Andy H

I always thought Philo Farnsworth sounded like a made up name. Like Zephram Cochrane.

It’s not “logic,” it’s “law.”

If you don’t make a reasonable effort to return something that you find to its rightful owner, you have committed theft.

A couple of years ago, the NYPD ran a sting called “Operation Lucky Bag,” in which they left bags with money or iPods or other valuable items in subway stations and other public places and then arrested people who picked them up and walked off with them. While the sting was discontinued due to the (blindingly obvious) fact that they weren’t actually giving people enough time to try and find the rightful owner before arresting them, the fact that you are committing theft if you don’t do so has been established in law for hundreds of years.

Shipments do not equal sales.

He would miss the internet less if he had a hat.

Great article!

This is a nice idea, although I think looking at the talk pages would be more useful in terms of a “conversation” about the edits. I.e., sometime the reason for the edits is clear; often it isn’t.

There’s been speculation that Kindles are sold at a loss, but no confirmation. Much less that they are sold at a “decent” loss.

The power of the atom is insignificant compared to the power to publish the e-mail addresses of civilian employees of an Arizona sheriff’s department.

Or not.

This is a good idea in theory, but I’m a little skeptical that it will be used as infrequently as it should be.
1. National Emergencies: This makes sense; these are rare.
2. Amber Alerts: The original Amber was a 9 year old abducted by stranger; having Amber Alerts for these kind of situations makes sense. But most of the Amber Alerts I hear about are for 16 or 17 y.o. runaways or else for children “taken” by a parent as part of a custody dispute. I’m not interested in helping resolve someone’s custody dispute.
3. Weather alerts: only if they are very focused to, say, tornado warnings and the like. My city’s siren system was – until a couple of years ago – used for everything from tornado warnings to thurnderstorm watches. Meaning it was going off every week in the fall and summer, with the result that people ignored it because it didn’t distinguish between a tornado being sighted two minutes ago and the possibility of thunderstorms developing over a 10 hour period.

Tell that to Ansel Adams.

A pint’s a pound the world around…

When I was a kid – back before the internet, or at least the WWW – a few people would periodically decide to go without TV for a year. In every case, there were a surprising number of people who were hostile to the idea and reacted defensively, almost as if they were being attacked for watching TV. It was really kind of bizarre…but some posters are having the same type of reaction to what Paul’s doing.

However, it would be less remarkable if he weren’t a tech journalist for an online site.

Your dad may be an idiot when it comes to technology. But that doesn’t mean that everyone in their 60’s is, particularly considering that the federal courts are pretty computerized.

And just how “technical” is this, anyway? It’s not like a patent case.

I think this post is, unfortunately, empirically wrong.

When you have a one-on-one relationship with someone…like a sales rep and a buyer…one of the parties screwing the other will end the relationship.

But that dynamic doesn’t apply when you are a large company offering services to 100 million people. There’s no personal relationship on either side. Look at the results: people have been whining about AT&T’s policies, etc., at least since the iPhone came out, but the number of subscribers have increased as their margins have grown. They are much more successful now than they were when they began carrying the iPhone, despite constant complaints, calls for boycotts, etc.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile (my first wireless provider), which has to my mind much more customer-friendly policies, is losing subscribers and is barely able to stay afloat. Clearly customers don’t care about how friendly the company is if the products and services don’t fit their needs. (I liked T-Mobile and had used them since they were VoiceStream, but their coverage sucked for my use case and I switched to Verizon after a few years). Also clearly, customers don’t seem to care much if a company’s policies aren’t very consumer friendly as long as the company gives them the products and services they want. See AT&T.

If customers aren’t loyal to the carriers, why would the carriers be loyal to the customers? The takeaway from Chris’s dad’s policy was that it made good business sense to not screw your customers. The real world takeaway in the carriers’ business is that it doesn’t make good business sense to not screw your customers.

The carrier-customer relationship is all about cold-hearted business choices. On both sides: carriers who charge extra for tethering are no more or less greedy than customers who demand that tethering be free. Both parties are trying to get the most they can while paying the least they can.

And I don’t believe that this is an area where more competition will help – ten or fifteen years ago, there were more carriers to choose from, but it was hardly a cell-user’s paradise.

While mandating cell-number portability was brilliant (and I remember the days when changing a carrier meant changing your number), I’m not even sure that there is any realistic government regulation that would help.

Well, yeah.

But maybe we can send him to an agricultural reeducation camp instead of putting him up against the wall.

Not sure, though; I’ll check with the Central Committee.

They should present this “pure heart, empty head” excuse in their motion for reconsideration.

Based on your choices, you don’t appreciate good dialogue as much as many people. This is an area where Whedon does a very good job, especially with ensemble casts.

The Hate is strong with this one.

And Apple bought Siri and then removed it from the app store. There’s a significant difference.

Is this a HS paper? I give it a B; it’s filled with too many unsupported assertions. Particularly the “deep reading” part which goes into lengthening attention spans and memory. The OP also doesn’t seem to know that the novel is a new literary form that didn’t really develop until the 18th century (although a writer in the 17th lamented that now one novel is being written every year), and didn’t surpass poetry in popularity until the 19th century. You can’t read “Aeneid” or “Divine Comedy” or “Paradise Lost” and think that memory and attention span weren’t already well-developed.

Reading isn’t going anywhere, and the effect of e-readers seems to have been to increase the amount of “deep reading” people do by making it more convenient.

If you are really interested in things that have affected reading, there are actual books on the subject – in particularly showing how television affected the writing styles of certain works. I.e., the re-writes of the Hardy Boys books in the late 50’s/early 60’s (originally written in the 20’s and 30’s) not only got rid of certain racist passages and outdated references (cars with running boards); they also greatly simplified the language to make it more appealing to kids who had TV as an alternative.

Is that why engineers are disproportionately represented among creationists?

MG is, maybe, triumphalist. And there is perhaps a whiff if hitting the other fellow while he’s down. But I don’t see any “desperation.” If you are MG…or any Apple fan…what is there to be desperate about?

That’s kind of what I thought. Plus, ergonomically, this would be better for voice control – “Siri, send these three files to my phone.” Because who’s to say that you will have your phone with you when you realize you want to transfer the files? What if every time you used Evernote you had to make sure your phone was nearby or it wouldn’t sync?

No. Because if that were the case, they would probably also stop selling Nooks.

Don’t confuse cyclists with lycra-clad racer wannabees, either; they are the worst offenders. Well, no, messengers are still worse. The second worst offenders.

The reason for drunk driving laws is to stop drunk driving, which kills thousands of people a year. The fact that someone has to pay for a defensive driving class isn’t going to stop that.

Paper books aren’t sold at cost once the initial investment has been recovered.

That’s wishful thinking. There is plenty of evidence that driving while using cellphones, etc. increases the risk of accidents. There is no evidence that more elaborate driving tests will make it safer to talk on cell phones

YA is a weird category; I kind of think that most golden age sf could basically be classified as YA.