalent to giving people the ability to have grocery store security cameras not see them. Sure there is data passed around through tracking pixels and various other methods - by more parties than most people would realize. But this data is not for individual profiling (or if so, on a strictly automated basis a la Google Analytics). No one is sitting in a room looking to use this data against people - it is barely even plausible to do so.
Consider a tracking pixel on Site A by Ad Company B - Ad Company B is getting thousands if not millions of records as a result of hits on Site A. In most cases, these companies opt to minimize stored data to streamline user experience and keep DB size from being ridiculously large. And most data culled is usually used for immediate use and not stored at all. Going back to the grocery store analogy, if someone wanted to they could review the tapes and know every item you bought, what you looked at and didn't buy, what you look like, who you talked to in the store, and probably what kind of car you drive - and if you have one of those store cards, they could probably get personal data on you based on when you checked out. But no one is doing that and I don't think I'm being naive in that assumption.
So, the result of features like these is that it will (a) expose people to data they don't understand and will likely overreact to, (b) cause a lot of web advertising vehicles (FYI - most companies don't host their own ads) to have to modify a lot of their ad platform code to work around these hurdles, (c)cause the bigger players in advertising to coerce MS to change or remove these features and finally (d) after a lot of confusion and inconvenience, everything will end up back the way it was.
So in short, they shouldn't even bother with it. It will have little positive result and will piss off more people than it will help.
Or as Douglas Adams put it: "one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change". Funny how near-sighted people can be - a man vilified in his own time can become symbol of hope (or fear depending on your branch of Christianity) for thousands of years afterward.
We snicker at tribal societies for what they worship, yet are any of our "modern" religions any more sensible? Personally I choose none of the above (which is surprisingly hard with children - complex questions, family influences, etc.). But if I HAD to choose one, I think some of the classic mythologies were much more fun. Some pantheons had all the drama of a weekly TV show.
While I'm not saying that your point is invalid - we do need to be conscious after all of the message we send via the phrasing we choose - I think that bringing up this argument here is only serving to do the opposite of the intention. What SHOULD be showcased here is the accomplishment, not the gender of the person who did it. Cheap solar cells to the poor masses is an incredibly noble cause. But by shining a spotlight on the fact that the original poster here used the words "crafty chick" (which I'd imagine weren't even meant to be demeaning), you are taking the focus away from what is important here.
As a male feminist, I hope to see less usage of words like "chick" and "girl" (if she is in or beyond her teens, she is a woman). But when we focus on things like this, we steal the wind from the sails of people like "crafty" here more so than the poor characterizations we are complaining about.
This means that neither the propellant or the resultant chemicals are perchlorates, so this substance can be ruled out as a contaminant due to propellants. So contamination theory is out. See also the following excerpt from the same site you sourced:
Will Phoenix's descent thrusters alter the composition of its landing site? Altering the chemistry of our landing site due to our thruster exhaust is unavoidable. The Phoenix Lander uses hydrazine, a hypergolic propellant that turns into ammonia during combustion. So essentially, we are spraying the surface with ammonia and a small amount of hydrazine that was not combusted. The way we get around that is by 1) knowing that we are going to be producing ammonia and 2) by designing the wet chemistry cells to carefully quantify the amount of ammonia in the regolith. We then use this information to interpret our other results.
Not likely - yes, perchlorate is used in solid rocket fuel, but solid rocket fuel would not be used for a landing because you can't control the burn. It is only really good as a powerful launch vehicle because it can burn fast and hot, but you can't easily turn it on or off or control the rate of burn. For landings and precision manuveuring liquid fuels such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen are much more common.
Actually, I don't agree here - while a ad/commercial free existence would be nice, I think the benefit of free content that putting up with the advertisements offers makes it worthwhile. I would gladly put up with ads and product placement in order to avoid paying for access to content. I think that most of us enjoy the fact that we have access to a plethora of news, reference and entertainment free of charge. But maybe I'm wrong - how much are you willing to pay to visit all of the websites you currently browse free of ads? Enough to keep them up and running?
All of us had dialup from circa 1980 to 2000 and we survived. This is like saying, "My grandpa earned $200 a month, and he got by ok!"
Times changes. Bandwidth inflation is a serious problem. Web pages don't clock in at under 10k anymore.
I'm not sure that is a valid analogy. The internet, while a vital part of most of our lives (and for many of us, our livelihoods), is a luxury and when used recreationally, a hobby. While I would not wish dial-up on anyone, if the ugliness of a dish is reason enough to avoid a satellite connection, then the internet is not as high of a priority to these people as it seems to be to their anonymous child. If their lives or livelihood depended on higher speed access to the internet, then this comparison would be more true. If the really want it badly enough, then they can put the dish in a tree nearby or find a way to disguise it on their roof. While cellular solutions might prove to be faster than dial-up, I'm not sure it is worth the price. Satellite would be cheaper and faster (theoretically - not being a Cape Codder, I'm not privy to specific pricing and bandwidths for that area).
The reason is somewhat simple, yes. But not the reason that you are referring to. The HD format wars started, in a sense, long before they actually begun in the comercial market - Sony and Toshiba have been working on these format standards for years prior to widespread release. While HD discs are enjoying some modicum of success at the moment, the reason that Microsoft is not changing allegiances to Sony is not because they don't want the business, but that they now see the future of the industry is elsewhere. With ever-increasing access to higher bandwidth rates for data services, the logical shift for the entertainment business is towards a system free of any hard-format media.
Microsoft foresaw this to an extent with the inclusion of the HDi technology in the Xbox 360 and likely only initially sided with anyone in this format war as a means of increasing sales by advertising compatibility with SOME HD format. But in the years to follow, we will likely see the decline of hard-format media on a larger scale (i.e., decreased sales of DVDs, game discs, HD discs - Blu-ray or otherwise). The handwriting for this is already on the wall as seen in the music industry - people are just not buying CDs in nearly the volume as was prevailent a decade ago. The conversion for video and gaming is a little slower due to the sizes of such files and the bandwidth necessary to stream such things. But both Microsoft and Sony are making more and more of their gaming content available via their networks. Eventually the majority of such content will be available in this method and stores like EB Games and Gamestop will become more of collector shops much like has already been happening with many of the record stores.
Personally I'm looking forward to the shift - I'd be much happier if I could get all the shows, movies, music and games right in my living room without having to go anywhere to buy it. Technically I could do that already with my laptop, but the legit route that will soon be available to us, while a bit more expensive, will be significantly easier and hopefully more reliable.
Ok, I will concede on the definition of privacy and anonymity being a facet of it. Your points on this matter are valid. But this doesn't change the matter of access to private data. The fear of this is somewhat valid in that the data is already out there and accessible to those intent on getting to it. But the data available by way of a biometric ID scan would be no more extensive than the data available by way of a credit card scan when it pertains to a business transaction. And when using biometrics in place of traditional ID cards, again, there is no proposal that I'm aware of that the information granted to an airport security officer would be any more than what would normally be printed on your driver's license or passport.
The real issue of concern is not the method by which the information is obtained, but the volume of information accessible by the obtainer. Fear of the latter should not stand in the way of progress of the former. If technology can grant us more convenience and speed in such transactions as checking into a hotel or going through airport security while not only not compromising security, but possibly increasing it, then why stand in the way of that progress. If bodies of power attempt to abuse our right to privacy in relationship to such transactions, obviously it is our civic duty to prevent and remedy this.
The premise of the article - or at least the blurb - is wrong. It makes the claim we "have no expectation of privacy in the public space." But we do. Ever want to take a road trip to some town where no one knows you, just to get away, do some shopping, have dinner, watch a show, without having to deal with people who know you? Ever enjoy the feeling of being out, alone, in an unfamiliar city?
Actually, the premise is more right than you are in this particular matter. What you are describing here as privacy is actually what the blurb more correctly labels as anonymity. When one opts to go to an unfamiliar but public place to escape recognition, it is not to enjoy privacy, but anonymity. In order to enjoy privacy one would have to be alone literally, not just figuratively.
How's that going to sit when the desk clerk looks you in the eye as you walk up and says, "How you doing, Mr. LeParanoid, and how's that appendectomy scar healing up? Wife happy about that diamond necklace you bought last week?"
This statement makes the assumption that the adoption of a biometric ID system would grant private proprietors access to data beyond your personal identification. In a nation where the majority of stores and restaurants still use modems to process credit card transactions, I doubt many vendors are going to upgrade to the fully internet-capable point-of-service systems that would be required to take the limited ID information to which your eye or your thumb would yield access and simultaneously run a multi-dimensional search on that information. More likely that clerk will be lucky if he doesn't have to type the name that comes up from the scan into the hotel booking system to find your reservation.
However, they still reserve the right to terminate your service if you break a law or violate their TOS.
Seems to me like they don't respect your right to free speech at all. If they can shut you down for any violation of law (perhaps something as innocuous as downloading images that violate your community's standards or post intent to do harm to the President in an online forum), then they respect the law, not your rights.
It seems like you are confusing right to free speech with some weird belief that you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You can argue free speech to defend your right against censorship of things you read or say via their services, but if you are convicted of breaking a local, state, or federal law, that is an entirely different matter. Technically you have the right to search for kiddie porn and threaten the President online as much as you want and AT&T can't stifle THAT due to free speech. But if you actually go to prison for downloading kiddie porn or threatening the President, they would be within their rights to refuse to continue to serve you as a customer - that is free enterprise - as is your ability to them go sign up for similar services from some other provider when they DO cut you off.
In a nutshell, Eolas had a patent pending for some form of integrated media into web pages. When IE supported Flash, Eolas saw this as infringement and sued Microsoft. Since then, MS designed new versions of IE to require you to click on a Flash element in order to activate it, thereby no longer being fluid. But they left a back door in that if a developer included the Flash object by having a separate javascript file write it to the page, then this would not require clicking to activate it (enter SWFObject as the lay-developers easy way out).
I just hope that this settlement included some exchange of words that discouraged Eolas from pursuing similar charges against Mozilla and other browser developers. It is bad enough they had effected change with THIS frivolous lawsuit.
I think that you are missing the market that Blockbuster is trying to appeal to with this move. Die-hard tech-savvy types (like us) are always going to be a tough nut to break for reasons such as DRM concerns, etc. But this is more of a direct compete with Netflix's current model where you have access to watch movies online instead of wait for them to be delivered. This move will offer additional ways for existing customers to access content as well as sway Netflix customers over to Blockbuster's version (which I personally consider superior anyway because I can go to the store and get rentals at no additional cost). This is a smart move on their part because they are catching up to Netflix's model while already having additional services Netflix doesn't have. Assuming they don't do anything stupid with the implementation (e.g., charge extra for online views or require separate user accounts to access such content) then this is bound to be a win for them. Most existing and potential customers of Blockbusters are not necessarily looking for the DRM-free holy grail that you claim as the linchpin to this venture.
While your idealistic approach to advertising may sound logical, there are many reasons why they would never be adopted in today's advertising market for a variety of reasons - at the top of that list would be trust and laziness.
Take suggestion #1 for instance: "1. as an advertiser, host the ad on your own server, and just look in your logs." This rarely happens on the web because (a) publishers don't deal with advertisers on a one-to-one basis and (b) advertisers don't handle marketing campaigns on a site-by-site basis. Both parties rely upon middlemen such as DoubleClick to manage their advertising media. Publishers do so because it allows them to maintain a manageable, consistent, and trustworthy relationship with one vendor to handle their advertising placements on their sites. Advertisers do so because it allows them to reach many publishers without having to establish each relationship and it allows them to host advertising media in a reliable and secure environment. Most of these middlemen offer very detailed aggregations of data on the performance of these ads in each placement that relies in no part on Alexa or any such tools that are being discussed in this thread. I work for one of these middlemen, so I know a lot about how these things work and where everyone is making their money.
To say that using hover and mouse-over events as a dependent part of a website is idiotic is, well, idiotic. There are millions of sites that use hover-sensitive menus that do not duplicate that functionality with clicks. Since 99% of web browsers support this, then it seems a perfectly logical feature to take advantage of. Other concerns related to iPhone support of websites would be Flash and javascript support & implementation. The support of these is typically more related to the OS than the browser. So far I've seen no information to suggest how these will be supported on the iPhone's OS.
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This response is directed to the entire sub-thread, not just the post - it IS true that Star Wars opted to steer clear of explaining its sci-fi tech where Star Trek revolved around the tech itself. But I have to completely disagree about Star Wars not being sci-fi.
If Jules Verne wrote a book about a version of the 20th century where carriages were propelled without horses, but failed to explain some sort of combustion engine as being the driving force, would that have made his work less sci-fi? Much of good science fiction literature relies not on the explanation and believability of the science, but of the fiction. In The Time Machine my H.G. Wells, it was not explained exactly HOW the time machine traversed time, but that is surely science fiction.
What makes Star Wars great science fiction is that the technology used integrates smoothly with the worlds in which the story it set - the hover car on Tattouine fit in place mach as a normal car fits in on Earth, the technologies presented blended with the settings in which they existed and didn't seem forced or in need of explanation. By the 'science fiction equals explained science' definition, would Battlestar Galactica be science fiction?
As for the story - yes, Star Wars was story-driven (at least the originals). Sure a lot of the fundamental story ideas were borrowed from other source, that fact doesn't negate a story being present. But in truth there are very few works of fiction that are truly original - the fundamentals are fairly constant and reused in pretty much every story ever. What makes Star Wars work is the relatability of the story - the course of events made enough sense and the characters actions and reactions were those we could see ourselves or people we knew doing in such circumstances (something that Star Trek occasionally could have used a little more of).
THANK YOU!
I've wondered myself why the definition for a planet capable of sustaining life had to be so narrow. One should consider that leading theories about how life started here involve the Earth having had much more extreme conditions and an environment that would be caustic to the majority of life as we know it. Yet we see within our own Solar System a variety of less volatile environs that we assume could never be valid hosts.
If we are seeking other places in the universe where life could have originated under the same circumstances as they did here, then of course they are bound to find a limited number of matches - the universe is vast and seemingly random. But how can we be so sure that the formula for life on Earth is the only valid formula for life?
If history has taught us nothing else, it is that when we hold the world/universe to our conventional standards, we should be prepared to be proven wrong.
When I enlarged the photo, the putty impression looked a lot like a nipple.
Maybe mammalian nipples originated from an ancient symbiosis with these creatures!
A graduated scale makes a hell of a lot more sense than the bell curve we've got now.
As long as we have poverty, extreme wealth is shameful.
I personally voted for Obama with the blessing of my 4-year-old daughter (she was outraged to hear that McCain doesn't plan to address the issue of equal pay). I'd rather not have to worry about the possibilities of losing my healthcare, paying higher taxes, or watching my kids educations suffer to fund more wars we shouldn't be fighting.
I'm more okay with socializing healthcare than the recent Wall St. bailout. I don't think government needs to stick their noses in everything, but it should be able to facilitate each of our efforts to reach our fullest potential.
If any of these views make me a Marxist, so be it.
Speaking of ad blocking, has anyone else noticed a fundamental flaw in their pop-up blocking?
Whenever a pop-up is blocked from loading, it shows a bar at the bottom of the screen that says "Pop-up Blocked". This bar, however, is the title bar of a window that contains the pop-up fully loaded. So in essence they are merely preventing it from being visible but not preventing any scripting from running on the resultant page.
This seems like an exploit that would be child's play to take advantage of.
So what you are saying is that even though we may all aspire to have a diamond, it is something you can't really hold onto because it will either overreact to something, burn out, or eventually become a stable graphite anyway (which is what we should have been looking for to begin with).
Man, how far can we drag out these relationship analogies?
I watched the video linked in the previous message and I have to say that this is really bad idea on their part. While I do work for a company that does internet advertising, I am not against this out of job preservation but because MS needs to realize they are going to shoot themselves in the foot with this.
First, what they are proposing with the InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscription features is equivalent to giving people the ability to have grocery store security cameras not see them. Sure there is data passed around through tracking pixels and various other methods - by more parties than most people would realize. But this data is not for individual profiling (or if so, on a strictly automated basis a la Google Analytics). No one is sitting in a room looking to use this data against people - it is barely even plausible to do so.
Consider a tracking pixel on Site A by Ad Company B - Ad Company B is getting thousands if not millions of records as a result of hits on Site A. In most cases, these companies opt to minimize stored data to streamline user experience and keep DB size from being ridiculously large. And most data culled is usually used for immediate use and not stored at all. Going back to the grocery store analogy, if someone wanted to they could review the tapes and know every item you bought, what you looked at and didn't buy, what you look like, who you talked to in the store, and probably what kind of car you drive - and if you have one of those store cards, they could probably get personal data on you based on when you checked out. But no one is doing that and I don't think I'm being naive in that assumption.
So, the result of features like these is that it will (a) expose people to data they don't understand and will likely overreact to, (b) cause a lot of web advertising vehicles (FYI - most companies don't host their own ads) to have to modify a lot of their ad platform code to work around these hurdles, (c)cause the bigger players in advertising to coerce MS to change or remove these features and finally (d) after a lot of confusion and inconvenience, everything will end up back the way it was.
So in short, they shouldn't even bother with it. It will have little positive result and will piss off more people than it will help.
Or as Douglas Adams put it: "one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change". Funny how near-sighted people can be - a man vilified in his own time can become symbol of hope (or fear depending on your branch of Christianity) for thousands of years afterward.
We snicker at tribal societies for what they worship, yet are any of our "modern" religions any more sensible? Personally I choose none of the above (which is surprisingly hard with children - complex questions, family influences, etc.). But if I HAD to choose one, I think some of the classic mythologies were much more fun. Some pantheons had all the drama of a weekly TV show.
While I'm not saying that your point is invalid - we do need to be conscious after all of the message we send via the phrasing we choose - I think that bringing up this argument here is only serving to do the opposite of the intention. What SHOULD be showcased here is the accomplishment, not the gender of the person who did it. Cheap solar cells to the poor masses is an incredibly noble cause. But by shining a spotlight on the fact that the original poster here used the words "crafty chick" (which I'd imagine weren't even meant to be demeaning), you are taking the focus away from what is important here.
As a male feminist, I hope to see less usage of words like "chick" and "girl" (if she is in or beyond her teens, she is a woman). But when we focus on things like this, we steal the wind from the sails of people like "crafty" here more so than the poor characterizations we are complaining about.
Easy - make the cells in existing pizza places and give them away with each pizza ordered! Manufacturing AND delivery solved!
If only there was some way that everyone could participate in deciding what standard we should use to make these types of decisions.
This means that neither the propellant or the resultant chemicals are perchlorates, so this substance can be ruled out as a contaminant due to propellants. So contamination theory is out. See also the following excerpt from the same site you sourced:
Will Phoenix's descent thrusters alter the composition of its landing site?
Altering the chemistry of our landing site due to our thruster exhaust is unavoidable. The Phoenix Lander uses hydrazine, a hypergolic propellant that turns into ammonia during combustion. So essentially, we are spraying the surface with ammonia and a small amount of hydrazine that was not combusted. The way we get around that is by 1) knowing that we are going to be producing ammonia and 2) by designing the wet chemistry cells to carefully quantify the amount of ammonia in the regolith. We then use this information to interpret our other results.
Not likely - yes, perchlorate is used in solid rocket fuel, but solid rocket fuel would not be used for a landing because you can't control the burn. It is only really good as a powerful launch vehicle because it can burn fast and hot, but you can't easily turn it on or off or control the rate of burn. For landings and precision manuveuring liquid fuels such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen are much more common.
Actually, I don't agree here - while a ad/commercial free existence would be nice, I think the benefit of free content that putting up with the advertisements offers makes it worthwhile. I would gladly put up with ads and product placement in order to avoid paying for access to content. I think that most of us enjoy the fact that we have access to a plethora of news, reference and entertainment free of charge. But maybe I'm wrong - how much are you willing to pay to visit all of the websites you currently browse free of ads? Enough to keep them up and running?
I'm not sure that is a valid analogy. The internet, while a vital part of most of our lives (and for many of us, our livelihoods), is a luxury and when used recreationally, a hobby. While I would not wish dial-up on anyone, if the ugliness of a dish is reason enough to avoid a satellite connection, then the internet is not as high of a priority to these people as it seems to be to their anonymous child. If their lives or livelihood depended on higher speed access to the internet, then this comparison would be more true. If the really want it badly enough, then they can put the dish in a tree nearby or find a way to disguise it on their roof. While cellular solutions might prove to be faster than dial-up, I'm not sure it is worth the price. Satellite would be cheaper and faster (theoretically - not being a Cape Codder, I'm not privy to specific pricing and bandwidths for that area).
The reason is somewhat simple, yes. But not the reason that you are referring to. The HD format wars started, in a sense, long before they actually begun in the comercial market - Sony and Toshiba have been working on these format standards for years prior to widespread release. While HD discs are enjoying some modicum of success at the moment, the reason that Microsoft is not changing allegiances to Sony is not because they don't want the business, but that they now see the future of the industry is elsewhere. With ever-increasing access to higher bandwidth rates for data services, the logical shift for the entertainment business is towards a system free of any hard-format media.
Microsoft foresaw this to an extent with the inclusion of the HDi technology in the Xbox 360 and likely only initially sided with anyone in this format war as a means of increasing sales by advertising compatibility with SOME HD format. But in the years to follow, we will likely see the decline of hard-format media on a larger scale (i.e., decreased sales of DVDs, game discs, HD discs - Blu-ray or otherwise). The handwriting for this is already on the wall as seen in the music industry - people are just not buying CDs in nearly the volume as was prevailent a decade ago. The conversion for video and gaming is a little slower due to the sizes of such files and the bandwidth necessary to stream such things. But both Microsoft and Sony are making more and more of their gaming content available via their networks. Eventually the majority of such content will be available in this method and stores like EB Games and Gamestop will become more of collector shops much like has already been happening with many of the record stores.
Personally I'm looking forward to the shift - I'd be much happier if I could get all the shows, movies, music and games right in my living room without having to go anywhere to buy it. Technically I could do that already with my laptop, but the legit route that will soon be available to us, while a bit more expensive, will be significantly easier and hopefully more reliable.
Ok, I will concede on the definition of privacy and anonymity being a facet of it. Your points on this matter are valid. But this doesn't change the matter of access to private data. The fear of this is somewhat valid in that the data is already out there and accessible to those intent on getting to it. But the data available by way of a biometric ID scan would be no more extensive than the data available by way of a credit card scan when it pertains to a business transaction. And when using biometrics in place of traditional ID cards, again, there is no proposal that I'm aware of that the information granted to an airport security officer would be any more than what would normally be printed on your driver's license or passport.
The real issue of concern is not the method by which the information is obtained, but the volume of information accessible by the obtainer. Fear of the latter should not stand in the way of progress of the former. If technology can grant us more convenience and speed in such transactions as checking into a hotel or going through airport security while not only not compromising security, but possibly increasing it, then why stand in the way of that progress. If bodies of power attempt to abuse our right to privacy in relationship to such transactions, obviously it is our civic duty to prevent and remedy this.
Actually, the premise is more right than you are in this particular matter. What you are describing here as privacy is actually what the blurb more correctly labels as anonymity. When one opts to go to an unfamiliar but public place to escape recognition, it is not to enjoy privacy, but anonymity. In order to enjoy privacy one would have to be alone literally, not just figuratively.
This statement makes the assumption that the adoption of a biometric ID system would grant private proprietors access to data beyond your personal identification. In a nation where the majority of stores and restaurants still use modems to process credit card transactions, I doubt many vendors are going to upgrade to the fully internet-capable point-of-service systems that would be required to take the limited ID information to which your eye or your thumb would yield access and simultaneously run a multi-dimensional search on that information. More likely that clerk will be lucky if he doesn't have to type the name that comes up from the scan into the hotel booking system to find your reservation.
However, they still reserve the right to terminate your service if you break a law or violate their TOS.
Seems to me like they don't respect your right to free speech at all. If they can shut you down for any violation of law (perhaps something as innocuous as downloading images that violate your community's standards or post intent to do harm to the President in an online forum), then they respect the law, not your rights.
It seems like you are confusing right to free speech with some weird belief that you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You can argue free speech to defend your right against censorship of things you read or say via their services, but if you are convicted of breaking a local, state, or federal law, that is an entirely different matter. Technically you have the right to search for kiddie porn and threaten the President online as much as you want and AT&T can't stifle THAT due to free speech. But if you actually go to prison for downloading kiddie porn or threatening the President, they would be within their rights to refuse to continue to serve you as a customer - that is free enterprise - as is your ability to them go sign up for similar services from some other provider when they DO cut you off.
In a nutshell, Eolas had a patent pending for some form of integrated media into web pages. When IE supported Flash, Eolas saw this as infringement and sued Microsoft. Since then, MS designed new versions of IE to require you to click on a Flash element in order to activate it, thereby no longer being fluid. But they left a back door in that if a developer included the Flash object by having a separate javascript file write it to the page, then this would not require clicking to activate it (enter SWFObject as the lay-developers easy way out). I just hope that this settlement included some exchange of words that discouraged Eolas from pursuing similar charges against Mozilla and other browser developers. It is bad enough they had effected change with THIS frivolous lawsuit.
I think that you are missing the market that Blockbuster is trying to appeal to with this move. Die-hard tech-savvy types (like us) are always going to be a tough nut to break for reasons such as DRM concerns, etc. But this is more of a direct compete with Netflix's current model where you have access to watch movies online instead of wait for them to be delivered. This move will offer additional ways for existing customers to access content as well as sway Netflix customers over to Blockbuster's version (which I personally consider superior anyway because I can go to the store and get rentals at no additional cost). This is a smart move on their part because they are catching up to Netflix's model while already having additional services Netflix doesn't have. Assuming they don't do anything stupid with the implementation (e.g., charge extra for online views or require separate user accounts to access such content) then this is bound to be a win for them. Most existing and potential customers of Blockbusters are not necessarily looking for the DRM-free holy grail that you claim as the linchpin to this venture.
While your idealistic approach to advertising may sound logical, there are many reasons why they would never be adopted in today's advertising market for a variety of reasons - at the top of that list would be trust and laziness.
." This rarely happens on the web because (a) publishers don't deal with advertisers on a one-to-one basis and (b) advertisers don't handle marketing campaigns on a site-by-site basis. Both parties rely upon middlemen such as DoubleClick to manage their advertising media. Publishers do so because it allows them to maintain a manageable, consistent, and trustworthy relationship with one vendor to handle their advertising placements on their sites. Advertisers do so because it allows them to reach many publishers without having to establish each relationship and it allows them to host advertising media in a reliable and secure environment. Most of these middlemen offer very detailed aggregations of data on the performance of these ads in each placement that relies in no part on Alexa or any such tools that are being discussed in this thread. I work for one of these middlemen, so I know a lot about how these things work and where everyone is making their money.
Take suggestion #1 for instance: "1. as an advertiser, host the ad on your own server, and just look in your logs
To say that using hover and mouse-over events as a dependent part of a website is idiotic is, well, idiotic. There are millions of sites that use hover-sensitive menus that do not duplicate that functionality with clicks. Since 99% of web browsers support this, then it seems a perfectly logical feature to take advantage of. Other concerns related to iPhone support of websites would be Flash and javascript support & implementation. The support of these is typically more related to the OS than the browser. So far I've seen no information to suggest how these will be supported on the iPhone's OS.