Seriously, this joke is not too far off. At the very least, I'm guessing he'll find something with a keyboard and fewer icons much easier to deal with than a touchscreen and the constant icons/notifications that tablets have.
A 3 year old laptop with the least flashy linux you can find (maybe an old version of Ubuntu?), turn off auto-updates, show him the firefox icon and set up a webmail account, and you're done.
'I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone."
He referring to the early 2000s when there wasn't a new version of Windows for 6 years?
The interesting thing, is that it turns out that not only is it discrimination against men as parents, but it is discrimination against women as professionals. The more time men are allowed to take off when they have kids, the less women fall behind them in the rat race.
The New York Times had a good article several years ago about this, explaining why Sweden switched to a system where the two parents get a combined total of 13 months of paid leave during the first 8 years of a child's life. By not allowing any one parent to take more than 9 of those months, they essentially encourage men to take a good portion of that leave and prevent women from taking too much.
Alas, I can only dream of that -- I'll take off a total of 8 weeks of unpaid leave this year for my child while he's under the age of one, since I won't be allowed to in later years.
"There is now general agreement that GM and other companies were indeed actively involved in a largely unpublicized program to purchase many streetcar systems and convert them to buses, which they supplied."
Wasn't going to post here, almost never do, I'm a lurker. I know that nobody'll ever read this, but I wanted to thank you. This is one of the few websites which has drawn me back day after day for more than 10 years. You did a great job, as have many of the other people who have worked on the site and who have been regular users. Good luck with future endeavors (and with doing nothing for a while).
The Kindle is a bad example -- the Kindle program was shut down, but it is quite possible that a relatively small effort by Amazon could make the device totally acceptable -- the Kindle 2 already had a screen reader (it could read books out loud), all that was missing was something that read the menus out loud so that a blind person could actually use the device. In other words, it had all of the hardware capabilities and only needed a bit more software -- software that would be relatively simple compared to the screenreader software that they already had.
The Kindle 3 incorporates menus that you can listen to. It will be interesting to see whether they meet accessibility standards.
I should add that there are also significant tax credits for small businesses that need to make modifications to meet ADA standards: http://www.adainfo.org/business/#tax
Q. Are there any limitations on the ADA's barrier removal requirements for existing facilities? A. Yes. Barrier removal need be accomplished only when it is "readily achievable" to do so.
Q. What does the term "readily achievable" mean? A. It means "easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense."
Q. What are examples of the types of modifications that would be readily achievable in most cases? A. Examples include the simple ramping of a few steps, the installation of grab bars where only routine reinforcement of the wall is required, the lowering of telephones, and similar modest adjustments.
Q. Must alternative steps be taken without regard to cost? A. No, only readily achievable alternative steps must be undertaken. Q. Will businesses need to install elevators? A. Businesses are not required to retrofit their facilities to install elevators unless such installation is readily achievable, which is unlikely in most cases.
Q. When barrier removal is not readily achievable, what kinds of alternative steps are required by the ADA? A. Alternatives may include such measures as in-store assistance for removing articles from inaccessible shelves, home delivery of groceries, or coming to the door to receive or return dry cleaning.
The ADA is very well written and did not become a fundamentally outrageous burden on our economy. All it has done is improve access for people with disabilities and really, all of us.
This just isn't the truth. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations - solutions that make sense and are affordable. In the case of a big business, this would definitely mean installing the ramp. In the case of a small business, this would mean finding a workable solution, that could be a ramp or could be a small staircase elevator, or could be having a call button that calls a couple of employees to lift the wheelchair user into the store. There are many different solutions that are possible, and as we know, there are still many businesses that don't have staircases. There are numerous resources available on the subject: http://www.adata.org/
In the case of new buildings, they should be designed in the first place to be usable for everyone. It doesn't add much extra expense and the end result is generally positive for all (I certainly notice ramps a lot more now that I have a baby in a stroller). In the case of websites, design that is accessible for blind users and other people with disabilities is generally good for all -- think of well designed css, avoiding distracting design (that is bad for people with learning disabilities), good usage of appropriate image descriptions, etc. It costs essentially nothing extra to include those in a new website and everyone can appreciate it.
Frankly, if adding a little staircase elevator or having a ramp or finding another solution was so expensive that it put the store out of business, I think maybe this guy's business problems were a little bigger than he described them.
Comcast and others could profit from Bittorrent while maintaining network neutrality. They may not be doing so and probably don't see "bit torrent a a good thing right now," but their desired solution is not one that I agree with. If Comcast chooses to overcharge light users (like me) and undercharge heavy users (like our hypothetical bittorrent users), that is a flaw in their business model, not a flaw with net neutrality.
As for the content delivery folks, which I assume to understand are the content creators, aren't they also paying for their bandwidth on the other end? Which major content creators are using Bittorrent or other forms of p2p sharing right now? Even if they are using p2p, their users are still paying for the bandwidth. In any case, it seems to me that as long as the bandwidth were being paid for, Comcast wouldn't complain -- except that the content being carried over their bandwidth competes with their own content. That's the crux of the issue; Comcast doesn't want to treat other content creators fairly and is looking for excuses to fight net neutrality.
"If comcast could profit from bit torrent then they will be happy for it because, when done correctly, bit torrent more efficiently broadcasts across the edges of the network rather than the backbone."
So, you don't think that the average Bittorrent user pays for higher-priced plans than the average non-user? Network neutrality allows charging users for their network usage, it is meant to prevent discrimination based on type of usage. I think it is probably safe to say that people downloading lots of content on the internet (and uploading lots) pay to have faster service than people who don't use it much.
I'd add that the concept of "compendium of all human knowledge" included a whole lot of stuff that can't be cited. Unfortunately, Wikipedia decided that it was supposed to compete with Brittanica and other traditional encyclopedias and needed academic citations. All of a sudden humans who knew things outside the realms of academia were lesser again, and people who knew how to make a citation were greater, even if they didn't understand what they were citing.
I myself stopped participating after having an extended argument related to a minor edit I made, but the other guy had a citation. While I had real world experience on the issue and the other guy didn't, he had the citation. When I finally got the book he cited through inter-library loan, it turned out he had completely misunderstood the text.
I think Wikipedia or something like it will evolve to include different tags that let people determine if they want to read uncited or irrelevant information.
Hey, at least they're calling it a tax. In California they call it "raising fees." Either way, it seems like politicians are never willing to tax the rich, but are happy to jack up taxes on the young.
The Slashdot community doesn't pretend to be unbiased, and why should it? The important thing is that you, as a reader, be able to interpret and understand what others say.
To expand a bit, the way capitalism is supposed to work involves equal access to information and markets. Currently there is extreme inequality, which is why broadband access is so expensive, and that expense makes access to information and market even more unequal in today's wired world.
Latin America is majority urban, and most people in rural areas still are relatively close to cities. The remote areas, such as the Amazon, have the lowest population density. Your statement just isn't true, at least in that region.
Having spent several years living in Ecuador, I can say that broadband access does matter. Just because other things also matter, such as water, food, roads, and whatnot, doesn't mean that one of the key infrastructural elements of communication and creativity in the world today is unimportant. Yes, I believe that the top priorities must be health care and education, since they are the basis of what can be provided to help people improve their lives, but other infrastructural issues are important, and indeed are among the tools that can improve health care and education.
The real problem however is not costs. The real problem is inequality. This makes the few powerful and they then manipulate prices to their own benefit. Infrastructure is much cheaper to set up, because normal laborers make a fraction of what people in the first-world make, yet the rates for using that infrastructure are much higher in absolute terms.
The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge. At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge. That time is long gone, and now a certain class of people who think of themselves as academically superior run the site. It now strives to be a better Britannica, rather than a completely different and grander project.
Does Wikipedia have value? Obviously. Is it what I thought it was 5 years ago? No. Do I wish it were? Yes.
And to those who think the only issues that non-academics know about, I ask them, does an anthropologist know more about a culture than the group s/he studies? In SOME ways, perhaps yes, but not in all. Does the agronomist know more than the third-world peasant? In some ways, but not all. Does the linguist know more than the guy who grew up in a multilingual society? In some ways. The new Wikipedia order is blocking those other viewpoints and it looks like the only way to get them back is to move on to another project. That's sad.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, this joke is not too far off. At the very least, I'm guessing he'll find something with a keyboard and fewer icons much easier to deal with than a touchscreen and the constant icons/notifications that tablets have.
A 3 year old laptop with the least flashy linux you can find (maybe an old version of Ubuntu?), turn off auto-updates, show him the firefox icon and set up a webmail account, and you're done.
'I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone."
He referring to the early 2000s when there wasn't a new version of Windows for 6 years?
The interesting thing, is that it turns out that not only is it discrimination against men as parents, but it is discrimination against women as professionals. The more time men are allowed to take off when they have kids, the less women fall behind them in the rat race.
The New York Times had a good article several years ago about this, explaining why Sweden switched to a system where the two parents get a combined total of 13 months of paid leave during the first 8 years of a child's life. By not allowing any one parent to take more than 9 of those months, they essentially encourage men to take a good portion of that leave and prevent women from taking too much.
Alas, I can only dream of that -- I'll take off a total of 8 weeks of unpaid leave this year for my child while he's under the age of one, since I won't be allowed to in later years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
"There is now general agreement that GM and other companies were indeed actively involved in a largely unpublicized program to purchase many streetcar systems and convert them to buses, which they supplied."
Thanks for your thoughts. I've also lived in a poor country (Ecuador) and concur with everything you said.
Yay!
Now lets hope they don't negotiate a deal (or worse yet, that the Department of Justice doesn't flat out lose the case).
Wasn't going to post here, almost never do, I'm a lurker. I know that nobody'll ever read this, but I wanted to thank you. This is one of the few websites which has drawn me back day after day for more than 10 years. You did a great job, as have many of the other people who have worked on the site and who have been regular users. Good luck with future endeavors (and with doing nothing for a while).
"Some people's cows can moo, but yours should keep quiet."
In other news, people were heard complaining that the letters F A B I O look nothing like the hunky guy on the cover of their romance novels...
The Kindle is a bad example -- the Kindle program was shut down, but it is quite possible that a relatively small effort by Amazon could make the device totally acceptable -- the Kindle 2 already had a screen reader (it could read books out loud), all that was missing was something that read the menus out loud so that a blind person could actually use the device. In other words, it had all of the hardware capabilities and only needed a bit more software -- software that would be relatively simple compared to the screenreader software that they already had.
The Kindle 3 incorporates menus that you can listen to. It will be interesting to see whether they meet accessibility standards.
You know, SCOTUS just sounds dirty every time I see it.
An awesome game. MS was so impressed they named their console after it!
I should add that there are also significant tax credits for small businesses that need to make modifications to meet ADA standards:
http://www.adainfo.org/business/#tax
See the ADA FAQ at http://www.ada.gov/q%26aeng02.htm
Here are a few of the questions and answers:
Q. Are there any limitations on the ADA's barrier removal requirements for existing facilities?
A. Yes. Barrier removal need be accomplished only when it is "readily achievable" to do so.
Q. What does the term "readily achievable" mean?
A. It means "easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense."
Q. What are examples of the types of modifications that would be readily achievable in most cases?
A. Examples include the simple ramping of a few steps, the installation of grab bars where only routine reinforcement of the wall is required, the lowering of telephones, and similar modest adjustments.
Q. Must alternative steps be taken without regard to cost?
A. No, only readily achievable alternative steps must be undertaken.
Q. Will businesses need to install elevators?
A. Businesses are not required to retrofit their facilities to install elevators unless such installation is readily achievable, which is unlikely in most cases.
Q. When barrier removal is not readily achievable, what kinds of alternative steps are required by the ADA?
A. Alternatives may include such measures as in-store assistance for removing articles from inaccessible shelves, home delivery of groceries, or coming to the door to receive or return dry cleaning.
The ADA is very well written and did not become a fundamentally outrageous burden on our economy. All it has done is improve access for people with disabilities and really, all of us.
This just isn't the truth. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations - solutions that make sense and are affordable. In the case of a big business, this would definitely mean installing the ramp. In the case of a small business, this would mean finding a workable solution, that could be a ramp or could be a small staircase elevator, or could be having a call button that calls a couple of employees to lift the wheelchair user into the store. There are many different solutions that are possible, and as we know, there are still many businesses that don't have staircases. There are numerous resources available on the subject: http://www.adata.org/
In the case of new buildings, they should be designed in the first place to be usable for everyone. It doesn't add much extra expense and the end result is generally positive for all (I certainly notice ramps a lot more now that I have a baby in a stroller). In the case of websites, design that is accessible for blind users and other people with disabilities is generally good for all -- think of well designed css, avoiding distracting design (that is bad for people with learning disabilities), good usage of appropriate image descriptions, etc. It costs essentially nothing extra to include those in a new website and everyone can appreciate it.
Frankly, if adding a little staircase elevator or having a ramp or finding another solution was so expensive that it put the store out of business, I think maybe this guy's business problems were a little bigger than he described them.
Comcast and others could profit from Bittorrent while maintaining network neutrality. They may not be doing so and probably don't see "bit torrent a a good thing right now," but their desired solution is not one that I agree with. If Comcast chooses to overcharge light users (like me) and undercharge heavy users (like our hypothetical bittorrent users), that is a flaw in their business model, not a flaw with net neutrality.
As for the content delivery folks, which I assume to understand are the content creators, aren't they also paying for their bandwidth on the other end? Which major content creators are using Bittorrent or other forms of p2p sharing right now? Even if they are using p2p, their users are still paying for the bandwidth. In any case, it seems to me that as long as the bandwidth were being paid for, Comcast wouldn't complain -- except that the content being carried over their bandwidth competes with their own content. That's the crux of the issue; Comcast doesn't want to treat other content creators fairly and is looking for excuses to fight net neutrality.
"If comcast could profit from bit torrent then they will be happy for it because, when done correctly, bit torrent more efficiently broadcasts across the edges of the network rather than the backbone."
So, you don't think that the average Bittorrent user pays for higher-priced plans than the average non-user? Network neutrality allows charging users for their network usage, it is meant to prevent discrimination based on type of usage. I think it is probably safe to say that people downloading lots of content on the internet (and uploading lots) pay to have faster service than people who don't use it much.
Or perhaps we could say that buying NeXT to get Steve Jobs back was a bet the company risk.
I'd add that the concept of "compendium of all human knowledge" included a whole lot of stuff that can't be cited. Unfortunately, Wikipedia decided that it was supposed to compete with Brittanica and other traditional encyclopedias and needed academic citations. All of a sudden humans who knew things outside the realms of academia were lesser again, and people who knew how to make a citation were greater, even if they didn't understand what they were citing.
I myself stopped participating after having an extended argument related to a minor edit I made, but the other guy had a citation. While I had real world experience on the issue and the other guy didn't, he had the citation. When I finally got the book he cited through inter-library loan, it turned out he had completely misunderstood the text.
I think Wikipedia or something like it will evolve to include different tags that let people determine if they want to read uncited or irrelevant information.
Hey, at least they're calling it a tax. In California they call it "raising fees." Either way, it seems like politicians are never willing to tax the rich, but are happy to jack up taxes on the young.
The Slashdot community doesn't pretend to be unbiased, and why should it? The important thing is that you, as a reader, be able to interpret and understand what others say.
To expand a bit, the way capitalism is supposed to work involves equal access to information and markets. Currently there is extreme inequality, which is why broadband access is so expensive, and that expense makes access to information and market even more unequal in today's wired world.
Latin America is majority urban, and most people in rural areas still are relatively close to cities. The remote areas, such as the Amazon, have the lowest population density. Your statement just isn't true, at least in that region.
Having spent several years living in Ecuador, I can say that broadband access does matter. Just because other things also matter, such as water, food, roads, and whatnot, doesn't mean that one of the key infrastructural elements of communication and creativity in the world today is unimportant. Yes, I believe that the top priorities must be health care and education, since they are the basis of what can be provided to help people improve their lives, but other infrastructural issues are important, and indeed are among the tools that can improve health care and education.
The real problem however is not costs. The real problem is inequality. This makes the few powerful and they then manipulate prices to their own benefit. Infrastructure is much cheaper to set up, because normal laborers make a fraction of what people in the first-world make, yet the rates for using that infrastructure are much higher in absolute terms.
The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge. At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge. That time is long gone, and now a certain class of people who think of themselves as academically superior run the site. It now strives to be a better Britannica, rather than a completely different and grander project.
Does Wikipedia have value? Obviously. Is it what I thought it was 5 years ago? No. Do I wish it were? Yes.
And to those who think the only issues that non-academics know about, I ask them, does an anthropologist know more about a culture than the group s/he studies? In SOME ways, perhaps yes, but not in all. Does the agronomist know more than the third-world peasant? In some ways, but not all. Does the linguist know more than the guy who grew up in a multilingual society? In some ways. The new Wikipedia order is blocking those other viewpoints and it looks like the only way to get them back is to move on to another project. That's sad.