There's not very much in the way of precedent covering Executive agreements - much less than what addresses the constitutionality of treaties, for example. However, Lawrence Lessig co-wrote an op-ed piece not too long ago addressing ACTA and Executive Agreements:
The hdmi audio output is not selectable in win 7 because it is "not plugged in" unless the tv is tuned to the hdmi channel during boot up of the machine, even if the cable is never unplugged.
You've got crappy drivers, then - I can select HDMI out and set it as the default output whether there's anything plugged in or not. Try newer drivers or a better audio card. Either way, it's clearly not the OS.
I've never understood why all companies want to locate themselves in Baltimore when there's plenty of room in nearby Frederick or Bel Air or Annapolis.
I'd be willing to live in any of those towns.
Putting the office in Frederick a great idea if your workers live in Frederick, but for those who live in Aberdeen, it's not so hot.
The reason for opening up shop in the city is because it's centrally located, and hence equally inconvenient for everyone:)
Your misunderstanding is no doubt due to your complete lack of familiarity with how the justice system works, but it's not nearly as bad as you assume in your ignorance. All criminal defendants have the right to a speedy trial in the US, but that right is commonly waived by the defendant in order to give himself time to prepare a defense. That's commonly done, particularly in cases such as this, where the case is technically complex, both with respect to the actions of the defendant and the law itself. Had he not done so of his own free will, the case would have been done and the trial over a long time ago, one way or another. He chose not to do that, and in the mean time, was unable or unwilling to come up with the bail required to secure his release prior to his trial, so in jail he sits. By his own choice.
The PROTECT Act includes prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, also known as virtual child pornography.[1][2][4] Provisions against virtual child pornography in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. However, the provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law.
Yes, quite. See "PROTECT Act" (2003):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003
The short version is obscenity can, as always, be prosecuted, and the PROTECT Act remedied the missing element in CPPA, which was the law struck down in Ashcroft, thus once again allowing the prosecution of virtual child pornography found to be obscene.
Not particularly, no. I don't waste my time on anything more than a cursory check - you're the one making the claim, so unless the evidence can be easily located I'm going to depend on you to provide your sources.
IOW, you arrived at your opinion without availing yourself of all the facts. What a surprise.
I don't have any references to his initial processing, however, since they managed to get him through, it seems reasonable to assume that they had a translator on hand for that portion, also. It's irrelevant though, since "BSO G" interacted with him on multiple occasions.
I'm sorry, no. Having a customs inspector who self-reports a "limited" knowledge of Polish is not the same having a translator, and your assumption that they had a Polish translator at any stage is simply not supported by the facts. Not that this will prevent you from bulling on through to your desired conclusion.
I can't say that he got what he deserved, but what he got is a direct result of his own actions.
You have a very curious notion of proximate cause. Mr. Dziekanski died as a direct result of being tazed and handcuffed by four RCMP officers who did not even attempt to communicate in any fashion with the person they were attempting to arrest.
I realize you want to excuse that for some reason, but the logical result is that the police would be free to kill anyone at all during an arrest, safe in the understanding that you'll be there to assure everyone that the dead person brought it on themselves. Don't want to be killed by the police? No problem - don't let that driver's license expire, bub.
No thanks. Some of us believe in a bit more oversight than that, and I pray you never have to live in a world that thinks as you do.
RCMP officers stationed at the airport can fairly be said to be participating in "airport security"...
Which would be a great argument if you could show that they were stationed at the airport. As far as I can tell, the RCMP does not have personnel attached to YVR.
You didn't look very hard, then:
Four RCMP members were on duty at YVR during the evening of Saturday, October 13, and early hours of Sunday, October 14, 2007. Presumably because the shift had been quiet and no calls for assistance had been received by these members, all four were present at the RCMP sub-office at YVR at the time complaints were received concerning a male acting erratically in the international arrivals area, which was less than two minutes away by car.
Well, ignoring the fact that airport personnel DID make use of a translator service on multiple occasions to communicate with the guy.
Your turn: source, please.
But do I hold them responsible for his death? Not even close. I can criticize certain aspects of their actions, but there's no way I can say that they were "wrong". They attempted to carry out their duties by responding to a situation which he had created, and they didn't violate any laws or procedures while doing so. Unless new evidence comes to light, I'd say it's case closed.
Well, I guess I'm just not prepared to agree that the penalty for being an angry foreigner should be death. YMMV.
RCMP officers stationed at the airport can fairly be said to be participating in "airport security", which is what the parent post was about.
The only thing they really did wrong was lie about the incident.
Sure, that. Oh, and they killed the guy, who had the temerity to become upset at being detained and held in a strange land by a bunch of folks who couldn't be bothered to find a translator to even begin to communicate with him. Perhaps the CBSA should alert travelers to BC that they should have an English/whatever translating dictionary with them at all times - the life you save might be your own.
I have a heck of a lot more faith in Canadian airport security than in American airport security! There are some little differences, e.g., we aren't required to take such ridiculous steps as taking our shoes off. But the one biggest difference: our security personnel are calm, collected, and doing their job well.
They sure are - just ask Robert Dziekanski. Oh, wait. You can't:
So, people who want DARPA money think it's a good idea when they get it, and a bad idea when someone else gets it. Can we get an assessment from someone who isn't so obviously vested in the outcome of DARPA's budget?
Incidentally, I switched my Internet service to Clear WiMax. It's slightly more expensive than Comcast in the short term because I had to buy the equipment, but they've got a 3Mbps/$30 tier while Comcast's minimum was 6Mbps/$42.95, so I'll save money in the long run. And more importantly, it lets me avoid supporting the fascists at either Comcast or AT&T (the only DSL provider here)! Totally worth it...
Erm, you know that Comcast is part owner of Clear, right?
On Windows, you just throw in the disk, click ok, and your hardware is working.
Unless you're running Vista x64, have 4GB or more of memory, and are trying to install the drivers for a TV tuner. Doesn't matter which manufacturer, they all would tend to fuck up under such conditions. I gave up trying to get TV tuners to work on my rig after wasting close to $250 on various models cuz I found only one commonality amongst them: they don't fucking work.
Apparently I am imagining that I am sitting in front of a Vista x64 box with 6GB of memory, and the HVR-1250 happily playing the Colbert Report in the background:/
(I hate "works for me!" posts, actually, but your statement was so absolute that I couldn't help but post one data point to the contrary...)
I actually know the machine you're talking about - except I had a HDD. I know for a fact the thing will run MS-DOS 5.0.x
Heh. I had the same Equity I also, but since my dad was something of a computer geek himself, he sprang for a 20MB hardcard for it. At the time, 20MB seemed like it would be enough space to last me the rest of my life:/
I found it very healthy, to re-check all your most basic assumptions at most every 10 years. You will be surprised which one have absolutely no scientific base, but were very very deeply connected to every thought of yours.
Absolutely. Don't assume that a hot stove will burn you - you should go right ahead and stick your hand on there every ten years or so, just in case.
Because the terminator traveling across country hitting up county courthouses for birth certificates isn't nearly as interesting.
Could be.
This week, on Terminator: The Registrar Chronicles:
(ring)
"County Clerk's Office, how may I help you?"
"I need ze birth certificate for Sarah Connor"
"Are you a parent or next-of-kin?"
"Negative."
"We'll need some documentation that you're the parent or next-of-kin to provide birth records to you."
"I'll be back..."
Again, I'm hearing that TW signed a bad contract and is taking it out on its subscribers
I gather that you've had a bad experience with a cable company, and therefore you are looking to reinforce your view of them as pure, unadulterated evil. However, your characterization of the carriage agreements could hardly be farther from the truth. If Disney comes to you, as a cable provider, and says "If you want to carry ESPN for your subscribers, you must also carry ESPN2," then you have two choices - take the deal, or watch millions of customers defect to satellite. If you'd like to call that "taking it out on [their] subscribers", so be it. Most observers would probably call it "the lesser of two evils", but there you go.
And I'd like to see the agreement. I've never seen one, and I'd expect that it's not as you characterized.
The exact details of the various carriage agreements content producers have with cable and satellite companies are not made public, for the rather obvious reason that it contains information of value to your competitors if you are a cable company, and information of value to other purchasers if you are a content producer. After all, if cable company X managed to negotiate a good deal, Y and Z will undoubtedly want the same deal or better. Whether you believe me as to what these agreements look like in general is neither here nor there - it is what it is, whether you believe it or not.
They may be required to pay ESPN for ESPN2, but are they actually required to deliver ESPN2 into every house that received ESPN? Or is there just the expectation that they will because they've paid for it?
Naturally they're required to actually deliver it. If they weren't required, cable companies might not do so, and then ESPN would be missing out on the piles of ad revenue which they expect to gain from selling time on ESPN2. A previous post I've made here goes into a bit more detail as to why the producers of channels want to bundle things together. It's not actually about revenue from subscribers, it's more about ad revenue. Perhaps you will find it illuminating:
You can claim it won't be financially viable or whatever to sell ESPN2 separately from EPSN, but you can't tell me that the cable companies aren't bundling them. Well, unless you can name a single cable provider you can get ESPN from and not ESPN2 (and note, I'm not even trying for the harder choice of EPSN2 without ESPN).
Of course the cable companies are bundling the channels into packages, but the point is that they mainly have no choice but to do so by the terms under which they carry the channels in the first place. Even if Time-Warner or Comcast wanted to sell you ESPN by itself, they can't - ESPN won't let them. If, as a cable company, you want your subscribers to be able to watch ESPN, you have to also provide them with ESPN2. Period.
I'm not denying the reality of bundling, merely pointing out the real culprits, and it's not the cable companies.
On XP, I can run most Win 16 apps just fine. I can run many Windows 95/98 apps just fine. Same with NT4 apps. Windows 2000 apps? No sweat.
How do those apps run in Vista?
I'm not trying to be a smartass, I'm just asking, 'cause I don't know, not having made the switch to Vista.
16-bit apps basically don't run in Vista at all - if you have a critical 16-bit app, say hello to some sort of emulation. 32-bit kernel drivers won't load or run on 64-bit Vista. Aside from that, compatibility is decent for the most part.
I think you're interpretation of the motivations of the "producers" is wrong - they're for profit companies: they're in it for the money, they won't subsidize anything ("subsidizing" = less profit).
If the specialist channels are part of the packages, that's because the producers believe they can make more money by having them there than by not having them there.
Here's the thing - "subsidize" is not a totally accurate description of the situation. You're right, they're not putting niche channels on because they're nice people, they're putting them on to turn a profit. The only way to turn a profit is to generate revenue in the first place, but the problem is that when the producers approach cable companies or satellite companies with their plan to put The Quilting Channel on the air, the cable companies will (rightly) say "Who's going to watch such a thing, and why should we pay you for the privilege of carrying it? TQC is not the sort of channel that attracts new subscribers for us, so what's in it for us?" And so TQC never goes anywhere, much to the disappointment of grandmothers everywhere.
If, however, the owners of TQC also own something really popular, they can bundle the two together in order to get the niche channel on to cable systems. Basically, the deal is that if you want to carry the Beer'n'Titties Network, you also have to carry TQC. And it's not even necessarily a matter of charging cable operators more for the bundle - they might charge less for the bundle than for BTN by itself, as an incentive to carry TQC also. The reason is that they can then make more money from advertisers, because they can then say to advertisers "Hey, TQC has penetration into X million households, so here's how much ad time costs for you on that station". And, of course, the bigger "X" is, the more that ad time is worth.
So "subsidy" is not a good word, necessarily - it's not like those channels are necessarily losing money. It's more like a situation where their value is maximized by leveraging the value of the flagship channel. Take away the ability to get that penetration, and the producers will lose ad revenue, and hence the direct cost of niche channels to subscribers will go up - they'll have to make up that lost ad money somewhere, if they can, so they'll either charge more per subscriber, or they'll fold up shop altogether if they can't. But either way it's not a particularly attractive situation for people who are actually interested in quilting.
Alright, but why should the MTV and ESPN crowds, cultural cretans though they may be, subsidize the History or National Geographic channels of Frontline on PBS for the wine drinking, luxury car driving, and art appreciating snobby types (who could afford to pay full price anyway)?
Normally I'd agree, but unlike NEA grants using tax money to subsidize the ballet, the folks who are into gangsta rap, NASCAR, the NFL, or whatever, can always opt out of these subsidies. As it stands right now, your subscription to ESPN is subsidizing sumo wrestling and tractor pulls on ESPN 8, "The Ocho". If that's a problem, you can always cancel your subscription.
As another example, I'm interested in bicycle races. The "Versus" cable TV channel will have the Tour de France, but no cable channel will carry the Giro d'Italia or several other bike races I could name. There just isn't enough interest in most of the customers in America. If I could get TV shows a la carte, I could get the Giro.
You've changed the point I was making, and I don't think you even realize you did it;)
(Full disclosure: I work in the cable industry, so I'm far more familiar with the economics of it than most people here.)
Anyway, by "changing the point", notice that you've asked for TV shows a la carte. I think that eventually you'll get what you want, but what most people think they want is channels a la carte. That's simply not going to happen unless it's mandated, and even then, as I said, it really won't save anyone any money.
But that's neither here nor there. The future of television is not 500 channels, or 5,000, or 5 million, where you go through and pick and pay for only the ones you really want. Instead, the future is, in my opinion, going to consist of only one channel, but what's on that channel is determined by you. One channel, but it has whatever you want to watch. And pay for, of course. Other than selling programs in bundles rather than channels, in the long run the idea of a linear channel is dead - the future is all video on demand. Which makes this discussion kind of moot anyway:)
Cable-television companies make money by selling packages of channels. The average American household pays $700 a year for over 100 channels of cable television but watches no more than 15. Most would welcome the chance to buy only those channels they want to watch, rather than pay for expensive packages of programming they are largely not interested in.
It's not the cable companies that are selling packages of channels, it's the content producers - cable companies don't much care beyond the technical details of access control and so forth.
Everyone thinks they want a la carte programming, but the reality is that if it ever came to pass, most folks would pay pretty much what they pay now, except they'd get fewer channels in exchange, particularly for those who are interested in niche or specialty channels. Without the producers being able to subsidize niche channels through fees for their popular, flagship channels - which is, of course, exactly why they sell channels in packages like they do now - the price of those niche channels will go up dramatically for those who choose to subscribe to them. Not a problem if you're only interested in ESPN 1 and MTV 1, but if your tastes are even slightly outside the mainstream, you won't wind up saving much money at all.
I'm also a little skeptical of his bandwidth testing method. I've never heard the Alken site, and the tests I did right now on my own system aren't even close to my actual performance (although, maybe they're justing getting slammed with traffic).
Why would you choose a server in Norway to test the speed of a wireless connection in New York anyway? Are we testing the speed of the actual wireless network, or the peering arrangements for each provider across the North Atlantic?
Seems to me that you'd want to pick something a little closer, so as to test the actual speed of the provider's network, rather than the speed of the connection to Norway or South Africa or Mars or wherever. Alken just benchmarked my home connection at 1.6 Mbit down. Speakeasy's Washington DC speed test server clocked me at 23.7 Mbit down - which one do you think is a better reading of my ISP's actual performance?
Slashdot Mirror
There's not very much in the way of precedent covering Executive agreements - much less than what addresses the constitutionality of treaties, for example. However, Lawrence Lessig co-wrote an op-ed piece not too long ago addressing ACTA and Executive Agreements:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502403.html
His take, in short: not bloody likely.
absolutely wrong.
The hdmi audio output is not selectable in win 7 because it is "not plugged in" unless the tv is tuned to the hdmi channel during boot up of the machine, even if the cable is never unplugged.
You've got crappy drivers, then - I can select HDMI out and set it as the default output whether there's anything plugged in or not. Try newer drivers or a better audio card. Either way, it's clearly not the OS.
I've never understood why all companies want to locate themselves in Baltimore when there's plenty of room in nearby Frederick or Bel Air or Annapolis.
I'd be willing to live in any of those towns.
Putting the office in Frederick a great idea if your workers live in Frederick, but for those who live in Aberdeen, it's not so hot.
:)
The reason for opening up shop in the city is because it's centrally located, and hence equally inconvenient for everyone
Your misunderstanding is no doubt due to your complete lack of familiarity with how the justice system works, but it's not nearly as bad as you assume in your ignorance. All criminal defendants have the right to a speedy trial in the US, but that right is commonly waived by the defendant in order to give himself time to prepare a defense. That's commonly done, particularly in cases such as this, where the case is technically complex, both with respect to the actions of the defendant and the law itself. Had he not done so of his own free will, the case would have been done and the trial over a long time ago, one way or another. He chose not to do that, and in the mean time, was unable or unwilling to come up with the bail required to secure his release prior to his trial, so in jail he sits. By his own choice.
US law does not ban simulated child pornography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition
Yes it does - "PROTECT Act" (2003):
The PROTECT Act includes prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, also known as virtual child pornography.[1][2][4] Provisions against virtual child pornography in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. However, the provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003
Uh, not quite. See Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002).
Yes, quite. See "PROTECT Act" (2003): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003 The short version is obscenity can, as always, be prosecuted, and the PROTECT Act remedied the missing element in CPPA, which was the law struck down in Ashcroft, thus once again allowing the prosecution of virtual child pornography found to be obscene.
Not particularly, no. I don't waste my time on anything more than a cursory check - you're the one making the claim, so unless the evidence can be easily located I'm going to depend on you to provide your sources.
IOW, you arrived at your opinion without availing yourself of all the facts. What a surprise.
I don't have any references to his initial processing, however, since they managed to get him through, it seems reasonable to assume that they had a translator on hand for that portion, also. It's irrelevant though, since "BSO G" interacted with him on multiple occasions.
I'm sorry, no. Having a customs inspector who self-reports a "limited" knowledge of Polish is not the same having a translator, and your assumption that they had a Polish translator at any stage is simply not supported by the facts. Not that this will prevent you from bulling on through to your desired conclusion.
I can't say that he got what he deserved, but what he got is a direct result of his own actions.
You have a very curious notion of proximate cause. Mr. Dziekanski died as a direct result of being tazed and handcuffed by four RCMP officers who did not even attempt to communicate in any fashion with the person they were attempting to arrest.
I realize you want to excuse that for some reason, but the logical result is that the police would be free to kill anyone at all during an arrest, safe in the understanding that you'll be there to assure everyone that the dead person brought it on themselves. Don't want to be killed by the police? No problem - don't let that driver's license expire, bub.
No thanks. Some of us believe in a bit more oversight than that, and I pray you never have to live in a world that thinks as you do.
RCMP officers stationed at the airport can fairly be said to be participating in "airport security" ...
Which would be a great argument if you could show that they were stationed at the airport. As far as I can tell, the RCMP does not have personnel attached to YVR.
You didn't look very hard, then:
Source: http://www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca/prr/rep/rev/chair-pre/dziekanski/robert_2-eng.aspx
Well, ignoring the fact that airport personnel DID make use of a translator service on multiple occasions to communicate with the guy.
Your turn: source, please.
But do I hold them responsible for his death? Not even close. I can criticize certain aspects of their actions, but there's no way I can say that they were "wrong". They attempted to carry out their duties by responding to a situation which he had created, and they didn't violate any laws or procedures while doing so. Unless new evidence comes to light, I'd say it's case closed.
Well, I guess I'm just not prepared to agree that the penalty for being an angry foreigner should be death. YMMV.
The only thing they really did wrong was lie about the incident.
Sure, that. Oh, and they killed the guy, who had the temerity to become upset at being detained and held in a strange land by a bunch of folks who couldn't be bothered to find a translator to even begin to communicate with him. Perhaps the CBSA should alert travelers to BC that they should have an English/whatever translating dictionary with them at all times - the life you save might be your own.
I have a heck of a lot more faith in Canadian airport security than in American airport security! There are some little differences, e.g., we aren't required to take such ridiculous steps as taking our shoes off. But the one biggest difference: our security personnel are calm, collected, and doing their job well.
They sure are - just ask Robert Dziekanski. Oh, wait. You can't:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html
Good thing they were calm and collected about the whole thing.
"+5, reinforces my pre-existing worldview"
So, people who want DARPA money think it's a good idea when they get it, and a bad idea when someone else gets it. Can we get an assessment from someone who isn't so obviously vested in the outcome of DARPA's budget?
Incidentally, I switched my Internet service to Clear WiMax. It's slightly more expensive than Comcast in the short term because I had to buy the equipment, but they've got a 3Mbps/$30 tier while Comcast's minimum was 6Mbps/$42.95, so I'll save money in the long run. And more importantly, it lets me avoid supporting the fascists at either Comcast or AT&T (the only DSL provider here)! Totally worth it...
Erm, you know that Comcast is part owner of Clear, right?
;)
http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/05/05/daily24.html
Damned clever, those fascists
Unless you're running Vista x64, have 4GB or more of memory, and are trying to install the drivers for a TV tuner. Doesn't matter which manufacturer, they all would tend to fuck up under such conditions. I gave up trying to get TV tuners to work on my rig after wasting close to $250 on various models cuz I found only one commonality amongst them: they don't fucking work.
Apparently I am imagining that I am sitting in front of a Vista x64 box with 6GB of memory, and the HVR-1250 happily playing the Colbert Report in the background :/
(I hate "works for me!" posts, actually, but your statement was so absolute that I couldn't help but post one data point to the contrary...)
FreeDOS probably would boot on this machine.
I actually know the machine you're talking about - except I had a HDD. I know for a fact the thing will run MS-DOS 5.0.x
Heh. I had the same Equity I also, but since my dad was something of a computer geek himself, he sprang for a 20MB hardcard for it. At the time, 20MB seemed like it would be enough space to last me the rest of my life :/
I found it very healthy, to re-check all your most basic assumptions at most every 10 years. You will be surprised which one have absolutely no scientific base, but were very very deeply connected to every thought of yours.
Absolutely. Don't assume that a hot stove will burn you - you should go right ahead and stick your hand on there every ten years or so, just in case.
Because the terminator traveling across country hitting up county courthouses for birth certificates isn't nearly as interesting.
Could be.
This week, on Terminator: The Registrar Chronicles:
(ring)
"County Clerk's Office, how may I help you?"
"I need ze birth certificate for Sarah Connor"
"Are you a parent or next-of-kin?"
"Negative."
"We'll need some documentation that you're the parent or next-of-kin to provide birth records to you."
"I'll be back..."
Again, I'm hearing that TW signed a bad contract and is taking it out on its subscribers
I gather that you've had a bad experience with a cable company, and therefore you are looking to reinforce your view of them as pure, unadulterated evil. However, your characterization of the carriage agreements could hardly be farther from the truth. If Disney comes to you, as a cable provider, and says "If you want to carry ESPN for your subscribers, you must also carry ESPN2," then you have two choices - take the deal, or watch millions of customers defect to satellite. If you'd like to call that "taking it out on [their] subscribers", so be it. Most observers would probably call it "the lesser of two evils", but there you go.
And I'd like to see the agreement. I've never seen one, and I'd expect that it's not as you characterized.
The exact details of the various carriage agreements content producers have with cable and satellite companies are not made public, for the rather obvious reason that it contains information of value to your competitors if you are a cable company, and information of value to other purchasers if you are a content producer. After all, if cable company X managed to negotiate a good deal, Y and Z will undoubtedly want the same deal or better. Whether you believe me as to what these agreements look like in general is neither here nor there - it is what it is, whether you believe it or not.
They may be required to pay ESPN for ESPN2, but are they actually required to deliver ESPN2 into every house that received ESPN? Or is there just the expectation that they will because they've paid for it?
Naturally they're required to actually deliver it. If they weren't required, cable companies might not do so, and then ESPN would be missing out on the piles of ad revenue which they expect to gain from selling time on ESPN2. A previous post I've made here goes into a bit more detail as to why the producers of channels want to bundle things together. It's not actually about revenue from subscribers, it's more about ad revenue. Perhaps you will find it illuminating:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1211949&cid=27728081
You can claim it won't be financially viable or whatever to sell ESPN2 separately from EPSN, but you can't tell me that the cable companies aren't bundling them. Well, unless you can name a single cable provider you can get ESPN from and not ESPN2 (and note, I'm not even trying for the harder choice of EPSN2 without ESPN).
Of course the cable companies are bundling the channels into packages, but the point is that they mainly have no choice but to do so by the terms under which they carry the channels in the first place. Even if Time-Warner or Comcast wanted to sell you ESPN by itself, they can't - ESPN won't let them. If, as a cable company, you want your subscribers to be able to watch ESPN, you have to also provide them with ESPN2. Period.
I'm not denying the reality of bundling, merely pointing out the real culprits, and it's not the cable companies.
Yah, I should have specified x64, sorry.
How do those apps run in Vista?
I'm not trying to be a smartass, I'm just asking, 'cause I don't know, not having made the switch to Vista.
16-bit apps basically don't run in Vista at all - if you have a critical 16-bit app, say hello to some sort of emulation. 32-bit kernel drivers won't load or run on 64-bit Vista. Aside from that, compatibility is decent for the most part.
I think you're interpretation of the motivations of the "producers" is wrong - they're for profit companies: they're in it for the money, they won't subsidize anything ("subsidizing" = less profit).
If the specialist channels are part of the packages, that's because the producers believe they can make more money by having them there than by not having them there.
Here's the thing - "subsidize" is not a totally accurate description of the situation. You're right, they're not putting niche channels on because they're nice people, they're putting them on to turn a profit. The only way to turn a profit is to generate revenue in the first place, but the problem is that when the producers approach cable companies or satellite companies with their plan to put The Quilting Channel on the air, the cable companies will (rightly) say "Who's going to watch such a thing, and why should we pay you for the privilege of carrying it? TQC is not the sort of channel that attracts new subscribers for us, so what's in it for us?" And so TQC never goes anywhere, much to the disappointment of grandmothers everywhere.
If, however, the owners of TQC also own something really popular, they can bundle the two together in order to get the niche channel on to cable systems. Basically, the deal is that if you want to carry the Beer'n'Titties Network, you also have to carry TQC. And it's not even necessarily a matter of charging cable operators more for the bundle - they might charge less for the bundle than for BTN by itself, as an incentive to carry TQC also. The reason is that they can then make more money from advertisers, because they can then say to advertisers "Hey, TQC has penetration into X million households, so here's how much ad time costs for you on that station". And, of course, the bigger "X" is, the more that ad time is worth.
So "subsidy" is not a good word, necessarily - it's not like those channels are necessarily losing money. It's more like a situation where their value is maximized by leveraging the value of the flagship channel. Take away the ability to get that penetration, and the producers will lose ad revenue, and hence the direct cost of niche channels to subscribers will go up - they'll have to make up that lost ad money somewhere, if they can, so they'll either charge more per subscriber, or they'll fold up shop altogether if they can't. But either way it's not a particularly attractive situation for people who are actually interested in quilting.
Alright, but why should the MTV and ESPN crowds, cultural cretans though they may be, subsidize the History or National Geographic channels of Frontline on PBS for the wine drinking, luxury car driving, and art appreciating snobby types (who could afford to pay full price anyway)?
Normally I'd agree, but unlike NEA grants using tax money to subsidize the ballet, the folks who are into gangsta rap, NASCAR, the NFL, or whatever, can always opt out of these subsidies. As it stands right now, your subscription to ESPN is subsidizing sumo wrestling and tractor pulls on ESPN 8, "The Ocho". If that's a problem, you can always cancel your subscription.
As another example, I'm interested in bicycle races. The "Versus" cable TV channel will have the Tour de France, but no cable channel will carry the Giro d'Italia or several other bike races I could name. There just isn't enough interest in most of the customers in America. If I could get TV shows a la carte, I could get the Giro.
You've changed the point I was making, and I don't think you even realize you did it ;)
:)
(Full disclosure: I work in the cable industry, so I'm far more familiar with the economics of it than most people here.)
Anyway, by "changing the point", notice that you've asked for TV shows a la carte. I think that eventually you'll get what you want, but what most people think they want is channels a la carte. That's simply not going to happen unless it's mandated, and even then, as I said, it really won't save anyone any money.
But that's neither here nor there. The future of television is not 500 channels, or 5,000, or 5 million, where you go through and pick and pay for only the ones you really want. Instead, the future is, in my opinion, going to consist of only one channel, but what's on that channel is determined by you. One channel, but it has whatever you want to watch. And pay for, of course. Other than selling programs in bundles rather than channels, in the long run the idea of a linear channel is dead - the future is all video on demand. Which makes this discussion kind of moot anyway
It's not the cable companies that are selling packages of channels, it's the content producers - cable companies don't much care beyond the technical details of access control and so forth.
Everyone thinks they want a la carte programming, but the reality is that if it ever came to pass, most folks would pay pretty much what they pay now, except they'd get fewer channels in exchange, particularly for those who are interested in niche or specialty channels. Without the producers being able to subsidize niche channels through fees for their popular, flagship channels - which is, of course, exactly why they sell channels in packages like they do now - the price of those niche channels will go up dramatically for those who choose to subscribe to them. Not a problem if you're only interested in ESPN 1 and MTV 1, but if your tastes are even slightly outside the mainstream, you won't wind up saving much money at all.
Why would you choose a server in Norway to test the speed of a wireless connection in New York anyway? Are we testing the speed of the actual wireless network, or the peering arrangements for each provider across the North Atlantic?
Seems to me that you'd want to pick something a little closer, so as to test the actual speed of the provider's network, rather than the speed of the connection to Norway or South Africa or Mars or wherever. Alken just benchmarked my home connection at 1.6 Mbit down. Speakeasy's Washington DC speed test server clocked me at 23.7 Mbit down - which one do you think is a better reading of my ISP's actual performance?