Bridges often have unused structural elements: walk-ways made unsafe by modern traffic levels, maintenance accesses unused for safety reasons, supports made redundant beyond the factor of safety by bridge improvements, etc. Chips and boards too: FPGAs with 10% utilization, chip designs re-purposed with functional components disabled, subsystems replaced in boards by new designers not confident enough to remove the old design, etc.
Cruft in software is more often removed because (1) software has a potentially longer lifetime than hardware and (2) it's a lot easier to remove an uncalled function from a program than a girder from a bridge! Software cleanup should be an expected and planned part of a project's life cycle.
I agree that the shield laws should be expanded, for the same reasons you laid out. I'd prefer to see it happen through legislation rather than reliance on precedence set by rulings like this one, but at least we're likely to see some progress. As for political name-calling, I don't know if the privilege to hide your sources can be used to dodge libel charges anyway - but politicians could always use thicker skins!
I think it's reasonable for bloggers to push for leveling of the journalistic playing field, and I hope that those who take their roles as amateur journalists seriously get the respect they deserve.
Definitely. And with the decline of print media, it's bound to get cleared up sooner or later. Hopefully sooner!
With journalism we're talking about restricting the right to have an opinion and speak the truth.
No, we're not. We are expressly talking about the Shield Laws that exempt journalists from disclosing the sources of their facts; not their right to disclose facts in general. It is the applicability of the Shield Laws to non-print media and amateur journalism that is in question.
It's a balance of what is good for the state right now (getting information used to catch and prosecute illegal activity) and what is good for the state long term (protection from undue threat of exposure for whistleblowers, leaks, and sources). The history that led to the creation of Shield Laws clearly indicates that we the people want a balance. People whose roles are critical to a progressive society may be afforded the privilege of freedom from subpoenas - in limited situations. But we also don't want to de-claw subpoenas as a tool of justice by giving everyone carte blanche exemption.
Regardless, freedom of speech is secure (well, as secure as it is regardless of this issue!) and this is strictly about being forced by a court to disclose sources.
How about we don't have special rights for special people? Everyone gets the same rights regardless of whether or not the government or someone else feels like a particular class of people shouldn't have them.
Think for a minute. No special privileges granted to police officers to enter premises in case of emergencies, carry weapons openly, or detain people against their will despite not witnessing a crime? No special privileges granted to fire-fighters to restrict people from entering their own homes or to enter someone's home without permission? No special privileges granted to ambulance drivers to go through red lights?
We give government the power to grant privileges to some people that we do not want granted to all people.
I think the point you were trying to make was that everyone should be afforded the protection of the Shield Laws, not just journalists. I disagree; the privilege to withhold information from a court, despite due process being followed via a subpoena, is powerful. That privilege should only be given to people whose refusal to disclose information about potentially criminal activities is, despite appearances, a good thing for the state and its people. This boils down to people whose jobs are beneficial to the state and its people and who rely on public trust and confidential communication to do their jobs effectively. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, maybe some others. And the importance of confidentiality and trust and whether or not information was given in the context of those jobs is examined when the Shield Laws are relied upon.
If we want to continue to give the press special privileges, someone has to determine who is and is not press. The alternative is to let everyone rely on the Shield Laws. We don't want that because it would significantly undermine the power of the court to ascertain information via subpoenas. Joey "The Wrench" Rigatoni calls his Facebook profile a blog and can't tell you who posted "I killed Jimmy Hoffa" on his wall.
The definitions of "media" and "press" are evolving and the court system is intentionally slow-moving. This unfortunately comes down hard on journalists (and not-journalists) during the transition period.
The protections given to journalists are not those of free speech - we already have those - but rather the shield laws that allow journalists to legally withhold information relating to the fact-gathering process. That's a weighty privilege afforded to few other professions and I don't think it should be handed out to every blogger or rag writer without compromising the court system and subpoenas.
I would cautiously support a "Journalist License" because I think it would more clearly define the rights of journalists and provide security and confidence to sources. I would insist on the following points.
- A Journalist License should be available to any journalist who meets a reasonable standard of fact-checking and professionalism in reporting, regardless of chosen media or corporate association (or lack thereof).
- A "Journalist License" must not be an impediment to the anonymous publication of information.
- The granting of a Journalist License must not include any personal investigation into the journalist.
- It must not be possible to cancel or invalidate a Journalist License. It may expire, but re-issuing must not impose any additional requirements.
- Disclosure of a Journalist License must be optional at all times.
- A journalist must not be afforded or denied any due process or rights as a result of holding or not-holding a Journalist License, except for the "Shield Laws".
There's a lot of potential for abuse by government, but formalized simply and clearly I think it could be done right. That said, I would read very carefully before supporting any attempts to implement such a license.
If you cannot do what you like with you hardware then you obviously do not own it.
You can't legally saw the barrel off your shotgun, remove the airbags from your car, or torture your dog. We give government the power to make laws abridging our use of our own possessions. I think modding should be legal, with exceptions as necessary (reselling a car without disclosing modded brake-control firmware, for example), but I don't think the definition of ownership is the right way to argue the point.
Honestly, I can't imagine it'll be that huge an implication. Just because it'll be legal doesn't at all mean Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony need to make it easy, nor does it stop them from ruining old jailbreak methods with new firmware, like what they do now, to whatever effectiveness it does.
If it's legal it can be widely advertised and freely undertaken. If jailbroken phones are desirable, their legality will create a market for jailbreakable phones and (with time) vendors will try to expand into that market.
It appears that provision was intended to prevent "tie-in" sales. A Businessperson's Guide to Federal Warranty Law gives the example of vacuum cleaner manufacturers requiring branded vacuum cleaner bags to keep the warranty in effect.
Because the firmware on your phone is not (yet) a monetized product distinct from the phone itself, I suspect requiring a specific vendor's firmware does not fall afoul of the spirit of the law. Also note that the vendor is allowed to void the warranty because of damage caused by incorrect service or modification, which I would assume can be extended to damage caused by buggy third-party firmware.
Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures... was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.
Reasonable and responsible activists would have hired safety and security experts to write a report, lobbied a politician to present it, and run a media campaign to raise awareness. But hey, they made their point: there are dangerous radical groups in France that will break into nuclear power plants. They even pointed out one in particular, called Greenpeace.
NSA-approved shredders are good enough for destroying classified documents up to TS; the shredded remains do not need to be controlled. The shreddings are fine enough that no piece of output can contain a single glyph at any reasonable font size. The shreddings of even a single piece of paper are shuffled together by the action of the blades. These shredders aren't cheap, but I bet they'll stand up to state-level threats of reconstruction for the next 10 years or so.
If that's not good enough, some locations use burn-boxes - never trust a machine to do thermodynamic's job!
Frankly, if you can't handle CS1 without hand-holding, maybe you're just not cut out for Computer Science. I've found that professors are much happier to take extra time on concepts once you get into the later undergrad material and grad school research-oriented topic - the hard stuff - but have little patience for introductory courses.
After all, why should a professor dumb down a relatively easy course for 200 students when he or she could accelerate it for 100 students? Prove your ability on the easy stuff and the professor will spend more time on you when you get to the difficult stuff.
So the US and Russian Federation toast the stock they have. 5 years later the People's Republic of China or North Korea release a mutated weaponized smallpox that no one else has a vaccine for.
Does having a tiny bit of old smallpox in a vial somewhere give you a significant advantage in making large quantities of vaccine for new mutated smallpox?
According to TFS the US is ordering 14 million smallpox vaccine doses and I don't think they're relying on the current smallpox vials to make them. It seems to me that we could kill off smallpox but still be ready to produce vaccines if a new strain broke out.
Frankly, I think the odds and resulting damage of some nation hiding weaponized smallpox all these years and intentionally releasing it are overshadowed by the odds and damage of the US accidentally releasing or losing the stored vials. Autoclave the thing and call it a day.
It seems to me that the real research question is "how can one stranger teach another stranger a natural language using a less powerful shared language?" For instance, how can I teach you English when the only language we share is basic gestures?
Some theoretical work on communicating the rules of complicated languages using very limited languages would be interesting. The fact that they used robots is hardly important; anybody can stick a speech synthesizer and speech recognition on a PC and call it a day. The underlying problem is the same.
When I hear "Robots used in [10-years-out research topic x]" I think "If they were serious about research topic x they'd be working theoretically - they're nowhere near ready to start worrying about implementations!"
Maybe that's unfair, but it seems that there's a world of cool theory to be explored on this topic, and unless they plan on having the robots do the work, I don't see many breakthroughs coming from the authors.
"3G" is a weak term that means different things in these two technology stacks. AT&T's 3G is a much better 3G than Verizon's 3G, and thus also much more expensive to roll out.
Very true, but prospective customers don't want to hear the details. AT&T can come back with a line of commercials advertising how their 3G is faster than Verizon's 3G and bam - competition. The point is that the Verizon ads aren't unfairly damaging or misleading and there's plenty of room for rebuttal by AT&T.
I see these ads a lot; they run often during college football games here in Florida. I have AT&T on a non-3G phone so it doesn't really apply to me, but if I were in the market for a 3G phone I'd definitely want to follow-up on those ads.
I don't think they're misleading - they say "if you want to know why your friend's 3G coverage is so spotty" (or something along those lines, with 3G mentioned every time) and the examples given are all 3G-specific (high-bandwidth applications). Besides, who advertises about the breadth of their 2G service these days? It's very clear that it's talking about 3G.
It is incredibly easy to be skeptical and cynical, until you have seen something that rivals the best magician's trick. From a guy who spent most of every day of his life by himself.
So did you believe the magician's claim that he has supernatural powers, too? If an old man with a stick and a talent for miming can fool you into thinking that dead wood can turn "into a straining, curving, living thing" and detect water, I've got a card trick to show you.
In my mind there was simply no way you could hold a branch and make it do that -- the branch itself wanted to do it, and did it.
I've located the source of the problem, highlighted above.
but if I legally have a box, I ought to be able to get at the data I pay for.
And if you legally have a song you ought to be able to listen to it as many times as you please. And if you legally have a movie you ought to be able to watch it in every room in the house. And if you legally have a video game you ought to be able to use it on as many computers as you wish.
Media companies feel that since media has no inherent usage limitations (transportation, duplication, accessibility, etc.) they've got to limit it purposefully. It's scary (and I'm not saying that facetiously) for someone who grew up when a product had a serial number, an owner, a size, a weight, to suddenly be in charge of selling an ephemeral product with nothing but a production cost that must be somehow recouped.
Wait until the kids that grew up with broadband are old enough to approach venture capitalists, to lobby congress, to go to court. Then we'll see some change.
I too gave up cable for precisely this reason: Cox wouldn't give me a box with working Firewire (despite angry phone calls to managers citing the FCC regulation that requires it here in the States). After a few weeks I decided that the cost of pursuing it further up the ladder and the cost of the service in the first place wasn't worth the quality of service, so I cut the cord.
I replaced my cable subscription with broadcast HD (for sports, particularly the home team) and a two-at-a-time Netflix subscription, which worked out quite well.
Anyway, for some people television is as important a media as the Internet is for us here on Slashdot. There's certainly a lot more intelligent material on the Internet than on television, but face it, most people aren't using the Internet for that anyway. Television is a good way to turn your brain off and relax, which, in moderation, can be a good thing.
My guess is that, like the FCC, the relevant Canadian authorities have little care about this particular issue. Cable companies in the states don't blink when you cite the FCC. Everyone but a single tech at Cox claimed straight-faced that the FCC mandated no such thing. Either they haven't heard of it before, have never had anyone complain before, or simply hoped I'd go away.
(Incidentally, I made it very clear to the manager of the local Cox management why I was disconnecting my service and why I would encourage others to do the same. He didn't seem fazed and I never got any offers for reduced cost service.)
The reason why streaming music is taking over is because radio is crap. Seriously, if you don't like hip hop, pop, country or classic rock, there are -no- stations other than that anymore. If you have musical tastes other than that, too bad.
You could easily write that as: "If you have musical tastes that aren't the same as the majority, too bad." But that's pretty much expected, right? Imagine liking orchestral music when big band took off. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's "crap". A lot of people like Miley Cyrus and don't care if it's not skillfully performed music. Radio, like any limited-spectrum broadcast medium, caters to the majority.
If dislike in radio genres was substantial enough to impact the music industry's bottom line (via "switchers" to streaming media) the radio stations would adjust accordingly.
I think what is increasing demand in streaming media is availability, ease of use, and cost. The state of streaming "Internet radio" 10 years ago was pitiful. Since then we have standardized technologies, better quality, and (however grudgingly) music label support. Along with reasonable costs (free in many cases!), increased access to high-bandwidth Internet connections, and more legitimacy in not owning physical albums, tapes, CDs, etc. streaming becomes a viable media delivery method.
"it's happening much faster than ever before thanks to human behaviour"
that's the leap that you aren't being very convincing about. there seems to be this movement of "omgz everything humanz do is wrong!" which isn't science. global warming advocates can't remove the emotion from their arguments, which makes me suspicous.
The great thing about science is that the OP doesn't need to be convincing. Anyone can look at the data and reach a conclusion.
In case you don't want to become an expert in the field, however, and are willing to accept an overwhelming majority of existing experts, you would find that "97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures." (from the OP's link).
Perhaps if you didn't accept that poll, you might find that "Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger.". And so on.
Personally I don't get it. Why is it so hard to accept? Reliance on academic authories has its pitfalls of course, but a certain point you need the humility to accept that there is no debate over this particular point among experts.
It reminds me of the "debate" over whether or not 0.999... = 1. Non-mathematicians will swear up and down that it can't be. They'll pull out everything they've got, but at the end of the day, just because you don't understand it doesn't make it so. Read with a careful eye, but c'mon, the cause of the current change in global mean temperatures is no longer a debate.
Level heads, people, level heads. This is a report from the AP; neither Verizon nor Boingo have commented on the mechanics of the service.
Verizon has little incentive to refuse access to portable devices or Macs or anybody else for that matter. They're probably not into Windows evangelism nor do they really benefit from offering a "free" service that nobody can use (roll out costs will trump usage costs for the near term and if the service isn't used it won't attract more customers anyway). Finally, Verizon is a major phone company and knows as well as anyone that mobility is the present and future. They're not going to ignore that segment.
Similarly, Boingo, whose whole business is providing easy-to-use wireless access, would suffer from word-of-mouth. Furthermore, as other posters have commented, Boingo already has applications for many platforms, including most smart phones.
Therefore I find it hard to believe that Verizon, with Boingo's consent as business partner is allowing only Windows XP and Vista to access their new hotspots. I'll wait until Verizon and/or Boingo make an official announcement before getting the ol' pitchfork out the closet.
I think Microsoft's new campaign of "personalization" is worthwhile, especially as a way to counter the "hipness" of Apple. With Apple you get popularity, but there's no uniqueness. Microsoft gave up on popularity, hipness after the failed Bill Gates/Seinfeld "quirky" commercials. Uniqueness and customization is a good strategy, I think. The "I'm a PC" commercials pushed it and the stores, as per the article, are making it a big focus.
I don't really have any need to buy Microsoft products, but it's certainly interesting. It's new at least, and I think it has a shot at succeeding. Plus, having real people to talk to is a step towards making it easier to use a valid, purchased product than a pirated product, which is step 1 in fighting piracy (the real way).
It may be they lied about keeping user supplied data in house, and they may have implied that they used advanced technological means to do the transcription, but if their service does what it says I can't blame them for using human labour to do the transcription.
I don't know... an unethical service, an unscrupulous company, a management with the lack of business sense to realize this is a public relations disaster, a fiscally untenable platform, and (possibly) opens them up to legal action... I'd call that crazy.
Sure, the technology works, but the whole idea is preposterous. Who transcribes the workers' voice mail? Or is voice mail transcription reserved for the upper class? Surely it's not such an elite service to warrant that treatment, which indicates that something went wrong in the management's thinking.
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Bridges often have unused structural elements: walk-ways made unsafe by modern traffic levels, maintenance accesses unused for safety reasons, supports made redundant beyond the factor of safety by bridge improvements, etc. Chips and boards too: FPGAs with 10% utilization, chip designs re-purposed with functional components disabled, subsystems replaced in boards by new designers not confident enough to remove the old design, etc.
Cruft in software is more often removed because (1) software has a potentially longer lifetime than hardware and (2) it's a lot easier to remove an uncalled function from a program than a girder from a bridge! Software cleanup should be an expected and planned part of a project's life cycle.
I think it's reasonable for bloggers to push for leveling of the journalistic playing field, and I hope that those who take their roles as amateur journalists seriously get the respect they deserve.
Definitely. And with the decline of print media, it's bound to get cleared up sooner or later. Hopefully sooner!
With journalism we're talking about restricting the right to have an opinion and speak the truth.
No, we're not. We are expressly talking about the Shield Laws that exempt journalists from disclosing the sources of their facts; not their right to disclose facts in general. It is the applicability of the Shield Laws to non-print media and amateur journalism that is in question.
It's a balance of what is good for the state right now (getting information used to catch and prosecute illegal activity) and what is good for the state long term (protection from undue threat of exposure for whistleblowers, leaks, and sources). The history that led to the creation of Shield Laws clearly indicates that we the people want a balance. People whose roles are critical to a progressive society may be afforded the privilege of freedom from subpoenas - in limited situations. But we also don't want to de-claw subpoenas as a tool of justice by giving everyone carte blanche exemption.
Regardless, freedom of speech is secure (well, as secure as it is regardless of this issue!) and this is strictly about being forced by a court to disclose sources.
How about we don't have special rights for special people? Everyone gets the same rights regardless of whether or not the government or someone else feels like a particular class of people shouldn't have them.
Think for a minute. No special privileges granted to police officers to enter premises in case of emergencies, carry weapons openly, or detain people against their will despite not witnessing a crime? No special privileges granted to fire-fighters to restrict people from entering their own homes or to enter someone's home without permission? No special privileges granted to ambulance drivers to go through red lights?
We give government the power to grant privileges to some people that we do not want granted to all people.
I think the point you were trying to make was that everyone should be afforded the protection of the Shield Laws, not just journalists. I disagree; the privilege to withhold information from a court, despite due process being followed via a subpoena, is powerful. That privilege should only be given to people whose refusal to disclose information about potentially criminal activities is, despite appearances, a good thing for the state and its people. This boils down to people whose jobs are beneficial to the state and its people and who rely on public trust and confidential communication to do their jobs effectively. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, maybe some others. And the importance of confidentiality and trust and whether or not information was given in the context of those jobs is examined when the Shield Laws are relied upon.
If we want to continue to give the press special privileges, someone has to determine who is and is not press. The alternative is to let everyone rely on the Shield Laws. We don't want that because it would significantly undermine the power of the court to ascertain information via subpoenas. Joey "The Wrench" Rigatoni calls his Facebook profile a blog and can't tell you who posted "I killed Jimmy Hoffa" on his wall.
The definitions of "media" and "press" are evolving and the court system is intentionally slow-moving. This unfortunately comes down hard on journalists (and not-journalists) during the transition period.
I would cautiously support a "Journalist License" because I think it would more clearly define the rights of journalists and provide security and confidence to sources. I would insist on the following points.
There's a lot of potential for abuse by government, but formalized simply and clearly I think it could be done right. That said, I would read very carefully before supporting any attempts to implement such a license.
If you cannot do what you like with you hardware then you obviously do not own it.
You can't legally saw the barrel off your shotgun, remove the airbags from your car, or torture your dog. We give government the power to make laws abridging our use of our own possessions. I think modding should be legal, with exceptions as necessary (reselling a car without disclosing modded brake-control firmware, for example), but I don't think the definition of ownership is the right way to argue the point.
Honestly, I can't imagine it'll be that huge an implication. Just because it'll be legal doesn't at all mean Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony need to make it easy, nor does it stop them from ruining old jailbreak methods with new firmware, like what they do now, to whatever effectiveness it does.
If it's legal it can be widely advertised and freely undertaken. If jailbroken phones are desirable, their legality will create a market for jailbreakable phones and (with time) vendors will try to expand into that market.
It appears that provision was intended to prevent "tie-in" sales. A Businessperson's Guide to Federal Warranty Law gives the example of vacuum cleaner manufacturers requiring branded vacuum cleaner bags to keep the warranty in effect.
Because the firmware on your phone is not (yet) a monetized product distinct from the phone itself, I suspect requiring a specific vendor's firmware does not fall afoul of the spirit of the law. Also note that the vendor is allowed to void the warranty because of damage caused by incorrect service or modification, which I would assume can be extended to damage caused by buggy third-party firmware.
Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures ... was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.
Reasonable and responsible activists would have hired safety and security experts to write a report, lobbied a politician to present it, and run a media campaign to raise awareness. But hey, they made their point: there are dangerous radical groups in France that will break into nuclear power plants. They even pointed out one in particular, called Greenpeace.
NSA-approved shredders are good enough for destroying classified documents up to TS; the shredded remains do not need to be controlled. The shreddings are fine enough that no piece of output can contain a single glyph at any reasonable font size. The shreddings of even a single piece of paper are shuffled together by the action of the blades. These shredders aren't cheap, but I bet they'll stand up to state-level threats of reconstruction for the next 10 years or so.
If that's not good enough, some locations use burn-boxes - never trust a machine to do thermodynamic's job!
Frankly, if you can't handle CS1 without hand-holding, maybe you're just not cut out for Computer Science. I've found that professors are much happier to take extra time on concepts once you get into the later undergrad material and grad school research-oriented topic - the hard stuff - but have little patience for introductory courses.
After all, why should a professor dumb down a relatively easy course for 200 students when he or she could accelerate it for 100 students? Prove your ability on the easy stuff and the professor will spend more time on you when you get to the difficult stuff.
So the US and Russian Federation toast the stock they have. 5 years later the People's Republic of China or North Korea release a mutated weaponized smallpox that no one else has a vaccine for.
Does having a tiny bit of old smallpox in a vial somewhere give you a significant advantage in making large quantities of vaccine for new mutated smallpox?
According to TFS the US is ordering 14 million smallpox vaccine doses and I don't think they're relying on the current smallpox vials to make them. It seems to me that we could kill off smallpox but still be ready to produce vaccines if a new strain broke out.
Frankly, I think the odds and resulting damage of some nation hiding weaponized smallpox all these years and intentionally releasing it are overshadowed by the odds and damage of the US accidentally releasing or losing the stored vials. Autoclave the thing and call it a day.
It seems to me that the real research question is "how can one stranger teach another stranger a natural language using a less powerful shared language?" For instance, how can I teach you English when the only language we share is basic gestures?
Some theoretical work on communicating the rules of complicated languages using very limited languages would be interesting. The fact that they used robots is hardly important; anybody can stick a speech synthesizer and speech recognition on a PC and call it a day. The underlying problem is the same.
When I hear "Robots used in [10-years-out research topic x]" I think "If they were serious about research topic x they'd be working theoretically - they're nowhere near ready to start worrying about implementations!"
Maybe that's unfair, but it seems that there's a world of cool theory to be explored on this topic, and unless they plan on having the robots do the work, I don't see many breakthroughs coming from the authors.
"3G" is a weak term that means different things in these two technology stacks. AT&T's 3G is a much better 3G than Verizon's 3G, and thus also much more expensive to roll out.
Very true, but prospective customers don't want to hear the details. AT&T can come back with a line of commercials advertising how their 3G is faster than Verizon's 3G and bam - competition. The point is that the Verizon ads aren't unfairly damaging or misleading and there's plenty of room for rebuttal by AT&T.
I see these ads a lot; they run often during college football games here in Florida. I have AT&T on a non-3G phone so it doesn't really apply to me, but if I were in the market for a 3G phone I'd definitely want to follow-up on those ads.
I don't think they're misleading - they say "if you want to know why your friend's 3G coverage is so spotty" (or something along those lines, with 3G mentioned every time) and the examples given are all 3G-specific (high-bandwidth applications). Besides, who advertises about the breadth of their 2G service these days? It's very clear that it's talking about 3G.
It is incredibly easy to be skeptical and cynical, until you have seen something that rivals the best magician's trick. From a guy who spent most of every day of his life by himself.
So did you believe the magician's claim that he has supernatural powers, too? If an old man with a stick and a talent for miming can fool you into thinking that dead wood can turn "into a straining, curving, living thing" and detect water, I've got a card trick to show you.
In my mind there was simply no way you could hold a branch and make it do that -- the branch itself wanted to do it, and did it.
I've located the source of the problem, highlighted above.
but if I legally have a box, I ought to be able to get at the data I pay for.
And if you legally have a song you ought to be able to listen to it as many times as you please. And if you legally have a movie you ought to be able to watch it in every room in the house. And if you legally have a video game you ought to be able to use it on as many computers as you wish.
Media companies feel that since media has no inherent usage limitations (transportation, duplication, accessibility, etc.) they've got to limit it purposefully. It's scary (and I'm not saying that facetiously) for someone who grew up when a product had a serial number, an owner, a size, a weight, to suddenly be in charge of selling an ephemeral product with nothing but a production cost that must be somehow recouped.
Wait until the kids that grew up with broadband are old enough to approach venture capitalists, to lobby congress, to go to court. Then we'll see some change.
I too gave up cable for precisely this reason: Cox wouldn't give me a box with working Firewire (despite angry phone calls to managers citing the FCC regulation that requires it here in the States). After a few weeks I decided that the cost of pursuing it further up the ladder and the cost of the service in the first place wasn't worth the quality of service, so I cut the cord.
I replaced my cable subscription with broadcast HD (for sports, particularly the home team) and a two-at-a-time Netflix subscription, which worked out quite well.
Anyway, for some people television is as important a media as the Internet is for us here on Slashdot. There's certainly a lot more intelligent material on the Internet than on television, but face it, most people aren't using the Internet for that anyway. Television is a good way to turn your brain off and relax, which, in moderation, can be a good thing.
My guess is that, like the FCC, the relevant Canadian authorities have little care about this particular issue. Cable companies in the states don't blink when you cite the FCC. Everyone but a single tech at Cox claimed straight-faced that the FCC mandated no such thing. Either they haven't heard of it before, have never had anyone complain before, or simply hoped I'd go away.
(Incidentally, I made it very clear to the manager of the local Cox management why I was disconnecting my service and why I would encourage others to do the same. He didn't seem fazed and I never got any offers for reduced cost service.)
The reason why streaming music is taking over is because radio is crap. Seriously, if you don't like hip hop, pop, country or classic rock, there are -no- stations other than that anymore. If you have musical tastes other than that, too bad.
You could easily write that as: "If you have musical tastes that aren't the same as the majority, too bad." But that's pretty much expected, right? Imagine liking orchestral music when big band took off. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's "crap". A lot of people like Miley Cyrus and don't care if it's not skillfully performed music. Radio, like any limited-spectrum broadcast medium, caters to the majority.
If dislike in radio genres was substantial enough to impact the music industry's bottom line (via "switchers" to streaming media) the radio stations would adjust accordingly.
I think what is increasing demand in streaming media is availability, ease of use, and cost. The state of streaming "Internet radio" 10 years ago was pitiful. Since then we have standardized technologies, better quality, and (however grudgingly) music label support. Along with reasonable costs (free in many cases!), increased access to high-bandwidth Internet connections, and more legitimacy in not owning physical albums, tapes, CDs, etc. streaming becomes a viable media delivery method.
"it's happening much faster than ever before thanks to human behaviour" that's the leap that you aren't being very convincing about. there seems to be this movement of "omgz everything humanz do is wrong!" which isn't science. global warming advocates can't remove the emotion from their arguments, which makes me suspicous.
The great thing about science is that the OP doesn't need to be convincing. Anyone can look at the data and reach a conclusion.
In case you don't want to become an expert in the field, however, and are willing to accept an overwhelming majority of existing experts, you would find that "97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures." (from the OP's link).
Perhaps if you didn't accept that poll, you might find that "Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger.". And so on.
Personally I don't get it. Why is it so hard to accept? Reliance on academic authories has its pitfalls of course, but a certain point you need the humility to accept that there is no debate over this particular point among experts.
It reminds me of the "debate" over whether or not 0.999... = 1. Non-mathematicians will swear up and down that it can't be. They'll pull out everything they've got, but at the end of the day, just because you don't understand it doesn't make it so. Read with a careful eye, but c'mon, the cause of the current change in global mean temperatures is no longer a debate.
Verizon Wi-Fi is not available for PDAs, phones, desktop PCs or Macs.
Not available for desktop PCs? What exactly is the difference between a laptop and a desktop running Windows, except for form factor?
This is an incredibly stupid decision for Verizon to make, and for Boingo to go along with. Bad business sense.
Level heads, people, level heads. This is a report from the AP; neither Verizon nor Boingo have commented on the mechanics of the service.
Verizon has little incentive to refuse access to portable devices or Macs or anybody else for that matter. They're probably not into Windows evangelism nor do they really benefit from offering a "free" service that nobody can use (roll out costs will trump usage costs for the near term and if the service isn't used it won't attract more customers anyway). Finally, Verizon is a major phone company and knows as well as anyone that mobility is the present and future. They're not going to ignore that segment.
Similarly, Boingo, whose whole business is providing easy-to-use wireless access, would suffer from word-of-mouth. Furthermore, as other posters have commented, Boingo already has applications for many platforms, including most smart phones.
Therefore I find it hard to believe that Verizon, with Boingo's consent as business partner is allowing only Windows XP and Vista to access their new hotspots. I'll wait until Verizon and/or Boingo make an official announcement before getting the ol' pitchfork out the closet.
I think Microsoft's new campaign of "personalization" is worthwhile, especially as a way to counter the "hipness" of Apple. With Apple you get popularity, but there's no uniqueness. Microsoft gave up on popularity, hipness after the failed Bill Gates/Seinfeld "quirky" commercials. Uniqueness and customization is a good strategy, I think. The "I'm a PC" commercials pushed it and the stores, as per the article, are making it a big focus.
I don't really have any need to buy Microsoft products, but it's certainly interesting. It's new at least, and I think it has a shot at succeeding. Plus, having real people to talk to is a step towards making it easier to use a valid, purchased product than a pirated product, which is step 1 in fighting piracy (the real way).
It may be they lied about keeping user supplied data in house, and they may have implied that they used advanced technological means to do the transcription, but if their service does what it says I can't blame them for using human labour to do the transcription.
I don't know... an unethical service, an unscrupulous company, a management with the lack of business sense to realize this is a public relations disaster, a fiscally untenable platform, and (possibly) opens them up to legal action... I'd call that crazy.
Sure, the technology works, but the whole idea is preposterous. Who transcribes the workers' voice mail? Or is voice mail transcription reserved for the upper class? Surely it's not such an elite service to warrant that treatment, which indicates that something went wrong in the management's thinking.