In Vancouver (BC), we have walk buttons all over. If you don't press them, you don't get a walk light. But the lights are the same length, anyway.

So lots of people forget to press the button, and when the light goes green...they hesitate, then run back and push the button, and wait through this green light for the next one.

"When selling to users who want their devices to just work, we believe integrated will trump fragmented every time."

Yeah, just look at how well it worked for your personal computers...

Does anybody else notice all sorts of parallels between Apple vs. Google + Linux today, and Apple vs. IBM + Microsoft in the 80s and 90s? Including the hubris?

This is unbelievable! Next you're going to tell me that "3.9G wireless" doesn't mean anything, or that 9 out of 10 doctors don't recommend Crest, or that most items in an "up to 90% off!" sale are not in fact 90% off!

Sounds pretty paranoid to me. If we can't trust company advertisements for unbiased information, what can we trust?

Hehe, my $5 overdue fee for a late movie return, from however many years ago I last rented a movie? You think they bother with a credit report? 'Cause, uh...nobody else has complained.

You failed to mention that Rogers Video is one of the largest chains of movie rental shops in Canada. That's what makes this an especially weird coincidence.

At one point, I couldn't get a cell phone from Rogers the telco, apparently because I owed some late fees to Rogers the movie rental shop, which I could only pay at the movie shop. So I went with another telco. Weird, anyway; I hadn't realized they were all so tightly connected.

You know where 'soccer' comes from?

Asocciation Football. Oxford slang made it into 'socc-er.

But 'football' is right there in the original name. Maybe we oughta come up with a new name for our game?

Cost of development still matters. That's why android works--phone companies want to compete with the iPhone, but they don't want to create a whole new OS. And (snicker) I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Year of the Windows Tablet.

As for media...that's a point. But then, it'd be open, so companies could develop the appropriate apps, and you could use the media you already have. I'll point out that Ubuntu has a music store, now...

...Tin foil hat!

So, how long will it be before somebody uses the "Power Lines" defense in a murder case?

I dunno, that wouldn't work again. Most Chinese people are essentially in denial about Tiananmen--they deny it happened, deny it's severity, blame it on outsiders and troublemakers, and, especially, they accuse outsiders of exaggerating it. Remember that they're used to a biased media, they take it for granted. It's natural for them to assume that our worldview is doctored, just like theirs is. With that assumption, it's safe for them to assume that our version of Tiananmen is hyperbole, intended to undermine their government (which...I mean, honestly, it's not like they have no grounds for suspecting our media...)

This is possible because they only ever got an after-the-fact, doctored version of events. In those days, you could cover it up.

Now? How would they suppress the storm of blog posts, YouTube (or equivalent) videos, images, cell phone messages, etc, that would accompany such an event? They'd have to shut the entire country down--and even then...well, in 1989, there were (relatively speaking) a handful of cameras in Beijing. Now, counting cellphones, every person has at least one (well, anyway, there's one per-capita in Beijing, I'm sure). An equivalent suppression would require shutting down the Internet permanently. They couldn't do it.

As evidence: there was a major earthquake in China in the 70's (not sure which one, so I don't know which to reference), many deaths, etc... The Chinese government took days (weeks?) to admit that it had occurred at all. In 2008, there was footage and images of the Sichuan earthquake on the Internet as it was happening. They can't cover things up like they used to.

And if the Chinese people had watched Tiananmen unfolding in real-time...?

This is why, in my opinion, arguments for embargoes are stupid. They end up hurting the people and strengthening governments (see: North Korea, Cuba, Iraq). On the other hand, if you freely engage in business with 'bad' countries, even obeying their rules, you get cellphones, computers, and cameras in the hands of common people. They don't need your wishes and prayers, they need your tools.

Well, there's the whole starving-to-death thing. When you're struggling to survive, it's a little harder to be creative and inventive. The speed of progress and innovation in the US and Europe was closely correlated with the amount of surplus food they had (and have) lying around.

China has only recently (almost) got rid of that problem. Now they're playing catchup. They're making a ton of money creating 'knock-offs', and building their infrastructure in the process.

Expect China (and India) to be the most innovative countries on earth in, oh, I dunno, twenty to thirty years.

Thank you for this!

I don't know why we take flack from the Windows world, here. How do you burn a CD in Windows? Open "Start->All Programs", and start scanning the list of programs for something than (hopefully) has "CD [Burn|Write|Creator]" in the name, open it, and...well, you're on your own, they all behave completely differently.

By contrast, "right-click on disk image, "Burn image to disk...", insert disk, click OK", on every (Ubuntu) system, seems like child's play.

....But that doesn't mean the pages shouldn't exist.

A friend of mine is a biker (pedal variety), and he was reading up on different makes, models, etc, on Wikipedia. He found a mess. Lots of companies, major companies (in their niches) were missing, and any attempt to create a page resulted in instant deletion. He chose one particular company, and, with another editor, defended it tooth and nail for a few weeks.

I'm not sure if it's still there or not.

He's not the CEO of this company, he's not a stakeholder...he doesn't even own one of their bikes. But that information should be in Wikipedia, whether or not it drives business for the company. People who visited company pages from Wikipedia stay longer? That's probably because they want to end up where they are.

That's not to say that conflict of interest isn't a problem; but the problem (IMHO) isn't simple inclusion. Any company with a reasonable number of employees and customers deserves at least a mention. In the case of bicycles, some of the pages that weren't permitted to exist were (to some subculture or style) vitally important; maybe, say, one of the only downhill bike manufacturers. The problem is when the pages are one-sided, or when people start tinkering with rankings or redirection.

Anyway, just my two cents. I've more often been frustrated by the lack of existence of a page for some random company, than by...well, the existence of a page, no matter how biased (I can always tone down the bias myself, after all).

But the people who can write the software, stories, movies, music, and games might do well to find a model where they get paid in advance... You're right, they're performing a valuable service; but once that service is performed, there's no particular reason why they should continue to reap benefits off of it forever. Is there?

Live performers have a harder time finding venues now than they did at the turn of the (previous) century. Movies had record audiences, percentage-wise, in the 1930's and 40's, and they've been declining ever since. Things changed; recorded music and VHS tapes (well, and other forms of entertainment) appeared, respectively. That's fine, the creators found new models. The models didn't involve smashing vinyl disks or herding people into theatres at gunpoint, even though they'd done something beneficial, and thus deserved to be paid. They adapted to their environment. Now it's time for them (and you, I presume) to do that again.

Good luck with that!