one of the pro arguments we got in Philly was to help streamline city services. being a pretty densely populated city there are a decent number of people served per station (in theory).
part of the argument for the city getting behind it was a thinking that more people would have internet access. if more people have internet access they can use that access to get to forms, information bla bla bla. basically things that people either have to go to City Hall for, or call somewhere and then have some clerk mail out the forms.... or just to look up information like if a certain holiday means delayed trash pick-up.
basically the argument was that it could save money on those kids of services, and add a convenience to the residents and visitors. i would assume there were a bunch of city divisions that would otherwise have to use cellular cards or something to be online. this would be a lot cheaper than that, right?
we seem to be the one city that Earthlink is not scrapping the network in. part of the reason is that so much of the city is already up and running. there are a few more towers in a few locations i need running before i give it a try. it's great coverage near my house, but we have cable there. this is how much of the city is covered right now (some places are open, others subscription). https://home.feather.net/coverage/wi-phi/coverage_html
seriously, they are for the artists in name alone. the problem is that the big labels sign on with the RIAA to protect THEIR interests. some bigger artists are slowly working on cutting out the middleman, but they are taking baby steps. the thing is that the majors still have the power to promote the hell out of an artist/band and if a new artist/band tries to stand up to this, the label will just find somebody else willing to sell their soul for a chance at fame.
at Apple's last iPod press event, Steve Jobs said that roughly 1/3 of Billboard top releases for 2006 were not even released on CD, digital only. granted i think a lot of those numbers are based on things like American Idol performances, but that means that some entity like American Idol/Fox/whatever can bypass a major label to get them distribution in brick+mortar stores (or even physical products at Amazon.com).
while things like commercial radio and MTV are still prominent ways to sell music, it seems like the time is coming that a huge band (like say GreenDay for example?) could start or sign with a label that is run like the indie labels they started with (profits split 50/50 between the label and the band). the extra money the artist would make could easily pay for them to hire a better promotion company. i say Green Day just because they spent years on indie labels, so they would be directly aware of the difference in revenue sharing. the indies don't have the machine that the majors do, but i think that era is fading. something as stupid as myspace can promote a band to a younger audience.
as of a month or two ago (last results i saw), those web analyzing stats that supposedly tell who is running what had OS X instals way ahead of MS Vista. obviously XP is still the tops, and a lot of people are waiting to upgrade a stable XP machine, but i was totally surprised to see OS X outnumbering Vista by such a significant lead.
all that being said, i don't think Apple is displeased with market share. of course they are going to keep running ads promoting their product over whatever MS is shipping. Apple is having record quarters and years. they are selling tons of iPods, iPhones and this last quarter was very strong for Mac sales. iirc they broke some personal record for hardware shipped (maybe laptops?). the company is strong across the board, why put all their effort into fighting MS? at this point MS doesn't seem to feel a significant threat from Apple, so they make some comments, but they are not actively trying to kill the company. that's probably better for everyone. i'd rather see a few companies challenging each other to make better products and not just slag the other options. i think we can mostly agree that MS acts as though they hate Linux a lot more than Apple.
i watched some of those shows that way and the quality was kind of crappy. it's also possible some of it was Comcast being a crappy ISP. i'm pretty sure at least one of those two shows only has the most recent episode up for streaming, so if you are, god forbid, busy.... you are out of luck. generally commercials drive me up the wall, but the online ones don't really phase me.
i have a TiVo w/out service and sometimes miss the beginning of the season. this happened to me with Lost last year. i ended up just buying the missed episodes from iTunes because they were no longer streaming. personally i will sometimes get busy and not watch any TV for a few weeks, in that case i would have to use the TiVo to archive, or download it. i gotta agree with Apple though, even at $2/episode i only buy a few shows. i bought the first two seasons of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia because my old cable company did not have FX. after i bought them, a DVD set of season 1 + 2 came out and it turned out to be cheaper than what i had paid. there is no way in hell i would have paid $5 for a 24 minute episode of anything (or whatever an hour show shakes out to be). in that case i can wait till the next year and just get the DVDs from Netflix.
i think it's more the principle. i know people that see no reason to pay for TV that is full of commercials and a slew of channels they just don't care about (like my mom!). i know people that hardly watch TV except maybe some local news. i know people that are regularly out of town, or working crazy long hours a few weeks a month, so it seems stupid to add an unneeded utility. then i know a few people that don't even own TV, but they are not really part of this mess.
i have cable because i live in a house with a few people that all split it. if i lived alone i would never pay what we do for TV.
non-Apple stores that sell Macs... like Best Buy? Microcenter? CompUSA? there are also still tons of little indie stores. hell, Philadelphia itself doesn't have an Apple store, though the city is surrounded with a few. we don't really need one because we have some really good Apple authorized resellers (like springboardmedia.com). i'm sure the city will get one eventually, but there is no hurry.
just because YOU Live in a terrible radio market, it doesn't mean the whole country is screwed. there are a few around me that are ok, and i don't listen to mainstream music. i do agree that it mostly sucks, but there are a few decent stations still operating. you can always get Sirius or an iPod if you need a music fix. that's what most of the country seems to be doing. radio listenership has been on a steady decline in the last 5 years or so.
this is all silly anyway, radio is on a countdown to digital takeover anyway. when that happens (well after TV), there is a chance we will have a lot more radio stations on the air. i personally live in a large radio market, so the only way to "start" a radio station here is to buy out an existing one. that part kind of sucks. it holds down the college/community stations. in the free-for-all situation, those college/community stations would be totally shut out.
i'm not fan of the FCC's policies, but somebody has to keep stations from stepping on each others toes. again, if they handle it right, digital radio could change all of this. unfortunately, as of now it doesn't look so positive.
nothing against Alaska, but if they have such a financial surplus, they should be able to build their own bridges to nowhere.... and nobody would complain. build 15 of them for all i care. Ted Stevens is notorious for getting tons of federal money for projects in Alaska. that makes me wonder how much surplus they really have?
again, nothing against Alaska, but my city has to float bonds to make capital improvements to silly things like schools and police stations. it's somehow twisted that Alaska is trying to suck up federal money for bridges to reduce traffic, or to open up new land for private developers... when they have such a freaking surplus.
according to his website he is diehard against the rights of women to decide for themselves if they want an abortion. is it the Libertarian belief that the chosen religion should be the law of the land? i didn't think so.....
we have a connivence store chain here called WaWa (like 7-11, but good) and their ATMs all do $10 increments. we used to have a bank here in the Philadelphia area that had ATMs that would do $5 bills. they were eventually swallowed up and their magic red ATMs disappeared.
as others pointed out, some casinos have higher denominations than $20.
i would rather see schools make some modest donation to OOo (or some other worthy alternative) and create a nice robust free alternative. that would benefit all citizens, and students. there is NO reason to train grade school kids to use Office 2007. even if 90% of businesses use MS Office, they won't be using Office 2007 when these kids are out of college in 10 years. same reason it's stupid to train them to learn MS Windows when they are 10 years old.
if anything they should be using a computer as a tool. they should have basic computer use skills, but there is no reason for them to only learn, for example MS Vista, when it will be long gone by the time they are older. if they want to take computer programming classes, teach them the fundamentals, hell teach them html or something standard.
i don't know much about them but i used to see a few around here that i were told were from some after market kit. the obvious reason being that they were painted, and not stainless steel. offhand i used to see a red one and a yellow one.
there is something kind of awesome that 95% of the nostalgia about those cars is purely based on Back To The Future, and nothing to do with being obscure car junkies, or fans of their quirky history.
while some startup station may be able to "broadcast from overseas", but any college or community station is still screwed. there are some college stations these days that do not even broadcast on FM due to budget reasons. they are all done.
an interesting thing i saw posts say that once the iPhone is activated (through iTunes), you can pop out the sim card and all the non-AT&T based stuff still works. the web browsing, email etc will revert to WiFi.
that makes me think that maybe the computer is only needed for activation, syncing songs and future software updates. if that's true you could probably find somebody else's computer and use it to setup the phone till this is sorted out.
the fact that the phone requires no in store activation makes me wonder if you will be able to buy them at other Apple retailers in the future?
these licensing and webcasting rules are killing low budget operations like college/community radio. a lot of college stations had to scrap their webstreams because of additional fees, and adding downloadable shows is a whole different licensing scheme. some may be small enough to escape it, but plenty of small non-commercial stations have been hit for all this.
college/community stations have a lot more reason to offer downloadable/podcasts of shows because they are often made of of specialty shows with a DJ that is on for 1-3 hours once a week.
1) it would not be a cult because they are so massively large and pervasive. maybe the article could have said 'fanboys' or something.
2) i would not say that most MS users are fanatic fans either. i would think most use it because that's what they have at work, or the computer they bought. maybe they bought that computer with MS Windows because it's the same OS they use at work and it's just easier. most people i know that run MS Windows are not at all in love with it. it works just fine for them and they are content.
that being said, especially these days, i would think that a lesser percentage of Mac users are "in the cult". that's probably something to Apple's credit. their user base is bigger than ever with non-techie people. My Mom uses a Macintosh, but she doesn't read rumor sites or even have the Apple sticker on her car.
let's face it, most joe 6-pack type people use their computers to get online. they probably have webmail, so their web browser is by far the above and beyond the #1 used application. as long as the thing can get online and it's easy to launch the browser, i would bet most people could care less what OS they run. i'm sure that was what Walmart when they were (are?) selling computers with Linux. (did that whole thing stop?)
as of last year i read somewhere that in the USA portable CD players (discmans) still outsold digital music players something like 5:1. not sure where they are going, i feel like i see digital players of some flavor everywhere i look.
true, but i think that loophole is what made them seem trendy in this age of relatively expensive gasoline. i would think *SOMEBODY* could close that loophole. i understand that it is there for farmers etc that need to buy heavy vehicles for their industry, but when it somehow extends to doctors and lawyers buying the Hummer H2 as opposed to a Honda or even a Jeep Grand Wagoneer because they can write off the H2 and not the others... something is kind of messed up. only the largest of the SUVs are covered in that write-off (think Hummer, Chevy Suburban, Ford Excursion etc). It's really intended for massive farm equipment type stuff, and the spirit of the law was that the high weight excluded pretty much any passenger vehicle at the time. oops!
iirc the foam is frozen solid, and not anything like styrofoam used to make cheap coolers. remember that pieces of this foam falling at launch broke the heat tiles that caused the last disaster. yes, they were moving at a high rate of speed, but they had to have enough mass to them that they could still do that damage and not just reach a terminal velocity. as other people said, it's also possible that the foam is needed during the launch. there has to be a reason that they do not just skin the tank in something to keep the foam intact. granted the weight is an issue, but so is losing a ship. remember the tank was not always orange, but they stopped painting the external tank because the weight of the paint was significant enough that it was deemed a waste. that is a HUGE tank with a lot of surface area.
i wondered why nobody ever brings that up? you could not trade in 8-tracks for cassettes, then for vinyl then for CDs..... same way you could not trade in VHS, Betamax or LaserDisc for DVD, or DVDs for BluRay/HDDVDs. i'm no fan of DRM, but how is the iTMS/iPod any different from that? no wonder the labels love locking people to an iPod or Zune or whatever else. if there was no DRM you would NEVER have to buy those songs or movies again.
i don't understand how Apple or Microsoft or Napster or anyone can be blamed for the DRM that the big labels demand. the EU and everyone else should go after the labels that require it. if Apple deactivated their DRM tomorrow, they would breach their contract with the big labels, and whenever this time period of licensing is over, the labels would pull everything from iTMS.
the government does not care what your personal schedule is, this is about 90% of the population.
the point is that there is more "usable daylight". the thinking is that the average citizen has to be at work at 08:00 or 09:00 no matter what. they will get up and go. the trick is that they will finish their work day and have that extra hour of daylight. the hope is that they will use that light to leave the house. other people have pointed it out, and i also heard it on NPR. a major motivational factor is the economy. *somebody* out there determined that people are just more likely to go out if it's light out. i don't mean for essential trips, but that post-winter "i just need to get out of the house". the extra daylight boosts the motivation. basically this is an attempt to give a little kick to the economy. will it also save power in the long run? maybe? sure? whatever the reasons i am enjoying it. it's nice to go running after work and have that extra bit of light.
i think you are dismissing the posts as fanbois, but they have a point.
1) before iTMS Apple had that iTunes Rip-Mix-Burn ad campaign that got the RIAA in such a tizzy. they are never happy. that ad was about making mix CDs with your own content. it wasn't download-mix-burn. 2) the iPod was huge BEFORE iTMS existed, so don't blame the store for people buying iPods 3) the iPod can play most any DRM-free music, as can the other popular music players. they can sell non-DRM music and everyone can play! 4) supposedly *most* iPod owners still do not acquire content from iTMS, and the heavy buyers are really heavy buyers. the bulk of users (in terms of a head count) buy some singles here and there. therefore most are not locked into the iPod platform. i have personally spent maybe $5 at iTMS, the rest i rip from my CDs. i could take that $5 loss in stride if i changed teams.
what about people that were previously "locked in" to 8-tracks? they got no compensation from the industry for buying a format that died off....
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one of the pro arguments we got in Philly was to help streamline city services. being a pretty densely populated city there are a decent number of people served per station (in theory).
part of the argument for the city getting behind it was a thinking that more people would have internet access. if more people have internet access they can use that access to get to forms, information bla bla bla. basically things that people either have to go to City Hall for, or call somewhere and then have some clerk mail out the forms.... or just to look up information like if a certain holiday means delayed trash pick-up.
basically the argument was that it could save money on those kids of services, and add a convenience to the residents and visitors. i would assume there were a bunch of city divisions that would otherwise have to use cellular cards or something to be online. this would be a lot cheaper than that, right?
we seem to be the one city that Earthlink is not scrapping the network in. part of the reason is that so much of the city is already up and running. there are a few more towers in a few locations i need running before i give it a try. it's great coverage near my house, but we have cable there.
this is how much of the city is covered right now (some places are open, others subscription).
https://home.feather.net/coverage/wi-phi/coverage_html
seriously, they are for the artists in name alone.
the problem is that the big labels sign on with the RIAA to protect THEIR interests. some bigger artists are slowly working on cutting out the middleman, but they are taking baby steps. the thing is that the majors still have the power to promote the hell out of an artist/band and if a new artist/band tries to stand up to this, the label will just find somebody else willing to sell their soul for a chance at fame.
at Apple's last iPod press event, Steve Jobs said that roughly 1/3 of Billboard top releases for 2006 were not even released on CD, digital only. granted i think a lot of those numbers are based on things like American Idol performances, but that means that some entity like American Idol/Fox/whatever can bypass a major label to get them distribution in brick+mortar stores (or even physical products at Amazon.com).
while things like commercial radio and MTV are still prominent ways to sell music, it seems like the time is coming that a huge band (like say GreenDay for example?) could start or sign with a label that is run like the indie labels they started with (profits split 50/50 between the label and the band). the extra money the artist would make could easily pay for them to hire a better promotion company. i say Green Day just because they spent years on indie labels, so they would be directly aware of the difference in revenue sharing. the indies don't have the machine that the majors do, but i think that era is fading. something as stupid as myspace can promote a band to a younger audience.
as of a month or two ago (last results i saw), those web analyzing stats that supposedly tell who is running what had OS X instals way ahead of MS Vista. obviously XP is still the tops, and a lot of people are waiting to upgrade a stable XP machine, but i was totally surprised to see OS X outnumbering Vista by such a significant lead.
all that being said, i don't think Apple is displeased with market share. of course they are going to keep running ads promoting their product over whatever MS is shipping. Apple is having record quarters and years. they are selling tons of iPods, iPhones and this last quarter was very strong for Mac sales. iirc they broke some personal record for hardware shipped (maybe laptops?). the company is strong across the board, why put all their effort into fighting MS? at this point MS doesn't seem to feel a significant threat from Apple, so they make some comments, but they are not actively trying to kill the company. that's probably better for everyone. i'd rather see a few companies challenging each other to make better products and not just slag the other options. i think we can mostly agree that MS acts as though they hate Linux a lot more than Apple.
i watched some of those shows that way and the quality was kind of crappy. it's also possible some of it was Comcast being a crappy ISP. i'm pretty sure at least one of those two shows only has the most recent episode up for streaming, so if you are, god forbid, busy.... you are out of luck. generally commercials drive me up the wall, but the online ones don't really phase me.
i have a TiVo w/out service and sometimes miss the beginning of the season. this happened to me with Lost last year. i ended up just buying the missed episodes from iTunes because they were no longer streaming. personally i will sometimes get busy and not watch any TV for a few weeks, in that case i would have to use the TiVo to archive, or download it. i gotta agree with Apple though, even at $2/episode i only buy a few shows. i bought the first two seasons of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia because my old cable company did not have FX. after i bought them, a DVD set of season 1 + 2 came out and it turned out to be cheaper than what i had paid. there is no way in hell i would have paid $5 for a 24 minute episode of anything (or whatever an hour show shakes out to be). in that case i can wait till the next year and just get the DVDs from Netflix.
i'm immune to zombie attacks.
i think it's more the principle. i know people that see no reason to pay for TV that is full of commercials and a slew of channels they just don't care about (like my mom!). i know people that hardly watch TV except maybe some local news. i know people that are regularly out of town, or working crazy long hours a few weeks a month, so it seems stupid to add an unneeded utility. then i know a few people that don't even own TV, but they are not really part of this mess.
i have cable because i live in a house with a few people that all split it. if i lived alone i would never pay what we do for TV.
non-Apple stores that sell Macs... like Best Buy? Microcenter? CompUSA? there are also still tons of little indie stores.
hell, Philadelphia itself doesn't have an Apple store, though the city is surrounded with a few. we don't really need one because we have some really good Apple authorized resellers (like springboardmedia.com). i'm sure the city will get one eventually, but there is no hurry.
just because YOU Live in a terrible radio market, it doesn't mean the whole country is screwed. there are a few around me that are ok, and i don't listen to mainstream music. i do agree that it mostly sucks, but there are a few decent stations still operating. you can always get Sirius or an iPod if you need a music fix. that's what most of the country seems to be doing. radio listenership has been on a steady decline in the last 5 years or so.
this is all silly anyway, radio is on a countdown to digital takeover anyway. when that happens (well after TV), there is a chance we will have a lot more radio stations on the air. i personally live in a large radio market, so the only way to "start" a radio station here is to buy out an existing one. that part kind of sucks. it holds down the college/community stations. in the free-for-all situation, those college/community stations would be totally shut out.
i'm not fan of the FCC's policies, but somebody has to keep stations from stepping on each others toes. again, if they handle it right, digital radio could change all of this. unfortunately, as of now it doesn't look so positive.
nothing against Alaska, but if they have such a financial surplus, they should be able to build their own bridges to nowhere.... and nobody would complain. build 15 of them for all i care. Ted Stevens is notorious for getting tons of federal money for projects in Alaska. that makes me wonder how much surplus they really have?
again, nothing against Alaska, but my city has to float bonds to make capital improvements to silly things like schools and police stations. it's somehow twisted that Alaska is trying to suck up federal money for bridges to reduce traffic, or to open up new land for private developers... when they have such a freaking surplus.
according to his website he is diehard against the rights of women to decide for themselves if they want an abortion. is it the Libertarian belief that the chosen religion should be the law of the land? i didn't think so.....
y /
he says it right here.
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/life-and-libert
i am sick of people claiming he is not anti-choice and that he is just "defending the constitution".
yeah, and Boston should have paid for the Big Dig themselves....... but alas those booming local economies need federal money to make some roads.
we have a connivence store chain here called WaWa (like 7-11, but good) and their ATMs all do $10 increments. we used to have a bank here in the Philadelphia area that had ATMs that would do $5 bills. they were eventually swallowed up and their magic red ATMs disappeared.
as others pointed out, some casinos have higher denominations than $20.
i would rather see schools make some modest donation to OOo (or some other worthy alternative) and create a nice robust free alternative. that would benefit all citizens, and students.
there is NO reason to train grade school kids to use Office 2007. even if 90% of businesses use MS Office, they won't be using Office 2007 when these kids are out of college in 10 years. same reason it's stupid to train them to learn MS Windows when they are 10 years old.
if anything they should be using a computer as a tool. they should have basic computer use skills, but there is no reason for them to only learn, for example MS Vista, when it will be long gone by the time they are older. if they want to take computer programming classes, teach them the fundamentals, hell teach them html or something standard.
i don't know much about them but i used to see a few around here that i were told were from some after market kit. the obvious reason being that they were painted, and not stainless steel. offhand i used to see a red one and a yellow one.
there is something kind of awesome that 95% of the nostalgia about those cars is purely based on Back To The Future, and nothing to do with being obscure car junkies, or fans of their quirky history.
while some startup station may be able to "broadcast from overseas", but any college or community station is still screwed. there are some college stations these days that do not even broadcast on FM due to budget reasons. they are all done.
you have to use a paperclip or pin to release it, but it pops right out.
http://www.powerbookmedic.com/iphone/simcard.html
an interesting thing i saw posts say that once the iPhone is activated (through iTunes), you can pop out the sim card and all the non-AT&T based stuff still works. the web browsing, email etc will revert to WiFi.
that makes me think that maybe the computer is only needed for activation, syncing songs and future software updates. if that's true you could probably find somebody else's computer and use it to setup the phone till this is sorted out.
the fact that the phone requires no in store activation makes me wonder if you will be able to buy them at other Apple retailers in the future?
these licensing and webcasting rules are killing low budget operations like college/community radio. a lot of college stations had to scrap their webstreams because of additional fees, and adding downloadable shows is a whole different licensing scheme. some may be small enough to escape it, but plenty of small non-commercial stations have been hit for all this.
college/community stations have a lot more reason to offer downloadable/podcasts of shows because they are often made of of specialty shows with a DJ that is on for 1-3 hours once a week.
1) it would not be a cult because they are so massively large and pervasive. maybe the article could have said 'fanboys' or something.
2) i would not say that most MS users are fanatic fans either. i would think most use it because that's what they have at work, or the computer they bought. maybe they bought that computer with MS Windows because it's the same OS they use at work and it's just easier. most people i know that run MS Windows are not at all in love with it. it works just fine for them and they are content.
that being said, especially these days, i would think that a lesser percentage of Mac users are "in the cult". that's probably something to Apple's credit. their user base is bigger than ever with non-techie people. My Mom uses a Macintosh, but she doesn't read rumor sites or even have the Apple sticker on her car.
let's face it, most joe 6-pack type people use their computers to get online. they probably have webmail, so their web browser is by far the above and beyond the #1 used application. as long as the thing can get online and it's easy to launch the browser, i would bet most people could care less what OS they run. i'm sure that was what Walmart when they were (are?) selling computers with Linux. (did that whole thing stop?)
as of last year i read somewhere that in the USA portable CD players (discmans) still outsold digital music players something like 5:1. not sure where they are going, i feel like i see digital players of some flavor everywhere i look.
true, but i think that loophole is what made them seem trendy in this age of relatively expensive gasoline.
i would think *SOMEBODY* could close that loophole. i understand that it is there for farmers etc that need to buy heavy vehicles for their industry, but when it somehow extends to doctors and lawyers buying the Hummer H2 as opposed to a Honda or even a Jeep Grand Wagoneer because they can write off the H2 and not the others... something is kind of messed up. only the largest of the SUVs are covered in that write-off (think Hummer, Chevy Suburban, Ford Excursion etc). It's really intended for massive farm equipment type stuff, and the spirit of the law was that the high weight excluded pretty much any passenger vehicle at the time. oops!
iirc the foam is frozen solid, and not anything like styrofoam used to make cheap coolers. remember that pieces of this foam falling at launch broke the heat tiles that caused the last disaster. yes, they were moving at a high rate of speed, but they had to have enough mass to them that they could still do that damage and not just reach a terminal velocity.
as other people said, it's also possible that the foam is needed during the launch. there has to be a reason that they do not just skin the tank in something to keep the foam intact. granted the weight is an issue, but so is losing a ship. remember the tank was not always orange, but they stopped painting the external tank because the weight of the paint was significant enough that it was deemed a waste. that is a HUGE tank with a lot of surface area.
i wondered why nobody ever brings that up? you could not trade in 8-tracks for cassettes, then for vinyl then for CDs..... same way you could not trade in VHS, Betamax or LaserDisc for DVD, or DVDs for BluRay/HDDVDs. i'm no fan of DRM, but how is the iTMS/iPod any different from that? no wonder the labels love locking people to an iPod or Zune or whatever else. if there was no DRM you would NEVER have to buy those songs or movies again.
i don't understand how Apple or Microsoft or Napster or anyone can be blamed for the DRM that the big labels demand. the EU and everyone else should go after the labels that require it. if Apple deactivated their DRM tomorrow, they would breach their contract with the big labels, and whenever this time period of licensing is over, the labels would pull everything from iTMS.
the government does not care what your personal schedule is, this is about 90% of the population.
the point is that there is more "usable daylight". the thinking is that the average citizen has to be at work at 08:00 or 09:00 no matter what. they will get up and go. the trick is that they will finish their work day and have that extra hour of daylight. the hope is that they will use that light to leave the house.
other people have pointed it out, and i also heard it on NPR. a major motivational factor is the economy. *somebody* out there determined that people are just more likely to go out if it's light out. i don't mean for essential trips, but that post-winter "i just need to get out of the house". the extra daylight boosts the motivation. basically this is an attempt to give a little kick to the economy. will it also save power in the long run? maybe? sure?
whatever the reasons i am enjoying it. it's nice to go running after work and have that extra bit of light.
too much flouride is possibly linked to thyroid gland problems too....
i think you are dismissing the posts as fanbois, but they have a point.
1) before iTMS Apple had that iTunes Rip-Mix-Burn ad campaign that got the RIAA in such a tizzy. they are never happy. that ad was about making mix CDs with your own content. it wasn't download-mix-burn.
2) the iPod was huge BEFORE iTMS existed, so don't blame the store for people buying iPods
3) the iPod can play most any DRM-free music, as can the other popular music players. they can sell non-DRM music and everyone can play!
4) supposedly *most* iPod owners still do not acquire content from iTMS, and the heavy buyers are really heavy buyers. the bulk of users (in terms of a head count) buy some singles here and there. therefore most are not locked into the iPod platform. i have personally spent maybe $5 at iTMS, the rest i rip from my CDs. i could take that $5 loss in stride if i changed teams.
what about people that were previously "locked in" to 8-tracks? they got no compensation from the industry for buying a format that died off....