The stickers constitute defacement, in my book. They diminish the value of the CD to the retailer - the message is repugnant, they're large, ugly, and cover the artwork, making customers less likely to purchase a CD (the whole point of their little vendetta).
Wow; god forbid anyone might do anything to reduce the likelyhood of someone buying a crappy CD.
The stickers go outside the shrink wrap. They bring pertinant information to the attention of consumers. There's no reduction in actual value of the product. The only thing being interfered with is an (exploitative) sales process.
First off, they won't be dropping it on their desktop or laptop lines anytime soon...
Totally, but the point isn't that they're going to stop shipping windows desktops and laptops; the point is they're going to stop using it internally for themselves.
You're right that the process will take a lot of time, but this is big. It basically send a message to the business IT community; "Yeah we'll sell you this crap pre-installed. We don't use it ourselves; but hey, the customer is always right..."
This is the kind of think that can help tip business desktops away from MS in large numbers by giving local IT managers confidence and evidence that kowtowing to Redmond isn't a prerequisite to success. A 10% shift now will precipitate a lot more movement a year or two down the line. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Is that they do it at the prom and it is really embarassing for Microsoft.
Oh man! Zing!
I think it's great news. I like that they're playing it cool too; seems like maybe they're positioning themselves to represent "levelheaded business people" who are making the move away from MS.
All the basic functionality of the Office Suite is there in Free form, so all MS has to play up are advnaced features that require you to drink their kool-aid on an enterprise level. Many corporations are now realizing that locking their data to one provider isn't necessary anymore for "great moments in business" to happen.
In all fairness, there are reasons not to give people paper printouts of their vote. It makes your vote really really easy to sell, inviting a whole other kind of corruption.
Not to say this whole Diebold clusterfsck isn't a big problem, but giving people "recipts" of their votes isn't a perfect solution either.
From a purely political standpoint, I think the best way to insure these machines aren't used nefariously is to do rigorous exit polling and make sure your candidate (whoever he/she may be) suceeds by a margin that can't be fudged by a few hundred votes one way or another. If exit polling is done right, it would be very difficult for anyone to brazenly steal an election. However, I doubt any system that involves people will be fool-proof if it comes down to a statistically insignificant number of votes. To many variables in play.
The only people interested in politics are people with something to sell or something to keep...And people who have something they want and realize if they don't get off the mark no one is going to give it to them. A lot of people fitting this description, techies being one constituency, are waking up. 2004 will be the year of participation or the year of total oblivion. I have my hope.
Hmmm... I'm not sure where you're getting your history from. The US has always been a two-party dominated political system. That's the kind of thing our governing structure supports -- as opposed to a multi-party friendly parlimentary system. While the names and the positions of the parties have always been fluid, it's been a bipolar system pretty much since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off on just about every important issue.
And if you think all politicians are bought and sold and none care about the media regulation issue, I urge you again to take a look at Howard Dean. Everyone wants to get elected and so everyone will say things which they think will futher that end. Dean believes that the truth -- facts -- will get him elected. That's something we should all be able to understand.
Good luck getting any real pro-tech stuff passed with Team Bush running the show. These people are the apotheosis of cronyism. In spite of this getting a little media attention, I think the whole thing will go down to the liking of the big corporations (Fox, ClearChannel, Disney, Verizon, etc). The haggling will be over who in the corporate club gets the choice concessions, not over whether "the public" has any rights to be considered.
If you ask me, government should have a stake in infrastructure to keep costs down and competition open. This consistantly proves to be the best model for entrepreneurial economic success by the most parties. Look at how the national interstate highway system (which costs billions a year to maintain) is such a success, vs the railroad system. I expect nations with nationally supported (and open) tellecommunications infrastructure will weild a significant economic advantage over those which rely on profit-based monopolies/oligargies to move their bits around.
I would advise slashdotters to get involved in the upcoming political process (the 2004 presidential election) if they care about the future of technology vis-a-vis regulation. To my mind, the only thing that can stop the person-centric information revolution and kill the end-to-end net is crony regulation that will force people to use non-open software on non-open networks to do the important things (e.g. transactions, contracts, digital media, etc).
Currently I like Howard Dean, who hopefully will be maneuvered into becoming The Internet Candidate. It's an exciting time. Participate!
If Google didn't find that blogs improved the results (and I don't know, I would assume they test these things, like, constantly), do you suppose they'd increase the frequency at which they crawl them, or decrease it? Yes, that's what I think.
There's no indication whether or not blogs will be left in or out of search results. This is very different from USENET, which was never part of the web in the first place. Orlowski is far from an unbiased source on this, having published many articles critical of bloggers in general. While two source are cited which are critical of the effect that blogs have had on the google ranking algorythm, none are cited which show the contributions personal publishers have made to the info-sphere.
While there's certainly a lot of innane content available in blog form, this isn't really any different than it was before. I have never had to wade through 500 pages of results to find an original source either. The whole thing reeks of FUD to me Methinks that Orlowski and Roddy have their own axes to grind.
This whole mess (spam, snail-mail attacks, etc etc etc) is just one more reason to salivate over the day when a legal and user-friendly online indentification system is in place (e.g. ping id or some further derivation). This will drastically reduce spam as well as making it very difficult to sign other people up for things. It will also kick start the next.com boom (as individuals and businesses worldwide will be able to easily form binding agreements instantly across the globe).
GPG isn't enough. Don't wait for passport. Get your company/family/self started on federated ID today.
You sound like a compitent skilled user, which is not the bulk of the MS demographic. Most people are afraid of opening the preferences option, and as a result they get routed to MSN quite a lot. Some are annoyed; some are indifferent; some of them even learn to like it.
There are a lot of people who don't think the interet will make them powerful per se, but believe that the internet will make the world a better place and help them lead a happy and fulfilled life at the same time. That's where I and my blog stand. I think if there's one thing that the internet can do, it's to increase the prevalence and vitality of communty/personal-level networks and culture (e.g. things that only 100 - 1000 or so people pay attention to and tend to be responsive and lively) in response to the overwhelming preponderance of political-level networks (things that 10,000+ people pay attention to and tend to be one-way and bombastic).
I'm not articulating very well, so I'll just refer you to this link. It's not about personal agendas, it's about changing the framework in which everyone (regardless of agenda/ideology) operates.
Actually, that's more serious than it is funny. This kind of passive misinformation (bars innacurately represent differences in actual performance) helps to empower and amplify the perception. It also leads one to ask how this analysis was done.
That article came out before the ruling. In fact, it seems like the opposite of what was expected occurred.
Powell has promoted an approach that would automatically lift the network-sharing requirement..
This is what happened, except that exemptions were made (the voice thing) for the big boys like WorldCom and possibly AT&T. The commission didn't go as far as powell wanted.
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to exempt new high-speed communications networks from requirements that they be shared with competitors, a move aimed at encouraging investment in bringing fast Internet access to consumers.
Right. Big time investment. Just around the corner. We just need to know it won't all get snapped up by our competition. But we're planning. Yes we are. Big Time Investment. Promise. Even though the economy's in the crapper. Investment. In the future. Of the internet. For Consumers. Investment.
Horseshit!
This is such complete and total doublespeak. Every telecom network in this country was built with public assistence. That's the way to "encourage investment." This is simply a move to allow the established Bells (and neo-bells, like SBC) reap more profit off of existing (publicly subsidised) infrastructure.
Where am I going, and how did I get in this handbasket!
I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
Maybe it's because I stay away from flame wars, but I've never been unfairly modded. In fact, I think I've only been modded down once or twice, and usually somoene else came along and modded the same post back up. If anything, I find slashdot a little "easy" in terms of getting karma.
I think one of the key thigs about the relatively open community systems on the internet -- like/., k5, the blogosphere, etc -- is that they represent a step forward in terms of meritoctacy in relation to other forms of communal communication. While subgroups develop within any population above a certain size, on the net if you don't keep putting out a strong signal that speaks to people, no one is going to read your crap.
Your mileage may vary along with your definition of "crap", but you can't deny it's a lot more meritocratic than, say, your average high-school cafeteria. Pseudonomitiy prevents race, class, sex, from setting up any initial barriers. The bi-directional nature of internet technology tends to cut down on the ability of any one voice to dominate a discussion. In the end, every voice is accessible as any other (moderation aside), and the proof is in the reading.
And it turns out that writing is not easy. While everyone can put up a website, not everyone can make it attractive enough so that other people will seeks it out and read it. Equality can only exist in terms of opportunity. When it comes to products (and blogs are products, make no mistake) favorites must emerge, especially in a feild as crowded as the blogosphere. Personally I wish the top dog was someone with more sense and humanity than Glenn Reynolds, but I take heart in the fact that any other blog (even my own) is just as accessible.
Do power dynamics emerge and is power sometimes abuse? Of course they will and of course it is. That's never going to change. The key is whether or not people have real alternatives, and with as diverse and open a place as the internet, I think (at least in the realms of personal expression if not commerce) that we're doing ok for now.
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other.
Well, in comparison to M$, they've remained relatively benign and tend to produce products of a higher quality. Microsoft has a long history of using underhanded business tactics (e.g. punative lawsuits, abuse of monopoly power) to pursue their ends, while Apple has maintained its edge primarily through innovation.
In reality, this is a move made by Apple to protect itself from exposure to legal liability. It has more to do with the litigious nature of the US business environment than any desire by Apple to "smack down" anything.
Actually the Guiliani directive to crack down on "quality of life" crime went way further back than jaywaliking. In fact the aggressive prosecution of jaywalkers (and the outlawying of dancing in unlicensed city bars and clubs) is really where he went over the line.
The basis of the quality of life program was to try to move in and bust kids writing graffitti, homeless people loitering and especially low-level drug dealers. Beat cops had previously been instructed to avoid drug deals for fear of corruption.
The numbers largely speak for themselves (though there's a strong case that improved economic conditions do as much to deter crime as incresed police presence), but because of endemic flaws in the police system (e.g. a certain amount of ingranced racism) the whole campaign caused a lot of acrimony.
People (more often than not minorities) were being stopped and shaken down for guns and drugs illegally, but since these shakedowns seemed effective, the department allowed it to go on. The high-profile beatings and killings of minorities around the city was causing a lot of civil unrest. Thankfully, since 9-11 the relationship between the police and the people of the city seems to be back on track. Too bad it took such a tragedy to set things right.
Unlicensing the spectrum, in these times of budget deficits and an impending war, doesn't seem like a good idea fiscally.
I disagree. While unlicensing a chunk of the airwaves won't bring in a big bonanza chunk of money, it will hell promote new industry and long term growth in the economy.
The airwaves are one of the bases for ecnomic infrastructure in the "Information Age." The net economic effect of allowing thousands of individuals and businesses to make the most of this chunk of spectrum far outweighs any one-time payment from existing business groups, who in all truth probably wouldn't make much of it anyway.
So the question is should the govenrment seek to bolster it's coffers once by selling spectrum to proprietary interests, or promote the economy as a whole over the next decade by letting us all use it. I think the choice is clear.
Where are the prefs for "disc caching" and "http pipelining"? I love chimera (using it now), but the lack of powerful preferencing is my major pet peeve.
1. Make sure the snow is really hard on top, and at least 4' deep. Make sure you're wearing your snow-shoes or you'll fall through! 2. Use a long, thin, "snow-cutting" saw to cut the snow into curved-rectangular blocks. 3. Starting at the base, line the outside of the igloo with the blocks, being sure to leave room for a doorway. You'd be surprised how many hosers forget this! 4. After each layer, have a beer. This only works if you drink Canadian beer. That's MOLSON Canadian, not that "Canadian budweiser" crap. You can rest your beer on the ice blocks to keep it cold. 5. As you get to the top and can no longer reach high enough to put any more blocks up, just give up. Who needs an entire igloo anyway? That can be your "breathing hole". 6. It'll still be freezing, because this is Canada, after all. Build a fire inside your igloo. 7. If your hole isn't big enough, some of the ice on top will melt. This is normal. If your entire igloo melts, it's too warm for igloos right now. Wait until igloo season. 8. Since there's no power outlet, you won't be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada in your igloo. Go back to your house and watch it there.
I particularly love it when these l00ns talk about cultural dominance and cultural exploitation. They would have you believe that Mickey Mouse is putting a gun to people's head saying that they will listen to Brittney Spears.
Since I started it, I'll bite, just in case anyone with an un-made-up mind happens to read this thread.
The notion of cultural dominance is not one of overt coercion by means of violence. There's a long (and natural) history of other cultures following whoever seems to be leading the pack.
However, with todays global marketplace for entertainment, the ability of a dominant nation (e.g. the US) to export its culture to other nations has reached an unprecidented high-water mark. This results in an increasingly bland homoginzation of art and entertainment thoughout the world and generates significant resentment/backlash in many places.
I don't believe this is a Good Thing, and I also don't believe that This Is The Way It Has To Be. By bringin more producers and more viewpoints into the global cultural exchange, we can keep all of our minds active, challanged and resilliant. Of course this is pretty un-american, this talking of "active minds".
When rational arguments fail, there's always over-hyped meaningless buzzwords, right?
On both sides of the argument, you're correct.
However, I don't think that "fair and mutually beneficial commercial relations that do not result in the exploitation of one party by another" is a collection of over-hyped and meaningless buzzwords. The concept of Corportate Hegemony sadly gets a lot more airtime, which is a big problem with the left: it's basically a dissident or anti-movement, a collection of arguments against the way things are going rather than for a rational alternative.
I for one don't think this is due to a lack of rational alternatives. Hence "fair and mutually beneficial commercial relations that do not result in the exploitation of one party by another".
Slashdot Mirror
The stickers constitute defacement, in my book. They diminish the value of the CD to the retailer - the message is repugnant, they're large, ugly, and cover the artwork, making customers less likely to purchase a CD (the whole point of their little vendetta).
Wow; god forbid anyone might do anything to reduce the likelyhood of someone buying a crappy CD.
The stickers go outside the shrink wrap. They bring pertinant information to the attention of consumers. There's no reduction in actual value of the product. The only thing being interfered with is an (exploitative) sales process.
First off, they won't be dropping it on their desktop or laptop lines anytime soon...
Totally, but the point isn't that they're going to stop shipping windows desktops and laptops; the point is they're going to stop using it internally for themselves.
You're right that the process will take a lot of time, but this is big. It basically send a message to the business IT community; "Yeah we'll sell you this crap pre-installed. We don't use it ourselves; but hey, the customer is always right..."
This is the kind of think that can help tip business desktops away from MS in large numbers by giving local IT managers confidence and evidence that kowtowing to Redmond isn't a prerequisite to success. A 10% shift now will precipitate a lot more movement a year or two down the line. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Is that they do it at the prom and it is really embarassing for Microsoft.
Oh man! Zing!
I think it's great news. I like that they're playing it cool too; seems like maybe they're positioning themselves to represent "levelheaded business people" who are making the move away from MS.
All the basic functionality of the Office Suite is there in Free form, so all MS has to play up are advnaced features that require you to drink their kool-aid on an enterprise level. Many corporations are now realizing that locking their data to one provider isn't necessary anymore for "great moments in business" to happen.
In all fairness, there are reasons not to give people paper printouts of their vote. It makes your vote really really easy to sell, inviting a whole other kind of corruption.
Not to say this whole Diebold clusterfsck isn't a big problem, but giving people "recipts" of their votes isn't a perfect solution either.
From a purely political standpoint, I think the best way to insure these machines aren't used nefariously is to do rigorous exit polling and make sure your candidate (whoever he/she may be) suceeds by a margin that can't be fudged by a few hundred votes one way or another. If exit polling is done right, it would be very difficult for anyone to brazenly steal an election. However, I doubt any system that involves people will be fool-proof if it comes down to a statistically insignificant number of votes. To many variables in play.
The only people interested in politics are people with something to sell or something to keep ...And people who have something they want and realize if they don't get off the mark no one is going to give it to them. A lot of people fitting this description, techies being one constituency, are waking up. 2004 will be the year of participation or the year of total oblivion. I have my hope.
Hmmm... I'm not sure where you're getting your history from. The US has always been a two-party dominated political system. That's the kind of thing our governing structure supports -- as opposed to a multi-party friendly parlimentary system. While the names and the positions of the parties have always been fluid, it's been a bipolar system pretty much since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off on just about every important issue.
And if you think all politicians are bought and sold and none care about the media regulation issue, I urge you again to take a look at Howard Dean. Everyone wants to get elected and so everyone will say things which they think will futher that end. Dean believes that the truth -- facts -- will get him elected. That's something we should all be able to understand.
Good luck getting any real pro-tech stuff passed with Team Bush running the show. These people are the apotheosis of cronyism. In spite of this getting a little media attention, I think the whole thing will go down to the liking of the big corporations (Fox, ClearChannel, Disney, Verizon, etc). The haggling will be over who in the corporate club gets the choice concessions, not over whether "the public" has any rights to be considered.
If you ask me, government should have a stake in infrastructure to keep costs down and competition open. This consistantly proves to be the best model for entrepreneurial economic success by the most parties. Look at how the national interstate highway system (which costs billions a year to maintain) is such a success, vs the railroad system. I expect nations with nationally supported (and open) tellecommunications infrastructure will weild a significant economic advantage over those which rely on profit-based monopolies/oligargies to move their bits around.
I would advise slashdotters to get involved in the upcoming political process (the 2004 presidential election) if they care about the future of technology vis-a-vis regulation. To my mind, the only thing that can stop the person-centric information revolution and kill the end-to-end net is crony regulation that will force people to use non-open software on non-open networks to do the important things (e.g. transactions, contracts, digital media, etc).
Currently I like Howard Dean, who hopefully will be maneuvered into becoming The Internet Candidate. It's an exciting time. Participate!
So here's what should be the final word:
From evhead
There's no indication whether or not blogs will be left in or out of search results. This is very different from USENET, which was never part of the web in the first place. Orlowski is far from an unbiased source on this, having published many articles critical of bloggers in general. While two source are cited which are critical of the effect that blogs have had on the google ranking algorythm, none are cited which show the contributions personal publishers have made to the info-sphere.
Far more authoratative sources that I have already weighed in on this.
While there's certainly a lot of innane content available in blog form, this isn't really any different than it was before. I have never had to wade through 500 pages of results to find an original source either. The whole thing reeks of FUD to me Methinks that Orlowski and Roddy have their own axes to grind.
This whole mess (spam, snail-mail attacks, etc etc etc) is just one more reason to salivate over the day when a legal and user-friendly online indentification system is in place (e.g. ping id or some further derivation). This will drastically reduce spam as well as making it very difficult to sign other people up for things. It will also kick start the next .com boom (as individuals and businesses worldwide will be able to easily form binding agreements instantly across the globe).
GPG isn't enough. Don't wait for passport. Get your company/family/self started on federated ID today.
You sound like a compitent skilled user, which is not the bulk of the MS demographic. Most people are afraid of opening the preferences option, and as a result they get routed to MSN quite a lot. Some are annoyed; some are indifferent; some of them even learn to like it.
Dan,
There are a lot of people who don't think the interet will make them powerful per se, but believe that the internet will make the world a better place and help them lead a happy and fulfilled life at the same time. That's where I and my blog stand. I think if there's one thing that the internet can do, it's to increase the prevalence and vitality of communty/personal-level networks and culture (e.g. things that only 100 - 1000 or so people pay attention to and tend to be responsive and lively) in response to the overwhelming preponderance of political-level networks (things that 10,000+ people pay attention to and tend to be one-way and bombastic).
I'm not articulating very well, so I'll just refer you to this link. It's not about personal agendas, it's about changing the framework in which everyone (regardless of agenda/ideology) operates.
Actually, that's more serious than it is funny. This kind of passive misinformation (bars innacurately represent differences in actual performance) helps to empower and amplify the perception. It also leads one to ask how this analysis was done.
That article came out before the ruling. In fact, it seems like the opposite of what was expected occurred.
..
Powell has promoted an approach that would automatically lift the network-sharing requirement
This is what happened, except that exemptions were made (the voice thing) for the big boys like WorldCom and possibly AT&T. The commission didn't go as far as powell wanted.
From the article:
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to exempt new high-speed communications networks from requirements that they be shared with competitors, a move aimed at encouraging investment in bringing fast Internet access to consumers.
Right. Big time investment. Just around the corner. We just need to know it won't all get snapped up by our competition. But we're planning. Yes we are. Big Time Investment. Promise. Even though the economy's in the crapper. Investment. In the future. Of the internet. For Consumers. Investment.
Horseshit!
This is such complete and total doublespeak. Every telecom network in this country was built with public assistence. That's the way to "encourage investment." This is simply a move to allow the established Bells (and neo-bells, like SBC) reap more profit off of existing (publicly subsidised) infrastructure.
Where am I going, and how did I get in this handbasket!
Your old httpd.conf file is probably at:
you can restore it and then to a sudo apachectl graceful to bring yr old settings back.
I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
/., k5, the blogosphere, etc -- is that they represent a step forward in terms of meritoctacy in relation to other forms of communal communication. While subgroups develop within any population above a certain size, on the net if you don't keep putting out a strong signal that speaks to people, no one is going to read your crap.
;)
Maybe it's because I stay away from flame wars, but I've never been unfairly modded. In fact, I think I've only been modded down once or twice, and usually somoene else came along and modded the same post back up. If anything, I find slashdot a little "easy" in terms of getting karma.
I think one of the key thigs about the relatively open community systems on the internet -- like
Your mileage may vary along with your definition of "crap", but you can't deny it's a lot more meritocratic than, say, your average high-school cafeteria. Pseudonomitiy prevents race, class, sex, from setting up any initial barriers. The bi-directional nature of internet technology tends to cut down on the ability of any one voice to dominate a discussion. In the end, every voice is accessible as any other (moderation aside), and the proof is in the reading.
And it turns out that writing is not easy. While everyone can put up a website, not everyone can make it attractive enough so that other people will seeks it out and read it. Equality can only exist in terms of opportunity. When it comes to products (and blogs are products, make no mistake) favorites must emerge, especially in a feild as crowded as the blogosphere. Personally I wish the top dog was someone with more sense and humanity than Glenn Reynolds, but I take heart in the fact that any other blog (even my own) is just as accessible.
Do power dynamics emerge and is power sometimes abuse? Of course they will and of course it is. That's never going to change. The key is whether or not people have real alternatives, and with as diverse and open a place as the internet, I think (at least in the realms of personal expression if not commerce) that we're doing ok for now.
Ahh I got off topic. So shoot me.
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other.
Well, in comparison to M$, they've remained relatively benign and tend to produce products of a higher quality. Microsoft has a long history of using underhanded business tactics (e.g. punative lawsuits, abuse of monopoly power) to pursue their ends, while Apple has maintained its edge primarily through innovation.
In reality, this is a move made by Apple to protect itself from exposure to legal liability. It has more to do with the litigious nature of the US business environment than any desire by Apple to "smack down" anything.
Actually the Guiliani directive to crack down on "quality of life" crime went way further back than jaywaliking. In fact the aggressive prosecution of jaywalkers (and the outlawying of dancing in unlicensed city bars and clubs) is really where he went over the line.
The basis of the quality of life program was to try to move in and bust kids writing graffitti, homeless people loitering and especially low-level drug dealers. Beat cops had previously been instructed to avoid drug deals for fear of corruption.
The numbers largely speak for themselves (though there's a strong case that improved economic conditions do as much to deter crime as incresed police presence), but because of endemic flaws in the police system (e.g. a certain amount of ingranced racism) the whole campaign caused a lot of acrimony.
People (more often than not minorities) were being stopped and shaken down for guns and drugs illegally, but since these shakedowns seemed effective, the department allowed it to go on. The high-profile beatings and killings of minorities around the city was causing a lot of civil unrest. Thankfully, since 9-11 the relationship between the police and the people of the city seems to be back on track. Too bad it took such a tragedy to set things right.
From the instructions page:
ECFS only accepts filings in proceedings with docket and rulemaking numbers. ECFS is therefore unable to acccept filings in non-docketed proceedings.
Can someone explain this so our comments are not disreguarded?
Unlicensing the spectrum, in these times of budget deficits and an impending war, doesn't seem like a good idea fiscally.
I disagree. While unlicensing a chunk of the airwaves won't bring in a big bonanza chunk of money, it will hell promote new industry and long term growth in the economy.
The airwaves are one of the bases for ecnomic infrastructure in the "Information Age." The net economic effect of allowing thousands of individuals and businesses to make the most of this chunk of spectrum far outweighs any one-time payment from existing business groups, who in all truth probably wouldn't make much of it anyway.
So the question is should the govenrment seek to bolster it's coffers once by selling spectrum to proprietary interests, or promote the economy as a whole over the next decade by letting us all use it. I think the choice is clear.
Where are the prefs for "disc caching" and "http pipelining"? I love chimera (using it now), but the lack of powerful preferencing is my major pet peeve.
1. Make sure the snow is really hard on top, and at least 4' deep. Make sure you're wearing your snow-shoes or you'll fall through!
2. Use a long, thin, "snow-cutting" saw to cut the snow into curved-rectangular blocks.
3. Starting at the base, line the outside of the igloo with the blocks, being sure to leave room for a doorway. You'd be surprised how many hosers forget this!
4. After each layer, have a beer. This only works if you drink Canadian beer. That's MOLSON Canadian, not that "Canadian budweiser" crap. You can rest your beer on the ice blocks to keep it cold.
5. As you get to the top and can no longer reach high enough to put any more blocks up, just give up. Who needs an entire igloo anyway? That can be your "breathing hole".
6. It'll still be freezing, because this is Canada, after all. Build a fire inside your igloo.
7. If your hole isn't big enough, some of the ice on top will melt. This is normal. If your entire igloo melts, it's too warm for igloos right now. Wait until igloo season.
8. Since there's no power outlet, you won't be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada in your igloo. Go back to your house and watch it there.
9. ???
10. Profit!
I particularly love it when these l00ns talk about cultural dominance and cultural exploitation. They would have you believe that Mickey Mouse is putting a gun to people's head saying that they will listen to Brittney Spears.
Since I started it, I'll bite, just in case anyone with an un-made-up mind happens to read this thread.
The notion of cultural dominance is not one of overt coercion by means of violence. There's a long (and natural) history of other cultures following whoever seems to be leading the pack.
However, with todays global marketplace for entertainment, the ability of a dominant nation (e.g. the US) to export its culture to other nations has reached an unprecidented high-water mark. This results in an increasingly bland homoginzation of art and entertainment thoughout the world and generates significant resentment/backlash in many places.
I don't believe this is a Good Thing, and I also don't believe that This Is The Way It Has To Be. By bringin more producers and more viewpoints into the global cultural exchange, we can keep all of our minds active, challanged and resilliant. Of course this is pretty un-american, this talking of "active minds".
When rational arguments fail, there's always over-hyped meaningless buzzwords, right?
On both sides of the argument, you're correct.
However, I don't think that "fair and mutually beneficial commercial relations that do not result in the exploitation of one party by another" is a collection of over-hyped and meaningless buzzwords. The concept of Corportate Hegemony sadly gets a lot more airtime, which is a big problem with the left: it's basically a dissident or anti-movement, a collection of arguments against the way things are going rather than for a rational alternative.
I for one don't think this is due to a lack of rational alternatives. Hence "fair and mutually beneficial commercial relations that do not result in the exploitation of one party by another".
Peace