Well yes, those ring tones are a nice profit margin billion dollar industry (not exagerating!).
From what I saw, nothing in Steve's speech confirmed that you could use your music library AS A RINGTONE. He consistently had another ringtone even when music was playing. That could leave room for both iTunes music AND ringtone customization by the carrier. Same with the newer ringback capabilities.
That seems odd to me and I wonder if they won't change that before long. Given the highlighting of widget functionality and the inherently developer-friendly nature of widgets on OSX...
Also found it very strange that there was no interface to iTunes Store... I suppose you can use Safari on it to go to the Store, but your purchases would only be available after returning to your PC, dowloading and syncing?
Sounds like a great domain to forward to whitehouse.gov. I mean "hell" because of who lives there and ".com" because its clearly a commercial enterprise today...
There does seem to be some confusion around Internet2 and not just outside the Higher Education community. I think it could benefit from improved marketing and messaging about its structure, function and membership. Perhaps what the article was referring to was the RFP issued this year for The Quilt. Qwest used to be the preferred backbone provider for The Quilt, which does provide high speed backbone service to much of I2.
The results of their RFP will be officially announced May 5 according to their site.
I cannot find any evidence that the Journal in which this article appeared (International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health) is peer-reviewed. Does anyone know more about this journal?
I give this a few weeks before China figures out what Google is doing and either finds a way to block it or threatens to remove Google entirely from the Chinese web. Is Google willing to risk losing those eyeballs?
Ok so I was about to post a gut response and then I went back to RTFA and thought it through again...
Let's try the legacy Ma Bell perspective:
You make a phone call to Joe. You initiated the transaction but both you and Joe pay for access to the network. Even further, in the wireless phone world both you and Joe likely pay per minute for the call.
Now let's try a cable perspective:
You want subscribers who will pay a monthly access fee. To get them, you need the best available content. You MUST get networks such as ESPN, CNN, ABC, NBC, MTV, etc. into your content package. You don't charge ESPN for access to your "network"...
Similarly, newspapers:
You need subscribers. You pay content creators (reporters, comic authors, etc.) for the content necessary to attract and retain subscribers.
It seems the battle is which model does the data backbone (the Internet, if you will) fall into? Is it simply a network by which people and organizations can communicate with no guarantee or claims as to the quality of that content (a la the phone network) or are you selling end-subscriber access to a content service (a la cable TV or newspaper)?
I think for SBC the answer is "yes". It's both. They have end customers who want access to the Internet FOR the content that's there. They also have customers who just want a communications network for data. Here is another way to look at the power of the organizations involved:
Could a major Internet content/service provider (Google, CNN, Apple iTunes, Yahoo, etc.) approach a network provider (SBC, Comcast, AOL, etc.) and threaten to cut off those network's subscribers unless the network provider PAYS them for their content?
This would be the true coup de etat in the industry. When a single content or service source becomes so demanded by end consumers that it MUST be available on your network to keep those subscribers. I don't know that any website is yet that important... Maybe Windows Update could be, if anyone used it.:)
We all know that information wants to be free... apparently telecom lines want to be free too.
That's right! And as soon as the world realizes that food, shelter, energy and access to clean drinking water also want to be free this will be a much better world...
After that, I'll push for cars, entertainment and space travel... They want to be free too!
I agree with a lot of your thoughts. I started off (in my youth?) as more of a conspiracy theorist, but as time has moved on its become clear that almost any organization large enough (government or business) to be accused of conspiracy theories of any threat are also too disorganized at an individual level to pull them off. Instead it seems to always be well intentioned people whose actions, collectively, lead to an unfortunate and unthought-of end...
The real question is whether that end is unpredictable given the steps along the way. If it is predictable, can it be identified and exposed significantly enough and early enough to change course? One would hope that the United States has this capability through its ideals of free speech, open forums and a free press. But sometimes even those get eaten away at...
Now, with that disclaimer out... My company has deployed mobile sites, is donating thousands of radios to search, rescue and relief, has assisted in setting up shelters and donations, has given $250,000 to the American Red Cross, is matching employee contributions to the ARC (up to an additional $100,000), etc. I expect to head to the area myself soon to relieve employees working alongside public safety and other entities.
If a site can give you your forgotten password (as opposed to just resetting it for you), then don't use that site for anything you care to keep secure.
Including your password!!! I.e. - using the same password at a site like this as you use elsewhere.
I hate when I discover a site like this. I mean how do I have the time to check every site's lost password system??? I recently got this from Hertz. At their web site I had forgotten my password and it emailed it to me in cleartext! Arrghhhh....
Take away the current government protection and see what price the insurance companies which have the ability to cover such a disaster (are there any?) come up with. It definitely isn't zero.
Ahhhh true. But it also still won't be any more accurate. It'll just be THEIR educated guess. Real stats just don't exist.
The article you cite is interesting. I'm not expert enough to refute it, but I do find the following interesting:
The small-numbers problem remains because there has been little experience with these types of accidents. An insurer will never know the underlying probability of a catastrophic accident. Nor can the insurer anticipate the loss. Therefore, reasonable premiums are difficult to determine.
After making these statements Rothwell goes on to say that he and a friend did in fact come up with a premium based on unspecified "estimates". Since his estimate is $22M per reactor-year, he assigns that as the "subsidy" of the US government under the legislation.
In reality, we don't know. And we won't know unless we have more experience with nuclear disasters (let's hope not) here or elsewhere areound the world.
estimates that the west Siberian bog alone contains some 70 billion tonnes of methane
Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
According to this site, the approximate annual CO2 emissions worldwide is about 140M tonnes. If methane is 20 times as potent, that would be the equivalent of about 7M tonnes of methane. Using that number, the amount of methane contained in the peat bog is equivalent to 10,000 years of CO2 emissions at the current rate.
So I guess the remaining question is how fast this 70 billion tonnes of methane is actually entering the atmosphere (adjust properly for acceleration effects)...
If the place is profitable, more will sprout up like crazy...
Really? How many more?
According to this document from the University of Iowa, in 2000 nuclear energy use was 98.1 gigawatts and accounted for 1/5 of the total national energy supply. So the national energy consumption should be just under 500 gigawatts or 500,000 megawatts.
Since this plant produces 500 megawats, we would need at least 1000 of these plants to supply the nation's energy. At 7 square miles per plant, that is 7000 square miles, or an area just smaller than the State of Massachusetts.
Of course I could also describe it as just under 5% of the land mass of California. Or I could point out that the U.S. is currently home to over 500,000 producing oil wells, 306,000 miles of natural gas pipelines (same link) and 160,000 miles of oil transmission pipelines.
Taking all of that into account, it doesn't sound like a bad tradeoff for energy independence with an unlimited source...
US population essentially pays all of their liability insurance
Is this a mis-interpretation of recent current event news? The legislation within the Energy Bill (as I understand it) does NOT have the government paying the ongoing liability insurance (i.e. meltdown). What it does is obligate the government to insure the ventures against unforseen and out-of-their-control events which impact their ability to obtain licenses for, build, and turn up new nuclear power plants.
Basically the government is paying to insure them against groups filing frivalous lawsuits and tying it up in the courts for years. In addition, this obligation of the government under the legislation only applies to the first 4 new nuclear plants built.
At $500/school, if Linspire plans to survive, they can give them like 1 hour of support or 2 phone calls a year.
Or, more likely, Linspire will have something in the contract requiring the school system to provide Tier 1 support and will only accept few calls for Tier 2 and above directly.
I mean come on, at 17 (and younger) you were seeing sexual education films in high school that were more graphic and detailed that your average prime time basic cable sitcom...Let alone being worried about all the Little Timmy's who might get the wrong idea from some obscure pixelated model sex scene in GTA...
I always have found the whole sex/age thing a bit amusing... Let's remember... in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is not even 14!!!!
Act I, Scene II:
Capulet: She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made.
This is depicted this way by Shakespeare because at the time it was true. It was common in that era for girls to be pregnant (and married) by the age of 13-16... Now, this isn't to say we should encourage sexual activity and pregnancy at young ages, but we don't have to withhold the knowledge and treat it as "forbidden fruit" (which only tempts)...
I currently use Password Keeper which comes as a default on the Blackberry platform. You use a master password and then setup your logins/password/accounts/websites in the tool. They are all encrypted on the handset whenever the application is closed.
On my previous Nextel phone I used an app from their Download Apps section on their website. I think it cost like $3 but did basically the same thing. One master password to store all your others. It was great since it ran on any J2ME phone.
Maybe they should use a one-time shared secret key... send the tapes encrypted via one carrier (like UPS) and the key via another (like FedEx). You get the benefits of physical transport (high bandwidth, low cost) but losing one or the other isn't that bad. If you were really paranoid, use a second key and send it via DHL...
Of course the whole "dying during childbirth" thing seemed ridiculous as well
I've heard several people bring this up in one fashion or another... "why didn't they have the tech to save her"... "why didn't she have proper care pre-natal"...
Both my wife and I took this as more of an issue of willpower (central to the Star Wars univers, IMHO). After Annakin's fall and his attack on her the ONLY think she "had left to live for" was the birth of her children. The droid even came out and said she had lost the will to live.
Thus, when the Emperor tells Darth Vader that he killed her in his anger, he is telling the truth. Annakin's anger both led him to the Dark Side (and away from her) and caused him to lash out and attack her. These two things "killed" her will to live and thus killed her.
Slashdot Mirror
Also found it very strange that there was no interface to iTunes Store... I suppose you can use Safari on it to go to the Store, but your purchases would only be available after returning to your PC, dowloading and syncing?
Sounds like a great domain to forward to whitehouse.gov. I mean "hell" because of who lives there and ".com" because its clearly a commercial enterprise today...
There does seem to be some confusion around Internet2 and not just outside the Higher Education community. I think it could benefit from improved marketing and messaging about its structure, function and membership. Perhaps what the article was referring to was the RFP issued this year for The Quilt. Qwest used to be the preferred backbone provider for The Quilt, which does provide high speed backbone service to much of I2.
The results of their RFP will be officially announced May 5 according to their site.
California: 155,959 square miles (2000 Census Estimate)
Sweden: 173,732 square miles (Your data above)
And yet: California: 35,893,799 people (2004 Census Estimate)
Sweden: 9,016,596 (CIA World Factbook, 2006 Estimate)
So he was challenging the assumption that European countries were able to achieve better results due to a higher population density...
I cannot find any evidence that the Journal in which this article appeared (International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health) is peer-reviewed. Does anyone know more about this journal?
I give this a few weeks before China figures out what Google is doing and either finds a way to block it or threatens to remove Google entirely from the Chinese web. Is Google willing to risk losing those eyeballs?
Ok so I was about to post a gut response and then I went back to RTFA and thought it through again...
:)
Let's try the legacy Ma Bell perspective:
You make a phone call to Joe. You initiated the transaction but both you and Joe pay for access to the network. Even further, in the wireless phone world both you and Joe likely pay per minute for the call.
Now let's try a cable perspective:
You want subscribers who will pay a monthly access fee. To get them, you need the best available content. You MUST get networks such as ESPN, CNN, ABC, NBC, MTV, etc. into your content package. You don't charge ESPN for access to your "network"...
Similarly, newspapers:
You need subscribers. You pay content creators (reporters, comic authors, etc.) for the content necessary to attract and retain subscribers.
It seems the battle is which model does the data backbone (the Internet, if you will) fall into? Is it simply a network by which people and organizations can communicate with no guarantee or claims as to the quality of that content (a la the phone network) or are you selling end-subscriber access to a content service (a la cable TV or newspaper)?
I think for SBC the answer is "yes". It's both. They have end customers who want access to the Internet FOR the content that's there. They also have customers who just want a communications network for data. Here is another way to look at the power of the organizations involved:
Could a major Internet content/service provider (Google, CNN, Apple iTunes, Yahoo, etc.) approach a network provider (SBC, Comcast, AOL, etc.) and threaten to cut off those network's subscribers unless the network provider PAYS them for their content?
This would be the true coup de etat in the industry. When a single content or service source becomes so demanded by end consumers that it MUST be available on your network to keep those subscribers. I don't know that any website is yet that important... Maybe Windows Update could be, if anyone used it.
After that, I'll push for cars, entertainment and space travel... They want to be free too!
I agree with a lot of your thoughts. I started off (in my youth?) as more of a conspiracy theorist, but as time has moved on its become clear that almost any organization large enough (government or business) to be accused of conspiracy theories of any threat are also too disorganized at an individual level to pull them off. Instead it seems to always be well intentioned people whose actions, collectively, lead to an unfortunate and unthought-of end...
The real question is whether that end is unpredictable given the steps along the way. If it is predictable, can it be identified and exposed significantly enough and early enough to change course? One would hope that the United States has this capability through its ideals of free speech, open forums and a free press. But sometimes even those get eaten away at...
OK, I am biased since I work for a competitor.
Now, with that disclaimer out... My company has deployed mobile sites, is donating thousands of radios to search, rescue and relief, has assisted in setting up shelters and donations, has given $250,000 to the American Red Cross, is matching employee contributions to the ARC (up to an additional $100,000), etc. I expect to head to the area myself soon to relieve employees working alongside public safety and other entities.
But oh.... FREE WiFI!!! Wow....
I hate when I discover a site like this. I mean how do I have the time to check every site's lost password system??? I recently got this from Hertz. At their web site I had forgotten my password and it emailed it to me in cleartext! Arrghhhh....
In reality, we don't know. And we won't know unless we have more experience with nuclear disasters (let's hope not) here or elsewhere areound the world.
So I guess the remaining question is how fast this 70 billion tonnes of methane is actually entering the atmosphere (adjust properly for acceleration effects)...
According to this document from the University of Iowa, in 2000 nuclear energy use was 98.1 gigawatts and accounted for 1/5 of the total national energy supply. So the national energy consumption should be just under 500 gigawatts or 500,000 megawatts.
Since this plant produces 500 megawats, we would need at least 1000 of these plants to supply the nation's energy. At 7 square miles per plant, that is 7000 square miles, or an area just smaller than the State of Massachusetts.
Of course I could also describe it as just under 5% of the land mass of California. Or I could point out that the U.S. is currently home to over 500,000 producing oil wells, 306,000 miles of natural gas pipelines (same link) and 160,000 miles of oil transmission pipelines.
Taking all of that into account, it doesn't sound like a bad tradeoff for energy independence with an unlimited source...
Why is it that the video in this link is nude and the screenshots at the site referenced by the article have clothing? Are the images doctored?
Act I, Scene II:
Capulet: She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made.
This is depicted this way by Shakespeare because at the time it was true. It was common in that era for girls to be pregnant (and married) by the age of 13-16... Now, this isn't to say we should encourage sexual activity and pregnancy at young ages, but we don't have to withhold the knowledge and treat it as "forbidden fruit" (which only tempts)...
I currently use Password Keeper which comes as a default on the Blackberry platform. You use a master password and then setup your logins/password/accounts/websites in the tool. They are all encrypted on the handset whenever the application is closed.
On my previous Nextel phone I used an app from their Download Apps section on their website. I think it cost like $3 but did basically the same thing. One master password to store all your others. It was great since it ran on any J2ME phone.
Maybe they should use a one-time shared secret key... send the tapes encrypted via one carrier (like UPS) and the key via another (like FedEx). You get the benefits of physical transport (high bandwidth, low cost) but losing one or the other isn't that bad. If you were really paranoid, use a second key and send it via DHL...
Both my wife and I took this as more of an issue of willpower (central to the Star Wars univers, IMHO). After Annakin's fall and his attack on her the ONLY think she "had left to live for" was the birth of her children. The droid even came out and said she had lost the will to live.
Thus, when the Emperor tells Darth Vader that he killed her in his anger, he is telling the truth. Annakin's anger both led him to the Dark Side (and away from her) and caused him to lash out and attack her. These two things "killed" her will to live and thus killed her.