I fly very frequently and I am not afraid of terrorists. I'd be happy to walk through a metal detector set to pick up conventional guns, and run my luggage (laptop still in case) through an X-ray to look for obvious weapons. When terrorists down a US airline every month for a year we can talk again.
The problem is not that they are repeating the RIAA/MPAA approach. The problem is that they did exactly the opposite. Instead of protecting their content, they are giving it away. Even the AP: I have a free app on my iPhone from the AP that gives me the AP news feed. Newspapers wanted to get ahead of the digital revolution, so they put their product on-line. Some tried to charge for it, but there were enough who put it up for free that the for-charge plans failed. So they are stuck trying to make it work economically with on-line advertising.
The future of newspapers is dim. Soon, the only ones "reporting" news will be companies that are operating in other media: CNN, Fox etc. Ancillary, low-profit news media such as print and the Web will exist only as add-ons to the profit-making operations to "build the brand." Here in Hartford, for example, the sole daily newspaper, the Hartford Courant, recently announced that its newsroom operations were being combined with that of the co-owned Channel 61 station -- with the TV news director becoming the publisher of the newspaper. That's the model we're heading toward.
Satellite systems were tried (Google "Iridium") and found unable to compete economically with cellular except in locations where cellular is impractical. You need either a constellation of low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites or you need to live with the quarter-second propagation delay (and higher power requirements) of geostationary satellites. Also, the larger footprint of satellite signals means much less frequency reuse is possible than with the cellular network, requiring massively more spectrum to accommodate the same number of users. So, no, satellites do not promise a cheaper, faster solution. They work OK for mass broadcasting, not for mass two-way comms.
Yeah, that's not something the government should be doing. But somebody needs to be able to make those judgements because there really are people who are incapable of telling right from wrong. Here's an idea: Maybe for each such case we could set up a panel of disinterested citizens who would hear the evidence for and against and make the decision. We could call such a panel, I don't know... a jury?
If you were to directly introduce CO2 into the atmosphere before any other warming occurred, then it could become the driving force for the feedback cycle.
Yeah, but who would do something as brain-dead as that?
As a Federal Agency, the FCC can ask for proprietary information & trade secrets, but they cannot disseminate that information to the public.
Then they can't use that information to make regulatory decisions -- information they use for that purpose must be in the public record, as a recent court decision shows. And surely they are gathering that information in order to inform their regulatory decisions, because what other purpose could they have?
Gonzales is yet another example how the Bush administration values loyalty over competence. In virtually every executive-appointed office, Bush has installed people who are not qualified to do the job, but are unconditionally loyal to him and his party.
Appointing on the basis of competence only makes sense if you believe that government has a meaningful role to play. The current administration is fully committed to the Reaganite philosophy that "government is not the solution, it's the problem." As such, nobody should be surprised that Bush appointees (here and in Iraq) have consistently proved themselves incompetent.
With that in mind, making government effective is the last thing such an Administration would want. Much better to reward those who are politically loyal by giving them sinecures and by directing them to shape government policies to benefit your political friends. And you can see that happening throughout the government since 2001, whether it's FEMA ("heck of a job, Brownie"), FDA, the Forest Service or a host of other agencies and boards.
The only thing that surprises me at this point is that anyone would have higher expectations of the current Administration. (What's that old line about insanity being when you keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result?)
"You think Bush came along and blanked out a few lines just because the authors criticized him?"
Sure. Their usual technique is to assassinate the character of anyone who criticizes them, substituting purely ad hominem arguments -- false ones -- for any reasoned defense of their policies (c.f. Joseph Wilson). In this case, they would be attacking someone they themselves appointed to the government. That would make them look bad (as though their complete diplomatic, military and administrative fecklessness wasn't enough by itself), so all they can do is try to shut him up.
Reading the article, it seems like the primary problem is that the bloggers tended to not follow directions and wrote about whatever they actually felt like, instead of what they were supposed to write about.
Slashdot Mirror
...that's why when I look at sick people, I laugh.
Not if you're on one of those twelve airliners.
Sure, and they can call the Agricultural College "Boone's Farm."
...is the one that fits the socket on the wall in front of me.
You misspelled "ogled."
Yeah, I'm not buying that single-digit stuff. In the last 30 days, 13% of our site's 721,375 visits were via IE6 (per Google Analytics).
Now, if YouTube manages to drive the number to the low single digits, well, yay!
I can remember paying like $200 for a 16 kilobyte static RAM board for my Altair 680b. How old does that make me? And where did I leave my walker?
Since they don't charge extra for MMS on non-iPhones, my guess is they won't do so for iPhones.
Since they do charge extra for tethering on non-iPhones, my guess is they will do so for iPhones.
Which is all anyone should be looking for from any encyclopedia.
It's not hard to take sides at all. Software patents are bad. Period.
The only possible silver lining to this is that it helps demonstrate the badness of software patents.
(OK, seeing Microsoft discomfited is a little nice side effect, too.)
The problem is not that they are repeating the RIAA/MPAA approach. The problem is that they did exactly the opposite. Instead of protecting their content, they are giving it away. Even the AP: I have a free app on my iPhone from the AP that gives me the AP news feed. Newspapers wanted to get ahead of the digital revolution, so they put their product on-line. Some tried to charge for it, but there were enough who put it up for free that the for-charge plans failed. So they are stuck trying to make it work economically with on-line advertising.
The future of newspapers is dim. Soon, the only ones "reporting" news will be companies that are operating in other media: CNN, Fox etc. Ancillary, low-profit news media such as print and the Web will exist only as add-ons to the profit-making operations to "build the brand." Here in Hartford, for example, the sole daily newspaper, the Hartford Courant, recently announced that its newsroom operations were being combined with that of the co-owned Channel 61 station -- with the TV news director becoming the publisher of the newspaper. That's the model we're heading toward.
Satellite systems were tried (Google "Iridium") and found unable to compete economically with cellular except in locations where cellular is impractical. You need either a constellation of low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites or you need to live with the quarter-second propagation delay (and higher power requirements) of geostationary satellites. Also, the larger footprint of satellite signals means much less frequency reuse is possible than with the cellular network, requiring massively more spectrum to accommodate the same number of users. So, no, satellites do not promise a cheaper, faster solution. They work OK for mass broadcasting, not for mass two-way comms.
Yeah, that's not something the government should be doing. But somebody needs to be able to make those judgements because there really are people who are incapable of telling right from wrong. Here's an idea: Maybe for each such case we could set up a panel of disinterested citizens who would hear the evidence for and against and make the decision. We could call such a panel, I don't know... a jury?
Yeah, but who would do something as brain-dead as that?
"But boss, I have to browse the Web all day."
What?
Appointing on the basis of competence only makes sense if you believe that government has a meaningful role to play. The current administration is fully committed to the Reaganite philosophy that "government is not the solution, it's the problem." As such, nobody should be surprised that Bush appointees (here and in Iraq) have consistently proved themselves incompetent.
With that in mind, making government effective is the last thing such an Administration would want. Much better to reward those who are politically loyal by giving them sinecures and by directing them to shape government policies to benefit your political friends. And you can see that happening throughout the government since 2001, whether it's FEMA ("heck of a job, Brownie"), FDA, the Forest Service or a host of other agencies and boards.
The only thing that surprises me at this point is that anyone would have higher expectations of the current Administration. (What's that old line about insanity being when you keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result?)
No, it's about the attempt to delouse it.
Yeah, and here is where it died.
Sure. Their usual technique is to assassinate the character of anyone who criticizes them, substituting purely ad hominem arguments -- false ones -- for any reasoned defense of their policies (c.f. Joseph Wilson). In this case, they would be attacking someone they themselves appointed to the government. That would make them look bad (as though their complete diplomatic, military and administrative fecklessness wasn't enough by itself), so all they can do is try to shut him up.
Mod parent off-topic!
If your porn browsing results in "huge downloads" on your laptop, you should probably have some paper towels handy.