Unions are not there to protect the best performing employees--they couldn't care less about those people. The cream of the crop can always negotiate good terms for employment that are better than could be negotiated for the whole crew.
Unions are precisely for the 3/4 of the people you mention who do not carry their weight. Now if unions bought into the idea of actually rewarding excellence rather than coddling mediocrity, then maybe my opinion of them would improve. Some employees simply contribute more to the company than others and should be rewarded/paid higher for that. Employees are not fungible. It is somewhat ironic that unions treat them as such.
Unions would destroy the tech industry. Top level techs these days can make beaucoup bucks. Unionize the shop and that pay arrangement goes away.
That sounds like the most likely explanation for what happened--and Cogent just got ahead of the PR by doing their press release.
I never really did understand though why tier 1 carriers insist on the traffic being approximately equal in each direction between themselves. A residential user downloads more than than business customers upload on average. So what? By that I mean, both sending and receiving ends on an internet connection are paying for the service so why does it matter which direction the traffic is flowing?
I've noticed a huge up tick in take down notices as well, but my service is a private ISP, not affiliated with a university.
I think you are right that they are increasing pressure due to their losing ground. They are casting a wide net and applying it everywhere, not just on Universities.
The argument over exclusivity does not have anything to do with bulk services. The problem is that companies come in and obtain exclusive rights to sell service in the absence of any bulk deal with the property owner. A MDU's internal wiring is the property of the building owner. A building owner currently is not allowed to forbid competition in telephone services specifically, and is not allowed to prohibit competition for video either.
A building owner, however, is not required to let a tenant use existing wiring--but must allow service providers a reasonable way to connect their subscribers. In other words, if company A wires a building for the property owner, they currently are allowed to sign exclusive contracts to access that wiring. That seems fair to me so long as Company B is entitled to do the same thing. That, at least according to FCC rules and anything in my State's rules, is the current lay of the land. In practice, though, property companies can provide road blocks to competition by insisting on unreasonable routes to run wires--and good luck suing that property company since "reasonable" can be a rather subjective standard.
What the telcos want, though, isn't just equal access. They want to use the wiring their cable competitors paid to install. A large number of MDUs were built before cable access was brought to their community. Cable companies paid to wire them. I think a company that shells out money to invest in infrastructure should be entitled to own that wiring for a limited time or at least be entitled to fair compensation. Telephone service was deregulated by requiring telephone competitors to pay to use the other company's wire.
I don't think this is the first case where the RIAA was challenged. The RIAA lawyers are just smarter about dropping cases they don't have a good chance of winning rather than risk legal results that could set bad precedence (from their perspective). I've read tons of stories on slashdot about dropped lawsuits or settlements after filing--we don't typically hear what the settlement terms are, so for all we know some of those settlements could be slaps on wrists depending on how good the RIAA case is.
I do agree though that this reaching verdict is unfortunate for those who want to challenge the RIAA. It would be better if verdicts came out against the RIAA.
True, it quite likely was a mistake given the obvious impact on public opinion such an intentional act would be. However, I think the more salient observation to make would be that the Iranian government does block and filter things on purpose. Their mistake brought much needed attention to their censorship activities. I was well aware of China's cencorship of the internet and this mistake of Iran's made me aware of their cencorship practices. While not surprising that Iran censors the internet, I think it is well worth the excersise to bring attention to it.
Not sure why parent is rated -1. It's not an offensive or irrelevant point to make. I have honestly wondered the same thing--why don't the content companies want to distribute their own scheduling information at their own expense? I can only guess for a couple reasons:
1. Somehow people got duped into paying for it--why ruin a good thing, eh? 2. Content companies don't like PVRs for their commercial skipping capabilities, and out of time slot views aren't properly counted in ratings for their shows. Both problems affect what networks can charge for advertising.
It's only surprising that it's taken this long for people to figure out wifi is not a very good medium for tranporting service as an ISP. Many more APs are needed than believed to provide good coverage, and even when you have coverage you cannot stop other people from putting up APs that interfere with the muni APs. It was only inertia that kept so many projects going. It's comparable to what happens when there's a run on some form of investment such as subprime loans that have been in the financial news recently, or residential real estate, or the tech bust a few years ago. There is a reason for the run on the investments--they are proven to be either bad ideas or to have been overhyped.
Most average folks do not realise only channels 1, 6, and 11 are non-overlapping wifi channels. Channel 3 for instance overlaps with 1 and 6. Walking around downown Madison, WI where their muni wifi has been launched, one can often see 20+ wifi network names. The muni wifi network there just doesn't work and is unreliable. This is a turning point for wifi. Do not be surprised if other cities turn away from their monorail-like wifi networks.
My advice to Springfield--let Shelbyville have your wifi. You'll be happy you didn't waste your time on it.
I have to whole heartedly agree. Wifi just isn't reliable. Wimax is the way to go. I've seen municipal wifi up close and personal--more than I wish I ever had. Here in the midwest, Chicago has pulled out, Milwaukee may never get off the ground and Madison's wifi network has fizzled.
I really think a technology that does not exist in everyone's home, and different frequencies from home devices, needs to be set aside for the purpose of making such services reliable. Wimax is also a far superior technology for delivering service to the home user. People want wifi to replace their existing home service, and it is just not reliable enough.
True, but your arguement also means my "prime entertainment" might be mediocre content to other viewers. Why should someone else have to pay for what I want to watch? That's how the current system works. I do not ever watch sports programming, but because everyone has to pay for it in order to get any cable service at all, half the people who do not watch those shows are subsidizing their cost. I don't want to pay for something I don't want to buy. I'm never going to watch WE, Oxygen, or Lifetime nomatter how fine their programming may be yet I pay for them. Some sports fanatic not interested in all the news programming I watch may prefer not to pay for all the news channels on expaned basic.
You may have noticed that I picked "ABC News Now" as my example of content being crammed down the throats of consumers. Perhaps calling that channel mediocre programming is "frighteningly arrogant", however based on the numbers of viewers who actually watch it I think I can objectively say that my assertion is true. Another example channel that is force fed on expanded basic is Toon Disney. 1/10th the viewers of that for Nickelodeon according to recent viewer ratings, yet forced to be caried by any cable company who wants to carry ESPN when their ESPN contract comes up for renewal. That's crap--mediocre crap as judged by the fact that the viewership of those two force fed channels is a few tens of thousand of people in a country of 300 million. Using round numbers: 100 million cable households, 25 cents from the cable company per subscriber to carry toon disney, and 50,000 viewers gives Disney around $500 for every viewer who actually watches their crappy channel. If not for their lock on other content, ABC/Disney's toon disney would be a financial flop. They would have to charge $500 per subscriber per month to break even if a la carte programming were allowed.
Other examples of force fed content include Spanish language channels paid for by non Spanish speaking viewers. Why the heck is ESPN en Espanol required to be carried on expanded basic? Though before getting on your high horse, the other side of the arguement is true as well; why shouldn't native Spanish speakers be allowed to choose a majority of Spanish language programming ?
ESPN accounts for approximately 1/3 of the entire cost of expanded basic cable programming. This is because ABC/Disney FORCES cable companies to cary every ABC channel, every ESPN channel, every disney variant or none at all. ABC/Disney can go F@!# themselves because I don't want to watch any of their content, yet because they are one big company offering content, they can force cable companies to carry channels very few people watch (like ABC News Now, a cable news channel that nobody wants and that cable companies are being forced to carry when they renew their ESPN content agreements)
There are basically just a few companies that own the vast majority of content on the cable channel lineup. They are: GE--NBC, Telemundo, MSNBC, Bravo and the Sci Fi Channel. Time Warner--The WB Television Network, CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT ABC/Disney--ABC Television Network, ESPN, The Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E and Lifetime Viacom--Music Television, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, (and until spun off last year, CBS Television Network, UPN, Showtime) Scripps--HGTV, Food Network News Corp--Fox, National Geographic and FX,
There are very few channels these companies do not own. Forcing these companies to allow consumers to choose what they watch will give them less incentive to conglommerate and force feed mediocre content down our throats. You know, cable companies have to spend quite a bit of money on their plant to expand the number of channels they offer. By forcing cable companies to carry channels nobody wants, content companies are increasing cable bills by more than just the cost of the content.
I've been researching the cable industy looking into IPTV, and I have to say, there are more layers of evil than you would imagine in this industry. If you think cable companies suck--and for the most part, they do--the content companies suck even more.
The unlimited internet promise appears to be made outside the US more than what I see here. I just don't see those claims made much, if at all in the US. A search on google for unlimted internet for me (mostly because google gives geography related search results) gives results for unlimited internet, but by that they mean an unlimited number of dialup internet minutes via 56k modem. Most of the large US ISPs will not show up in the first couple pages of google search results when one searches for the term "unlimited internet"--mostly dialup companies show up. Here are some of the main internet providers in the US--cable and phone companies:
Find any claims of unlimited internet bandwidth from any major US ISP? Keep looking...you'll even find dislaimers saying explicitly that speed and bandwidth is not in any way guaranteed. Certainly those disclaimers are not front and center, but many have their disclaimers asterisk'd with notes on the main service description pages, so the disclaimers are not hard to find. The US has fairly clear and well enforced truth in advertising laws. Doesn't the UK?
I don't think anyone has any right to unlimited internet if I make no such claims, guarantees, or promises and especially if I specifically disclaim any such guarantee. The vast majority of US companies wouldn't make such a claim for fear of losing a class action lawsuit. It seems companies can make untrue claims about their products in the UK and not get sued? I certainly cannot in the US. That's a problem with your consumer rights laws, if they even exist.
Not sure if this is the case in the UK, but in the US there always seems to be the same statement--"up to X mbits". I don't know of any large ISPs that do not use that phrase. While perhaps it's a bit of marketing-speak, it is plain English, up front, and obvious that there is no guaranteed bandwidth being sold on residential service. I do not know any company that explicitly states their residential service is "unlimited".
Agreed on the everybody else does it thing, though. I do think more can be done to make the fair usage policies transparent and up front. The PlusNet ISP you linked to has some good ideas for how companies can educate their users about their service not being unlimited. Right now in the US, no company has ventured out into metered billing like PlusNet has. Ultimately, many who complain a lot about residential service not being unlimited have no clue what such a service actually costs. The link you posted does a lot to help clarify for average people why one should never expect to get unlimited bandwidth on residential priced service. However people have short attention spans and the explanation is too long to put in a commercial/in a magazine/etc.
I've thought about switching my offered service plans to a metered service, but am concerned that in the US where I'm at, I will scare people away. People hate their cell phone companies because of tiered usage plans. I'd much rather have tiered usage plans so that those who consume 10+ times what they pay for will either have to pay their fair share or go somewhere else. I may even be able to lower what I charge for the casual/light user.
True, ISPs do underprice their services assuming people do not use 100% of bandwidth all the time. In the US, one can also buy unlimited local and long distance phone service, but the phone company does not expect the phone to be dialing long distance 24/7.
You provide a false choice by suggesting ISPs could possibly choose to sell service without any oversubsription. Say the 10mbit service my company offers were sold assuming 100% usage 100% all the time. Depending on infrastructure costs and typical bandwidth costs for a decent size ISP in the US, you would be talking around $500 to $1000 per month. Say you have 1,000,000 customers in a modest size city. Are you suggesting that the ISP should plan on delivering 10 Petabits of data to that community? I'm not sure that that kind of bandwidth is even feasible with current technologies.
I would be happy to provide such a service if I could actually get people to buy it. Instead, I foolishly sell service for such tiny amounts of money per subscriber at $25-$50/mo thinking that's what the consumer demands. More seriously, there is a reason dedicated internet bandwidth costs more money. ISPs certainly do not do enough to inform consumers that they are not getting a dedicated connection--they can at least do that education better so that people do not pout when their bandwidthh is throttled for high usage.
An ISP could just change their terms of service and next month the customer can decide if they want to stay. I've thought about changing my terms of service so that the highest one or two percent would leave my service and go to my competitor. It would be like killing two birds with one stone--reduce my costs and increase the costs of my competitor. The only reason I don't do that is the ill will it would sew among my customers. I have to say it is some times tempting to make high usage expensive and push those users off my network, but I continue to play the law of averages game and offer uncapped internet services. I think eventually, ip television will force me and all other ISPs to change from unlimted bandwidth to metered services.
Ohh so true. My 2nd grade teachers thought I had learning dissabilities. In reality I was just so damn bored. Thankfully my mother was a teacher for the school district, so when she told my teachers they needed to challenge me to get me to do better they were willing to give it a shot. They probably hated me for the trouble I was in class and would probably try anything by that point to make me less annoying. My teachers were somewhat surprised that all of a sudden I was less disruptive in class and did better academically.
I was not self actuated until high school. By that point, I didn't need teachers to teach me subjects--particularly math and the sciences. So I agree with your assertion that a young intelligent kid can benefit from some academic coaching.
I was placed in classes where I was the obviously much younger student in the class. I hated the ridicule directed my way for being intellectually capable. I was sensitive to the fact that I was threatening to others, so I learned to not speak up and give answers in a class environment except only occasionally--it wasn't necessary for the education of myself or my classmates, and I could just ignore the class and read ahead. That is an important social lesson that I may not have learned had I only been among peers as capable as me. It allowed me to know when it's appropriate to shine and when it's not--when an answer is needed to solve a problem nobody else knows, then show your stuff. I can pick out the special ed. (as in gifted special ed.) student a mile away. They never learned humility or how to interract with the rest of the world. They never learn how to take their gifts and use them to sway the masses since they are too busy trying to convince everyone they are right to the point of losing supporters. They develop their abilities for the most selfish goal of satisfying their need to feel they are better than everyone else. They become ignored geniuses.
Despite the assumed rigor attached to the study of physical sciences, for instance, acceptance of a scientist's theories often include a measure of politics. The history of science is filled with people long dead before their work is recognised or accepted. Einstein was a rare example of genius excepted in his lifetime. I believe it's not a coincidence that Einstien was also generally a humble and kind person.
I urge you to find a way to have your daughter be in a setting, at least for a small portion of her education, where she interracts with regular people. Afterall, the world is filled with regular people. Your 8 year old could, when ready and appropriate, spend time in some traditional college prep classes in a high school for instance. You can even have her approach this likely dull class not as an opportunity to learn the subject, but rather an exploration into how to interact with normal people. And please do everything you can to ensure she does not learn contempt for average people. Otherwise your daughter could end up sounding like the snotty girl in the article :
" 'People are, I must admit it, a lot of times intimidated by me,' she told me; modesty isn't among her many talents. She described herself as 'perfectionistic' and said other students sometimes had 'jealousy issues' regarding her. "
I tend to agree with you there regarding bonds and those "financial thingies" that deal in sub prime housing loans, I just don't think a broad based burst of tech is in process like Dvorak thinks. Those few areas he cites as examples of irrational exuberance (to borrow a phrase) are not the tech market as a whole as happened in the last bubble, but a segment of the entire tech market.
There are however a number of financial thingies with very limited or no exposure to sub prime loans that are getting trashed for no good reason.
There is an absurd amount of doom and gloom in the markets surrounding the sub prime fallout and it's impact on the housing and financial sectors.
When everyone shouts "the sky is falling", it's time to step back and look for bargains. The opposite is true--when everyone cries out in victory over the awesome performance of their stocks, it's time to look at your best performers and see whether their price is still justified. Many stocks are declining for no good reason since they have little or nothing to do with sub prime loans or housing. We are nowhere near the speculation levels that occurred during the last bubble.
Tech always seemed a bit pricey of a place to put your money to me. Wouldn't be surprised at a correction--but a collapse? I doubt it.
I completely agree--at $200 I would buy one to be my carry around computer. I may be rather unique in that I always carry one around with me throughout the day mostlly because of my work.
I could see college students slipping one in their backback and take it with them to all their classes to take notes. Jesus--it costs less than most absurdy overpriced text books. Let's see, $275 organic chemistry book versus $200 computer that allows me to take my school work wherever I go? Not even close as to what delivers more educational value. And most campuses these days have virtually ubiquitous wifi coverage including in many classrooms/lecture halls.
I always go with what 12" portable llaptop I can because I value the portability. That's why I like my 12" iBook as it was one of the few affordable 12" laptops. When you go sub 12", you get to pay absurd amounts of money for the portability. This is great--I'll buy one just to take around with me instead of my iBook. I'll probably dual boot with linux and windows xp. I don't need much space--a couple gigs for each OS is just fine by me. It's my portable no nonsense carry around anyway.
I share your excitement for Apple's and Linux's recent success, however that excitement needs to be tempered by the reality that Windows is still the default standard desktop OS. One would think that with a lack luster Vista release and improvements on alternatives we would see real changes in market penetrations, but we're only talking about a couple percent of the entire market adopting MS alternatives.
MS still has considerable advantages--namely since we do not yet have interoperability, many apps for businesses are only written for windows. Accounting software in paricular is an example. If all applications were written for Windows, Linux, and OSX such that the OS choice would not affect whether your critical application would run, I suspect many businesses would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, with the rest split between Windows and OSX. MS Access is only available on Windows--and many custom/highly specialised applications are written in Access. Exchange is unfortunately still the best option for shared calendaring.
In business, the most successful company doesn't always have the best product to sell. Bill Gates was good at business more than technological innovation. Many of those business practices are just good business when you are small, but become barriers to competition once you have obtained a monopoly. MS is still good at business strategy. Does anyone really anticipate Office for Linux? How come we have no Outlook for Mac? Instead you have Entourage that will never have the calendaring features of Exchange. I suspect MS won't write games for OSX or Linux any time soon. With MS's multiple products tied together to the same software platform, it takes a lot to attack that position. Each linux or OSX sale has to overcome multiple MS advantages at once. The only good news is that each conversion does infact attack MS on every front and every product MS makes at once. MS doesn't just lose it's OS, but every other product they make when someone switches away from Windows. You can also be guaranteed MS will not go quietly when the going gets tough.
actually, change in energy is defined by dE = dW + dQ . You forgot about heat.
You are correct that physics is based on models which then use mathematics. So assume for the moment the math proves out conservation of energy. As I mentioned in my posting, the only assumptions made in that proof are the definition of energy as a capacity to do work or affect temperature (a.k.a. heat). In mathematical form, that definition is dE = dW + dQ . You would have to throw out what is meant by the term energy to do away with its conservation because the conclusion that it is conserved is only based on the definition of energy--and that conclusion is based on mathematical derivation. If the definition of energy is not either a capacity to do work or affect temperature (heat), then it's not energy either in a physical sense or a layman's understanding of the term. The perpetual motion machine "inventors" are claiming to have a device that creates energy in mechanical form more than any energy inputs into the system. There really is no room for them to be correct.
Also you bring up the topic of quantum physics--which contrary to your assertion actually came into being in large part because of phenomena that did not comport with known observations ( look up topics such as ultraviolet catastrophe or the photoelectric effect--just two reasons for why quantum physics was necessary and were problems well known before quantum physics was able to explain observation). Anyway, there is a principle known as the correspondence principle whereby it is observed that all of these "modern physics" formulae reduce to the exact form of classical newtonian forms when appropriate conditions are met. You can use relativity equations for mechanics at slow speeds--not just for things moving realy close to the speed of light. And yes, you can use Schroedinger's equation to solve classical physics problems if you are a glutten for punishment.
More to the point, all the new physics that has come into being in the past century is consistent with newtonian physics in the sense that netwonian physics is a special case. In newtonian physics, we assume a frame of reference moving slow relative to the speed of light and we assume quantum numbers are very large as is the case for large objects (relative to atomic scale objects). There are still a lot of assumptions built into classical, netwonian physics. Enough to allow for future work to be done in the field of physics--mostly because it was developed from typical human experiance which is limited to our direct human observation. That was why quantum phisics for the atomic scale and special relativity for the fast moving came to be. What about other extreme conditions--lot's of possibilities to expand on classical mechanics. Conservation of energy however has no assumptions other than the definition of energy. There is no other angle from which to attack the conclusion that energy is conserved.
No doubt...and to think that there will always be some people who get fooled by this. If these people represent a publicly traded company, I'd be tempted to short their stock. However there are so many ill informed people in the world willing to throw money at get rich quick scams, I'm not sure how high the stock price would be pumped up before it deflated(I'm thinking of all the stock pumping/dumping that happened with SCO and their strategy to sue their way to profitability).
Some earlier comments cited previous hoaxes that roped in real investment money--millions of dollars, some from established businesses. My god, you'd think executives with a college degree in business should be more careful to look behind the curtain, or at least think to talk to a science expert.
I heard one science journalist posit that in the world we live in today, science is becoming what literacy was hundreds of years ago. The point was not to suggest that everyone become scientists, but that a science literacy that enables people to evaluate scientific findings/assertions and use science effectively is a necessity to be successful in a world increasingly impacted by scientific developments.
I think your point misses something somewhat important about the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. They are about as good as fact as one ever will get in science. In fact, the idea of a perpetual motion machine being an impossibility can be proven conclusively by showing that every thermodynamic process results in at best getting as much energy out as you put in, with the universal (at least as we know to date) result that available energy is lost to entropy. We can get close to perfect energy conservation--like moving electricity through a superconductor--but the point is we will never get more out than we put in..
This can be proven mathematically, much like mathematics can prove there is no possible solution to certain types of problems. At base level, there has to be some assumption. In mathematics, the well ordering principle is one such assumption--that is that there exists numbers, and these numbers are required to have the property that all numbers can be ordered in increasing (or decreasing) value without two different numbers being the same. It would be absurd to suggest the well ordering principle is a faulty assumption.
OK--so what principle assumptions are involved in proving all thermodynamic processes result in at best conservation of available energy (rest lost as entropy)? First, I suppose we have to cite the existence of this quantity called energy. Second, we have to define what energy is. We can define energy as a quantity that descibes a capacity to do work (as a physicist would definne work) and a capacity for changing temperature (as a physicist from a statistical thermodynamics perspective would define temperature). Using only these assumptions and mathematics, one can prove energy is conserved.
This is not like the long held assumption that the speed of lighht would be different depending on how fast you were moving relative to the source of light--which assumption Einstein famously shattered. The assumptions necessary to prove energy conservation are so fundamental, that to think the assumptions are wrong would be absurd. This is not the same kind of level oof science that asserts theories of evolution, shows that the world is not flat flat (it's a cubic time sphere, you silly:) You would have to refute logic and reason as methods for determining facts in order to disprove conservation of energy.
Interesting perspective. However I think one point in the article was that this was helpful specificaly for treating brain cancer. While I'm not an oncologist, I suspect one challenge in treating brain cancer with chemotherapy is the blood/brain barrier.
While the article does discuss possible uses for other cancers, I suspect that the studies have focused on brain cancer simply because it's easy to focus an electric field on a portion of the body, and non-cancerous brain cells are at the botton ranking for how much cell division they undergo.
Slashdot Mirror
Unions are not there to protect the best performing employees--they couldn't care less about those people. The cream of the crop can always negotiate good terms for employment that are better than could be negotiated for the whole crew. Unions are precisely for the 3/4 of the people you mention who do not carry their weight. Now if unions bought into the idea of actually rewarding excellence rather than coddling mediocrity, then maybe my opinion of them would improve. Some employees simply contribute more to the company than others and should be rewarded/paid higher for that. Employees are not fungible. It is somewhat ironic that unions treat them as such. Unions would destroy the tech industry. Top level techs these days can make beaucoup bucks. Unionize the shop and that pay arrangement goes away.
That sounds like the most likely explanation for what happened--and Cogent just got ahead of the PR by doing their press release. I never really did understand though why tier 1 carriers insist on the traffic being approximately equal in each direction between themselves. A residential user downloads more than than business customers upload on average. So what? By that I mean, both sending and receiving ends on an internet connection are paying for the service so why does it matter which direction the traffic is flowing?
I've noticed a huge up tick in take down notices as well, but my service is a private ISP, not affiliated with a university. I think you are right that they are increasing pressure due to their losing ground. They are casting a wide net and applying it everywhere, not just on Universities.
The argument over exclusivity does not have anything to do with bulk services. The problem is that companies come in and obtain exclusive rights to sell service in the absence of any bulk deal with the property owner. A MDU's internal wiring is the property of the building owner. A building owner currently is not allowed to forbid competition in telephone services specifically, and is not allowed to prohibit competition for video either.
A building owner, however, is not required to let a tenant use existing wiring--but must allow service providers a reasonable way to connect their subscribers. In other words, if company A wires a building for the property owner, they currently are allowed to sign exclusive contracts to access that wiring. That seems fair to me so long as Company B is entitled to do the same thing. That, at least according to FCC rules and anything in my State's rules, is the current lay of the land. In practice, though, property companies can provide road blocks to competition by insisting on unreasonable routes to run wires--and good luck suing that property company since "reasonable" can be a rather subjective standard.
What the telcos want, though, isn't just equal access. They want to use the wiring their cable competitors paid to install. A large number of MDUs were built before cable access was brought to their community. Cable companies paid to wire them. I think a company that shells out money to invest in infrastructure should be entitled to own that wiring for a limited time or at least be entitled to fair compensation. Telephone service was deregulated by requiring telephone competitors to pay to use the other company's wire.
I don't think this is the first case where the RIAA was challenged. The RIAA lawyers are just smarter about dropping cases they don't have a good chance of winning rather than risk legal results that could set bad precedence (from their perspective). I've read tons of stories on slashdot about dropped lawsuits or settlements after filing--we don't typically hear what the settlement terms are, so for all we know some of those settlements could be slaps on wrists depending on how good the RIAA case is.
I do agree though that this reaching verdict is unfortunate for those who want to challenge the RIAA. It would be better if verdicts came out against the RIAA.
True, it quite likely was a mistake given the obvious impact on public opinion such an intentional act would be. However, I think the more salient observation to make would be that the Iranian government does block and filter things on purpose. Their mistake brought much needed attention to their censorship activities. I was well aware of China's cencorship of the internet and this mistake of Iran's made me aware of their cencorship practices. While not surprising that Iran censors the internet, I think it is well worth the excersise to bring attention to it.
Not sure why parent is rated -1. It's not an offensive or irrelevant point to make. I have honestly wondered the same thing--why don't the content companies want to distribute their own scheduling information at their own expense? I can only guess for a couple reasons:
1. Somehow people got duped into paying for it--why ruin a good thing, eh?
2. Content companies don't like PVRs for their commercial skipping capabilities, and out of time slot views aren't properly counted in ratings for their shows. Both problems affect what networks can charge for advertising.
It's only surprising that it's taken this long for people to figure out wifi is not a very good medium for tranporting service as an ISP. Many more APs are needed than believed to provide good coverage, and even when you have coverage you cannot stop other people from putting up APs that interfere with the muni APs. It was only inertia that kept so many projects going. It's comparable to what happens when there's a run on some form of investment such as subprime loans that have been in the financial news recently, or residential real estate, or the tech bust a few years ago. There is a reason for the run on the investments--they are proven to be either bad ideas or to have been overhyped.
Most average folks do not realise only channels 1, 6, and 11 are non-overlapping wifi channels. Channel 3 for instance overlaps with 1 and 6. Walking around downown Madison, WI where their muni wifi has been launched, one can often see 20+ wifi network names. The muni wifi network there just doesn't work and is unreliable. This is a turning point for wifi. Do not be surprised if other cities turn away from their monorail-like wifi networks.
My advice to Springfield--let Shelbyville have your wifi. You'll be happy you didn't waste your time on it.
I have to whole heartedly agree. Wifi just isn't reliable. Wimax is the way to go. I've seen municipal wifi up close and personal--more than I wish I ever had. Here in the midwest, Chicago has pulled out, Milwaukee may never get off the ground and Madison's wifi network has fizzled.
I really think a technology that does not exist in everyone's home, and different frequencies from home devices, needs to be set aside for the purpose of making such services reliable. Wimax is also a far superior technology for delivering service to the home user. People want wifi to replace their existing home service, and it is just not reliable enough.
True, but your arguement also means my "prime entertainment" might be mediocre content to other viewers. Why should someone else have to pay for what I want to watch? That's how the current system works. I do not ever watch sports programming, but because everyone has to pay for it in order to get any cable service at all, half the people who do not watch those shows are subsidizing their cost. I don't want to pay for something I don't want to buy. I'm never going to watch WE, Oxygen, or Lifetime nomatter how fine their programming may be yet I pay for them. Some sports fanatic not interested in all the news programming I watch may prefer not to pay for all the news channels on expaned basic.
You may have noticed that I picked "ABC News Now" as my example of content being crammed down the throats of consumers. Perhaps calling that channel mediocre programming is "frighteningly arrogant", however based on the numbers of viewers who actually watch it I think I can objectively say that my assertion is true. Another example channel that is force fed on expanded basic is Toon Disney. 1/10th the viewers of that for Nickelodeon according to recent viewer ratings, yet forced to be caried by any cable company who wants to carry ESPN when their ESPN contract comes up for renewal. That's crap--mediocre crap as judged by the fact that the viewership of those two force fed channels is a few tens of thousand of people in a country of 300 million. Using round numbers: 100 million cable households, 25 cents from the cable company per subscriber to carry toon disney, and 50,000 viewers gives Disney around $500 for every viewer who actually watches their crappy channel. If not for their lock on other content, ABC/Disney's toon disney would be a financial flop. They would have to charge $500 per subscriber per month to break even if a la carte programming were allowed.
Other examples of force fed content include Spanish language channels paid for by non Spanish speaking viewers. Why the heck is ESPN en Espanol required to be carried on expanded basic? Though before getting on your high horse, the other side of the arguement is true as well; why shouldn't native Spanish speakers be allowed to choose a majority of Spanish language programming ?
ESPN accounts for approximately 1/3 of the entire cost of expanded basic cable programming. This is because ABC/Disney FORCES cable companies to cary every ABC channel, every ESPN channel, every disney variant or none at all. ABC/Disney can go F@!# themselves because I don't want to watch any of their content, yet because they are one big company offering content, they can force cable companies to carry channels very few people watch (like ABC News Now, a cable news channel that nobody wants and that cable companies are being forced to carry when they renew their ESPN content agreements)
There are basically just a few companies that own the vast majority of content on the cable channel lineup. They are:
GE--NBC, Telemundo, MSNBC, Bravo and the Sci Fi Channel.
Time Warner--The WB Television Network, CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT
ABC/Disney--ABC Television Network, ESPN, The Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E and Lifetime
Viacom--Music Television, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, (and until spun off last year, CBS Television Network, UPN, Showtime)
Scripps--HGTV, Food Network
News Corp--Fox, National Geographic and FX,
There are very few channels these companies do not own. Forcing these companies to allow consumers to choose what they watch will give them less incentive to conglommerate and force feed mediocre content down our throats. You know, cable companies have to spend quite a bit of money on their plant to expand the number of channels they offer. By forcing cable companies to carry channels nobody wants, content companies are increasing cable bills by more than just the cost of the content.
I've been researching the cable industy looking into IPTV, and I have to say, there are more layers of evil than you would imagine in this industry. If you think cable companies suck--and for the most part, they do--the content companies suck even more.
The unlimited internet promise appears to be made outside the US more than what I see here. I just don't see those claims made much, if at all in the US. A search on google for unlimted internet for me (mostly because google gives geography related search results) gives results for unlimited internet, but by that they mean an unlimited number of dialup internet minutes via 56k modem. Most of the large US ISPs will not show up in the first couple pages of google search results when one searches for the term "unlimited internet"--mostly dialup companies show up. Here are some of the main internet providers in the US--cable and phone companies:
ATT
Charter Communications
Time Warner
Verizon
Cox Cable
Qwest
And even evil Comcast
Find any claims of unlimited internet bandwidth from any major US ISP? Keep looking...you'll even find dislaimers saying explicitly that speed and bandwidth is not in any way guaranteed. Certainly those disclaimers are not front and center, but many have their disclaimers asterisk'd with notes on the main service description pages, so the disclaimers are not hard to find. The US has fairly clear and well enforced truth in advertising laws. Doesn't the UK?
I don't think anyone has any right to unlimited internet if I make no such claims, guarantees, or promises and especially if I specifically disclaim any such guarantee. The vast majority of US companies wouldn't make such a claim for fear of losing a class action lawsuit. It seems companies can make untrue claims about their products in the UK and not get sued? I certainly cannot in the US. That's a problem with your consumer rights laws, if they even exist.
Not sure if this is the case in the UK, but in the US there always seems to be the same statement--"up to X mbits". I don't know of any large ISPs that do not use that phrase. While perhaps it's a bit of marketing-speak, it is plain English, up front, and obvious that there is no guaranteed bandwidth being sold on residential service. I do not know any company that explicitly states their residential service is "unlimited".
Agreed on the everybody else does it thing, though. I do think more can be done to make the fair usage policies transparent and up front. The PlusNet ISP you linked to has some good ideas for how companies can educate their users about their service not being unlimited. Right now in the US, no company has ventured out into metered billing like PlusNet has. Ultimately, many who complain a lot about residential service not being unlimited have no clue what such a service actually costs. The link you posted does a lot to help clarify for average people why one should never expect to get unlimited bandwidth on residential priced service. However people have short attention spans and the explanation is too long to put in a commercial/in a magazine/etc.
I've thought about switching my offered service plans to a metered service, but am concerned that in the US where I'm at, I will scare people away. People hate their cell phone companies because of tiered usage plans. I'd much rather have tiered usage plans so that those who consume 10+ times what they pay for will either have to pay their fair share or go somewhere else. I may even be able to lower what I charge for the casual/light user.
True, ISPs do underprice their services assuming people do not use 100% of bandwidth all the time. In the US, one can also buy unlimited local and long distance phone service, but the phone company does not expect the phone to be dialing long distance 24/7.
You provide a false choice by suggesting ISPs could possibly choose to sell service without any oversubsription. Say the 10mbit service my company offers were sold assuming 100% usage 100% all the time. Depending on infrastructure costs and typical bandwidth costs for a decent size ISP in the US, you would be talking around $500 to $1000 per month. Say you have 1,000,000 customers in a modest size city. Are you suggesting that the ISP should plan on delivering 10 Petabits of data to that community? I'm not sure that that kind of bandwidth is even feasible with current technologies.
I would be happy to provide such a service if I could actually get people to buy it. Instead, I foolishly sell service for such tiny amounts of money per subscriber at $25-$50/mo thinking that's what the consumer demands. More seriously, there is a reason dedicated internet bandwidth costs more money. ISPs certainly do not do enough to inform consumers that they are not getting a dedicated connection--they can at least do that education better so that people do not pout when their bandwidthh is throttled for high usage.
An ISP could just change their terms of service and next month the customer can decide if they want to stay. I've thought about changing my terms of service so that the highest one or two percent would leave my service and go to my competitor. It would be like killing two birds with one stone--reduce my costs and increase the costs of my competitor. The only reason I don't do that is the ill will it would sew among my customers. I have to say it is some times tempting to make high usage expensive and push those users off my network, but I continue to play the law of averages game and offer uncapped internet services. I think eventually, ip television will force me and all other ISPs to change from unlimted bandwidth to metered services.
"A normal classroom is a torture for these kids."
Ohh so true. My 2nd grade teachers thought I had learning dissabilities. In reality I was just so damn bored.
Thankfully my mother was a teacher for the school district, so when she told my teachers they needed to challenge me to get me to do better they were willing to give it a shot. They probably hated me for the trouble I was in class and would probably try anything by that point to make me less annoying. My teachers were somewhat surprised that all of a sudden I was less disruptive in class and did better academically.
I was not self actuated until high school. By that point, I didn't need teachers to teach me subjects--particularly math and the sciences. So I agree with your assertion that a young intelligent kid can benefit from some academic coaching.
I was placed in classes where I was the obviously much younger student in the class. I hated the ridicule directed my way for being intellectually capable. I was sensitive to the fact that I was threatening to others, so I learned to not speak up and give answers in a class environment except only occasionally--it wasn't necessary for the education of myself or my classmates, and I could just ignore the class and read ahead. That is an important social lesson that I may not have learned had I only been among peers as capable as me. It allowed me to know when it's appropriate to shine and when it's not--when an answer is needed to solve a problem nobody else knows, then show your stuff. I can pick out the special ed. (as in gifted special ed.) student a mile away. They never learned humility or how to interract with the rest of the world. They never learn how to take their gifts and use them to sway the masses since they are too busy trying to convince everyone they are right to the point of losing supporters. They develop their abilities for the most selfish goal of satisfying their need to feel they are better than everyone else. They become ignored geniuses.
Despite the assumed rigor attached to the study of physical sciences, for instance, acceptance of a scientist's theories often include a measure of politics. The history of science is filled with people long dead before their work is recognised or accepted. Einstein was a rare example of genius excepted in his lifetime. I believe it's not a coincidence that Einstien was also generally a humble and kind person.
I urge you to find a way to have your daughter be in a setting, at least for a small portion of her education, where she interracts with regular people. Afterall, the world is filled with regular people. Your 8 year old could, when ready and appropriate, spend time in some traditional college prep classes in a high school for instance. You can even have her approach this likely dull class not as an opportunity to learn the subject, but rather an exploration into how to interact with normal people. And please do everything you can to ensure she does not learn contempt for average people. Otherwise your daughter could end up sounding like the snotty girl in the article :
" 'People are, I must admit it, a lot of times intimidated by me,' she told me; modesty isn't among her many talents. She described herself as 'perfectionistic' and said other students sometimes had 'jealousy issues' regarding her. "
I tend to agree with you there regarding bonds and those "financial thingies" that deal in sub prime housing loans, I just don't think a broad based burst of tech is in process like Dvorak thinks. Those few areas he cites as examples of irrational exuberance (to borrow a phrase) are not the tech market as a whole as happened in the last bubble, but a segment of the entire tech market.
There are however a number of financial thingies with very limited or no exposure to sub prime loans that are getting trashed for no good reason.
There is an absurd amount of doom and gloom in the markets surrounding the sub prime fallout and it's impact on the housing and financial sectors.
When everyone shouts "the sky is falling", it's time to step back and look for bargains. The opposite is true--when everyone cries out in victory over the awesome performance of their stocks, it's time to look at your best performers and see whether their price is still justified. Many stocks are declining for no good reason since they have little or nothing to do with sub prime loans or housing. We are nowhere near the speculation levels that occurred during the last bubble.
Tech always seemed a bit pricey of a place to put your money to me. Wouldn't be surprised at a correction--but a collapse? I doubt it.
I completely agree--at $200 I would buy one to be my carry around computer. I may be rather unique in that I always carry one around with me throughout the day mostlly because of my work.
I could see college students slipping one in their backback and take it with them to all their classes to take notes. Jesus--it costs less than most absurdy overpriced text books. Let's see, $275 organic chemistry book versus $200 computer that allows me to take my school work wherever I go? Not even close as to what delivers more educational value. And most campuses these days have virtually ubiquitous wifi coverage including in many classrooms/lecture halls.
I always go with what 12" portable llaptop I can because I value the portability. That's why I like my 12" iBook as it was one of the few affordable 12" laptops. When you go sub 12", you get to pay absurd amounts of money for the portability. This is great--I'll buy one just to take around with me instead of my iBook. I'll probably dual boot with linux and windows xp. I don't need much space--a couple gigs for each OS is just fine by me. It's my portable no nonsense carry around anyway.
before it get's pointed out...oops, entourage does i guess support calendaring/connecting to exchange
I share your excitement for Apple's and Linux's recent success, however that excitement needs to be tempered by the reality that Windows is still the default standard desktop OS. One would think that with a lack luster Vista release and improvements on alternatives we would see real changes in market penetrations, but we're only talking about a couple percent of the entire market adopting MS alternatives. MS still has considerable advantages--namely since we do not yet have interoperability, many apps for businesses are only written for windows. Accounting software in paricular is an example. If all applications were written for Windows, Linux, and OSX such that the OS choice would not affect whether your critical application would run, I suspect many businesses would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, with the rest split between Windows and OSX. MS Access is only available on Windows--and many custom/highly specialised applications are written in Access. Exchange is unfortunately still the best option for shared calendaring. In business, the most successful company doesn't always have the best product to sell. Bill Gates was good at business more than technological innovation. Many of those business practices are just good business when you are small, but become barriers to competition once you have obtained a monopoly. MS is still good at business strategy. Does anyone really anticipate Office for Linux? How come we have no Outlook for Mac? Instead you have Entourage that will never have the calendaring features of Exchange. I suspect MS won't write games for OSX or Linux any time soon. With MS's multiple products tied together to the same software platform, it takes a lot to attack that position. Each linux or OSX sale has to overcome multiple MS advantages at once. The only good news is that each conversion does infact attack MS on every front and every product MS makes at once. MS doesn't just lose it's OS, but every other product they make when someone switches away from Windows. You can also be guaranteed MS will not go quietly when the going gets tough.
actually, change in energy is defined by dE = dW + dQ . You forgot about heat.
You are correct that physics is based on models which then use mathematics. So assume for the moment the math proves out conservation of energy. As I mentioned in my posting, the only assumptions made in that proof are the definition of energy as a capacity to do work or affect temperature (a.k.a. heat). In mathematical form, that definition is dE = dW + dQ . You would have to throw out what is meant by the term energy to do away with its conservation because the conclusion that it is conserved is only based on the definition of energy--and that conclusion is based on mathematical derivation. If the definition of energy is not either a capacity to do work or affect temperature (heat), then it's not energy either in a physical sense or a layman's understanding of the term. The perpetual motion machine "inventors" are claiming to have a device that creates energy in mechanical form more than any energy inputs into the system. There really is no room for them to be correct.
Also you bring up the topic of quantum physics--which contrary to your assertion actually came into being in large part because of phenomena that did not comport with known observations ( look up topics such as ultraviolet catastrophe or the photoelectric effect--just two reasons for why quantum physics was necessary and were problems well known before quantum physics was able to explain observation). Anyway, there is a principle known as the correspondence principle whereby it is observed that all of these "modern physics" formulae reduce to the exact form of classical newtonian forms when appropriate conditions are met. You can use relativity equations for mechanics at slow speeds--not just for things moving realy close to the speed of light. And yes, you can use Schroedinger's equation to solve classical physics problems if you are a glutten for punishment.
More to the point, all the new physics that has come into being in the past century is consistent with newtonian physics in the sense that netwonian physics is a special case. In newtonian physics, we assume a frame of reference moving slow relative to the speed of light and we assume quantum numbers are very large as is the case for large objects (relative to atomic scale objects). There are still a lot of assumptions built into classical, netwonian physics. Enough to allow for future work to be done in the field of physics--mostly because it was developed from typical human experiance which is limited to our direct human observation. That was why quantum phisics for the atomic scale and special relativity for the fast moving came to be. What about other extreme conditions--lot's of possibilities to expand on classical mechanics. Conservation of energy however has no assumptions other than the definition of energy. There is no other angle from which to attack the conclusion that energy is conserved.
No doubt...and to think that there will always be some people who get fooled by this. If these people represent a publicly traded company, I'd be tempted to short their stock. However there are so many ill informed people in the world willing to throw money at get rich quick scams, I'm not sure how high the stock price would be pumped up before it deflated(I'm thinking of all the stock pumping/dumping that happened with SCO and their strategy to sue their way to profitability).
Some earlier comments cited previous hoaxes that roped in real investment money--millions of dollars, some from established businesses. My god, you'd think executives with a college degree in business should be more careful to look behind the curtain, or at least think to talk to a science expert.
I heard one science journalist posit that in the world we live in today, science is becoming what literacy was hundreds of years ago. The point was not to suggest that everyone become scientists, but that a science literacy that enables people to evaluate scientific findings/assertions and use science effectively is a necessity to be successful in a world increasingly impacted by scientific developments.
I think your point misses something somewhat important about the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. They are about as good as fact as one ever will get in science. In fact, the idea of a perpetual motion machine being an impossibility can be proven conclusively by showing that every thermodynamic process results in at best getting as much energy out as you put in, with the universal (at least as we know to date) result that available energy is lost to entropy. We can get close to perfect energy conservation--like moving electricity through a superconductor--but the point is we will never get more out than we put in..
This can be proven mathematically, much like mathematics can prove there is no possible solution to certain types of problems. At base level, there has to be some assumption. In mathematics, the well ordering principle is one such assumption--that is that there exists numbers, and these numbers are required to have the property that all numbers can be ordered in increasing (or decreasing) value without two different numbers being the same. It would be absurd to suggest the well ordering principle is a faulty assumption.
OK--so what principle assumptions are involved in proving all thermodynamic processes result in at best conservation of available energy (rest lost as entropy)? First, I suppose we have to cite the existence of this quantity called energy. Second, we have to define what energy is. We can define energy as a quantity that descibes a capacity to do work (as a physicist would definne work) and a capacity for changing temperature (as a physicist from a statistical thermodynamics perspective would define temperature). Using only these assumptions and mathematics, one can prove energy is conserved.
This is not like the long held assumption that the speed of lighht would be different depending on how fast you were moving relative to the source of light--which assumption Einstein famously shattered. The assumptions necessary to prove energy conservation are so fundamental, that to think the assumptions are wrong would be absurd. This is not the same kind of level oof science that asserts theories of evolution, shows that the world is not flat flat (it's a cubic time sphere, you silly
wonder if it could be used to convert coal to a liquid hydrocarbon--would make the US the new saudi arabia for oil considering our huge coal deposits.
Interesting perspective. However I think one point in the article was that this was helpful specificaly for treating brain cancer. While I'm not an oncologist, I suspect one challenge in treating brain cancer with chemotherapy is the blood/brain barrier.
While the article does discuss possible uses for other cancers, I suspect that the studies have focused on brain cancer simply because it's easy to focus an electric field on a portion of the body, and non-cancerous brain cells are at the botton ranking for how much cell division they undergo.