First I would like to point out that customer service representatives are people. And as people they make mistakes. I worked in cellular customer service for over two years and probably made a few mistakes. The first representative probably got the 3030 service mixed up with another service. There are many of them and sometime it is difficult to keep them straight. Give the people a break as it is human error. I just love when the article says "spokesperson". It implies that the CSR is speaking for the entire company when all they are really trying to do is help the customer in the best way they know how. Why didn't the CSR call back? Maybe they were not on shift yet.
The recycled phone number issue is getting more and more common. Some people change their number much too often. The problem occurs because the separate system that provisions the horoscope messages may not be cleared when a phone number is cut of. The system may not even recognize the number is cut off and continue to send messages. The sender does not care because they do not get charged for the messages. The issue is when a new account gets attached to the number and the number is still subscribed to old services. As for the horoscope being the correct one there are two possibilities. First that pure chance may have hit. There is a 1 in 12 chance of having the same sign as the previous owner. Another option is that there may be a query into the T-Mobile system that shows the horoscope system the birth-date of the owner of the phone.
Remember Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." CSR's can be pretty stupid at times. I know I have had to fix quite a few stupid mistakes.
Here is where knowledge of the law will help. There is a huge difference between an opinion and a fact. Saying "Obama is the worst president ever" is an opinion and not subject to libel claims. Saying "Obama rapes women" is a lie and subject to libel claims. When falsehoods are presented as fact libel comes in. Opinion is protected speech.
Look at the legislation. How many blogs are written by more than one person and are reviewed by an editor? Both those criteria must be met to be a relevant publisher and fall under the clause.
The section applies only to relevant publishers. Here is an excerpt from Clause 29 which defines a "relevant publisher"s. Please not it is part of the law.
(1) In sections [Awards of exemplary damages] to [Awards of costs], “relevant publisher” means a person who, in the course of a business (whether or not carried on with a view to profit), publishes news-related material— (a) which is written by different authors, and (b) which is to any extent subject to editorial control.
Blogs by single authors fail one or both tests and therefore are not relevant publishers. This whole issue is a fail.
UK Bloggers Could Face Libel Fines Unless Registered As Press
Even publishers who have registered could face exemplary fines; it is just a little higher standard. Look at the legislation;
(2) Exemplary damages may not be awarded against the defendant in respect of the claim if the defendant was a member of an approved regulator at the material time.
(3) But the court may disregard subsection (2) if—
(a) the approved regulator imposed a penalty on the defendant in respect of the defendant’s conduct or decided not to do so,
(b) the court considers, in light of the information available to the approved regulator when imposing the penalty or deciding not to impose one, that the regulator was manifestly irrational in imposing the penalty or deciding not to impose one, and
(c) the court is satisfied that, but for subsection (2), it would have made an award of exemplary damages under this section against the defendant.
Subsection 3 basically negates most "protection" from exemplary damages by registered publishers. Subsection 2 states exemplary damages can not be awarded against a registered publisher but subsection 3 shows how the court can disregard Subsection 2. Yes it is harder to impose exemplary damages but it still can happen. The other thing that is missing from this whole discussion is that the regulator can impose damages too that could be as much as the exemplary damages.
Basically what subsection 2 and 3 state is that publishers should be fined by their regulators and not the court unless the court believed the regulator was "manifestly irrational". This protects publishers who register with a regulator from being fined twice except under extraordinary circumstances.
The other thing they ignore is Clause 29 which defines what a "relevant publisher" is.
(1) In sections [Awards of exemplary damages] to [Awards of costs], “relevant publisher” means a person who, in the course of a business (whether or not carried on with a view to profit), publishes news-related material— (a) which is written by different authors, and (b) which is to any extent subject to editorial control.
A blogger is usually a single person and there is no editorial control so most bloggers would not be a relevant publisher. By the way there is a clause that protects web sites as well.
(3) A person who is the operator of a website is not to be taken as having editorial or equivalent responsibility for the decision to publish any material on the site, or for content of the material, if the person did not post the material on the site. (4) The fact that the operator of the website may moderate statements posted on it by others does not matter for the purposes of subsection (3).
That clause also stipulates a list of exempt publishers under Schedule 5.
Special interest titles
4 A person who publishes a title that—
(a) relates to a particular pastime, hobby, trade, business, industry or profession, and (b) only contains news-related material on an incidental basis that is relevant to the main content of the title.
I bet most bloggers would fall in this category.
What clause 21A sets forth are the circumstances under which a relevant publisher can be charges exemplary damages by the courts. Under Clause 29 and Schedule 5 it would be very difficult to categorizes a blogger as a relevant publisher. This is yet another tempest in a teapot brought on by reporting that only shows the salacious part of a story.
Actually the GET request required the ICC-ID of the device to get the email address for that device. The ICC-ID could be construed as a the name of the owner of the device asking for the information and therefore he was fraudulently impersonating someone else when making the requests
The difference is that each request had to have a code at the end of the GET. That code is relatively easily guessed but it still acts as a weak password. When most people use the internet it is akin to walking through a door with a sigh over it (the url) and asking for information. What he did was search around the building, found a door with a weak lock, pick the lock and got in.Then he tried a few hundred thousand more times (he had 114,00 successes but a lot more failures). This is not the way most people use the internet.
We will never know what AT&T would have done since Auernheimer didn't inform them before releasing the data.
If a newspaper accidentally prints the names and addresses of its entire subscriber base in the classifieds, and I call them to report it, can I then be held accountable for "releasing" the information?
No, but if you find an unlocked door on the newspaper office, rifle through their file and publicize that information then yes. That is basically what Auernheimer did.
The judge who refused to throw out the case stated that it would not have been an issue if information on a few users had been released as examples of the issue. He stated that 114,000 was far to many to prove an issue and it became malicious intent at that point.
Lighting is only one small component. Here are a list of other electricity users; heat pumps; refrigerators; fans, cash registers, automatic doors, security cameras By the way, natural light does not work all that well at night.
Entity administrator rights is only half of the requirements. You forgot about the second part that the entity must also have "delegated entity registration rights". You have to have rights to register other entities and I doubt that they give that right to everyone. While the first hurdle is pretty easy the second one is probably much harder.
A watt is calculated by volts (a measurement of electrical potential) time amps (a measurement of resistance). Notice that there is no time value in that calculation.
To correct your calculation; a 1 kilowatt device used constantly for 24 hours uses 24 kilowatt hours. Notice watts time hours equals watt hours. The kilo is there just to reduce the number of zeros needed. for example a 1 watt device used for one thousand hours uses 1000 watt hours or 1 kilowatt hour.
The point is that when the building is producing excess electricity it is powering the grid. When it is not producing electricity it is being powered by the grid. Even by your definition, the fuel where the energy is being stored is not part of the building therefore the building is relying on something other than itself for power some of the time. Self power is self contained and does not rely on a power plant hundreds of miles away to provide electricity.
Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store
Notice there is no mention of electricity storage in the article. On a dark calm night the store will be drawing power from the grid and will not be self powered. Net zero power is not self power. To be self power they would have to be off the grid.
I just hope their local utility discounts the electricity they have to buy to pay for the infrastructure to distribute power to and from the store and the generation capacity needed to cover if the store goes off line for some reason. Most utilities do this but possibly not to the level required.
If one has a net zero cost for a power bill they better be putting in significantly more power that they are getting out.
Engineering estimates suggest that the location will produce 256,000 kilowatts per year while using just 200,000.
Shouldn't that be kilowatt hours? Even if it was kwhrs the numbers are suspect. 200,000/ 365 days per year / 18 hours (12 hours open 12 hours closed using half power) = 30 Kw used in any given hour the store is open. That is equivalent to 300 100 watt incandescent bulbs. I would think a building would require much more than that.
any registered user who searched the system could view confidential information including account and social security numbers for any other user of the system
Only users who had entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights could do that. So they were users with higher than normal privileges. The main issue was that the SSN of some entities were displayed to some users who were not allowed to administrate those entities. The users with entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights need to see the SSN of entities they have rights to administrate. In the search function I bet the SSN was in a column that was only visible to users with those rights. The issue comes when the column is displayed. Rather than filter each row to see if the user was allowed to see that specific entity's information the user was allowed to see every entity's information. In some rows the information should have been there in others it should have been blank. Why not only allow them to search entities they can administrate? What if the user is looking for the public information on an entity they can not administrate?. In effect they had the column filter correct but not the row filter.
When there are users with some administration powers it is a complex problem to give them enough access without giving them too much.
In the end it comes down to a small data exposure exploitable by a few users who have privileged user access. This is very different from a hacker being able to access the information. I bet anyone who has dealt with these kinds of complex permissions have made similar mistakes. Hopefully they get caught in QA but sometimes they slip through. I laugh when I see posts about these security holes being an example of government incompetence considering the number of security holes in most major software packages in existence. If you have an ax to grind with the government this is not a good target.
The selection process brings up a few practical issues; * It would require a moderator reading every message that comes in and deciding what was a good comment. That is additional costs to the publisher. * moderation would need to be immediate to keep up with popular articles. * the selection process would be very subjective and lead to accusations of censorship. * if there is a limit to the number of "relevant" posts then this list will change over time and people reading the article at different times will see different comments.
In ye old days there was a specific amount of space available for letters to the editor; usually about half a page. They had two main issues; very few people could be heard, the comments and the article were disconnected (the article and letter could be printed days apart). With web pages there is plenty of space and immediacy.
I believe in moderating posts but it needs to be done by people with integrity. I have seen too many posts moderated troll, off topic, overrated, etc when the moderator really meant "I don't agree".
I think comments are a counter to today's move away from reporting and toward commentary. We used to get facts. Now, more often than not, we get slanted commentary and are told how to think. Comments allow people to bring forward alternate viewpoints.
The polarizing effect can even be a good one. When I see someone make a stupid attach I have a tendency to research the subject and become more informed. That is a good thing. Perhaps attacks make people learn more to defend their positions.
The changing of attitudes is more complex. Here are some possible reasons; If people who can not carry on a polite debate in support or opposition of a technology perhaps their position is weak and they are trying to bully their way through. I would hesitate to support the same position as a troll. Perhaps when people see negative speech they begin to think negatively bout everything and that manifests at negativity about the subject. This too may be a research issue as more information may change the position.
A number of the changes in gadgets are do to changes in his requirements. Here are the devices he got rid of;
ESA Portable DVD Player Panasonic Portable DVD Player; Why two? For most people they only get one. Kenmore Elite Sensor QuickTouch Microwave Oven; not replaced. Doesn't he microwave things any more? Or is it built in now so he does not count it? Panasonic KX-TS108W Desk Telephone; he had 2 smartphone why did he need a land line even then? Dell Dimension 2400 PC; Sorry by a laptop will not do what a desktop can do. For example I have 8 cores, 3TB of HD and a 240GB SSD in my desktop. It could be argued that he replaced the desktop with the Airbook and the laptop with the tablet so no real change. Dell E152FP 15-inch LCD Monitor; I would consider that part of the desktop. Playstation 2, XBox 360 "lost interest in console games: Sanyo ECJ-D55S Rice Cooker "don’t eat rice much anymore" Sony ICF-C793 Radio Alarm Clock; I still use my alarm clock as my phone is not loud enough when it is plugged into my computer in the other room iRobot Roomba Red Robot Vacuum Cleaner "it died. Now I have concrete floors, so I sweep by hand." Translation; early adopter that discoverd that it was not such a good idea and went back to the old way. 2Wire DSL Modem; Webpass is basically using a building's router so not really less equipment. Had he not moved in to one of the 250 buildings in CA he would still have a modem. Technis Quartz SL1301 Turntable, Kenwood KXW8060 Double Cassette Player, Yamaha HTR-5550 Tuner, Sony CPD-C315 5-CD Compact Disc Player, Boston HD7 Loudspeakers; this counts as one device as it works together as a sterio system. If the Jambox can put out the same sound as a my surround sound system the one might be comparing apples to apples. Otherwise the audio requirements have decreased. Brother label maker; Not replaced. I guess he does not make labels any more. Was rthis due to a fad? Handspring Treo 300 smartphone, Handspring Treo 650 smarthpone; Why two? So basically no change here. All other devices were replaced or still exist.
What he really consolidated were his portable devices; Handspring Treo 650 smarthpone Rio Diamond MP3 Player Sony ICD-S10 Digital Voice Recorder Sony Clie PEG-T415 Personal Organizer Swatch Beat 0033 Internet Wristwatch ESA Portable DVD Player All this is portable and replaced by the smartphone.
It looks to me that there are four reasons for fewer devices today; Better mobile technology; Fewer redundant items; Changes in requirements; and fewer early adopter items.
Had he restricted his article to devices he carries I would have fewer issues with it.
The claimed negative health effects are spurious. I wonder what any of the hundreds of thousands of households located close to rail lines, expressways or airports must think when they hear people whinging about effects from wind generators...
The differences between the noises you cite and wind farms are as follows; Consistency; The noise from a wind far is there usually 24/7 at a fairly constant rate. All the examples you cite are intermittent. There are periods if quiet between when trains and aircraft go by. When building roadways millions are spent on berms and sound fences to mitigate the noise. Even then there are periods of time, usually at night when people are trying to sleep, that roadways are much quieter. Frequencies; This is a major factor. The frequency of a windmill is within an order of magnitude of that of the human heart beat. This closeness may cause physical issues.
A constant thump that resonates in one's chest 24/7 is very different from a train going by every 5 to 10 minutes.
Yes windmills kill some birds and bats. In North America the reported bird-kill from windfarms is a fraction of the kill from oil and gas operations.
Could that be because the number of wind farms are a fraction of the number of oil and gas operations? If the number of wind farms exceed the number of oil and gas operation that may change.
.... and several orders of magnitude lower than the number of birds killed annually by.... house-cats. Like birds? Don't let your stupid cat out.
Sorry by two wrongs don't make a right. Just because cats are worse than windmills doesn't mean that windmills do not cause significant damage. The other issue is that using raw numbers is misleading. Windmills have been found to kill a larger proportion of large endangered birds, raptors for example, than cats. Cats, on the other hand, kill a much larger proportion of smaller birds such as starlings and sparrows. Killing a few hawks is much more damage than killing a few hundred starlings.
I am currently on the fence at this issue as I have seen no controlled studies on the effects of strong low frequency sound.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny how free accunts with no billingon file don't get slammed.
Perhaps because the people who use IPkall and Google voice are smarter that most T-Mobile users and don't sign up for premium SMS.
I have to call them once in a while asking how I got a SMS with no data contract.
Because SMS and data are different things. There are many plans with unlimited SMS and no data. Data is for browsing and picture transfers not SMS.
First I would like to point out that customer service representatives are people. And as people they make mistakes. I worked in cellular customer service for over two years and probably made a few mistakes. The first representative probably got the 3030 service mixed up with another service. There are many of them and sometime it is difficult to keep them straight. Give the people a break as it is human error. I just love when the article says "spokesperson". It implies that the CSR is speaking for the entire company when all they are really trying to do is help the customer in the best way they know how. Why didn't the CSR call back? Maybe they were not on shift yet.
The recycled phone number issue is getting more and more common. Some people change their number much too often. The problem occurs because the separate system that provisions the horoscope messages may not be cleared when a phone number is cut of. The system may not even recognize the number is cut off and continue to send messages. The sender does not care because they do not get charged for the messages. The issue is when a new account gets attached to the number and the number is still subscribed to old services. As for the horoscope being the correct one there are two possibilities. First that pure chance may have hit. There is a 1 in 12 chance of having the same sign as the previous owner. Another option is that there may be a query into the T-Mobile system that shows the horoscope system the birth-date of the owner of the phone.
Remember Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
CSR's can be pretty stupid at times. I know I have had to fix quite a few stupid mistakes.
Here is where knowledge of the law will help. There is a huge difference between an opinion and a fact. Saying "Obama is the worst president ever" is an opinion and not subject to libel claims. Saying "Obama rapes women" is a lie and subject to libel claims. When falsehoods are presented as fact libel comes in. Opinion is protected speech.
Look at the legislation. How many blogs are written by more than one person and are reviewed by an editor? Both those criteria must be met to be a relevant publisher and fall under the clause.
The section applies only to relevant publishers.
Here is an excerpt from Clause 29 which defines a "relevant publisher"s. Please not it is part of the law.
(1) In sections [Awards of exemplary damages] to [Awards of costs], “relevant publisher” means a person who, in the course of a business (whether or not carried on with a view to profit), publishes news-related material—
(a) which is written by different authors, and
(b) which is to any extent subject to editorial control.
Blogs by single authors fail one or both tests and therefore are not relevant publishers. This whole issue is a fail.
UK Bloggers Could Face Libel Fines Unless Registered As Press
Even publishers who have registered could face exemplary fines; it is just a little higher standard. Look at the legislation;
(2) Exemplary damages may not be awarded against the defendant in respect of the claim if the defendant was a member of an approved regulator at the material time.
(3) But the court may disregard subsection (2) if—
(a) the approved regulator imposed a penalty on the defendant in respect of the defendant’s conduct or decided not to do so,
(b) the court considers, in light of the information available to the approved regulator when imposing the penalty or deciding not to impose one, that the regulator was manifestly irrational in imposing the penalty or deciding not to impose one, and
(c) the court is satisfied that, but for subsection (2), it would have made an award of exemplary damages under this section against the defendant.
Subsection 3 basically negates most "protection" from exemplary damages by registered publishers. Subsection 2 states exemplary damages can not be awarded against a registered publisher but subsection 3 shows how the court can disregard Subsection 2. Yes it is harder to impose exemplary damages but it still can happen. The other thing that is missing from this whole discussion is that the regulator can impose damages too that could be as much as the exemplary damages.
Basically what subsection 2 and 3 state is that publishers should be fined by their regulators and not the court unless the court believed the regulator was "manifestly irrational". This protects publishers who register with a regulator from being fined twice except under extraordinary circumstances.
The other thing they ignore is Clause 29 which defines what a "relevant publisher" is.
(1) In sections [Awards of exemplary damages] to [Awards of costs], “relevant publisher” means a person who, in the course of a business (whether or not carried on with a view to profit), publishes news-related material—
(a) which is written by different authors, and
(b) which is to any extent subject to editorial control.
A blogger is usually a single person and there is no editorial control so most bloggers would not be a relevant publisher. By the way there is a clause that protects web sites as well.
(3) A person who is the operator of a website is not to be taken as having editorial or equivalent responsibility for the decision to publish any material on the site, or for content of the material, if the person did not post the material on the site.
(4) The fact that the operator of the website may moderate statements posted on it by others does not matter for the purposes of subsection (3).
That clause also stipulates a list of exempt publishers under Schedule 5.
Special interest titles
4 A person who publishes a title that—
(a) relates to a particular pastime, hobby, trade, business, industry or profession, and
(b) only contains news-related material on an incidental basis that is relevant to the main content of the title.
I bet most bloggers would fall in this category.
What clause 21A sets forth are the circumstances under which a relevant publisher can be charges exemplary damages by the courts. Under Clause 29 and Schedule 5 it would be very difficult to categorizes a blogger as a relevant publisher. This is yet another tempest in a teapot brought on by reporting that only shows the salacious part of a story.
Actually the GET request required the ICC-ID of the device to get the email address for that device. The ICC-ID could be construed as a the name of the owner of the device asking for the information and therefore he was fraudulently impersonating someone else when making the requests
The difference is that each request had to have a code at the end of the GET. That code is relatively easily guessed but it still acts as a weak password. When most people use the internet it is akin to walking through a door with a sigh over it (the url) and asking for information. What he did was search around the building, found a door with a weak lock, pick the lock and got in.Then he tried a few hundred thousand more times (he had 114,00 successes but a lot more failures). This is not the way most people use the internet.
We will never know what AT&T would have done since Auernheimer didn't inform them before releasing the data.
If a newspaper accidentally prints the names and addresses of its entire subscriber base in the classifieds, and I call them to report it, can I then be held accountable for "releasing" the information?
No, but if you find an unlocked door on the newspaper office, rifle through their file and publicize that information then yes. That is basically what Auernheimer did.
The judge who refused to throw out the case stated that it would not have been an issue if information on a few users had been released as examples of the issue. He stated that 114,000 was far to many to prove an issue and it became malicious intent at that point.
This is another example why we can't have nice things. Some malicious person will find a way to screw it up for no better reason than fun.
Lighting is only one small component. Here are a list of other electricity users;
heat pumps;
refrigerators;
fans,
cash registers,
automatic doors,
security cameras
By the way, natural light does not work all that well at night.
yeah I kinds screwed that up but I got the second part right.
Entity administrator rights is only half of the requirements. You forgot about the second part that the entity must also have "delegated entity registration rights". You have to have rights to register other entities and I doubt that they give that right to everyone. While the first hurdle is pretty easy the second one is probably much harder.
A watt is calculated by volts (a measurement of electrical potential) time amps (a measurement of resistance). Notice that there is no time value in that calculation.
To correct your calculation;
a 1 kilowatt device used constantly for 24 hours uses 24 kilowatt hours. Notice watts time hours equals watt hours. The kilo is there just to reduce the number of zeros needed. for example a 1 watt device used for one thousand hours uses 1000 watt hours or 1 kilowatt hour.
The point is that when the building is producing excess electricity it is powering the grid. When it is not producing electricity it is being powered by the grid. Even by your definition, the fuel where the energy is being stored is not part of the building therefore the building is relying on something other than itself for power some of the time. Self power is self contained and does not rely on a power plant hundreds of miles away to provide electricity.
They will use a geothermal heat pump which is very different than geothermal heating or geothermal electricity.
Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store
Notice there is no mention of electricity storage in the article. On a dark calm night the store will be drawing power from the grid and will not be self powered. Net zero power is not self power. To be self power they would have to be off the grid.
I just hope their local utility discounts the electricity they have to buy to pay for the infrastructure to distribute power to and from the store and the generation capacity needed to cover if the store goes off line for some reason. Most utilities do this but possibly not to the level required.
If one has a net zero cost for a power bill they better be putting in significantly more power that they are getting out.
Engineering estimates suggest that the location will produce 256,000 kilowatts per year while using just 200,000.
Shouldn't that be kilowatt hours? Even if it was kwhrs the numbers are suspect. 200,000/ 365 days per year / 18 hours (12 hours open 12 hours closed using half power) = 30 Kw used in any given hour the store is open. That is equivalent to 300 100 watt incandescent bulbs. I would think a building would require much more than that.
any registered user who searched the system could view confidential information including account and social security numbers for any other user of the system
Only users who had entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights could do that. So they were users with higher than normal privileges. The main issue was that the SSN of some entities were displayed to some users who were not allowed to administrate those entities. The users with entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights need to see the SSN of entities they have rights to administrate. In the search function I bet the SSN was in a column that was only visible to users with those rights. The issue comes when the column is displayed. Rather than filter each row to see if the user was allowed to see that specific entity's information the user was allowed to see every entity's information. In some rows the information should have been there in others it should have been blank. Why not only allow them to search entities they can administrate? What if the user is looking for the public information on an entity they can not administrate?. In effect they had the column filter correct but not the row filter.
When there are users with some administration powers it is a complex problem to give them enough access without giving them too much.
In the end it comes down to a small data exposure exploitable by a few users who have privileged user access. This is very different from a hacker being able to access the information. I bet anyone who has dealt with these kinds of complex permissions have made similar mistakes. Hopefully they get caught in QA but sometimes they slip through. I laugh when I see posts about these security holes being an example of government incompetence considering the number of security holes in most major software packages in existence. If you have an ax to grind with the government this is not a good target.
The selection process brings up a few practical issues;
* It would require a moderator reading every message that comes in and deciding what was a good comment. That is additional costs to the publisher.
* moderation would need to be immediate to keep up with popular articles.
* the selection process would be very subjective and lead to accusations of censorship.
* if there is a limit to the number of "relevant" posts then this list will change over time and people reading the article at different times will see different comments.
In ye old days there was a specific amount of space available for letters to the editor; usually about half a page. They had two main issues; very few people could be heard, the comments and the article were disconnected (the article and letter could be printed days apart). With web pages there is plenty of space and immediacy.
I believe in moderating posts but it needs to be done by people with integrity. I have seen too many posts moderated troll, off topic, overrated, etc when the moderator really meant "I don't agree".
I think comments are a counter to today's move away from reporting and toward commentary. We used to get facts. Now, more often than not, we get slanted commentary and are told how to think. Comments allow people to bring forward alternate viewpoints.
The polarizing effect can even be a good one. When I see someone make a stupid attach I have a tendency to research the subject and become more informed. That is a good thing. Perhaps attacks make people learn more to defend their positions.
The changing of attitudes is more complex. Here are some possible reasons;
If people who can not carry on a polite debate in support or opposition of a technology perhaps their position is weak and they are trying to bully their way through. I would hesitate to support the same position as a troll.
Perhaps when people see negative speech they begin to think negatively bout everything and that manifests at negativity about the subject.
This too may be a research issue as more information may change the position.
A number of the changes in gadgets are do to changes in his requirements. Here are the devices he got rid of;
ESA Portable DVD Player Panasonic Portable DVD Player; Why two? For most people they only get one.
Kenmore Elite Sensor QuickTouch Microwave Oven; not replaced. Doesn't he microwave things any more? Or is it built in now so he does not count it?
Panasonic KX-TS108W Desk Telephone; he had 2 smartphone why did he need a land line even then?
Dell Dimension 2400 PC; Sorry by a laptop will not do what a desktop can do. For example I have 8 cores, 3TB of HD and a 240GB SSD in my desktop. It could be argued that he replaced the desktop with the Airbook and the laptop with the tablet so no real change.
Dell E152FP 15-inch LCD Monitor; I would consider that part of the desktop.
Playstation 2, XBox 360 "lost interest in console games:
Sanyo ECJ-D55S Rice Cooker "don’t eat rice much anymore"
Sony ICF-C793 Radio Alarm Clock; I still use my alarm clock as my phone is not loud enough when it is plugged into my computer in the other room
iRobot Roomba Red Robot Vacuum Cleaner "it died. Now I have concrete floors, so I sweep by hand." Translation; early adopter that discoverd that it was not such a good idea and went back to the old way.
2Wire DSL Modem; Webpass is basically using a building's router so not really less equipment. Had he not moved in to one of the 250 buildings in CA he would still have a modem.
Technis Quartz SL1301 Turntable, Kenwood KXW8060 Double Cassette Player, Yamaha HTR-5550 Tuner, Sony CPD-C315 5-CD Compact Disc Player, Boston HD7 Loudspeakers; this counts as one device as it works together as a sterio system. If the Jambox can put out the same sound as a my surround sound system the one might be comparing apples to apples. Otherwise the audio requirements have decreased.
Brother label maker; Not replaced. I guess he does not make labels any more. Was rthis due to a fad?
Handspring Treo 300 smartphone, Handspring Treo 650 smarthpone; Why two? So basically no change here.
All other devices were replaced or still exist.
What he really consolidated were his portable devices;
Handspring Treo 650 smarthpone
Rio Diamond MP3 Player
Sony ICD-S10 Digital Voice Recorder
Sony Clie PEG-T415 Personal Organizer
Swatch Beat 0033 Internet Wristwatch
ESA Portable DVD Player
All this is portable and replaced by the smartphone.
It looks to me that there are four reasons for fewer devices today;
Better mobile technology;
Fewer redundant items;
Changes in requirements;
and fewer early adopter items.
Had he restricted his article to devices he carries I would have fewer issues with it.
The claimed negative health effects are spurious. I wonder what any of the hundreds of thousands of households located close to rail lines, expressways or airports must think when they hear people whinging about effects from wind generators...
The differences between the noises you cite and wind farms are as follows;
Consistency; The noise from a wind far is there usually 24/7 at a fairly constant rate. All the examples you cite are intermittent. There are periods if quiet between when trains and aircraft go by. When building roadways millions are spent on berms and sound fences to mitigate the noise. Even then there are periods of time, usually at night when people are trying to sleep, that roadways are much quieter.
Frequencies; This is a major factor. The frequency of a windmill is within an order of magnitude of that of the human heart beat. This closeness may cause physical issues.
A constant thump that resonates in one's chest 24/7 is very different from a train going by every 5 to 10 minutes.
Yes windmills kill some birds and bats. In North America the reported bird-kill from windfarms is a fraction of the kill from oil and gas operations.
Could that be because the number of wind farms are a fraction of the number of oil and gas operations? If the number of wind farms exceed the number of oil and gas operation that may change.
.... and several orders of magnitude lower than the number of birds killed annually by.... house-cats. Like birds? Don't let your stupid cat out.
Sorry by two wrongs don't make a right. Just because cats are worse than windmills doesn't mean that windmills do not cause significant damage. The other issue is that using raw numbers is misleading. Windmills have been found to kill a larger proportion of large endangered birds, raptors for example, than cats. Cats, on the other hand, kill a much larger proportion of smaller birds such as starlings and sparrows. Killing a few hawks is much more damage than killing a few hundred starlings.
I am currently on the fence at this issue as I have seen no controlled studies on the effects of strong low frequency sound.