I'm embarrased to say I'm no more knowledgeable about Canadian government than the stereotypical ignorant American. Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
America hasn't faced a problem of this magnitude and scope before so public safety at the cost of freedom of expression has never truly been tested.
Who do you think you're kidding? We faced a far worse crisis in 1861. Then, our enemy was domestic, and a lot more blood was spilled over the next four years than in any combat before or since. For example, more Americans died just at Antietam than perished Tuesday.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize the horror of the past week. It's the worst national crisis of my lifetime, and I'm guessing things will get worse before they get better.
But if we compromise our national principles in an effort to fight the enemy, then we've lost the war before it has begun.
Two-hundred-ten years of American history under the Bill of Rights show that one can protect public safety without putting limits on free expression.
I don't know if there is an equivalent of the First Amendment under Canadian law, but I hope they consider the example of their neighbor to the south before they punish their citizens for what they say.
Re:Huge outpourings of generosity
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· Score: 2
Just worth noting: My local hospital here in Virginia is asking people to wait a few weeks or months to donate blood. They have more than they need now, but anticipate returning to the chronic shortage of blood they've had for years once the publicity wears off.
Don't just give blood today. Give blood regularly.
Even if one had the presence of mind to try to subdue the attackers, how would you do it?
Think about the sight lines and aisle widths in an airplane. How far ahead can you really see? Five or six rows at best if everyone is standing. How are you supposed to leap forward to attack the highjackers when you're wedged like sardines in the aisles and between the seats? It's not going to happen.
The highjackers, having carefully planned the attacks, new this. The passengers, none of whom had any reason to expect this, had no time to plan before they were herded like cattle, probably not even knowing exactly what was going on, and in many cases probably not even being able to see the highjackers.
There may be other reasons, but I'll bet one is that it's the easy way out.
I once wrote an Internet policy for an employer that warned the staff that, while the company did not systematically monitor Internet usage, it was logistically possible for their email and other Internet communications to be viewed by someone other than the intended recipient. Consequently, they should at best treat it as semi-private (using the post card analogy).
Here's the problem: Maybe the system administrators can set it up so that the boss can't monitor email, but what's to stop the systems administrators from snooping? It would have been a lot of work to secure all electronic communications within the building, and, unless all email with the outside world were encrypted, impossible to secure communications that left the building. Given limited resources, we took the easy way out and warned people not to expect absolute privacy.
The proposed policy for the federal courts goes beyond that, but one could easily get there with similar logic. You get a bunch of head honchos sitting around a table asking themselves, are there really no circumstances where we might not want to snoop? Before you know it, they're building themselves a bunch of back doors just in case.
In the end, it all comes down to Caveat Emailor: If your communications are that sensitive, then you need to be responsible for your own security, and not depend on your employer or ISP to take care of it for you.
Excuse me if I overstated things. I meant "limited" in comparison to the average Tower Records store. I did try to make the point that I, too, found more than enough desirable selections to justify the price.
You'd never know they existed, but eMusic is already offering unlimited mp3 downloads of major-label albums for $10/month.
I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.
The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.
I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.
Ah, the stuff that's actually interesting. Genuine word processing, spreadsheets, interactive programs. Much more useful, but still limited by the screen size and interface.
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of the third-party apps. When I purchased mine, the Palm Vx (8 MB) still cost considerably more than the Palm V (2 MB). I only thought of it as being a planner, so I hestitated to spend the extra money on memory I thought I'd never use.
Well, those extra 6 MB are full of bus schedules, maps, a checkbook register, an email client (to compose emails for sending later), and more. The Palm makes a surprisingly good eBook reader (don't knock it until you try it), so I always have some reading handy. I also have stopped carrying a watch since I bought the Palm.
That's a lot of other things (watch, book, check register, maps, bus schedules) I don't have to carry and keep track of. Plus, since they're on a handheld computer, they do have more features than their paper counterparts. For example, the check register reconciles with statements in seconds, as opposed to the old fashioned pencil, calculator and paper method which can take quite a long time if you've made a mistake somewhere.
I also have used it to load up applications for short-term needs, such as a loan amortization app that came in quite handy while car shopping.
It's not for everyone. I know several people who have Palms gathering dust in the bottoms of desk drawers. I, for one, have found it very useful, though.
I hate to use the "s-word," as an old boss of mine used to call it, but it depends on whether there are synergies between the two companies.
Clearly Palm thinks the sum will be greater than the parts. I wonder if this telegraphs a change in strategy to diversify away from just handheld organizers and wireless communications.
I can't help but wonder, though, whether it's the cradles themselves zapping MOBO's, or whether it's customer misuse
Misuse is probably too strong a word.
I remember buying a cheap mechanical keyboard/monitor switch for some ALR 386 server boxes (this was some time ago, obviously). I found out the hard way that the switchbox was able to generate a sufficient static charge to blow out the keyboard port.
This didn't cost me a motherboard; the ALR motherboards incorporated a fusible link in the keyboard circuit, which absorbed the static charge and blew. It took a soldering iron to fix it, but once this fuse was replaced, the mobo worked fine once again.
As I recall, ALR fixed it under warranty.
Was I at fault for using the cheapo switchbox? Probably (I bought a better one thereafter). Was it "abuse"? Probably not. Had ALR denied me warranty coverage on these grounds, I would have been pretty pissed.
Should other mobo manufacturers be blamed for not similarly insulating their serial ports? Probably. Should the switchbox manufacturer have been expected to fix their design? At the price I paid, probably not. Should I have sued either ALR or the switch manufacturer. Good God, no.
I think radio right now is the best it's ever been.
You've got to be kidding.
Maybe the number of "formats" has increased, but that just means the recording and radio industries have sliced and diced the same ol' factory-produced, crappy pop pablum into new categories.
How many of those radio stations you hear on your commute have more than a few dozen songs in their playlists? How many deejays even get to pick their own playlists? How many of the songs being aired were recorded by local bands?
And you call the proliferation of shrieking talk radio garbage an improvement?
And NPR isn't any better. In the market where I live (Washington DC), the non-commercial end of the dial has been completely taken over by "public affairs," your industry's euphemism for hours of self-important blowhards verbally circle-jerking. Jazz, blues, bluegrass and classical are down to just a few hours a week, and even then, it's predictable, safe and dull.
I understand you're drawing a paycheck from the radio industry, but that doesn't mean you need to kid yourself about what you're doing.
The fact is, broadcasters, recording companies and unions have conspired to suck all the oxygen out of the air for any music that in any way challenges its listeners.
You can't argue that the increased concentration of power in the music and broadcasting industries has not been correlated with a decline in music quality. Yes, everyone has different tastes, but look back 60 years. Just as today, most popular music was sugary, dull and predictable. But popular music also included under its umbrella truly classic works by bands like Ellington's, Basie's, Goodman's, Lunceford's and Shaw's. Three hundred years from now, people will still be awed by "Cottontail" and "Lester Leaps In." What popular music recorded in the last decade can you say that about?"
We can only pray that whatever results from the technological, legal and regulatory wrangling over Napster will give artists more opportunities to be heard and consumers more choices. I can't say I'm optimistic.
If Sun is smart, they'll maximize their investment in Cobalt by maintaining -- and expanding -- the Cobalt brand name for low-end appliances.
When you think of Sun, you hardly think of bargains. But that can be an asset. Some people are willing to pay more for the Sun brand name, no matter what technology is inside. Likewise, others will assume Cobalt's a good value even before they compare prices. It's the best of both worlds that Proctor & Gamble enjoys by selling both Tide and Gain.
Sun should follow in the footsteps of Alfred P. Sloan by preserving the Sun brand name as their "Cadillac," and establishing Cobalt as their "Chevrolet."
Many contracts for natural gas in the Northeast U.S. specify only a limited supply--if you
exceed that you have to pay considerable surcharges--it may be cheaper just to buy
electricity for the added load.
With deregulation, many of us now have a choice of gas suppliers (paying the former monopoly only for distribution). The alternative suppliers' rates are not regulated (there are no "tarriffs" to use telco jargon), so these kinds of pricing constraints are on the way out in many cases.
And any pricing comparisons need to account for seasonal fluctuations. The typical consumer uses the most electricity in the summer when it's most expensive, and the most gas in the winter when that fuel is most expensive. There potentially could be a large benefit from replacing expensive summer electricity with cheap summer gas.
It just makes no sense to impose geographic only ordering to the web. The web isn't about
geography, it's about ideas, and increasingly, marketing and mindshare.
A hardware store isn't about ideas. A barbershop isn't about ideas. Just because you don't have a need for geographic specificity doesn't mean no one else does, either.
Giving geographic order to the.us TLD does not "impose geographic-only ordering to the Web," because changing one TLD does not change the nature of the whole Net.
Those who don't want geographic specificity have a more-or-less sensible way to register a domain name now. Why not create namespace for those who do desire geographic specificity?
To paraphrase you, the Web isn't about imposing one paradigm on everyone, it's about creating multiple paradigms for us all to choose from.
I agree that geographical specificity is good. One advantage is that it could get us out of the morass of trademark lawsuits.
If Uncle Sam is serious about making better use of the.us TLD -- and serious about allowing small businesses equal access to public resources -- then Congress should treat.us domains like trademarks: They would be specific to a certain line of business in a certain geographical area.
The burden would be on those registering domains to check trademark registrations and local DBA records to determine whether they were, for example, the only "Ford Plumbing" in their state. If so, they could have ford.plumbing.state.us. If there were other Ford Plumbings in the state but not their city, they'd register ford.plumbing.city.state.us.
This system would only work if Congress gave Ford Plumbing protection from FoMoCo's rabid attorneys.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for posting that.
I'm embarrased to say I'm no more knowledgeable about Canadian government than the stereotypical ignorant American. Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
America hasn't faced a problem of this magnitude and scope before so public safety at the cost of freedom of expression has never truly been tested.
Who do you think you're kidding? We faced a far worse crisis in 1861. Then, our enemy was domestic, and a lot more blood was spilled over the next four years than in any combat before or since. For example, more Americans died just at Antietam than perished Tuesday.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize the horror of the past week. It's the worst national crisis of my lifetime, and I'm guessing things will get worse before they get better.
But if we compromise our national principles in an effort to fight the enemy, then we've lost the war before it has begun.
Two-hundred-ten years of American history under the Bill of Rights show that one can protect public safety without putting limits on free expression.
I don't know if there is an equivalent of the First Amendment under Canadian law, but I hope they consider the example of their neighbor to the south before they punish their citizens for what they say.
Just worth noting: My local hospital here in Virginia is asking people to wait a few weeks or months to donate blood. They have more than they need now, but anticipate returning to the chronic shortage of blood they've had for years once the publicity wears off.
Don't just give blood today. Give blood regularly.
It is real, and it received a great deal of attention in its day.
I can vouch for that. I remember it getting a lot of airplay on radio in Washington DC (probably on WMAL-AM) when I was a kid.
20/20 hindsight.
I agree.
Even if one had the presence of mind to try to subdue the attackers, how would you do it?
Think about the sight lines and aisle widths in an airplane. How far ahead can you really see? Five or six rows at best if everyone is standing. How are you supposed to leap forward to attack the highjackers when you're wedged like sardines in the aisles and between the seats? It's not going to happen.
The highjackers, having carefully planned the attacks, new this. The passengers, none of whom had any reason to expect this, had no time to plan before they were herded like cattle, probably not even knowing exactly what was going on, and in many cases probably not even being able to see the highjackers.
I've recently been consumed by the non-violent fun found in Bridge Builder
Somebody should mod this up. I just downloaded Bridge Builder, and it's definitely very cool.
There may be other reasons, but I'll bet one is that it's the easy way out.
I once wrote an Internet policy for an employer that warned the staff that, while the company did not systematically monitor Internet usage, it was logistically possible for their email and other Internet communications to be viewed by someone other than the intended recipient. Consequently, they should at best treat it as semi-private (using the post card analogy).
Here's the problem: Maybe the system administrators can set it up so that the boss can't monitor email, but what's to stop the systems administrators from snooping? It would have been a lot of work to secure all electronic communications within the building, and, unless all email with the outside world were encrypted, impossible to secure communications that left the building. Given limited resources, we took the easy way out and warned people not to expect absolute privacy.
The proposed policy for the federal courts goes beyond that, but one could easily get there with similar logic. You get a bunch of head honchos sitting around a table asking themselves, are there really no circumstances where we might not want to snoop? Before you know it, they're building themselves a bunch of back doors just in case.
In the end, it all comes down to Caveat Emailor: If your communications are that sensitive, then you need to be responsible for your own security, and not depend on your employer or ISP to take care of it for you.
Excuse me if I overstated things. I meant "limited" in comparison to the average Tower Records store. I did try to make the point that I, too, found more than enough desirable selections to justify the price.
You'd never know they existed, but eMusic is already offering unlimited mp3 downloads of major-label albums for $10/month.
I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.
The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.
I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.
It's definitely worth checking out.
Palm Advantage 8: Third Party Applications
Ah, the stuff that's actually interesting. Genuine word processing, spreadsheets, interactive programs. Much more useful, but still limited by the screen size and interface.
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of the third-party apps. When I purchased mine, the Palm Vx (8 MB) still cost considerably more than the Palm V (2 MB). I only thought of it as being a planner, so I hestitated to spend the extra money on memory I thought I'd never use.
Well, those extra 6 MB are full of bus schedules, maps, a checkbook register, an email client (to compose emails for sending later), and more. The Palm makes a surprisingly good eBook reader (don't knock it until you try it), so I always have some reading handy. I also have stopped carrying a watch since I bought the Palm.
That's a lot of other things (watch, book, check register, maps, bus schedules) I don't have to carry and keep track of. Plus, since they're on a handheld computer, they do have more features than their paper counterparts. For example, the check register reconciles with statements in seconds, as opposed to the old fashioned pencil, calculator and paper method which can take quite a long time if you've made a mistake somewhere.
I also have used it to load up applications for short-term needs, such as a loan amortization app that came in quite handy while car shopping.
It's not for everyone. I know several people who have Palms gathering dust in the bottoms of desk drawers. I, for one, have found it very useful, though.
s/Tech Journalism/Business Journalism/g
I hate to use the "s-word," as an old boss of mine used to call it, but it depends on whether there are synergies between the two companies.
Clearly Palm thinks the sum will be greater than the parts. I wonder if this telegraphs a change in strategy to diversify away from just handheld organizers and wireless communications.
I can't help but wonder, though, whether it's the cradles themselves zapping MOBO's, or whether it's customer misuse
Misuse is probably too strong a word.
I remember buying a cheap mechanical keyboard/monitor switch for some ALR 386 server boxes (this was some time ago, obviously). I found out the hard way that the switchbox was able to generate a sufficient static charge to blow out the keyboard port.
This didn't cost me a motherboard; the ALR motherboards incorporated a fusible link in the keyboard circuit, which absorbed the static charge and blew. It took a soldering iron to fix it, but once this fuse was replaced, the mobo worked fine once again.
As I recall, ALR fixed it under warranty.
Was I at fault for using the cheapo switchbox? Probably (I bought a better one thereafter). Was it "abuse"? Probably not. Had ALR denied me warranty coverage on these grounds, I would have been pretty pissed.
Should other mobo manufacturers be blamed for not similarly insulating their serial ports? Probably. Should the switchbox manufacturer have been expected to fix their design? At the price I paid, probably not. Should I have sued either ALR or the switch manufacturer. Good God, no.
I think radio right now is the best it's ever been.
You've got to be kidding.
Maybe the number of "formats" has increased, but that just means the recording and radio industries have sliced and diced the same ol' factory-produced, crappy pop pablum into new categories.
How many of those radio stations you hear on your commute have more than a few dozen songs in their playlists? How many deejays even get to pick their own playlists? How many of the songs being aired were recorded by local bands?
And you call the proliferation of shrieking talk radio garbage an improvement?
And NPR isn't any better. In the market where I live (Washington DC), the non-commercial end of the dial has been completely taken over by "public affairs," your industry's euphemism for hours of self-important blowhards verbally circle-jerking. Jazz, blues, bluegrass and classical are down to just a few hours a week, and even then, it's predictable, safe and dull.
I understand you're drawing a paycheck from the radio industry, but that doesn't mean you need to kid yourself about what you're doing.
The fact is, broadcasters, recording companies and unions have conspired to suck all the oxygen out of the air for any music that in any way challenges its listeners.
You can't argue that the increased concentration of power in the music and broadcasting industries has not been correlated with a decline in music quality. Yes, everyone has different tastes, but look back 60 years. Just as today, most popular music was sugary, dull and predictable. But popular music also included under its umbrella truly classic works by bands like Ellington's, Basie's, Goodman's, Lunceford's and Shaw's. Three hundred years from now, people will still be awed by "Cottontail" and "Lester Leaps In." What popular music recorded in the last decade can you say that about?"
We can only pray that whatever results from the technological, legal and regulatory wrangling over Napster will give artists more opportunities to be heard and consumers more choices. I can't say I'm optimistic.
If Bill Schneider found it confusing, well, that's just further proof that any intelligent person should have no problem figuring it out.
This sort of kiss MIRCOS~1's argument that Windows's security features are more robust than Unices'/Linux's because the source code is proprietary.
If Sun is smart, they'll maximize their investment in Cobalt by maintaining -- and expanding -- the Cobalt brand name for low-end appliances.
When you think of Sun, you hardly think of bargains. But that can be an asset. Some people are willing to pay more for the Sun brand name, no matter what technology is inside. Likewise, others will assume Cobalt's a good value even before they compare prices. It's the best of both worlds that Proctor & Gamble enjoys by selling both Tide and Gain.
Sun should follow in the footsteps of Alfred P. Sloan by preserving the Sun brand name as their "Cadillac," and establishing Cobalt as their "Chevrolet."
Many contracts for natural gas in the Northeast U.S. specify only a limited supply--if you exceed that you have to pay considerable surcharges--it may be cheaper just to buy electricity for the added load.
With deregulation, many of us now have a choice of gas suppliers (paying the former monopoly only for distribution). The alternative suppliers' rates are not regulated (there are no "tarriffs" to use telco jargon), so these kinds of pricing constraints are on the way out in many cases.
And any pricing comparisons need to account for seasonal fluctuations. The typical consumer uses the most electricity in the summer when it's most expensive, and the most gas in the winter when that fuel is most expensive. There potentially could be a large benefit from replacing expensive summer electricity with cheap summer gas.
It just makes no sense to impose geographic only ordering to the web. The web isn't about geography, it's about ideas, and increasingly, marketing and mindshare.
.us TLD does not "impose geographic-only ordering to the Web," because changing one TLD does not change the nature of the whole Net.
A hardware store isn't about ideas. A barbershop isn't about ideas. Just because you don't have a need for geographic specificity doesn't mean no one else does, either.
Giving geographic order to the
Those who don't want geographic specificity have a more-or-less sensible way to register a domain name now. Why not create namespace for those who do desire geographic specificity?
To paraphrase you, the Web isn't about imposing one paradigm on everyone, it's about creating multiple paradigms for us all to choose from.
I agree that geographical specificity is good. One advantage is that it could get us out of the morass of trademark lawsuits.
.us TLD -- and serious about allowing small businesses equal access to public resources -- then Congress should treat .us domains like trademarks: They would be specific to a certain line of business in a certain geographical area.
If Uncle Sam is serious about making better use of the
The burden would be on those registering domains to check trademark registrations and local DBA records to determine whether they were, for example, the only "Ford Plumbing" in their state. If so, they could have ford.plumbing.state.us. If there were other Ford Plumbings in the state but not their city, they'd register ford.plumbing.city.state.us.
This system would only work if Congress gave Ford Plumbing protection from FoMoCo's rabid attorneys.
If Intel is looking for reasons not to let millions of defective products into customers' hands, they need look no farther than Firestone's example.
>Actually, its in Hampton, VA
There is a Langley Air Force Base down there.
... must go better together than most folks want to admit. This site is seriously Slashdotted at the moment.
> A DSL provider who actually delivers
Might as well ask for a car that gets 5000 mpg.