How is this new? This is already being done in Canada - I have a 60gb limit with my Rogers internet service.

It was a bunch of pictures of this guy and his girlfriend in new york. there was also short video of him playing a guitar with his shirt off - i shit you not. i returned the phone and bitched the rogers guy out, and i got a $50 gift card. i now order my phones directly from rogers over the phone and then have them shipped to rogers video stores, instead of buying the phones in stock at rogers-licensed stores.

my rogers htc magic has a bunch of rogers images preloaded, and several rogers bookmarks placed in the web-browser. i would be surprised if that's done by htc.

also, i've received phones from rogers that have been bought and then returned, with the other person's content still on the sd card - as could easily have been the case with the phone in question. In my case, there were pictures of the guy's trip to new york left on the phone.

Either way, that's pretty crazy. I wonder if it's a case of a rogue employee putting it there, or if it somehow got installed unntentionally by Vodafone. Or maybe the phone was used, returned, and re-sold without having the micro sd card formatted.

If you're interested, check out this TED talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7vK0pOvKI

As things stand, over the long term, most of the earth's biodiversity will disappear too - species will go extinct. Just because the current course means that it will likely happen eventually doesn't make it's a good thing.

And what is 'organically' for human culture, anyways? If we have free will, we control what we do.

Also, he wasn't just noting that it was going to happen - he was asserting a proscriptive argument for what should (or should not) happen: "there should be no effort made to keep a language living".

There is no question that there are innumerable benefits to broad standardization of languages, but it doesn't follow that other languages are somehow useless and should be abandoned.

Would you say the same thing about culture? Should we allow all minor cultures in the world to die, just because they are being consumed by another more dominant culture?

Diversity is beneficial - and in this case it comes at extraordinarily little cost.

I think that an effort should absolutely made to aid bilingualism for people in situations where it is economically and socially beneficial to speak a dominant language, in order to ensure that traditional languages remain.

Frankly, I don't understand why you would feel so vehemently that there should be no effort made to preserve these languages.

Ahh ok so it's an issue of it being a linear development of an existing invention, rather than a new invention in and of itself. That makes sense!

I was thinking that he was saying that, because the parent invention is public domain, all subsequent inventions based on it must therefore also be public domain - which sounded ridiculous.

I'm not sure if I agree with him about VOIP, but I can see the logic of the argument.

Thanks!

I'm not really talking about whether that kind of expression is common or not.

The way I saw his argument was this:
1. Sending data over TCP/IP is public domain
2. All ways of sending data that involve sending it using TCP/IP should therefore also be public domain. This includes VOIP, etc.

So to carry that over to my example, it would be:
1. Using the alphabet to communicate data is public domain
2. All ways of sending data that use the alphabet should also therefore be public domain. This includes books, etc.

To me, the second case seems wrong - and if it follows from the first case, then I vociferously disagree. But I'm thinking that maybe my example is flawed.

This is not meant as a flame - I'm just unclear about what you're saying.

As I understand it, this line of reasoning could be used to argue that, since the alphabet is public domain, all other uses of that alphabet should also be public domain. If that's what you mean, then I disagree.

Am I misunderstanding your argument?

Someone should patent it, just in case.

Method and apparatus for discerning which patent applicants have actually created something new and which are merely trying to create legal obstacles for their competition.

Yup, sounds complicated.

That ship has already sailed (on a nicely cleaned moat, nearly colliding with a duck house). The MPs are a laughing stock - being allowed to say "whoops - my bad" and pay them back doesn't really reassure the public much.

And, AFAIK, the CPS/Police investigation (the important one - dealing with the handful of claims that would get us mere mortals thrown in jail) has been running independently for months.

That it was introduced 17 years ago doesn't mean that Microsoft has been tardy about fixing it...

So, what you're saying is...if say I made a car, it had one or more acceleration issue for several years, I tried fixing the problems years ago, many times saying the car is now safe, but people still keep telling me they have issues; so, there's nothing "tardy" about my fixing the problem?

No, the real question is, why is it that Toyota had to pull cars off their sales floor, being not allowed to sell a known defective product, and Microsoft is still selling incremental versions of Windows while basically every month for years admitted they're selling a defective product?

Actually, you are just as likely to be hit. A miscalculated oversteer turn (drift) could make the car plunge right on the inside of the track. I would observe a robotic car driving from far away...