One of the last three video rental stores just closed in my neighborhood (in Seattle). They had a ton of stuff, from all media companies, and I could walk in a get a disc any time I wanted to. It would play on my DVD player, and I could keep it for a few days and then return it for a nominal cost. As the streaming companies fragment, I will watch fewer movies/shows, and long for the days when I could walk into this store and rent what I wanted.
"Courage" is what you have when you run into a burning building to save people, not what you have when you make a decision about whether to abandon a microphone plug. I hate how corporations in particular degrade the real meaning of words.
Paul Allen has a strong interest in old computer technology (Living Computer Museum), and science fiction. I hear he also has some money. They should approach him for help.
"It's expected to last until mid-day on Thursday when the weather looks likely to blow it away."
Just a reminder...when it comes to air pollution, there is no "away". It all stays here on planet earth, in the air we breathe all over the world. Just saying.
I think the banks should pre-pay the eventual millions/billions of dollars they will eventually be fined for whatever nefarious purpose this will be used for. They can write it off their books early, we can avoid lengthy trials and endless bloviating about how "something must be done to rein in the financial system", and we can all just admit that it's going to happen anyway so why not get ahead of the curve?
Is it really likely that something good and beautiful can be created by people working under this kind of regime? A cheaper role of toilet paper that gets to your house really fast...is that what some of our smartest people want to devote their lives to? Increasingly we let technology companies drive culture, and I can't help but think that nothing truly beautiful and valuable will come out of people working in conditions like this. It is a lie we tell ourselves as we look at attractive devices and use amazing software...in the case of Amazon and companies like it, these things are born of bad soil. Beyond just not wanting to buy anything through Amazon, I don't want this kind of company in my city (Seattle).
The Internet Essentials program Comcast offers is $9.95/month, and to be eligible, you have to have a child who participates in the Free and Reduced Lunch program. No kids? Not eligible.
Community Voice Mail http://www.cvm.org/, the nonprofit I work for, offers free voice mail boxes to more than 40,000 homeless and other "phoneless" people in 39 U.S. cities. We usually only provide the service to people who are seeking assistance from a social service agency; we buy local phone numbers in all these cities, and distribute them through a network of 2,500+ of these agencies. What we've found in 10+ years of doing this is that having a reliable phone number to put on job or housing application is still very important and can help determine whether a person gets their life back on track or not.
A lot of homeless people are using cell phones, mostly likely buying "pay-as-you-go" minutes. Those that find a way to sign up for annual plan without a reliable home address sometimes have problems paying the bills, and this can impact their credit record (which can impact applications for low-income housing, etc.). The cheap plans don't always include voice mail. And then there is the issue of having a reliable place to recharge your phone.
Ditto for email and the Web. There are obviously a lot of free access points, and a lot of information on the Web that can help people help themselves. If every homeless person had an email account, it would make it quite a bit easier to provide them with services (e.g. a broadcast message each week about job/housing opportunities in a particular city). As it is, we do this with voice mail, and it works reasonably well.
We're conducting focus groups and survey research on both topics this summer, with voice mail users in about five cities. Happy to post a follow-up about this when we have our data. (I'll leave the discussion about why and how people are homeless to those with more knowledge than I. I spend all my time trying to give people this voice mail tool so they can become ex-homeless!).
Spirograph taught me that I could create art through mathematical principles. Actually, I didn't know why it worked, but thought the resulting drawings were cool.
The Ig Nobel Awards were broadcast live, and the archived video can be found here. Real format only, but then, the broadcast was donated by RealNetworks.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the last three video rental stores just closed in my neighborhood (in Seattle). They had a ton of stuff, from all media companies, and I could walk in a get a disc any time I wanted to. It would play on my DVD player, and I could keep it for a few days and then return it for a nominal cost. As the streaming companies fragment, I will watch fewer movies/shows, and long for the days when I could walk into this store and rent what I wanted.
...focused on finding news ways to cart rich people around.
Sinofsky restates well-known book by Clayton Christensen written in 1997. News at 11:00?
"Courage" is what you have when you run into a burning building to save people, not what you have when you make a decision about whether to abandon a microphone plug. I hate how corporations in particular degrade the real meaning of words.
Paul Allen has a strong interest in old computer technology (Living Computer Museum), and science fiction. I hear he also has some money. They should approach him for help.
"It's expected to last until mid-day on Thursday when the weather looks likely to blow it away." Just a reminder...when it comes to air pollution, there is no "away". It all stays here on planet earth, in the air we breathe all over the world. Just saying.
I think the banks should pre-pay the eventual millions/billions of dollars they will eventually be fined for whatever nefarious purpose this will be used for. They can write it off their books early, we can avoid lengthy trials and endless bloviating about how "something must be done to rein in the financial system", and we can all just admit that it's going to happen anyway so why not get ahead of the curve?
Is it really likely that something good and beautiful can be created by people working under this kind of regime? A cheaper role of toilet paper that gets to your house really fast...is that what some of our smartest people want to devote their lives to? Increasingly we let technology companies drive culture, and I can't help but think that nothing truly beautiful and valuable will come out of people working in conditions like this. It is a lie we tell ourselves as we look at attractive devices and use amazing software...in the case of Amazon and companies like it, these things are born of bad soil. Beyond just not wanting to buy anything through Amazon, I don't want this kind of company in my city (Seattle).
The Internet Essentials program Comcast offers is $9.95/month, and to be eligible, you have to have a child who participates in the Free and Reduced Lunch program. No kids? Not eligible.
A competitor to these two malls should offer a "tracking free shopping experience" and take business away from the other malls.
A lot of homeless people are using cell phones, mostly likely buying "pay-as-you-go" minutes. Those that find a way to sign up for annual plan without a reliable home address sometimes have problems paying the bills, and this can impact their credit record (which can impact applications for low-income housing, etc.). The cheap plans don't always include voice mail. And then there is the issue of having a reliable place to recharge your phone.
Ditto for email and the Web. There are obviously a lot of free access points, and a lot of information on the Web that can help people help themselves. If every homeless person had an email account, it would make it quite a bit easier to provide them with services (e.g. a broadcast message each week about job/housing opportunities in a particular city). As it is, we do this with voice mail, and it works reasonably well.
We're conducting focus groups and survey research on both topics this summer, with voice mail users in about five cities. Happy to post a follow-up about this when we have our data. (I'll leave the discussion about why and how people are homeless to those with more knowledge than I. I spend all my time trying to give people this voice mail tool so they can become ex-homeless!).
Spirograph taught me that I could create art through mathematical principles. Actually, I didn't know why it worked, but thought the resulting drawings were cool.
The Ig Nobel Awards were broadcast live, and the archived video can be found here. Real format only, but then, the broadcast was donated by RealNetworks.