Do you have any idea how bogus the whole online diploma process already is? None of the major "all online" schools have any way to check who actually did the work. So student A signs up, and Student B does the work, but Student A gets the credit. As an employer, when I see a "degree" from one of this places, I just laugh.
If the Higher Learning Commission accepts the institution's model then why are you so skeptical of it? Online institutions with that level of accreditation offer a degree that's just as viable as any other institution with that accreditation level.
BTW, since you don't seem to understand what that means, schools accredited through the HLC's regional bodies are the big names that you normally see (state universities, famous privates, etc).
It seems to me that online degrees do not garner anywhere near the same amount of credibility that is given to a traditional degree. As a current engineering undergrad that has taken some online courses in high school, I can imagine using online learning to supplement classroom education, but it certainly cannot replace it. Labs and hands on learning require physical presence.
You're right, online institutions are playing catchup as we speak with specialized accreditation but they are gaining it and gaining acceptance as they go. The last holdouts are the hardcore, old school professors that don't believe you can learn as much through a computer. Eventually those voices will be replaced by age and those that grew up with the Internet as their TV will take their place.
Labs and hands on learning are important and are not ignored with online institutions. If you're in a physical science you will report to regional areas to take on that portion of your coursework in condensed format. There will always be an acceptable amount of classroom time that's required for accreditation. Instead of spreading it out over a quarter or semester, it will be done like summer courses are--shortened time frame.
Also, by learning online, you're missing out on a lot of networking opportunities that you'd otherwise have with professors and other students. You can get to know professors over the internet, but it can't replace face to face conversation.
Guess where I have done the most networking recently? Online. Just like everyone else in the Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace age. These are college-aged students we're talking about here. They are all into that shit. The boundaries have been blurred for 10 years, now they favor online.
Much like the paperless office never showing up, the claim that University classrooms will be irrelevant by 2020 is likely wrong.
I think you may be confusing "irrelevant" with "non-existent".
Brick and mortar schools will continue to exist. In fact, they will likely exist just as they do now. Thing is that with secondary enrollment dropping and competition with foreign institutions on the rise schools will need to kowtow to the needs of the student rather than the other way around. I see it as a very similar argument to the RIAA/MPAA deal. Students don't want to pay for an education as well as housing and food costs when there are alternatives that allow them not to.
As I mentioned above, I have worked in higher ed for a long time. I have done the brick and mortar and online side of things. At the last institution I worked for we had very few online courses and even fewer that were applicable to any degree track we offered. You would not believe how many people would call up and say, "what do you mean you don't have any online coursework?" So at this point the brick and mortars are working their asses off (sometimes under mandate by the state government as it is in MN) to offer tons more online coursework.
The biggest, nearly untapped, market in higher education is the adult learner. As I stated I don't know of many adult learners who have the flexibility in their lives to go back to a brick and mortar school to get a degree. But as more and more people learn the advantages of attending an online institution, the relevance of a brick and mortar education will diminish and the rise of online education will continue to rise just as it has with every other piece of the world (music, books, news, etc, etc).
Anyway, with the rise in online education, including charter schools (secondary) that are nearly all online, people are pushing their dollars towards institutions that aren't all brick and mortar. There are a few colleges that are all online and many of the brick and mortar schools are moving towards a format where blended courses (part online, part in-classroom) are the norm.
Education is at least partially funded by the students themselves and the state governments that are well known to run their "businesses" poorly. By cutting down on capital costs and increasing the reach of the classrooms to students that are not within driving distance or don't have the time to work full time and take courses on the college's schedule, institutions with online components (or even totally online) will slowly become the norm.
Why is this such a difficult thing for people to understand? While I enjoyed my physical college experience as an undergraduate, I could not possibly see myself going back to a brick and mortar institution for an advanced degree. The time and dollars necessary as well as the loss in income just wouldn't permit that to happen. Working in higher education for nearly a decade has taught me that I am not the only one. In fact, people that think like you do are way in the minority these days.
And how do you do that when the live event isn't being carried on that cable, because you don't pay for service or your provider simply doesn't carry the feed?
Or because the network isn't permitted to carry the feed because not enough tickets were sold for the event? There is nothing like alienating your fans by banning them from watching a game they cannot possibly afford to attend due to high ticket/parking fees and a poor economy.
Lawyers haven't made a living off suing their customers.
Excuse me? Most legal firms take home a high percentage of the verdict for themselves. While I agree with other posters that the lawyers are just doing the job they were hired to do, I don't agree that the 5 recruited to the DOJ didn't make a pretty penny off the RIAA/MPAA's "victims".
They're assuming that people use their websites the way people use their newspapers, and that's probably not the case anymore, and surely won't be in the future.
It hasn't been the case for years and it will continue to not be the case in the future. They are doing exactly the same thing that the RIAA and in many ways the MPAA has failed to do...get users to view their content on their terms instead of their customers' terms.
I do not want to go to an advertisement filled website that takes 100 seconds to load due to widgets, unrelated information, and stupid third party bullshit that many newspapers have on their sites. I don't like RSS feeds that aren't full as I have no interest in clicking through from my RSS reader to read your content just so you can pretend that an advertiser got his money's worth because I may not have blocked the ad. I also don't want to click through an article to drive up pageviews so that you can compete with other news sites online and show your current and potential advertisers meaningless data about how many people read your site and how many eyeballs will see their advertisements.
I spend a lot of time every day going out and getting information in my local area. I sit through the city council meetings, I watch them online when I don't want to drive there in person. I scour crime reports, I contact state agencies to get restaurant inspection information, and I ask local municipalities to provide me with how much they are spending and on what. You know what I get paid? Enough to cover my personal Internet costs and a little more, sometimes. Sad thing is while I'm not pumping out 25 articles a week, I'm pumping out 7 or 8 that are more informative and don't read like a press release for the city discussed.
Newspapers need to cut back and go back to basics or rethink how you're moving forward.
Add a mobile page which autodetects. I don't want to have to set something in my settings to get it to come up like that when I only read from my mobile page once or twice a day. It's a real fucking pain in the ass to wait 45 to 60 seconds for the page to come up because there is so much shit being loaded.
Tons of other sites have auto-mobile support. Why not a tech site like Slashdot?
As far as I'm concerned it can be a bunch of raw links to RSS feeds, CSV, and XML files. Who the hell cares what a data repository looks like? I want to take that data and use it myself elsewhere. I don't need it to be pretty where I get it from as long as it's in a format that's useful.
It's absolutely fucking awesome to see that other areas are taking the time, effort, and dollars to make data available to those who pay for its creation in the first place. If anything, the Federal Government should mandate that all states funnel that data to them for display to the citizens in one place. There is absolutely no reason why data shouldn't be in one consistent format and in one place for us to pull down to aggregate ourselves if we so choose.
Ahem. I am an iPhone user. I am not a fanboi. There are millions of other iPhone users just like me, you just don't hear from us over the high pitched whine that the minority of users put off.
Just because I like owning an iPod and I feel that the iPhone has a superior browsing experience than any other mobile device out there does not mean that I defend the devices inadequacies to the death. In fact, I think the thing fucking sucks for doing much other than surfing the web and playing media. Thankfully that's what I use it for the most and thus it's fine for me. I put it into the same bucket as using Windows. The OS works and is supported very well. It has its faults and those faults suck but it does what I need it to do easily and it works well enough. *shrug*
Please don't assume that just because a small portion of users of Foo rant and rave about its wonders that the rest of us are like that.
Honestly the frequency of R-ratings have gone up for all movies. I remember when there were countless great movies from the 1980s that were all rated PG. Now most comedies seem to be rated PG-13 and R. I don't personally have anything against R-rated movies being that I use "fuck" as a comma and have nothing against watching on-screen violence, but I'm wondering if the movie industry is hoping to move back to where it was 20 years ago. Hell, we say that they need to change how they do business, perhaps this is a step in that direction--something which they hope they will get back to a time when they feel that they were a little more successful?
Obviously they thought that their core demographic required that they have a movie rated R to attract viewers. Instead of flashy CGI they're moving to over-the-top language and T&A to cover the fact that the dialogue kinda fucking sucks. IMHO Iron Man, while rated PG-13, wouldn't have gained anything by becoming rated R.
I could recreate the entire site's functionality in 15 minutes.
The functionality isn't what's important, it's the community that is. Plenty of people have done MySpace and Facebook prior to both of them being around (webrings, GeoCities, etc are all related to those two sites) but the biggest draw is the number of users who have latched to make it successful.
That said, if you come up with a website that has the same (or preferably better) functionality and better network scalability and uptime as well as attract a customer base that rivals Twitter, then by all means go for it. In fact, if it's good enough I'm sure people will eventually make the switch and make you rich.
Let me know what retarded word you come up with to describe your service's micro-blog posts so that we can make fun of it here and get modded appropriately too.
You don't look at a single student, you look at a body of students over time. If an English teacher consistently produces an above-average number of well-performing students, and this trend continues over a couple of years, then you can start making at least some sort of preliminary statistical statements.
Sorry that my half-assed comment didn't explain that I expected this to be tracked over several years with regular checks against a larger and similar group and interventions, training, etc during the course of the teacher's career.
Plenty of higher educational institutions (going back at least 30+ years (from my limited knowledge), especially with technical colleges) have great ways of determining success via core competency tracking of individual students. If the majority of students are not scoring well in their own individual required competencies, then it's a pretty good indicator (along with other tracked metrics and comparisons to other educators teaching the same competencies to other students) that the specific teacher is not performing well.
Personally I don't know what the solution is but to say that it's difficult to track this due to an individual student's learning capacity, ability, and desire is just nonsense to me.
This might be useful for tracking down unauthorized recordings obtained during pre-release screenings.
Or it might be another scare tactic attempted by the MPAA to stop piracy of their movies--just like the stupid pat downs by goons in maroon jackets wielding hand-held metal detectors. Yeah, those are my keys and that's my mobile phone. No, I don't plan on recording the movie with Qik and no the offer of a free movie isn't worth you searching me more thoroughly off to the side. I'm just as happy to leave and not watch your shitty fucking movie ahead of time and instead wait for the free rental through Redbox and the associated websites which give me free rentals.
The movies used to be a place where I enjoyed relaxing for 2.5 hours. Between the high prices (even during matinees) and the gestapo bullshit at the prereleases, it's like going to the airport at Thanksgiving. While I don't bother to pirate movies anymore I might start to again just to piss the cocksuckers off.
"Not surprisingly, some say Obama's choice of a Google-party-goer who worships Google could cause big headaches for Microsoft."
Man, that's just terrible news.
It kinda is. While I understand the CIO's point that their solution is inexpensive (I don't know if it's faster), I'm concerned that the CIO might make another party just as much of a government supported monopoly as Microsoft used to be. Do we really need to have that sort of thinking occurring?
While I'm a current supporter (and by supporter I mean user) of Google and their applications, I fear all big businesses, regardless of whatever marketing mantra holdover they may provide to the public, especially those that are supported by government and you probably should too.
Imagine Olive Garden with a table that has a Pope's head encased in class on a lazy Susan in the middle. You get to spin it around and have it stare at others while you eat overpriced and oversized Americanized Italian food, family style, with lots of other people in a crowded and campy restaurant. That's Buca di Beppo.
But I suppose the Pope's head in glass could be confused with an Italian pedophilia clown in some circles, so good call there.
Everyone seems to forget the simple fact that we own the spectrum, not the government. What this is essentially doing is making the people pay for something they already own. Why the fuck should we have to pay to use it, watch the revenues go to pay for who knows what (remember the first sale that ended us up with $40 coupons for converter boxes we still had to pay for?)
This is bullshit and I'm surprised that Slashdotters aren't more aware of the fleecing that is taking place here. Shame on all of you.
2. Jailbreak has never really worked very well for me (or several others I know that have done it -- some people have no issues). As I have mentioned many times before, when I have my phone jailbroken, applications will randomly stop working (immediately return to the main screen after you start them). Once one starts doing that, the others quickly follow suit and requires you to reinstall the applications to get them to stop. So while I love the availability of the extra applications, I really would prefer that my applications continue working properly.
3. Backgrounder "worked". AIM would run and I would get IMs. Unfortunately sometimes it wouldn't work and would hang the entire device. If I am continuously restarting the device to gain control of runaway backgrounded processes, it's really not doing me much good is it?
It has NO stereo bluetooth support! It also lacks bluetooth IP networking for tethering to your laptop, and it doesn't use the standard USB mini-B cable.
*shrug*, when I look for a phone none of these things are even a consideration for me. I don't use bluetooth for anything and I really don't care about what USB cable is used as long as I can transfer what I need to the device quickly.
Personally there are plenty of choices out there in phones because people have different needs and tastes. The iPhone isn't anywhere near the perfect mobile device (actually far from it) but it does what it does very well. I am a mass transit rider and I love the video/music player and the web browser. I used to own a T-mobile Sidekick and I really miss the keyboard on that device as well as the background application running. It's been difficult for me to get used to the fact that I am not available on AIM 24/7 wherever I am.
You take the good with the bad and you weigh your options before choosing your device. I decided that the media component of the iPhone was far superior to other devices I tried and that was more important to me on my commutes, especially after a 5.5" of snow falls after 12 PM in Minneapolis crushing the roadways during rush hour.
As I have said time and time again, this has been a gigantic clusterfuck of enormous proportions.
1. The American public should have received a check (not a tax credit, not a credit card looking coupon, etc) for the total sale of the spectrum divided by every single citizen of this nation.
2. When the TV was moved to digital, it should have been better than what was offered before. Yes, the quality is better (when you can receive the signal) but most of the time (even with good equipment) the signal doesn't come in, you lose channels, and they randomly drop audio and video. At least with the old way, if it came in most of the way, I could still see and hear what was going on.
3. This was all unnecessary anyway. I don't care about opening up spectrum for other services when I am not directly benefiting in any way, shape or form by the change over. If you are seriously going to tell me that because I now have access to more channels, most of which rarely come in well after spending $20 on a box and $20+ more on rabbit ears or $40+ on a "HD" antenna, then you're wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have any idea how bogus the whole online diploma process already is? None of the major "all online" schools have any way to check who actually did the work. So student A signs up, and Student B does the work, but Student A gets the credit. As an employer, when I see a "degree" from one of this places, I just laugh.
If the Higher Learning Commission accepts the institution's model then why are you so skeptical of it? Online institutions with that level of accreditation offer a degree that's just as viable as any other institution with that accreditation level.
BTW, since you don't seem to understand what that means, schools accredited through the HLC's regional bodies are the big names that you normally see (state universities, famous privates, etc).
It seems to me that online degrees do not garner anywhere near the same amount of credibility that is given to a traditional degree. As a current engineering undergrad that has taken some online courses in high school, I can imagine using online learning to supplement classroom education, but it certainly cannot replace it. Labs and hands on learning require physical presence.
You're right, online institutions are playing catchup as we speak with specialized accreditation but they are gaining it and gaining acceptance as they go. The last holdouts are the hardcore, old school professors that don't believe you can learn as much through a computer. Eventually those voices will be replaced by age and those that grew up with the Internet as their TV will take their place.
Labs and hands on learning are important and are not ignored with online institutions. If you're in a physical science you will report to regional areas to take on that portion of your coursework in condensed format. There will always be an acceptable amount of classroom time that's required for accreditation. Instead of spreading it out over a quarter or semester, it will be done like summer courses are--shortened time frame.
Also, by learning online, you're missing out on a lot of networking opportunities that you'd otherwise have with professors and other students. You can get to know professors over the internet, but it can't replace face to face conversation.
Guess where I have done the most networking recently? Online. Just like everyone else in the Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace age. These are college-aged students we're talking about here. They are all into that shit. The boundaries have been blurred for 10 years, now they favor online.
Much like the paperless office never showing up, the claim that University classrooms will be irrelevant by 2020 is likely wrong.
I think you may be confusing "irrelevant" with "non-existent".
Brick and mortar schools will continue to exist. In fact, they will likely exist just as they do now. Thing is that with secondary enrollment dropping and competition with foreign institutions on the rise schools will need to kowtow to the needs of the student rather than the other way around. I see it as a very similar argument to the RIAA/MPAA deal. Students don't want to pay for an education as well as housing and food costs when there are alternatives that allow them not to.
As I mentioned above, I have worked in higher ed for a long time. I have done the brick and mortar and online side of things. At the last institution I worked for we had very few online courses and even fewer that were applicable to any degree track we offered. You would not believe how many people would call up and say, "what do you mean you don't have any online coursework?" So at this point the brick and mortars are working their asses off (sometimes under mandate by the state government as it is in MN) to offer tons more online coursework.
The biggest, nearly untapped, market in higher education is the adult learner. As I stated I don't know of many adult learners who have the flexibility in their lives to go back to a brick and mortar school to get a degree. But as more and more people learn the advantages of attending an online institution, the relevance of a brick and mortar education will diminish and the rise of online education will continue to rise just as it has with every other piece of the world (music, books, news, etc, etc).
Right after the paperless office is perfected.
Umm, whatever.
Anyway, with the rise in online education, including charter schools (secondary) that are nearly all online, people are pushing their dollars towards institutions that aren't all brick and mortar. There are a few colleges that are all online and many of the brick and mortar schools are moving towards a format where blended courses (part online, part in-classroom) are the norm.
Education is at least partially funded by the students themselves and the state governments that are well known to run their "businesses" poorly. By cutting down on capital costs and increasing the reach of the classrooms to students that are not within driving distance or don't have the time to work full time and take courses on the college's schedule, institutions with online components (or even totally online) will slowly become the norm.
Why is this such a difficult thing for people to understand? While I enjoyed my physical college experience as an undergraduate, I could not possibly see myself going back to a brick and mortar institution for an advanced degree. The time and dollars necessary as well as the loss in income just wouldn't permit that to happen. Working in higher education for nearly a decade has taught me that I am not the only one. In fact, people that think like you do are way in the minority these days.
And how do you do that when the live event isn't being carried on that cable, because you don't pay for service or your provider simply doesn't carry the feed?
Or because the network isn't permitted to carry the feed because not enough tickets were sold for the event? There is nothing like alienating your fans by banning them from watching a game they cannot possibly afford to attend due to high ticket/parking fees and a poor economy.
Lawyers haven't made a living off suing their customers.
Excuse me? Most legal firms take home a high percentage of the verdict for themselves. While I agree with other posters that the lawyers are just doing the job they were hired to do, I don't agree that the 5 recruited to the DOJ didn't make a pretty penny off the RIAA/MPAA's "victims".
They're assuming that people use their websites the way people use their newspapers, and that's probably not the case anymore, and surely won't be in the future.
It hasn't been the case for years and it will continue to not be the case in the future. They are doing exactly the same thing that the RIAA and in many ways the MPAA has failed to do...get users to view their content on their terms instead of their customers' terms.
I do not want to go to an advertisement filled website that takes 100 seconds to load due to widgets, unrelated information, and stupid third party bullshit that many newspapers have on their sites. I don't like RSS feeds that aren't full as I have no interest in clicking through from my RSS reader to read your content just so you can pretend that an advertiser got his money's worth because I may not have blocked the ad. I also don't want to click through an article to drive up pageviews so that you can compete with other news sites online and show your current and potential advertisers meaningless data about how many people read your site and how many eyeballs will see their advertisements.
I spend a lot of time every day going out and getting information in my local area. I sit through the city council meetings, I watch them online when I don't want to drive there in person. I scour crime reports, I contact state agencies to get restaurant inspection information, and I ask local municipalities to provide me with how much they are spending and on what. You know what I get paid? Enough to cover my personal Internet costs and a little more, sometimes. Sad thing is while I'm not pumping out 25 articles a week, I'm pumping out 7 or 8 that are more informative and don't read like a press release for the city discussed.
Newspapers need to cut back and go back to basics or rethink how you're moving forward.
Add a mobile page which autodetects. I don't want to have to set something in my settings to get it to come up like that when I only read from my mobile page once or twice a day. It's a real fucking pain in the ass to wait 45 to 60 seconds for the page to come up because there is so much shit being loaded.
Tons of other sites have auto-mobile support. Why not a tech site like Slashdot?
As far as I'm concerned it can be a bunch of raw links to RSS feeds, CSV, and XML files. Who the hell cares what a data repository looks like? I want to take that data and use it myself elsewhere. I don't need it to be pretty where I get it from as long as it's in a format that's useful.
I am impressed with the data made available there in one location. I have done a lot of work with county criminal complaints mapping; SHP to KML for state, county, and local parks; and restaurant inspection reports for the general area around my home because it's difficult for the average person to get that information in a package that's useful to them.
It's absolutely fucking awesome to see that other areas are taking the time, effort, and dollars to make data available to those who pay for its creation in the first place. If anything, the Federal Government should mandate that all states funnel that data to them for display to the citizens in one place. There is absolutely no reason why data shouldn't be in one consistent format and in one place for us to pull down to aggregate ourselves if we so choose.
I for one welcome our data providing overlords.
Ahem. I am an iPhone user. I am not a fanboi. There are millions of other iPhone users just like me, you just don't hear from us over the high pitched whine that the minority of users put off.
Just because I like owning an iPod and I feel that the iPhone has a superior browsing experience than any other mobile device out there does not mean that I defend the devices inadequacies to the death. In fact, I think the thing fucking sucks for doing much other than surfing the web and playing media. Thankfully that's what I use it for the most and thus it's fine for me. I put it into the same bucket as using Windows. The OS works and is supported very well. It has its faults and those faults suck but it does what I need it to do easily and it works well enough. *shrug*
Please don't assume that just because a small portion of users of Foo rant and rave about its wonders that the rest of us are like that.
Honestly the frequency of R-ratings have gone up for all movies. I remember when there were countless great movies from the 1980s that were all rated PG. Now most comedies seem to be rated PG-13 and R. I don't personally have anything against R-rated movies being that I use "fuck" as a comma and have nothing against watching on-screen violence, but I'm wondering if the movie industry is hoping to move back to where it was 20 years ago. Hell, we say that they need to change how they do business, perhaps this is a step in that direction--something which they hope they will get back to a time when they feel that they were a little more successful?
Obviously they thought that their core demographic required that they have a movie rated R to attract viewers. Instead of flashy CGI they're moving to over-the-top language and T&A to cover the fact that the dialogue kinda fucking sucks. IMHO Iron Man, while rated PG-13, wouldn't have gained anything by becoming rated R.
I could recreate the entire site's functionality in 15 minutes.
The functionality isn't what's important, it's the community that is. Plenty of people have done MySpace and Facebook prior to both of them being around (webrings, GeoCities, etc are all related to those two sites) but the biggest draw is the number of users who have latched to make it successful.
That said, if you come up with a website that has the same (or preferably better) functionality and better network scalability and uptime as well as attract a customer base that rivals Twitter, then by all means go for it. In fact, if it's good enough I'm sure people will eventually make the switch and make you rich.
Let me know what retarded word you come up with to describe your service's micro-blog posts so that we can make fun of it here and get modded appropriately too.
You don't look at a single student, you look at a body of students over time. If an English teacher consistently produces an above-average number of well-performing students, and this trend continues over a couple of years, then you can start making at least some sort of preliminary statistical statements.
Sorry that my half-assed comment didn't explain that I expected this to be tracked over several years with regular checks against a larger and similar group and interventions, training, etc during the course of the teacher's career.
Plenty of higher educational institutions (going back at least 30+ years (from my limited knowledge), especially with technical colleges) have great ways of determining success via core competency tracking of individual students. If the majority of students are not scoring well in their own individual required competencies, then it's a pretty good indicator (along with other tracked metrics and comparisons to other educators teaching the same competencies to other students) that the specific teacher is not performing well.
Personally I don't know what the solution is but to say that it's difficult to track this due to an individual student's learning capacity, ability, and desire is just nonsense to me.
I mostly view only one site: Google Reader.
*shrug*
This might be useful for tracking down unauthorized recordings obtained during pre-release screenings.
Or it might be another scare tactic attempted by the MPAA to stop piracy of their movies--just like the stupid pat downs by goons in maroon jackets wielding hand-held metal detectors. Yeah, those are my keys and that's my mobile phone. No, I don't plan on recording the movie with Qik and no the offer of a free movie isn't worth you searching me more thoroughly off to the side. I'm just as happy to leave and not watch your shitty fucking movie ahead of time and instead wait for the free rental through Redbox and the associated websites which give me free rentals.
The movies used to be a place where I enjoyed relaxing for 2.5 hours. Between the high prices (even during matinees) and the gestapo bullshit at the prereleases, it's like going to the airport at Thanksgiving. While I don't bother to pirate movies anymore I might start to again just to piss the cocksuckers off.
"Not surprisingly, some say Obama's choice of a Google-party-goer who worships Google could cause big headaches for Microsoft."
Man, that's just terrible news.
It kinda is. While I understand the CIO's point that their solution is inexpensive (I don't know if it's faster), I'm concerned that the CIO might make another party just as much of a government supported monopoly as Microsoft used to be. Do we really need to have that sort of thinking occurring?
While I'm a current supporter (and by supporter I mean user) of Google and their applications, I fear all big businesses, regardless of whatever marketing mantra holdover they may provide to the public, especially those that are supported by government and you probably should too.
Imagine Olive Garden with a table that has a Pope's head encased in class on a lazy Susan in the middle. You get to spin it around and have it stare at others while you eat overpriced and oversized Americanized Italian food, family style, with lots of other people in a crowded and campy restaurant. That's Buca di Beppo.
But I suppose the Pope's head in glass could be confused with an Italian pedophilia clown in some circles, so good call there.
Please explain to me why that's "worse".
Everyone seems to forget the simple fact that we own the spectrum, not the government. What this is essentially doing is making the people pay for something they already own. Why the fuck should we have to pay to use it, watch the revenues go to pay for who knows what (remember the first sale that ended us up with $40 coupons for converter boxes we still had to pay for?)
This is bullshit and I'm surprised that Slashdotters aren't more aware of the fleecing that is taking place here. Shame on all of you.
1. Push doesn't work very well.
2. Jailbreak has never really worked very well for me (or several others I know that have done it -- some people have no issues). As I have mentioned many times before, when I have my phone jailbroken, applications will randomly stop working (immediately return to the main screen after you start them). Once one starts doing that, the others quickly follow suit and requires you to reinstall the applications to get them to stop. So while I love the availability of the extra applications, I really would prefer that my applications continue working properly.
3. Backgrounder "worked". AIM would run and I would get IMs. Unfortunately sometimes it wouldn't work and would hang the entire device. If I am continuously restarting the device to gain control of runaway backgrounded processes, it's really not doing me much good is it?
It has NO stereo bluetooth support! It also lacks bluetooth IP networking for tethering to your laptop, and it doesn't use the standard USB mini-B cable.
*shrug*, when I look for a phone none of these things are even a consideration for me. I don't use bluetooth for anything and I really don't care about what USB cable is used as long as I can transfer what I need to the device quickly.
Personally there are plenty of choices out there in phones because people have different needs and tastes. The iPhone isn't anywhere near the perfect mobile device (actually far from it) but it does what it does very well. I am a mass transit rider and I love the video/music player and the web browser. I used to own a T-mobile Sidekick and I really miss the keyboard on that device as well as the background application running. It's been difficult for me to get used to the fact that I am not available on AIM 24/7 wherever I am.
You take the good with the bad and you weigh your options before choosing your device. I decided that the media component of the iPhone was far superior to other devices I tried and that was more important to me on my commutes, especially after a 5.5" of snow falls after 12 PM in Minneapolis crushing the roadways during rush hour.
YMMV.
No, it would be more like having Minnesota Democrats Exposed handle the Franken/Coleman recount.
Lots of media groups are doing shit like this. Take for instance Minneapolis/St Paul's CityPages and what they're doing with their restaurant reviews.
As I have said time and time again, this has been a gigantic clusterfuck of enormous proportions.
1. The American public should have received a check (not a tax credit, not a credit card looking coupon, etc) for the total sale of the spectrum divided by every single citizen of this nation.
2. When the TV was moved to digital, it should have been better than what was offered before. Yes, the quality is better (when you can receive the signal) but most of the time (even with good equipment) the signal doesn't come in, you lose channels, and they randomly drop audio and video. At least with the old way, if it came in most of the way, I could still see and hear what was going on.
3. This was all unnecessary anyway. I don't care about opening up spectrum for other services when I am not directly benefiting in any way, shape or form by the change over. If you are seriously going to tell me that because I now have access to more channels, most of which rarely come in well after spending $20 on a box and $20+ more on rabbit ears or $40+ on a "HD" antenna, then you're wrong.
Boo on digital TV.