And as it stands, Netflix doesn't censor movies like Blockbuster does, so I've been re-watching many of my favorite movies that I had watched during my Blockbuster days -- to see the parts that I've been missing.
While I've heard a lot of people say BB censors, beyond not carrying certain movies (such as NC17) I've never seen any hard evidence that they force studios to edit films prior to carrying them.
Now, studios may edit a movie with an eye towards will WalMart/BB et al carry it; but that's noting new - they've worried about what rating a movie will get before videotape.
I'd be curious to her about verified examples of BB editing a film before carrying it; not just refusing to carry a certain rated film or carrying an edited version that was released to general sales and not BB specific.
but we don't shoot them to stop them running. We chase, and if we fail to catch them then we fail to catch them. We don't just open fire when it looks like they're getting away.
This is the same principle - the bar is lower.
The can choose whatever tools, of those which are appropriate in general, they feel most appropriate for this situation. Arresting a child to perform a search for a phone used in the classroom was not in the category "appropriate in general". But I don't think I'm going to convince you of that.
That's because your shooting example is a bit ridiculous in comparison to this case. A more reasonable comparison is where you are stopped for having a burnt out tail light or some other minor traffic violation and the cop cites you. You can fix it within some time limit and the charge is dropped. The cop asks you to sign the ticket, which means you agree to appear on the date specified in court or resolve the ticket prior to that date. You refuse, despite the cop's trying to convince you to sign. You are then arrested. In that case, your actions escalated a minor event into something more serious; the cops actions, however, are not unreasonable in light of all that occurred.
She was not arrested, IMHO, for having the cellphone. The issue started with the cell phone, but when she refused to hand it over and it was apparent she was hiding something , which she insisted was not a cell phone. Her actions gave the police probable cause for a search. At that point, they need to follow procedure to ensure the search would hold up in court if she had something illegal.
She thought she could get away with something and chose to escalate the situation in hopes the other side would back down. It really was her choices that resulted in the arrest.
Yes, I doubt we will agree on the reasonableness of the action since we don't agree on what caused her to be arrested.
She's not the person in authority - she didn't escalate anything. Escalation of a situation can ONLY be performed by the person in authority.
Every time that you go to escalate the situation you have to ask yourself: "is achieving X outcome worth doing this".They still have access to detentions, they still have access to suspensions, they'll just have to use more of them until they get what they want. If that doesn't achieve what they want, they'll just have to accept that they won't achieve what they want.
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Either side can escalate a situation. The student chose to act in a manner that worsened the situation, and paid the price for her actions.
They can chose whatever tools that they feel appropriate. They do not have to "accept that they won't achieve what they want." If one thing doesn't work you can try something else; and in this case the search was not inappropriate, and if she had to be arrested to searched then that's her bad luck. She could have turned over the phone at anytime prior to her arrest but chose not to.
It's the same reason that we don't shoot fleeing shoplifters.
No, but if they don't stop when asked we do chase and hold them. Not an unreasonable response, and I do not think the schools response was unreasonable either.
Yeah, my father was in the Navy and had this kind of thing happen all the time. Once even the other way around, where DFAS paid much less than normal and "caught up" with next month's payment while my parents were scrambling around going WTF.
I hear of this kind of thing much less frequently nowadays though. I joined myself and haven't had problems, although our Chief of the Boat managed to run afoul of a DFAS screwup.
The nice thing about the old days with DK's was you could go to disbursing and talk to the person handling your pay. I made more than one trip down when one on my guy's pay got screwed up. Generally it was an x-Gold crew DK; cause the gold crew busted it and the blue crew fixed it.
And when a large group of us applied for unemployment, we got more than we should have.
After a few months, we all got a letter from the unemployment office wanting the extra money back. Good luck with that, except I still owe them money and the debt never goes away.
If I ever get laid off again, I can't draw a penny until the original amount is paid off out of what I will draw if I end up unemployed again.
That's because it is the government. When I worked for Uncle Sam, if he overpaid you he simply took it out of the next check you got. OTOH, if he underpaid you you also got it on the next check with no hassles.
Private industry is a bit different. years ago I got one of those letters from a previous employer. I eventually got around to sending them a check. A few months letter I got a check from them saying they had underpaid me. Go figure...
MS, OTHO, may be doing this not so much as to collect the money but to avoid lawsuits. If someone discovered they used different ways to calculate severance for the same agreements they could wind up in court. This way, they can at least say "We messed up, but once we found out we tried to fix it." Even if the employees don't pay it back and MS doesn't go after them at least they can show thwy tried; and fixed underpayments as well.
This of course is conjecture on my part; but my experience is it is not uncommon for companies to mess up severance payments. Even when I left Uncle Sam it took several months for me to get a "final" check that zeroed me out.
The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap;
Online distribution is already widespread in other countries, and there doesn't seem to be a move towards "bandwidth" (volume) caps. Instead, providers actually seem to be competing for offering better QoS for streaming and downloading.
The only volume caps companies seem to be implementing are caps on the top 0.1% of users, people who really use many orders of magnitude more volume per month than the median user. That seems reasonable and shouldn't be a problem for Netflix.
While a 150GB (ATT's trial cap) or 250GB (Comcast) currently applies to only a handful of users; as streaming and downloading become more popular more and more users will hit the caps. 150GB is less than 20 HD movies, for example. At $1/GB above the cap, a movie can run anywhere from a couple to eight dollars just to view it.
I see providers in the US using caps to increase their revenue; which means people will use less content and things such as NetFlix's video download service will suffer as a result. I'm not convinced providers will chose to compete on QoS; especially since they already are in the video on demand business in most cases. It's a perfect way to increase revenue and hurt your competitor in one fell swoop.
By moving to caps now they already have the precedent set for when usage starts climbing; and can make the argument that they should not be forced to subsidize NetFlix or anyone else's business model by upping capacity.
I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue...
That wasn't my point at all. My father knew that my ISP offered higher monthly limits for more cash. He also knew how much monthly usage he signed up for, and the rate for exceeding that usage.
My point is that he didn't say "Oh, those damn web sites, why don't they make everything smaller so it downloads quicker?" He said "All right, family. If you want to spend more time on the Internet, you have to fork out the cash to do so." He didn't focus on the ISP or the content. He focused on the terms of the service agreement that he entered into.
Did it limit our usage of New Media? Yes. I don't see how you can point the finger at the content providers, though.
Which is why I say that this is ultimately a content provider, not ISP, issue even though ISP's are the ones who will cap usage. If it slows the adoption of the services then the content providers will either have to find ways to either:
Lessen the size of downloads; which for videos would result in some degradation of the quality; or,
find a way to pay providers for the extra bandwidth.
Why do I say pay providers rather than get users to pay for excess usage? Let's use Comcast's announced 250GB cap as an example. That's about 30HD movies. Other services are talking much lower caps, from 5 - 40 GB - which isn't enough to watch many movies, even at DVD quality. While none have announced tiered pricing; Comcast was rumored to want $15 for each extra 10GB. That's roughly an extra $11 per HD movies; a price I doubt most people would pay.
Get one bill with unexpected overage charges and I bet most consumers respond by cutting back on usage; not looking for a higher tier usage rate.
In the end, the ISP's have the content providers over a barrel since they control the pipe and people are likely to look to the content provider as the way to control usage rather than the ISP. While they may not say "make the d/l's smaller," the end result is less usage and business challenges for providers, not ISPs.
So, in the end, the content providers are the ones who will suffer from caps not the ISP.
Regards my provider - as far as I can tell my service is tiered by speed, not usage but I probably don't get above a few GB/month usage.
I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue.
I really doubt this. Back when I was using dial-up at my parents house (in 1997), my computer-illiterate father didn't blame our ISP when they charged us extra for going over our hourly limit... he blamed the folks in the house who pushed us over said limit.
I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue and thus limit the use and or adoption of high bandwidth using services such as videos. We currently have pretty much unlimited usage for a flat rate; but that's really because most users don't use a lot of bandwidth. I think ISP's will need to be clearer about caps and limits and the pricing of added use; but I think people will look at the pricing and decided movies are not worth an extra XX dollars and let NetFlix try to sort out the model. That's why I say it's a content provider, not ISP issue.
Caps actually work in ISP's favor if they are also in the video business since they can stream video over their line without having the customer worry about internet usage; that's why I see a NetFlix / cable company hookup a more viable business model.
Also, your ISP has put a price tag on add'l bandwidth? Who's your provider?
It's a major provider; right now pricing is tiered by speed; not use although there is probably a high use clause in my service agreement (I mainly do email so it's not an issue for me).
Net neutrality is about treating all of the bytes and protocols the same. Caps and pay-per-use are different animals entirely.
And personally, I think ISPs should be able to shape traffic so that video streaming and VIOP have priority over email and http, which in turn is handled before unanttended background crap like torrents are delivered.
Of course, if they can shape traffic (I'm no saying that's good or bad) then they can shape "preferred providers" preferentially; degrading service for companies that don't kick in some cash
Now, if they could shape classes of traffic such as VOIP / video but had to do it on a non-preferential basis with the class then I'd say that is an idea worth exploring.
Why would I be mad at Netflix because my ISP set too low bandwidth limits?
I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue. At any rate; they'll be faced with "pay an additional $25/month for higher caps" (about what it is in my area) or forgo NetFlix d/ls. My guess how that will play out?
The real challenge is how do you give users the flexibility to watch multiple movies at the same time or watch without an active internet connection?
BB advantage is that not only do you get videos by mail but you can return at stores for an instore rental plus 2x month I get free game/video rental coupons. As a result, BB is a better deal since I get about 2x the DVDs at a time, plus a large mail back catalog of stuff not in the store. As a result, I get the latest releases from the B&M and the older stuff by mail. BB has so far leveraged the online/ B&M model quite well with something NetFlix can't match. So for only a few bucks more than NetFlix I get a better deal.
The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap; and they are likely to be mad at NetFlix, not their ISP. As a result, I see pressure form larger ISPs, at least, to pressure NetFlix in paying for bandwidth or working out a revenue split where NetFlix is bundled with the service.
Of course, once WalMart buys NetFlix and RedBox all bets are off for BB. You read it here first.
there can be an upside to this, if they record the video:
1. Somebody decides to payback a political enemy by releasing a video in the company of someone who is not their partner... (This is Chicago, after all)
2. The video is used in a case where the city is sued
The list could go on and on. Remember, every sword is dual edged.
Not to start a flame war or a vocal-minority thing here, but am I alone in having virtually no issues at all with iPhone's ActiveSync capability? I've been using it for work email since day one and haven't had a single issue.
What issues have you had?
For me, the issue is not what works (email works fine) but what was left out - tasks, meeting invite creation capability; and how the iPhone handles some things such as email sorting. In addition, for some odd reason some of my multi-day all day events don't show up on my iPhone.
From an exchange usability perspective, as someone who wants his phone to handle all the exchange tasks I do on a laptop; the iPhone is no where near as good as my Treo 700p or w.
Cutting costs in software means 1 or more of the following:
Fewer flashy effects.
Shorter game.
Less polished gameplay.
Less testing. (And therefore more bugs.)
Less media hype.
There are probably more ways yet, but they all (except the last) boil down to 1 thing: The game won't be as good. The last one means they'll sell less copies and has probably already been balanced anyhow.
You left out a key one:
Pay the programmers, artists, and writers et. al. less
Go low enough and you accomplish your cost cutting recommendations as well.
Absolutely true. I personally know a restaurant owner in San Francisco that complains about these suggestive calls.
Apparently the Better Business Bureau operates the same way, but with more obfuscation.
Membership in the BBB allows your company to 'respond' to customer complaints, which means that your company no longer has a nasty "complaints unresponded" number. You don't actually have to do anything about the complaints; you just have to respond, which requires member$hip.
MBAs are wrecking our society.
I've used the BBB to resolve complaints with companies; in all cases the companies actually responded, worked out a solution I found acceptable. At that point the complaint was listed as resolved. BBB gives an option to list it as unresolved if you don't like the response; I've never used that so I can't comment on that process' effectiveness. Oh wait, this is/....
As an aside, it is possible for a diluted mark to lose its protected status (such as with Bayer's "Aspirin" analgesic).
Actually, Bayer lost Aspirin as a trademark in the US and the other victors as a result of WWI reparations. They still have the trademark in a number of other countries. I think they also lost the trademark to Heroin as part of the war reparations.
You are right about dilution resulting an a loss of rights to a mark; which is why companies go to great lengths to protect them.
'making an example' is arbitrary. It is by definition NOT consistent. The whole point of making an example is to punish someone more harshly than you usually would as a demonstration of the extent of your power to try and scare everyone else straight. Being the first person to fall under a new policy of harsher punishment sucks, but that's not the same as having been made an example of. You make an example of someone by giving them a kicking, and then going back to the more lenient punishments used before.
Except that it looks arbitrary (becasue it is), it looks unjust (because it is), and ultimately undermines authority by making the teacher look not like the bringer of order, but like the schoolyard bully - lashing out when it suits them.
I guess we just have different definitions of "making an example of." What happened to her was clearly within the realm of conceivable consequences of her actions and didn't, IMHO, drop to the level you describe.
At each point in the incident where she could have ended it she chose to escalate it. This wasn't "You have a cell phone and are texting, you are under arrest..." but a series of increasingly bad decisions and actions on her part that lead to her eventual arrest.
From the report it does not sound like a teacher arbitrarily lashing out.
Having read the warrant I'd say the arrest was not unreasonable. Her lying and attempting to hide the phone left the officer no choice but to arrest her to be able to search her; had she given up the phone at the start she probably would not have been arrested.
The warrant, IMHO, contained enough information to, err, warrant an arrest; independent of other behaviors on her part.
There's no warrant, only a police report. Why was a search necessary? Obviously, they wanted to do one, but what legal justification was there for one? Having a phone isn't, in itself, illegal (or they could have arrested her for that, instead of that old catch-all of "disorderly conduct"). What crime had she committed to justify an arrest? You're probably right that if she'd given up the phone at the start there would have been no arrest; that only demonstrates that she'd committed no crime and the arrest was a pretext for a warrantless search and seizure.
Yea, it's an arrest report but I couldn't resist the pun.
Once it became clear that she was trying to hide something I do not think it was unreasonable to search her. She claimed not to have a phone yet was hiding something. It could have been a weapon, drugs, other illegal items; all of which I think gives probable cause for a search.
Since disorderly conduct is a catch all often used when someone is disruptive, refuses to obey a police officer's order but is not a serious threat; I'm not surprised that she was charged with that. Having a cell phone is not illegal and she should have copped to that up front and none of the subsequent things would have happened. Instead, she chose to escalate the situation to the point that she was arrested.
I doubt the cop had any great desire to arrest her; he'd probably just as soon taken the phone and have the incident end there. She pushed to the point where he decided to end it with an arrest; for all I know his department may require an arrest before searching a student. I'd bet he'd had even not arrested her after he told her he was if she had coughed up the phone at that point. She tried bluffing when the other side held all the cards; not a smart move.
Overall, I think her conduct resulted in her arrest; and that arresting her was not unreasonable.
My guess is the student acted in a manner that drove the teacher to make an example out of her;
Congratulations, the teacher is now automatically in the wrong. Way to undermine your own argument.
How so? Teachers have latitude in deciding how to react to a situation; at some point the student goes to far and is punished. That sends the message that the teacher will remain in control of the class and not tolerate certain behaviors. "Making an example" is an effective way to establish one's authority, and there is nothing wrong with that. My experience is once you establish you are willing to enforce the rules and do so consistently you have far fewer problems. Most people are smart enough to learn from an example; and actually appreciate and respect someone who consistently enforces a reasonable set of rules. Conversely, arbitrary enforcement leads to confusion and a loss of respect for leadership.
No more common than someone reporting one side of the story to bolster their case while making the otehr side look bad.
In this case, the only side of the story we have is that of the police officer. Yet some people are basing their opinion that the arrest was justified on the assumption of additional bad behavior on the part of the arrestee.
Having read the warrant I'd say the arrest was not unreasonable. Her lying and attempting to hide the phone left the officer no choice but to arrest her to be able to search her; had she given up the phone at the start she probably would not have been arrested.
The warrant, IMHO, contained enough information to, err, warrant an arrest; independent of other behaviors on her part.
What the kid did was annoying, disorderly and immature; no argument about that.
What the school and police did was irresponsible and a complete waste of public resources.
This was not a police matter. Very few things in a school are police matters. In this case, the teacher failed to properly supervise and discipline a student under their direct responsibility. Suspend/detend the kid, sure, but cops ? Did someone get beat/stabbed/shot/raped ? No ? Then no cops.
Idiot teachers like this are the leading reason why today's kids are such utter failures. They take after the moronic role models they're given.
"School resource officer" is what a school cop is called, in our district it's a local sheriff's deputy. While I would like a school to be able to work without one, the reality is in today's environment involving them is the best way for a teacher to protect them selves and avoid a lawsuit.
Teachers in our district have been told if they take a phone during class and it gets lost they have to pay for it. Guess who takes the phone? The school cop. that way, it's on the county.
Of course, most teachers prefer not to have to do that; and will sometimes take different approaches. For example, if its an athlete causing trouble a word to teh coach results in the entire team being punished; that's usually enough to stop an future problems.
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And as it stands, Netflix doesn't censor movies like Blockbuster does, so I've been re-watching many of my favorite movies that I had watched during my Blockbuster days -- to see the parts that I've been missing.
While I've heard a lot of people say BB censors, beyond not carrying certain movies (such as NC17) I've never seen any hard evidence that they force studios to edit films prior to carrying them.
Now, studios may edit a movie with an eye towards will WalMart/BB et al carry it; but that's noting new - they've worried about what rating a movie will get before videotape.
I'd be curious to her about verified examples of BB editing a film before carrying it; not just refusing to carry a certain rated film or carrying an edited version that was released to general sales and not BB specific.
but we don't shoot them to stop them running. We chase, and if we fail to catch them then we fail to catch them. We don't just open fire when it looks like they're getting away. This is the same principle - the bar is lower.
The can choose whatever tools, of those which are appropriate in general, they feel most appropriate for this situation. Arresting a child to perform a search for a phone used in the classroom was not in the category "appropriate in general". But I don't think I'm going to convince you of that.
That's because your shooting example is a bit ridiculous in comparison to this case. A more reasonable comparison is where you are stopped for having a burnt out tail light or some other minor traffic violation and the cop cites you. You can fix it within some time limit and the charge is dropped. The cop asks you to sign the ticket, which means you agree to appear on the date specified in court or resolve the ticket prior to that date. You refuse, despite the cop's trying to convince you to sign. You are then arrested. In that case, your actions escalated a minor event into something more serious; the cops actions, however, are not unreasonable in light of all that occurred.
She was not arrested, IMHO, for having the cellphone. The issue started with the cell phone, but when she refused to hand it over and it was apparent she was hiding something , which she insisted was not a cell phone. Her actions gave the police probable cause for a search. At that point, they need to follow procedure to ensure the search would hold up in court if she had something illegal.
She thought she could get away with something and chose to escalate the situation in hopes the other side would back down. It really was her choices that resulted in the arrest.
Yes, I doubt we will agree on the reasonableness of the action since we don't agree on what caused her to be arrested.
She's not the person in authority - she didn't escalate anything. Escalation of a situation can ONLY be performed by the person in authority.
Every time that you go to escalate the situation you have to ask yourself: "is achieving X outcome worth doing this".They still have access to detentions, they still have access to suspensions, they'll just have to use more of them until they get what they want. If that doesn't achieve what they want, they'll just have to accept that they won't achieve what they want.
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Either side can escalate a situation. The student chose to act in a manner that worsened the situation, and paid the price for her actions.
They can chose whatever tools that they feel appropriate. They do not have to "accept that they won't achieve what they want." If one thing doesn't work you can try something else; and in this case the search was not inappropriate, and if she had to be arrested to searched then that's her bad luck. She could have turned over the phone at anytime prior to her arrest but chose not to.
It's the same reason that we don't shoot fleeing shoplifters.
No, but if they don't stop when asked we do chase and hold them. Not an unreasonable response, and I do not think the schools response was unreasonable either.
Oh boy. Talk about a broken window fallacy.
The sad thing is, after the San Diego fires, politicians were saying at least the rebuilding will stimulate the economy and create jobs.
Yeah, my father was in the Navy and had this kind of thing happen all the time. Once even the other way around, where DFAS paid much less than normal and "caught up" with next month's payment while my parents were scrambling around going WTF.
I hear of this kind of thing much less frequently nowadays though. I joined myself and haven't had problems, although our Chief of the Boat managed to run afoul of a DFAS screwup.
The nice thing about the old days with DK's was you could go to disbursing and talk to the person handling your pay. I made more than one trip down when one on my guy's pay got screwed up. Generally it was an x-Gold crew DK; cause the gold crew busted it and the blue crew fixed it.
And when a large group of us applied for unemployment, we got more than we should have.
After a few months, we all got a letter from the unemployment office wanting the extra money back. Good luck with that, except I still owe them money and the debt never goes away.
If I ever get laid off again, I can't draw a penny until the original amount is paid off out of what I will draw if I end up unemployed again.
That's because it is the government. When I worked for Uncle Sam, if he overpaid you he simply took it out of the next check you got. OTOH, if he underpaid you you also got it on the next check with no hassles.
Private industry is a bit different. years ago I got one of those letters from a previous employer. I eventually got around to sending them a check. A few months letter I got a check from them saying they had underpaid me. Go figure...
MS, OTHO, may be doing this not so much as to collect the money but to avoid lawsuits. If someone discovered they used different ways to calculate severance for the same agreements they could wind up in court. This way, they can at least say "We messed up, but once we found out we tried to fix it." Even if the employees don't pay it back and MS doesn't go after them at least they can show thwy tried; and fixed underpayments as well.
This of course is conjecture on my part; but my experience is it is not uncommon for companies to mess up severance payments. Even when I left Uncle Sam it took several months for me to get a "final" check that zeroed me out.
The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap;
Online distribution is already widespread in other countries, and there doesn't seem to be a move towards "bandwidth" (volume) caps. Instead, providers actually seem to be competing for offering better QoS for streaming and downloading.
The only volume caps companies seem to be implementing are caps on the top 0.1% of users, people who really use many orders of magnitude more volume per month than the median user. That seems reasonable and shouldn't be a problem for Netflix.
While a 150GB (ATT's trial cap) or 250GB (Comcast) currently applies to only a handful of users; as streaming and downloading become more popular more and more users will hit the caps. 150GB is less than 20 HD movies, for example. At $1/GB above the cap, a movie can run anywhere from a couple to eight dollars just to view it.
I see providers in the US using caps to increase their revenue; which means people will use less content and things such as NetFlix's video download service will suffer as a result. I'm not convinced providers will chose to compete on QoS; especially since they already are in the video on demand business in most cases. It's a perfect way to increase revenue and hurt your competitor in one fell swoop.
By moving to caps now they already have the precedent set for when usage starts climbing; and can make the argument that they should not be forced to subsidize NetFlix or anyone else's business model by upping capacity.
I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue...
That wasn't my point at all. My father knew that my ISP offered higher monthly limits for more cash. He also knew how much monthly usage he signed up for, and the rate for exceeding that usage. My point is that he didn't say "Oh, those damn web sites, why don't they make everything smaller so it downloads quicker?" He said "All right, family. If you want to spend more time on the Internet, you have to fork out the cash to do so." He didn't focus on the ISP or the content. He focused on the terms of the service agreement that he entered into. Did it limit our usage of New Media? Yes. I don't see how you can point the finger at the content providers, though.
Which is why I say that this is ultimately a content provider, not ISP, issue even though ISP's are the ones who will cap usage. If it slows the adoption of the services then the content providers will either have to find ways to either:
Lessen the size of downloads; which for videos would result in some degradation of the quality; or,
find a way to pay providers for the extra bandwidth.
Why do I say pay providers rather than get users to pay for excess usage? Let's use Comcast's announced 250GB cap as an example. That's about 30HD movies. Other services are talking much lower caps, from 5 - 40 GB - which isn't enough to watch many movies, even at DVD quality. While none have announced tiered pricing; Comcast was rumored to want $15 for each extra 10GB. That's roughly an extra $11 per HD movies; a price I doubt most people would pay.
Get one bill with unexpected overage charges and I bet most consumers respond by cutting back on usage; not looking for a higher tier usage rate.
In the end, the ISP's have the content providers over a barrel since they control the pipe and people are likely to look to the content provider as the way to control usage rather than the ISP. While they may not say "make the d/l's smaller," the end result is less usage and business challenges for providers, not ISPs.
So, in the end, the content providers are the ones who will suffer from caps not the ISP.
Regards my provider - as far as I can tell my service is tiered by speed, not usage but I probably don't get above a few GB/month usage.
I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue.
I really doubt this. Back when I was using dial-up at my parents house (in 1997), my computer-illiterate father didn't blame our ISP when they charged us extra for going over our hourly limit... he blamed the folks in the house who pushed us over said limit.
I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue and thus limit the use and or adoption of high bandwidth using services such as videos. We currently have pretty much unlimited usage for a flat rate; but that's really because most users don't use a lot of bandwidth. I think ISP's will need to be clearer about caps and limits and the pricing of added use; but I think people will look at the pricing and decided movies are not worth an extra XX dollars and let NetFlix try to sort out the model. That's why I say it's a content provider, not ISP issue.
Caps actually work in ISP's favor if they are also in the video business since they can stream video over their line without having the customer worry about internet usage; that's why I see a NetFlix / cable company hookup a more viable business model.
Also, your ISP has put a price tag on add'l bandwidth? Who's your provider?
It's a major provider; right now pricing is tiered by speed; not use although there is probably a high use clause in my service agreement (I mainly do email so it's not an issue for me).
Net neutrality is about treating all of the bytes and protocols the same. Caps and pay-per-use are different animals entirely.
And personally, I think ISPs should be able to shape traffic so that video streaming and VIOP have priority over email and http, which in turn is handled before unanttended background crap like torrents are delivered.
Of course, if they can shape traffic (I'm no saying that's good or bad) then they can shape "preferred providers" preferentially; degrading service for companies that don't kick in some cash
Now, if they could shape classes of traffic such as VOIP / video but had to do it on a non-preferential basis with the class then I'd say that is an idea worth exploring.
Why would I be mad at Netflix because my ISP set too low bandwidth limits?
I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue. At any rate; they'll be faced with "pay an additional $25/month for higher caps" (about what it is in my area) or forgo NetFlix d/ls. My guess how that will play out?
If Chicago wants to use cameras to reduce crime, maybe they should mount them in the government offices instead of on street corners.
Or at least the elected representatives' offices
The real challenge is how do you give users the flexibility to watch multiple movies at the same time or watch without an active internet connection?
BB advantage is that not only do you get videos by mail but you can return at stores for an instore rental plus 2x month I get free game/video rental coupons. As a result, BB is a better deal since I get about 2x the DVDs at a time, plus a large mail back catalog of stuff not in the store. As a result, I get the latest releases from the B&M and the older stuff by mail. BB has so far leveraged the online/ B&M model quite well with something NetFlix can't match. So for only a few bucks more than NetFlix I get a better deal.
The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap; and they are likely to be mad at NetFlix, not their ISP. As a result, I see pressure form larger ISPs, at least, to pressure NetFlix in paying for bandwidth or working out a revenue split where NetFlix is bundled with the service.
Of course, once WalMart buys NetFlix and RedBox all bets are off for BB. You read it here first.
there can be an upside to this, if they record the video:
1. Somebody decides to payback a political enemy by releasing a video in the company of someone who is not their partner... (This is Chicago, after all)
2. The video is used in a case where the city is sued
The list could go on and on. Remember, every sword is dual edged.
Not to start a flame war or a vocal-minority thing here, but am I alone in having virtually no issues at all with iPhone's ActiveSync capability? I've been using it for work email since day one and haven't had a single issue. What issues have you had?
For me, the issue is not what works (email works fine) but what was left out - tasks, meeting invite creation capability; and how the iPhone handles some things such as email sorting. In addition, for some odd reason some of my multi-day all day events don't show up on my iPhone.
From an exchange usability perspective, as someone who wants his phone to handle all the exchange tasks I do on a laptop; the iPhone is no where near as good as my Treo 700p or w.
Cutting costs in software means 1 or more of the following:
Fewer flashy effects. Shorter game. Less polished gameplay. Less testing. (And therefore more bugs.) Less media hype.
There are probably more ways yet, but they all (except the last) boil down to 1 thing: The game won't be as good. The last one means they'll sell less copies and has probably already been balanced anyhow.
You left out a key one:
Pay the programmers, artists, and writers et. al. less
Go low enough and you accomplish your cost cutting recommendations as well.
Demand goes up as cost goes down; somewhere there is a profit maximizing point to seek.
Next up, Valve announces experiments that show water is wet.
Apparently the Better Business Bureau operates the same way, but with more obfuscation.
Membership in the BBB allows your company to 'respond' to customer complaints, which means that your company no longer has a nasty "complaints unresponded" number. You don't actually have to do anything about the complaints; you just have to respond, which requires member$hip.
MBAs are wrecking our society.
I've used the BBB to resolve complaints with companies; in all cases the companies actually responded, worked out a solution I found acceptable. At that point the complaint was listed as resolved. BBB gives an option to list it as unresolved if you don't like the response; I've never used that so I can't comment on that process' effectiveness. Oh wait, this is /. ...
As an aside, it is possible for a diluted mark to lose its protected status (such as with Bayer's "Aspirin" analgesic).
Bayer lost Aspirin because the Germans lost WWII.
Not because they allowed dilution.
Uhh, that'd be WWI - the first act of the play.
As an aside, it is possible for a diluted mark to lose its protected status (such as with Bayer's "Aspirin" analgesic).
Actually, Bayer lost Aspirin as a trademark in the US and the other victors as a result of WWI reparations. They still have the trademark in a number of other countries. I think they also lost the trademark to Heroin as part of the war reparations.
You are right about dilution resulting an a loss of rights to a mark; which is why companies go to great lengths to protect them.
'making an example' is arbitrary. It is by definition NOT consistent. The whole point of making an example is to punish someone more harshly than you usually would as a demonstration of the extent of your power to try and scare everyone else straight. Being the first person to fall under a new policy of harsher punishment sucks, but that's not the same as having been made an example of. You make an example of someone by giving them a kicking, and then going back to the more lenient punishments used before. Except that it looks arbitrary (becasue it is), it looks unjust (because it is), and ultimately undermines authority by making the teacher look not like the bringer of order, but like the schoolyard bully - lashing out when it suits them.
I guess we just have different definitions of "making an example of." What happened to her was clearly within the realm of conceivable consequences of her actions and didn't, IMHO, drop to the level you describe.
At each point in the incident where she could have ended it she chose to escalate it. This wasn't "You have a cell phone and are texting, you are under arrest..." but a series of increasingly bad decisions and actions on her part that lead to her eventual arrest.
From the report it does not sound like a teacher arbitrarily lashing out.
There's no warrant, only a police report. Why was a search necessary? Obviously, they wanted to do one, but what legal justification was there for one? Having a phone isn't, in itself, illegal (or they could have arrested her for that, instead of that old catch-all of "disorderly conduct"). What crime had she committed to justify an arrest? You're probably right that if she'd given up the phone at the start there would have been no arrest; that only demonstrates that she'd committed no crime and the arrest was a pretext for a warrantless search and seizure.
Yea, it's an arrest report but I couldn't resist the pun.
Once it became clear that she was trying to hide something I do not think it was unreasonable to search her. She claimed not to have a phone yet was hiding something. It could have been a weapon, drugs, other illegal items; all of which I think gives probable cause for a search.
Since disorderly conduct is a catch all often used when someone is disruptive, refuses to obey a police officer's order but is not a serious threat; I'm not surprised that she was charged with that. Having a cell phone is not illegal and she should have copped to that up front and none of the subsequent things would have happened. Instead, she chose to escalate the situation to the point that she was arrested.
I doubt the cop had any great desire to arrest her; he'd probably just as soon taken the phone and have the incident end there. She pushed to the point where he decided to end it with an arrest; for all I know his department may require an arrest before searching a student. I'd bet he'd had even not arrested her after he told her he was if she had coughed up the phone at that point. She tried bluffing when the other side held all the cards; not a smart move.
Overall, I think her conduct resulted in her arrest; and that arresting her was not unreasonable.
Congratulations, the teacher is now automatically in the wrong. Way to undermine your own argument.
How so? Teachers have latitude in deciding how to react to a situation; at some point the student goes to far and is punished. That sends the message that the teacher will remain in control of the class and not tolerate certain behaviors. "Making an example" is an effective way to establish one's authority, and there is nothing wrong with that. My experience is once you establish you are willing to enforce the rules and do so consistently you have far fewer problems. Most people are smart enough to learn from an example; and actually appreciate and respect someone who consistently enforces a reasonable set of rules. Conversely, arbitrary enforcement leads to confusion and a loss of respect for leadership.
In this case, the only side of the story we have is that of the police officer. Yet some people are basing their opinion that the arrest was justified on the assumption of additional bad behavior on the part of the arrestee.
Having read the warrant I'd say the arrest was not unreasonable. Her lying and attempting to hide the phone left the officer no choice but to arrest her to be able to search her; had she given up the phone at the start she probably would not have been arrested.
The warrant, IMHO, contained enough information to, err, warrant an arrest; independent of other behaviors on her part.
I will go ahead and state the obvious:
What the kid did was annoying, disorderly and immature; no argument about that.
What the school and police did was irresponsible and a complete waste of public resources.
This was not a police matter. Very few things in a school are police matters. In this case, the teacher failed to properly supervise and discipline a student under their direct responsibility. Suspend/detend the kid, sure, but cops ? Did someone get beat/stabbed/shot/raped ? No ? Then no cops.
Idiot teachers like this are the leading reason why today's kids are such utter failures. They take after the moronic role models they're given.
"School resource officer" is what a school cop is called, in our district it's a local sheriff's deputy. While I would like a school to be able to work without one, the reality is in today's environment involving them is the best way for a teacher to protect them selves and avoid a lawsuit.
Teachers in our district have been told if they take a phone during class and it gets lost they have to pay for it. Guess who takes the phone? The school cop. that way, it's on the county.
Of course, most teachers prefer not to have to do that; and will sometimes take different approaches. For example, if its an athlete causing trouble a word to teh coach results in the entire team being punished; that's usually enough to stop an future problems.