Actually, that's probably pretty close. The retail price for a Kindle is $259 right now. A weekender edition of the NYT delivered to a local borough is not quite $200 a year. Make it a full 7 day delivery and it's over $300 to that same borough. 7 day delivery to a Midwestern city is about $370. It seems to me you could buy an awful lot of Kindles when those kind of numbers are being thrown around, especially when you consider that a bulk purchase is liable to get the NYT a big price break. Throw in some consideration with Amazon for exclusive content, and it becomes a very tempting deal for both parties.:)
The fatal flaw in your argument is your unspoken assumption that Kindle's book reading goodness is only available for a specific hardware platform.
Over here in reality, Kindle works fine on my iPod Touch. An Android version is said to be in the works. There is also a PC version, a Mac version, an incarnation for Blackberry, and of course it works fine on an iPad and iPhone.
Fair enough. One reason I enjoy reading Slashdot so much is finding out things.:)
That said, I don't see a Linux version (yet) so it's not an option for me. In the future, maybe?
Even so, the tie to a single vendor for books is a bit too tight for me to get thrilled about. I want something that allows me to read anywhere with no worries that I'll lose it somehow. The whole fiasco with 1984 being pulled combined with finding Webscription.Net has me thinking I'm liable to avoid Kindles for the time being.
Suppose I have a Kindle (or, say, one of the requisite apps on some other hardware platform), and I've bought a few books for it that I've noted and highlighted. Suppose, then, that I lose my Kindle. Or it gets run over by a bus. Or stolen. Or dunked in a hot tub. Or whatever.
All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.
Which, you must admit, is pretty cool. (Hey luddites! The cloud has uses!)
The fatal flaw in your argument is your unspoken assumption that a specific type of hardware owned by the provider is necessary to implement this scenario. I can think of three examples off the top of my head that invalidate that assumption. The first is available for MS Windows and OS/X today; Valve's Steam service.
"Ahh," you say, "That's for games, not books." True, but let's take a look at what Steam provides anyhow. There are hundreds of games from dozens of companies available through the store. The store is set up to allow an individual to purchase, download, and install any game listed on multiple PCs as long as only one login is active at any time.
The second is O'Reilly Publishing's Safari Books Online. This browser based, subscription service allows you to search through all of the online publications that O'Reilly has created. Depending upon the level of subscription that you buy, you can download immediately, or purchase access to, any publication that catches your interest.
The final example is Baen Publishing's Webscription.Net. Here you'll find books from Baen and six other publishing companies. Again, browser based so no special hardware necessary.
Although the name implies an ongoing charge to access material, no such subscription is required. Buy a book once and you can download it in several different DRM free formats. (Yes I said DRM FREE!)
Webscription keeps track of what you have already purchased, so a lost or trashed copy is no problem. Just log in and download your books again.
(BTW, Baen Publishing also hosts the Baen Free Library as a marketing tool. More than 40 authors have agreed to post some or all of their books there for free. Yes, I said FREE. DRM free, too. You don't even have to create an account to get access to all this largesse.:) Well worth browsing if you like science fiction or fantasy.)
Of the three alternate services that I've noted above, Webscription is clearly the most user friendly. What Amazon can provide that the other services can't is a much, MUCH broader range of material. That is a huge advantage and in IMO that is what is driving Kindle sales more than any other factor. (I don't mean to say that I think the hardware itself is trash. Quite the contrary.)
So, instead, please: Let's simply discuss the implications of Amazon sharing your highlights with others. (This is a matter that I really don't have any opinion on in this instance, but I guess I'll don my flamesuit anyway...)
The nub of the issue is that any vendor supplied solution inevitably means is that you're locked in to some extent. It's the nature of the beast. The question is, how much lock-in are you willing to accept in order to take advantage of the service? How much re-use of your personal information are you willing to accept?
Getting back to the immediate issue at hand: In my view, the fact that (a) it's only highlights; (b) it's anonymized; and (c) it's turned off by default makes it a pretty benign use of personal information. Frankly, if Amazon offered similar functionality as software on a platform that I already owned, I might seriously consider using it.
That's... actually not a bad idea in this case. While I doubt those old airframes would stand up to hard usage for long, they are probably in good enough shape to make a few cross Atlantic runs. Only downside that I would anticipate would the lack of upgraded electronics in most of those birds. They mostly just fly air shows, after all.
Some examples. One is this Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling squashed. The people who worked on the lexicon put a lot of time into it, and they got screwed thanks to copyright and this idea that somehow they weren't the victims, that instead they were victimizing poor little J.K. Rowling and making it impossible for her to profit from doing her own lexicon her way, when she saw they were right about it being profitable and changed her mind on letting them do it. Obviously, she's no dummy, and so I guess she was pushed and manipulated into this stance by publishers whose opinions she perhaps trusts overmuch. It goes against her own philosophy as revealed in her works, so far as I can tell. That is, what would Harry Potter do in a similar situation?
That's not quite true. J.K. Rowling didn't object to someone else creating a lexicon. She objected to copying and republishing large amounts of her text word for word. There is no question in my mind that the amount of that text went far, FAR beyond any reasonable definition of fair use.
Great comment. Of course I only say that because your perceptions of both the current state and probable future are pretty close to mine. "Great minds think alike" and all that.:-)
We do differ in some regards, however. While I certainly recognize the success that Apple has had in UI design in the past 10 years or so, I must say that I'm one of the people that their design choices just leaves cold. I have only played with an iPhone for all of 5 minutes, so I can't say much about it.
However, I am reasonably familiar with its cousin, OS/X, and can point to several design choices there that really bug me. The deviation from CUA design principles, the implementation of the taskbar, the single menu bar, no multiple workspaces, the decision to abandon X and the resulting loss of a true client/server UI with native networking support all bother me. These all still strike me as change for change's sake more than true innovation.
I know, though, that I am in the minority in my view of OS/X's UI. That doesn't bother me at all. I would far rather have a wide variety of choice for everyone to choose from. Heck, I tend to bounce between fluxbox, xfce, and KDE when I'm on an XWindows system as it is. In Windows, I tend to set up the 'classic' mode just to turn off the more annoying things that Microsoft thinks are cute.
The iPod clearly had a much easier UI than its competition. 90% of them suffered from some combination of too much clutter, difficult navigation, and slow responsiveness. That, plus Apple's implementation of the iTunes store, made the iPod's domination almost inevitable. I understand that the iPhone and IPad similarly reflect Jobs' fanatical devotion to UI and detail.
However, unlike the iPod's single use, the iPhone and iPad compete in much more of a multiple use case world. My guess is that the iPad will follow the iPhone's trajectory of rapid penetration and saturation of a niche market (U.S. only smartphone market in the iPhone's case), at which point it will stablize and successfully defend its turf.
I don't, however, think that either one of these devices will ever reach the level of domination that Microsoft has in the desktop world. The global market is far too diverse and dynamic these days. Over the next several years, I expect that both will face incredibly tough competition and will have to fight hard just to hang on to their gains.
For myself, I'll be looking at MeeGo and Android devices once data plan costs come down a bit more. If data plans remain as expensive and as limited as they currently are here in the U.S., I'll stick with a dumb phone. When it comes time to replace my Xubuntu driven eee, I'll look for a 802.11 wireless enabled tablet that I can run the distro of my choice on.
Long term (10-50 years out), I expect that the trend to create all these walled gardens will break down pretty thoroughly. There are bound to be a lot of casualties along the way, though.
You keep saying we (the denizens of Slashdot) don't get your point. The fact that you have 5 +5 rated posts on this one article alone would suggest that maybe some of us do. Heck, I don't think I've ever seen any single person pull that off (without Friend modifiers, anyway) in all the years that I've been hanging out here. I've been lurking here since before UIDs reached 5 digits, too.
Can we please move on and discuss the long term implications of a great UI tied to a locked down device? Many of us have been down this road before and we know we don't like where it goes. Care to comment on that subject?
The whole point of such a setup for FPSes is to gain peripheral vision, though. Back when we were playing QW and Q2, I knew a guy who would set up his FOV to 140 degrees (default is typically set to 90). Made for some heavy distortion onscreen, but sneaking up on him was pretty tough!:) Personally, I used to set mine to 110 or 120.
As an aside, 90 degrees is really low. Most people have peripheral vision out to about 160 degrees. Mine is slightly higher. There's one retired running back in the NFL who I think had peripheral vision to about 190 degrees. Rabbits and some other prey animals can have peripheral vision that reaches 210 degrees.
Actually, I think the full, official name for Mexico is "Los Estados Unidos de Mexico". The Federal Capital is known as "Mexico." It drove me crazy until my dad, a Spanish teacher, explained what the answer, "a Mexico" to the question, "Adonde va?" really meant.
(says the gringo from the Upper Midwest who hasn't cracked a Spanish textbook or done more than order a beer in Spanish in probably 25 years.:) )
Oh, I think that you'll see all branches of the military in space eventually. In fact, I would argue that the Navy/Marine combination is a lot closer in terms of tradition, training, and SOP to what you'll need for a large scale force in space than the Air Force.
Go back and re-read my sentence. I said that "software development is the _only_ form of creative expression covered by patents _and_ copyrights." No value judgment was made in relation to other forms of expression.
Here's another idea: Let's recognize that software is the _only_ form of creative expression covered by patents _and_ copyrights. Let's further recognize that this conflation was and is a HUGE mistake. Let's choose one or the other and move on.
I suggest copyright is the appropriate protection to rely upon as the process of software development is much closer to writing a screenplay than it is to inventing a new widget. Care to debate my reasoning?;)
Now, as to buying a politician or four, I'm willing to think about it if I ever win the lottery. Failing that, I'll keep voting for whichever candidate(s) in my country/state/county/city elections that seem to have a clue, regardless of affiliation. (Where's Gus Hall when you need him?)
You're confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
[lecture and rant modes on]
The Constitution was written after the Articles of Confederation had failed to provide a country that met the vision of the Founding Fathers. They decided that a stronger, more centralized government was necessary for the survival of the new country.
In this context, "the general Welfare" should probably be interpreted as establishing a level playing field for everyone to succeed on their own merits. I cannot believe for a second that the Founding Fathers would be OK with more than 700,000 personal bankruptcies due to health costs Every. Single. Year.
And I told people at the time that I expected Microsoft to take _at_least_ 10 years to be able to do that consistently. 15 years wouldn't surprise me.
While I have not yet tried out Win7 or IE8 myself, everything that I've read says that they've made remarkable progress in improving their overall security stance. They just might finish up nearer the shorter end of my estimate than I thought at the time.:)
I made my submission after first seeing a story in El Reg. While I saw it in several other places, I thought the Dark Reading story was a bit better in highlighting the findings than most. You're right, though. It's very light on the methodology. The press release on VeraCode's site has a bit more information:
...1,600 Internally Developed, Open Source, Outsourced, and Commercial applications analyzed when first submitted to Veracode...
...the first report of its kind to provide security intelligence derived from multiple testing methodologies (static, dynamic and manual) on the full spectrum of application types (components, shared libraries, web and non-web applications) and programming languages (including Java, C/C++ and.NET) from every part of the software supply chain on which organizations depend.
...analyzing billions of lines of code submitted to Veracode for independent verification of software security from more than 15 industries.
(emphasis added)
So. The sample consists of approximately 1,600 applications consisting of billions of lines of code from self selecting organizations; organizations who have an interest in writing the most secure code possible or they wouldn't be subjecting themselves to this process or paying for the service. And still, 60% of all these apps fail the first time through!
I've been following testing results for FOSS for years. I've waded through thesis papers, press releases, magazine articles, Coverity's Scan site, you name it and I've dug into it. Virtually everything else that I've come across covered just a single means; static or dynamic code analysis, pen testing, fuzz testing, bug report analysis, mathematical breakdowns that attempt to address the "why" FOSS works so well, etc. The press release defines a sample size that is at least within shouting distance as the largest two that I know of; a study commissioned by the European Commission to analyze the economic impact of FLOSS which briefly discusses bug fixing, Coverity, and Coverity again.
At most, they might have tackled two methodologies in a single article. This is the first such announcement that I've been able to find that covers multiple methodologies. IMNSHO, that's what makes this an important story. Slashvertisement or not.
(BTW, note that the original announcment was at RSA Conference 2010. I suppose that makes it a RSAvertisement first? Nahhh. Doesn't trip off the tongue.;) )
You 'site' a 'ton of cases' and yet can't be bothered to cite a single one by URL. Yeah, some solid evidence there. The plural of unsupported allegation is not data.
I've known a few cops and a couple DAs in my time. Generally, they're decent people who happen to deal with the scum of society day in and day out. This inevitably leads to seeing all people through a very cynical lens. It can also lead to abuse of power pretty quickly if they feel that they aren't being held accountable. In those places and times where the legislative bodies and court systems have let them have free rein, they become the enemy that you describe. However, this is the exception, not the rule.
You want a solution? Somebody here on Slashdot has a great.sig that addresses this quite well:
"Soap, ballot, jury, bullet. Please use in that order."
Funny, I always thought it had to do with the number of splinters you Canucks pick up from knotholes... I've always admired your high tolerance for pain, even if it is LaBatts induced.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that's probably pretty close. The retail price for a Kindle is $259 right now. A weekender edition of the NYT delivered to a local borough is not quite $200 a year. Make it a full 7 day delivery and it's over $300 to that same borough. 7 day delivery to a Midwestern city is about $370. It seems to me you could buy an awful lot of Kindles when those kind of numbers are being thrown around, especially when you consider that a bulk purchase is liable to get the NYT a big price break. Throw in some consideration with Amazon for exclusive content, and it becomes a very tempting deal for both parties. :)
That's too easy. How about Linux on a dead badger?
Fair enough. One reason I enjoy reading Slashdot so much is finding out things. :)
That said, I don't see a Linux version (yet) so it's not an option for me. In the future, maybe?
Even so, the tie to a single vendor for books is a bit too tight for me to get thrilled about. I want something that allows me to read anywhere with no worries that I'll lose it somehow. The whole fiasco with 1984 being pulled combined with finding Webscription.Net has me thinking I'm liable to avoid Kindles for the time being.
The fatal flaw in your argument is your unspoken assumption that a specific type of hardware owned by the provider is necessary to implement this scenario. I can think of three examples off the top of my head that invalidate that assumption. The first is available for MS Windows and OS/X today; Valve's Steam service.
"Ahh," you say, "That's for games, not books." True, but let's take a look at what Steam provides anyhow. There are hundreds of games from dozens of companies available through the store. The store is set up to allow an individual to purchase, download, and install any game listed on multiple PCs as long as only one login is active at any time.
The second is O'Reilly Publishing's Safari Books Online. This browser based, subscription service allows you to search through all of the online publications that O'Reilly has created. Depending upon the level of subscription that you buy, you can download immediately, or purchase access to, any publication that catches your interest.
The final example is Baen Publishing's Webscription.Net. Here you'll find books from Baen and six other publishing companies. Again, browser based so no special hardware necessary.
Although the name implies an ongoing charge to access material, no such subscription is required. Buy a book once and you can download it in several different DRM free formats. (Yes I said DRM FREE!)
Webscription keeps track of what you have already purchased, so a lost or trashed copy is no problem. Just log in and download your books again.
(BTW, Baen Publishing also hosts the Baen Free Library as a marketing tool. More than 40 authors have agreed to post some or all of their books there for free. Yes, I said FREE. DRM free, too. You don't even have to create an account to get access to all this largesse. :) Well worth browsing if you like science fiction or fantasy.)
Of the three alternate services that I've noted above, Webscription is clearly the most user friendly. What Amazon can provide that the other services can't is a much, MUCH broader range of material. That is a huge advantage and in IMO that is what is driving Kindle sales more than any other factor. (I don't mean to say that I think the hardware itself is trash. Quite the contrary.)
The nub of the issue is that any vendor supplied solution inevitably means is that you're locked in to some extent. It's the nature of the beast. The question is, how much lock-in are you willing to accept in order to take advantage of the service? How much re-use of your personal information are you willing to accept?
Getting back to the immediate issue at hand: In my view, the fact that (a) it's only highlights; (b) it's anonymized; and (c) it's turned off by default makes it a pretty benign use of personal information. Frankly, if Amazon offered similar functionality as software on a platform that I already owned, I might seriously consider using it.
The real issue for me is that I have no d
You do know that Linux was born as a desktop OS, don't you? :)
Wish I could mod you up to 10 zillion.
That's... actually not a bad idea in this case. While I doubt those old airframes would stand up to hard usage for long, they are probably in good enough shape to make a few cross Atlantic runs. Only downside that I would anticipate would the lack of upgraded electronics in most of those birds. They mostly just fly air shows, after all.
Don't you see the inherent contradiction in those two statements?
BTW, I would STRONGLY recommend that you read up on the history of Thalidomide before blithely rejecting the work that the FDA does.
That's not quite true. J.K. Rowling didn't object to someone else creating a lexicon. She objected to copying and republishing large amounts of her text word for word. There is no question in my mind that the amount of that text went far, FAR beyond any reasonable definition of fair use.
Great comment. Of course I only say that because your perceptions of both the current state and probable future are pretty close to mine. "Great minds think alike" and all that. :-)
We do differ in some regards, however. While I certainly recognize the success that Apple has had in UI design in the past 10 years or so, I must say that I'm one of the people that their design choices just leaves cold. I have only played with an iPhone for all of 5 minutes, so I can't say much about it.
However, I am reasonably familiar with its cousin, OS/X, and can point to several design choices there that really bug me. The deviation from CUA design principles, the implementation of the taskbar, the single menu bar, no multiple workspaces, the decision to abandon X and the resulting loss of a true client/server UI with native networking support all bother me. These all still strike me as change for change's sake more than true innovation.
I know, though, that I am in the minority in my view of OS/X's UI. That doesn't bother me at all. I would far rather have a wide variety of choice for everyone to choose from. Heck, I tend to bounce between fluxbox, xfce, and KDE when I'm on an XWindows system as it is. In Windows, I tend to set up the 'classic' mode just to turn off the more annoying things that Microsoft thinks are cute.
The iPod clearly had a much easier UI than its competition. 90% of them suffered from some combination of too much clutter, difficult navigation, and slow responsiveness. That, plus Apple's implementation of the iTunes store, made the iPod's domination almost inevitable. I understand that the iPhone and IPad similarly reflect Jobs' fanatical devotion to UI and detail.
However, unlike the iPod's single use, the iPhone and iPad compete in much more of a multiple use case world. My guess is that the iPad will follow the iPhone's trajectory of rapid penetration and saturation of a niche market (U.S. only smartphone market in the iPhone's case), at which point it will stablize and successfully defend its turf.
I don't, however, think that either one of these devices will ever reach the level of domination that Microsoft has in the desktop world. The global market is far too diverse and dynamic these days. Over the next several years, I expect that both will face incredibly tough competition and will have to fight hard just to hang on to their gains.
For myself, I'll be looking at MeeGo and Android devices once data plan costs come down a bit more. If data plans remain as expensive and as limited as they currently are here in the U.S., I'll stick with a dumb phone. When it comes time to replace my Xubuntu driven eee, I'll look for a 802.11 wireless enabled tablet that I can run the distro of my choice on.
Long term (10-50 years out), I expect that the trend to create all these walled gardens will break down pretty thoroughly. There are bound to be a lot of casualties along the way, though.
You keep saying we (the denizens of Slashdot) don't get your point. The fact that you have 5 +5 rated posts on this one article alone would suggest that maybe some of us do. Heck, I don't think I've ever seen any single person pull that off (without Friend modifiers, anyway) in all the years that I've been hanging out here. I've been lurking here since before UIDs reached 5 digits, too.
Can we please move on and discuss the long term implications of a great UI tied to a locked down device? Many of us have been down this road before and we know we don't like where it goes. Care to comment on that subject?
This guy doesn't deserve a Troll mod at all. He is just presenting a his position and view of the current state in a polite way.
The whole point of such a setup for FPSes is to gain peripheral vision, though. Back when we were playing QW and Q2, I knew a guy who would set up his FOV to 140 degrees (default is typically set to 90). Made for some heavy distortion onscreen, but sneaking up on him was pretty tough! :) Personally, I used to set mine to 110 or 120.
As an aside, 90 degrees is really low. Most people have peripheral vision out to about 160 degrees. Mine is slightly higher. There's one retired running back in the NFL who I think had peripheral vision to about 190 degrees. Rabbits and some other prey animals can have peripheral vision that reaches 210 degrees.
Actually, I think the full, official name for Mexico is "Los Estados Unidos de Mexico". The Federal Capital is known as "Mexico." It drove me crazy until my dad, a Spanish teacher, explained what the answer, "a Mexico" to the question, "Adonde va?" really meant.
(says the gringo from the Upper Midwest who hasn't cracked a Spanish textbook or done more than order a beer in Spanish in probably 25 years. :) )
Oh, I think that you'll see all branches of the military in space eventually. In fact, I would argue that the Navy/Marine combination is a lot closer in terms of tradition, training, and SOP to what you'll need for a large scale force in space than the Air Force.
Kentucky Fried Movie is still one of the funniest things that I've ever seen. :)
Go back and re-read my sentence. I said that "software development is the _only_ form of creative expression covered by patents _and_ copyrights." No value judgment was made in relation to other forms of expression.
Here's another idea: Let's recognize that software is the _only_ form of creative expression covered by patents _and_ copyrights. Let's further recognize that this conflation was and is a HUGE mistake. Let's choose one or the other and move on.
I suggest copyright is the appropriate protection to rely upon as the process of software development is much closer to writing a screenplay than it is to inventing a new widget. Care to debate my reasoning? ;)
Now, as to buying a politician or four, I'm willing to think about it if I ever win the lottery. Failing that, I'll keep voting for whichever candidate(s) in my country/state/county/city elections that seem to have a clue, regardless of affiliation. (Where's Gus Hall when you need him?)
Have you actually tried to buy services in a hospital lately? It's virtually impossible without proof of insurance.
[lecture and rant modes on]
The Constitution was written after the Articles of Confederation had failed to provide a country that met the vision of the Founding Fathers. They decided that a stronger, more centralized government was necessary for the survival of the new country.
In this context, "the general Welfare" should probably be interpreted as establishing a level playing field for everyone to succeed on their own merits. I cannot believe for a second that the Founding Fathers would be OK with more than 700,000 personal bankruptcies due to health costs Every. Single. Year.
[modes off]
And I told people at the time that I expected Microsoft to take _at_least_ 10 years to be able to do that consistently. 15 years wouldn't surprise me.
While I have not yet tried out Win7 or IE8 myself, everything that I've read says that they've made remarkable progress in improving their overall security stance. They just might finish up nearer the shorter end of my estimate than I thought at the time. :)
I made my submission after first seeing a story in El Reg. While I saw it in several other places, I thought the Dark Reading story was a bit better in highlighting the findings than most. You're right, though. It's very light on the methodology. The press release on VeraCode's site has a bit more information:
(emphasis added)
So. The sample consists of approximately 1,600 applications consisting of billions of lines of code from self selecting organizations; organizations who have an interest in writing the most secure code possible or they wouldn't be subjecting themselves to this process or paying for the service. And still, 60% of all these apps fail the first time through!
I've been following testing results for FOSS for years. I've waded through thesis papers, press releases, magazine articles, Coverity's Scan site, you name it and I've dug into it. Virtually everything else that I've come across covered just a single means; static or dynamic code analysis, pen testing, fuzz testing, bug report analysis, mathematical breakdowns that attempt to address the "why" FOSS works so well, etc. The press release defines a sample size that is at least within shouting distance as the largest two that I know of; a study commissioned by the European Commission to analyze the economic impact of FLOSS which briefly discusses bug fixing, Coverity, and Coverity again.
At most, they might have tackled two methodologies in a single article. This is the first such announcement that I've been able to find that covers multiple methodologies. IMNSHO, that's what makes this an important story. Slashvertisement or not.
(BTW, note that the original announcment was at RSA Conference 2010. I suppose that makes it a RSAvertisement first? Nahhh. Doesn't trip off the tongue. ;) )
You 'site' a 'ton of cases' and yet can't be bothered to cite a single one by URL. Yeah, some solid evidence there. The plural of unsupported allegation is not data.
I've known a few cops and a couple DAs in my time. Generally, they're decent people who happen to deal with the scum of society day in and day out. This inevitably leads to seeing all people through a very cynical lens. It can also lead to abuse of power pretty quickly if they feel that they aren't being held accountable. In those places and times where the legislative bodies and court systems have let them have free rein, they become the enemy that you describe. However, this is the exception, not the rule.
You want a solution? Somebody here on Slashdot has a great .sig that addresses this quite well:
Get it?
Funny, I always thought it had to do with the number of splinters you Canucks pick up from knotholes... I've always admired your high tolerance for pain, even if it is LaBatts induced. ;)
You do realize that it's largely the same group of a*****es in charge of both services, right?