Not appreciably, and not enough to make a difference when you're using a computer. Turn off an incandescent bulb and it dims slowly enough that you can see it going down as the filament cools. As the grandparent notes, it's not fast enough going down that it's going to flicker noticably when the AC goes from one side to the other and never actually goes completely black, only slightly dimmer in the middle.
Fluorescents go dim when the phosphors stop being excited and it takes much less time for them to dim when full current is no longer going to them so there's noticable flicker sometimes when looking at them out of the corner of the eye or when interfering with the refresh on a monitor. But again, I don't think they go dark, just much dimmer.
LEDs I think, because they dim so quickly when full power isn't applied to them, do end up flickering the worst when under AC power; for some people it's enough that they can notice it when looking at them directly, and pretty much everyone when seen out of peripheral vision.
Hm, I actually just had the idea when reading this that you could probably get a good haul by grabbing a bunch of credit card applications, getting a folding table, dressing nicely and setting yourself up in a mall. Plus you'd have the advantage of not necessarily having as many cameras pointed at you. Not as many ids of course, but the info would be good and very little chance of being caught.
It's certainly the one that's most likely to have _attempts_ at shutting down made at it, but from what I know they've anticipated enough of the methods of doing this and demonstrated enough flexibility in response to things they haven't anticipated that it's pretty unlikely anyone will succeed in shutting it down.
For this reason I'd probably call it one of the least likely to be shut down.
Linksys (I don't know about others) come with a standard antenna port
Careful. Not ALL Linksys have antenna ports. Some do, some don't. I just bought one that doesn't. Not a concern for me, but don't buy one online without looking closely expecting them to have ports.
Huge difference between labelling content (which is what Tipper was going for - dunno about Hillary) and censoring content (which is what Thompson wants).
I'm all for labelling so that people can make informed choices. I'm way against censorship so that I'm allowed to make those informed choice.
Hate speech is funny that way. I wouldn't be comfortable calling someone a nig***, and I would be quite rightly called a racist if I were to use it, but it's a term that is used quite commonly by the african canadian/african american community and it's not necessarily racist when used within that community. It's all about context and who says it.
Given what you've said though, it seems that that particular comment shouldn't be considered hate speech in a legal sense when taken out of context. We'll have to see what the human rights tribunal has to say about it. I'd be upset if there was censure about it (although the author seems to be quite interested in the publicity, so he might want it).
I know nothing about this particular book, nor do I know what the author specifically said in that book. I'm also kind of going on what little I know about our hate laws here and I've not specifically studied it in depth.
That being said, there's nothing legally wrong with hating someone or a group of someones in Canada. You're absolutely right in that we should never have anyone say that these or those thoughts aren't allowed. Nor is there a problem with me going out and saying that something should be changed or that there's a problem with the way a particular group of people acts. Nor should there be.
The problem here - and I'm not necessarily saying that the tribunal has the correct balance - is that if you go around actually formenting hate against a group, telling people that you should hate a particular group, vilify them, hurt them, then it becomes a problem to society at large.
Look at it like this: No matter where you are, there are reasonable restrictions on speech. The classic example is yelling FIRE in a theatre because that can cause immediate and noticable harm to the people in that theatre. I would (and someone in the United States would as well) get in trouble for uttering a death threat. If I were to talk or write to someone and tell them to assassinate someone else, I would be in trouble with the law because of conspiracy to commit murder. If we are to assume that these laws are reasonable (and I think they are, you're welcome to disagree) then we have already put some reasonable restrictions on free speech. The purpose of the hate crime laws we have here are to put someone telling others that they should cause harm to a group in the same category as someone telling others that they should cause harm to an individual. The principle is absolutely sound and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
As I said earlier, however, the hate crime tribunal may or may not have the correct balance to determine where that specific line is. I would be fine with - for example - someone being held accountable if they published a book putting forward their arguments for killing all the muslims, vandalizing their mosques, all that kind of thing. I'm not so fond of the idea that someone would go to jail for just publishing a book saying that there are movements within the Muslim community that need to be watched or that should be changed. The bar should be set very very high, but the bar should be there. Having the laws and the tribunal in the open makes the possibility of a reasoned debate possible, and make it possible to change the application of the law to be 'better', whatever that may be at the time...
Now that I think of it, of course, there are people within that community (and others of course - the white supremacist christians come to mind - but the Muslim one is the one that is getting most press time recently) that if I recall correctly have come under the provisions of the hate crime legislation and could be deported or jailed or whatever for preaching violence towards non-muslims.
In any case, it's not a black and white thing, and a healthy society (as the 'fire' and conspiracy examples I think show) needs reasonable restrictions on what you can and can't say. I'd be happy to debate what is reasonable, but you can't say that you should be able to say and publish whatever you want because it's just not true and no society has ever, anywhere, done so.
Well, the whole thing behind this is that they see how much money they're making from iTMS and want to do the same with applications for the iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised if they set up the same kind of thing for application downloading for the Mac as well - although without the limitation of having to get it from there only.
As far as I know (from watching Law and Order) if they happen to see something illegal while they're going after the piano, then it's all good. For example: If the piano was stacked high with bricks of cocaine, they wouldn't have to just move the bricks to the side while they took the piano, they could arrest the person for the coke. The question in court is whether it's reasonable to assume that they found the coke while executing the warrant. Your example is probably unreasonable, and wouldn't be allowed, but mine is and probably would be.
Again, this is just from watching TV, so it may be an invention of hollywood.
Oh, and as an aside, the other thing is that in Canada, we don't really hold to the same standards. If throwing out improperly gained evidence would lead to a perversion of justice (ie, the person would go free on the drugs if the evidence was disallowed) then the courts might allow it to be introduced in the case anyway. There would also probably be sanctions or criminal charges against the officers involved, but the first case would be allowed to go forward.
Tinfoil hattery aside, there are a lot of people in the government who would love to have everyone + dog in a single database with a single primary key that is indelibly attached to a single person, but perhaps not for the same reasons the tinfoil people think.
I bring your attention to the following inflamitory, apocryphal, forward I got the other day:
--
Actual letter to the Canadian Passport office
Dear Mr. Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?
My birth date you have on my social insurance card, and it is on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30 years. It is on my health insurance card, my driver's license, on the last eight goddamn passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at election times.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Maryanne, my father's name is Robert and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!
$^&**%^$#@#
I apologize, Mr. Minister. I'm really Tee-ed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of this poop! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my #$&*^%' address. What is going on? You have a gang of Neanderthals workin' there?
Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for %^&((&% sakes. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach.
Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another (*&&%^^$%^ copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60!!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day??
Nooooo, that'd be too damned easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some #$%^&*&&$% to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?!
($%^&** morons)
Hey, you know why we can't smile? We're totally irate!
Signed - An Irate Canadian Citizen.
P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 when one of my forefathers took up arms against the Americans. I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had security clearances up the yingyang.
I was aide de camp to the lieutenant governor of our province for ten years and I have been doing volunteer work for the RCMP for about five years.
However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor, WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN COMMUNIST &&*(()%^ CHINA !!!
Hamilton, Ontario Canada
--
And I gotta say, a lot of people in government would love to do everything he says, but the problem is that they'd have to remember all the personal information about everyone in the country and share all that information not only between departments but between jurisdictions as well, and currently, we can't break down the walls that exist between departments to share information because of our privacy and security rules and regulations. There are a lot of very smart people trying very hard to get a good balance between these two things, but it's very very difficult to reconcile them.
You want the same kind of service from your government as you get from Radio shack? You gotta allow them to collect and store your personal information and identify it reliably. You want to keep your privacy? You won't get the kind of service some people want.
TL, DR: Choose only one: Good customer service from government or no big government databases.
And as far as I know, the money is paid out based on radio airplay.
So, if you were to give music away for free (as a (grand)parent poster suggested), and got popular, radio stations would start playing the music, and you'd get money out of the system.
The other thing is that because of CanCon regulations, radio airplay is skewed towards Canadian artists, so a greater percentage of the money would stay inside Canada, and to a certain extent lesser known artists, than other renumeration methods (CD sales for example) would support.
These are things I don't see in Canada much, which may mean it's not as much of an issue, or just because the tech news I read is mostly American (/., Ars) and British (Reg, Inq).
Contributing to the difficulty on those issues is that none of them are purely bad or good. I think patents are a good thing, DRM can be a good thing, and I think Copyright is a good thing. I think they're being applied incorrectly and in an unbalanced manner that favours some parties more than others, both in the regulatory arena and in the civil.
But I'm thinking now - going back to my previous points - you do have to be careful what you wish for. Be aware that any time you say something should be done and that someone should fix something that the someone is probably the government, and the something is often going to be more legislation and regulation. Is that what we want?
When I said "you" i should have said "people". I don't care whether you're fine talking and driving, I care whether people in the aggregate are ok talking and driving. (hint: they aren't)
It's the same kind of argument as I made with the S-OX one: If people self-regulated so that only the people who could do it safely talked while driving, we wouldn't need government regs. However, they don't, and we have people doing it, and it's dangerous for everyone. Since the government can't really say "only those who can talk and drive safely are allowed to do it" then they have to ban it outright.
Now, I'm Canadian, so I can't comment authoritatively on what it's like in the U.S, but your points make no sense whatsoever. Can it be argued that government gets in the way? Perhaps, but not with the examples you've given.
Phones in cars: If it was just your life you were putting in danger, then who am I to stand in your way? However, this affects everyone around you. You become statistically more dangerous to everyone around you when you're talking on the phone while driving, and you should not have the right to do that. Governments who do this do it because more people are concerned about not getting run over by dorks who can't wait ten minutes to make their bowling plans than there are dorks.
Restrictions on talking on the phone in airplanes: There were (valid?) concerns about cell phones interfering with airplane electronics. Now that these issues are more well understood, the restrictions are going away. Personally, I'd rather them be more safe than sorry.
Electrical rate-hikes and forced conservation to combat Global Warming: Yup. Again, your right to run ten computers at artificially low rates that don't take into account the total cost of the power it takes (including the environmental cost) doesn't trump my right to not have my house under water in 50 years. You're using power, pay the full cost of it.
Sarbanes-Oxley and other laws that make business finance riskier (so there are fewer tech startups): It has been proven over and over again that businesses cannot be trusted to monitor themselves, so the public says things like "they shouldn't be allowed to do that, someone should do something about it so my retirement fund doesn't dissapear!". Well, guess what? The "someone" tends to be the government, and the "something" is S-OX. Got a better way to make sure "they" can't do "that"? I'm all ears, but if you say the invisible hand of the market I'm going to flick your ear.
And taxes, well, it costs money to do the business of government. I'd like it to be lower myself, but to say that internet shopping should be tax-free just because it's online is just arrogant and dumb. There may be other good reasons for it being tax-free, but if you want your iPod and you buy it online, you should be paying taxes just like the rest of us chumps. We can make a case for lowering taxes overall, but that's a completely different argument.
And it could be back in a week or less as Verus 2007 Inc. No liability whatsoever for the new company, but could have the exact same people involved and they could purchase the assets of the old company.
"While I agree in our modern capitalist world 'bots will continue to chip away at a large number of jobs, these jobs are usually the ones that don't require an education. Get an education and plenty of doors will open up that robots can't touch. If you don't like that don't blame tech, blame capitalism."
And, in fact, I do blame capitalism... The problem being that in our society we don't value in any way the necessary work that is done by people with little education or even intelligence, and our system blames them for the lack of it.
I mean, 100 is an average iq (by definition). It's all fine and good to say that the person of average or above average intelligence from a middle class family should educate themselves and better themselves so they can repair the floor cleaning machine rather than mopping the floors themselves, but how about the person who was born in a disadvantaged family and has a below average IQ and therefore has neither the opportunity or the intelligence to become a floor cleaning robot technician? Is it their fault? No. Right now we look down on them and throw them away when they're not needed anymore... And I don't have an answer for this either. It's just something that bothers me.
Oprah's one of the worst transgressers in this by the way... she pulled herself out of poverty because she's exceptionally driven and intelligent and has made a fortune by peddling the lie that anyone can do the same. Well, they can't if they have an IQ of 80, have FAS, have ADD, or even just aren't good looking enough. It's impossible, and we shouldn't look down on them for not 'getting an education and making something of themselves' when they just don't have the ability to do so at all. They still have value to society, just not the same as those of us with different abilities.
They've been doing a 'pay as you go' computer pilot for 2nd world countries, which I thought was a great idea. This might be something interesting for poorer people in 1st world nations. If they could find the advertisers to support it.
I seem to remember ad supported internet, which didn't really go anywhere.
I find radio interesting, with fabulous insights into the day's events (with much much more depth and intelligence than any kind of television or even newspaper reporting these days - and way better dirt-digging) always playing interesting music - new and old, and generally surprising me in good ways. Radio drama, comedy, up-and-coming artists, commentary...
Of course, I only really listen to CBC 1&2 (and 3 online) , so those of you chumps still listening to commercial radio might have a different perspective.
Our approaches are the same, but our audiences are different: design for the majority, try as much as possible to fit in the minority, and make sure things degrade gracefully. I don't know where the beligerence comes from.
If I were to do anything for your audience, I'd do the same thing as you do. I don't know what you'd do if you had my clients, but I can tell you that if a major feature was broken in IE, you'd hear about it much much faster than a year.
I'm having steak and some really good beer tonight, thanks.
Well, I'm a vegetarian, but I do have some Cameron's in the 'fridge.
You're absolutely right of course. Except where you're wrong.
Yes, IE is buggy, yes it sucks, yes it breaks standards, we've heard it all before.
However, when I write web pages, I'm not doing it to make a point or stand up for standards for the sake of standards, I'm doing it so that my clients can serve their clients best. This means that I make things appear squeaky clean on what the vast majority of their visitors use (IE in case you're wondering) and ensure that things degrade gracefully (in those cases where it can't be exactly the same) on others.
Whether that's the way it should be or not doesn't make one iota of difference. that's the way it is.
Now, I'm not arrogant enough to actually restrict non IE browsers from coming in, nor am I dumb enough to not do any work on getting things as standards compliant as possible, or as good as possible on FF/Opera/Safari/Other, but when it comes down to a choice of which browser it needs to look best on because of whatever reason, there's only one way I'm going to go until or unless the landscape changes considerably. Anything else would be a disservice to the people who pay me.
Perhaps there are some people who can tell their clients, "well, it looks right on the browsers that 15% (10%, 20%, whatever) of your user base is using and it's wonky on what the other 85% use, but those 15% are using more standards compliant software, just tell your other users to get with the program and switch!" but I'm not about to. I want to eat.
There's probably going to be better answers to your question, but perhaps mine will be good simply for succinctness. Here goes:
Sopranos wasn't a good/popular show because it was about mobsters, Sopranos was a good/popular show because it was a good drama, with good writing, acting, stories, directing and so on. it was about compelling characters in age old man against man/himself/nature conflicts.
the mob thing was simply a backdrop with enough richness that the creators could keep coming up with things they could frame the real story in. It could have been anything really, but Mobsters are a reasonably good one to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Not appreciably, and not enough to make a difference when you're using a computer. Turn off an incandescent bulb and it dims slowly enough that you can see it going down as the filament cools. As the grandparent notes, it's not fast enough going down that it's going to flicker noticably when the AC goes from one side to the other and never actually goes completely black, only slightly dimmer in the middle.
Fluorescents go dim when the phosphors stop being excited and it takes much less time for them to dim when full current is no longer going to them so there's noticable flicker sometimes when looking at them out of the corner of the eye or when interfering with the refresh on a monitor. But again, I don't think they go dark, just much dimmer.
LEDs I think, because they dim so quickly when full power isn't applied to them, do end up flickering the worst when under AC power; for some people it's enough that they can notice it when looking at them directly, and pretty much everyone when seen out of peripheral vision.
Hm, I actually just had the idea when reading this that you could probably get a good haul by grabbing a bunch of credit card applications, getting a folding table, dressing nicely and setting yourself up in a mall. Plus you'd have the advantage of not necessarily having as many cameras pointed at you. Not as many ids of course, but the info would be good and very little chance of being caught.
I completely disagree.
It's certainly the one that's most likely to have _attempts_ at shutting down made at it, but from what I know they've anticipated enough of the methods of doing this and demonstrated enough flexibility in response to things they haven't anticipated that it's pretty unlikely anyone will succeed in shutting it down.
For this reason I'd probably call it one of the least likely to be shut down.
Linksys (I don't know about others) come with a standard antenna port
Careful. Not ALL Linksys have antenna ports. Some do, some don't. I just bought one that doesn't. Not a concern for me, but don't buy one online without looking closely expecting them to have ports.
Huge difference between labelling content (which is what Tipper was going for - dunno about Hillary) and censoring content (which is what Thompson wants).
I'm all for labelling so that people can make informed choices. I'm way against censorship so that I'm allowed to make those informed choice.
Hate speech is funny that way. I wouldn't be comfortable calling someone a nig***, and I would be quite rightly called a racist if I were to use it, but it's a term that is used quite commonly by the african canadian/african american community and it's not necessarily racist when used within that community. It's all about context and who says it.
Given what you've said though, it seems that that particular comment shouldn't be considered hate speech in a legal sense when taken out of context. We'll have to see what the human rights tribunal has to say about it. I'd be upset if there was censure about it (although the author seems to be quite interested in the publicity, so he might want it).
I know nothing about this particular book, nor do I know what the author specifically said in that book. I'm also kind of going on what little I know about our hate laws here and I've not specifically studied it in depth.
That being said, there's nothing legally wrong with hating someone or a group of someones in Canada. You're absolutely right in that we should never have anyone say that these or those thoughts aren't allowed. Nor is there a problem with me going out and saying that something should be changed or that there's a problem with the way a particular group of people acts. Nor should there be.
The problem here - and I'm not necessarily saying that the tribunal has the correct balance - is that if you go around actually formenting hate against a group, telling people that you should hate a particular group, vilify them, hurt them, then it becomes a problem to society at large.
Look at it like this: No matter where you are, there are reasonable restrictions on speech. The classic example is yelling FIRE in a theatre because that can cause immediate and noticable harm to the people in that theatre. I would (and someone in the United States would as well) get in trouble for uttering a death threat. If I were to talk or write to someone and tell them to assassinate someone else, I would be in trouble with the law because of conspiracy to commit murder. If we are to assume that these laws are reasonable (and I think they are, you're welcome to disagree) then we have already put some reasonable restrictions on free speech. The purpose of the hate crime laws we have here are to put someone telling others that they should cause harm to a group in the same category as someone telling others that they should cause harm to an individual. The principle is absolutely sound and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
As I said earlier, however, the hate crime tribunal may or may not have the correct balance to determine where that specific line is. I would be fine with - for example - someone being held accountable if they published a book putting forward their arguments for killing all the muslims, vandalizing their mosques, all that kind of thing. I'm not so fond of the idea that someone would go to jail for just publishing a book saying that there are movements within the Muslim community that need to be watched or that should be changed. The bar should be set very very high, but the bar should be there. Having the laws and the tribunal in the open makes the possibility of a reasoned debate possible, and make it possible to change the application of the law to be 'better', whatever that may be at the time...
Now that I think of it, of course, there are people within that community (and others of course - the white supremacist christians come to mind - but the Muslim one is the one that is getting most press time recently) that if I recall correctly have come under the provisions of the hate crime legislation and could be deported or jailed or whatever for preaching violence towards non-muslims.
In any case, it's not a black and white thing, and a healthy society (as the 'fire' and conspiracy examples I think show) needs reasonable restrictions on what you can and can't say. I'd be happy to debate what is reasonable, but you can't say that you should be able to say and publish whatever you want because it's just not true and no society has ever, anywhere, done so.
Yup, stats show rear-enders go up.
However, the stats also show that t-bone collisions go down.
Guess which one kills or injures more people?
Well, the whole thing behind this is that they see how much money they're making from iTMS and want to do the same with applications for the iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised if they set up the same kind of thing for application downloading for the Mac as well - although without the limitation of having to get it from there only.
As far as I know (from watching Law and Order) if they happen to see something illegal while they're going after the piano, then it's all good. For example: If the piano was stacked high with bricks of cocaine, they wouldn't have to just move the bricks to the side while they took the piano, they could arrest the person for the coke. The question in court is whether it's reasonable to assume that they found the coke while executing the warrant. Your example is probably unreasonable, and wouldn't be allowed, but mine is and probably would be.
Again, this is just from watching TV, so it may be an invention of hollywood.
Oh, and as an aside, the other thing is that in Canada, we don't really hold to the same standards. If throwing out improperly gained evidence would lead to a perversion of justice (ie, the person would go free on the drugs if the evidence was disallowed) then the courts might allow it to be introduced in the case anyway. There would also probably be sanctions or criminal charges against the officers involved, but the first case would be allowed to go forward.
Tinfoil hattery aside, there are a lot of people in the government who would love to have everyone + dog in a single database with a single primary key that is indelibly attached to a single person, but perhaps not for the same reasons the tinfoil people think.
I bring your attention to the following inflamitory, apocryphal, forward I got the other day:
--
Actual letter to the Canadian Passport office
Dear Mr. Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.
How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?
My birth date you have on my social insurance card, and it is on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30 years. It is on my health insurance card, my driver's license, on the last eight goddamn passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at election times.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Maryanne, my father's name is Robert and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!
$^&**%^$#@#
I apologize, Mr. Minister. I'm really Tee-ed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of this poop! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my #$&*^%' address. What is going on?
You have a gang of Neanderthals workin' there?
Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for %^&((&% sakes. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach.
Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another (*&&%^^$%^ copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60!!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day??
Nooooo, that'd be too damned easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some #$%^&*&&$% to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?!
($%^&** morons)
Hey, you know why we can't smile? We're totally irate!
Signed - An Irate Canadian Citizen.
P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since
1776 when one of my forefathers took up arms against the Americans. I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had security clearances up the yingyang.
I was aide de camp to the lieutenant governor of our province for ten years and I have been doing volunteer work for the RCMP for about five years.
However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor, WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN COMMUNIST &&*(()%^ CHINA !!!
Hamilton, Ontario Canada
--
And I gotta say, a lot of people in government would love to do everything he says, but the problem is that they'd have to remember all the personal information about everyone in the country and share all that information not only between departments but between jurisdictions as well, and currently, we can't break down the walls that exist between departments to share information because of our privacy and security rules and regulations. There are a lot of very smart people trying very hard to get a good balance between these two things, but it's very very difficult to reconcile them.
You want the same kind of service from your government as you get from Radio shack? You gotta allow them to collect and store your personal information and identify it reliably. You want to keep your privacy? You won't get the kind of service some people want.
TL, DR: Choose only one: Good customer service from government or no big government databases.
And as far as I know, the money is paid out based on radio airplay.
So, if you were to give music away for free (as a (grand)parent poster suggested), and got popular, radio stations would start playing the music, and you'd get money out of the system.
The other thing is that because of CanCon regulations, radio airplay is skewed towards Canadian artists, so a greater percentage of the money would stay inside Canada, and to a certain extent lesser known artists, than other renumeration methods (CD sales for example) would support.
I always thought that too, but once I looked at that scene closely on the DVD, you can see that it doesn't do that.
He's looking at a reflected image in a mirror with several panes on it, each of which show a slightly different angle of the scene.
The only impossible thing in there is the enhancement. Which I agree is impossible, but the (apparent) 3d thing isn't.
I think. I could just be making this up because I like the movie.
Fair enough.
These are things I don't see in Canada much, which may mean it's not as much of an issue, or just because the tech news I read is mostly American (/., Ars) and British (Reg, Inq).
Contributing to the difficulty on those issues is that none of them are purely bad or good. I think patents are a good thing, DRM can be a good thing, and I think Copyright is a good thing. I think they're being applied incorrectly and in an unbalanced manner that favours some parties more than others, both in the regulatory arena and in the civil.
But I'm thinking now - going back to my previous points - you do have to be careful what you wish for. Be aware that any time you say something should be done and that someone should fix something that the someone is probably the government, and the something is often going to be more legislation and regulation. Is that what we want?
Sorry, should make myself clearer.
When I said "you" i should have said "people". I don't care whether you're fine talking and driving, I care whether people in the aggregate are ok talking and driving. (hint: they aren't)
It's the same kind of argument as I made with the S-OX one: If people self-regulated so that only the people who could do it safely talked while driving, we wouldn't need government regs. However, they don't, and we have people doing it, and it's dangerous for everyone. Since the government can't really say "only those who can talk and drive safely are allowed to do it" then they have to ban it outright.
Bull. (Mostly)
Now, I'm Canadian, so I can't comment authoritatively on what it's like in the U.S, but your points make no sense whatsoever. Can it be argued that government gets in the way? Perhaps, but not with the examples you've given.
Phones in cars: If it was just your life you were putting in danger, then who am I to stand in your way? However, this affects everyone around you. You become statistically more dangerous to everyone around you when you're talking on the phone while driving, and you should not have the right to do that. Governments who do this do it because more people are concerned about not getting run over by dorks who can't wait ten minutes to make their bowling plans than there are dorks.
Restrictions on talking on the phone in airplanes: There were (valid?) concerns about cell phones interfering with airplane electronics. Now that these issues are more well understood, the restrictions are going away. Personally, I'd rather them be more safe than sorry.
Electrical rate-hikes and forced conservation to combat Global Warming: Yup. Again, your right to run ten computers at artificially low rates that don't take into account the total cost of the power it takes (including the environmental cost) doesn't trump my right to not have my house under water in 50 years. You're using power, pay the full cost of it.
Sarbanes-Oxley and other laws that make business finance riskier (so there are fewer tech startups): It has been proven over and over again that businesses cannot be trusted to monitor themselves, so the public says things like "they shouldn't be allowed to do that, someone should do something about it so my retirement fund doesn't dissapear!". Well, guess what? The "someone" tends to be the government, and the "something" is S-OX. Got a better way to make sure "they" can't do "that"? I'm all ears, but if you say the invisible hand of the market I'm going to flick your ear.
And taxes, well, it costs money to do the business of government. I'd like it to be lower myself, but to say that internet shopping should be tax-free just because it's online is just arrogant and dumb. There may be other good reasons for it being tax-free, but if you want your iPod and you buy it online, you should be paying taxes just like the rest of us chumps. We can make a case for lowering taxes overall, but that's a completely different argument.
And it could be back in a week or less as Verus 2007 Inc. No liability whatsoever for the new company, but could have the exact same people involved and they could purchase the assets of the old company.
Happens all the time with builders.
"While I agree in our modern capitalist world 'bots will continue to chip away at a large number of jobs, these jobs are usually the ones that don't require an education. Get an education and plenty of doors will open up that robots can't touch. If you don't like that don't blame tech, blame capitalism."
And, in fact, I do blame capitalism... The problem being that in our society we don't value in any way the necessary work that is done by people with little education or even intelligence, and our system blames them for the lack of it.
I mean, 100 is an average iq (by definition). It's all fine and good to say that the person of average or above average intelligence from a middle class family should educate themselves and better themselves so they can repair the floor cleaning machine rather than mopping the floors themselves, but how about the person who was born in a disadvantaged family and has a below average IQ and therefore has neither the opportunity or the intelligence to become a floor cleaning robot technician? Is it their fault? No. Right now we look down on them and throw them away when they're not needed anymore... And I don't have an answer for this either. It's just something that bothers me.
Oprah's one of the worst transgressers in this by the way... she pulled herself out of poverty because she's exceptionally driven and intelligent and has made a fortune by peddling the lie that anyone can do the same. Well, they can't if they have an IQ of 80, have FAS, have ADD, or even just aren't good looking enough. It's impossible, and we shouldn't look down on them for not 'getting an education and making something of themselves' when they just don't have the ability to do so at all. They still have value to society, just not the same as those of us with different abilities.
Sigh. Off topic rant over.
Poor people in first world countries are still rich by worldwide standards, and are a lucrative market for advertisers.
Not necessarily for lexus or rolex perhaps, but for Busch lite (or Bush jr? HA! I slay me!) and walmart, yes.
So ad-supported internet did go somewhere! It's dead (Jim).
That's what I thought...
They've been doing a 'pay as you go' computer pilot for 2nd world countries, which I thought was a great idea. This might be something interesting for poorer people in 1st world nations. If they could find the advertisers to support it.
I seem to remember ad supported internet, which didn't really go anywhere.
Broadcast radio doesn't suck at all in any way.
I find radio interesting, with fabulous insights into the day's events (with much much more depth and intelligence than any kind of television or even newspaper reporting these days - and way better dirt-digging) always playing interesting music - new and old, and generally surprising me in good ways. Radio drama, comedy, up-and-coming artists, commentary...
Of course, I only really listen to CBC 1&2 (and 3 online) , so those of you chumps still listening to commercial radio might have a different perspective.
And there's the rub.
Our approaches are the same, but our audiences are different: design for the majority, try as much as possible to fit in the minority, and make sure things degrade gracefully. I don't know where the beligerence comes from.
If I were to do anything for your audience, I'd do the same thing as you do. I don't know what you'd do if you had my clients, but I can tell you that if a major feature was broken in IE, you'd hear about it much much faster than a year. Well, I'm a vegetarian, but I do have some Cameron's in the 'fridge.
You're absolutely right of course. Except where you're wrong.
Yes, IE is buggy, yes it sucks, yes it breaks standards, we've heard it all before.
However, when I write web pages, I'm not doing it to make a point or stand up for standards for the sake of standards, I'm doing it so that my clients can serve their clients best. This means that I make things appear squeaky clean on what the vast majority of their visitors use (IE in case you're wondering) and ensure that things degrade gracefully (in those cases where it can't be exactly the same) on others.
Whether that's the way it should be or not doesn't make one iota of difference. that's the way it is.
Now, I'm not arrogant enough to actually restrict non IE browsers from coming in, nor am I dumb enough to not do any work on getting things as standards compliant as possible, or as good as possible on FF/Opera/Safari/Other, but when it comes down to a choice of which browser it needs to look best on because of whatever reason, there's only one way I'm going to go until or unless the landscape changes considerably. Anything else would be a disservice to the people who pay me.
Perhaps there are some people who can tell their clients, "well, it looks right on the browsers that 15% (10%, 20%, whatever) of your user base is using and it's wonky on what the other 85% use, but those 15% are using more standards compliant software, just tell your other users to get with the program and switch!" but I'm not about to. I want to eat.
There's probably going to be better answers to your question, but perhaps mine will be good simply for succinctness. Here goes:
Sopranos wasn't a good/popular show because it was about mobsters, Sopranos was a good/popular show because it was a good drama, with good writing, acting, stories, directing and so on. it was about compelling characters in age old man against man/himself/nature conflicts.
the mob thing was simply a backdrop with enough richness that the creators could keep coming up with things they could frame the real story in. It could have been anything really, but Mobsters are a reasonably good one to use.