Goodness forbid an "educated" person get their hands dirty. It is useful to put theory into practice through direct effort, and it demonstrates a proficiency with the practical tools and results that can only lead to better theory.

As a Canadian, I think we are in no position to pity or criticize our neighbours. Our media and telecom industries are in some ways even more integrated and oligopolistic than our neighbours' equvialents. Most of the private terrestrial broadcasters happen to be owned, in whole or in part, by the same companies that own what are known as "broadcast distribution undertakings" - basically, the cable, satellite, and IPTV providers. Several also own digital pay TV channels, cellular and landline telecom providers, and probably backbone services as well.

Hope you like vertically integrated telecommunications/content cartels. My only question is whether Comcast will buy a wireless service provider or AT&T will buy digital TV channels and fund original programs first.

Wake me when evolution deniers have a a testable hypothesis. "Goddidit" is not a theory.

"Real 4G" is clearly whatever the cell service providers want it to be. Between the meaningless buzzwords in ads and promotional literature, and the alphabet soup of acronyms used to name specific data transmission schemes, it's no wonder so much confusion reigns about which service is "the best".

I think this was actually floated here in Canuckistan early last decade. It never made it into a piece of legislation; it's effectively a tax on any computer with storage that plays music, whether it's a little $50 flash-memory player with cheap plastic buttons to $3500 laptop gaming rigs. There's no hope of equal enforcement, and either the loopholes would be massive or the entire industry would smash it down before it could ever be legislated.

Hey, while we're all getting drawn into well-burnt flamewars, can we get a vi vs. emacs story for our weekend debating pleasure? Maybe some BSD vs. GPL flavour for good measure?

Wake me when the author pits NCSA Mosaic against lynx.

Hear, hear.

My partner and I dumped cable TV when it was clear we were only watching a few shows on the hundred-or-so channels we had access to. 95% of the content was repetitious junk, with the same amount of annoying ads and infomercials as terrestrial broadcast. At least we don't have to pay to pull in HD OTA content, aside from the $45 for the secondhand indoor antenna I bought[0]. Between that and Netflix, we're set. I've thought about slapping together a MythTV box from time to time for recording purposes.

There's some neat stuff happening in OTA broadcasting post-analog shutdown. Some NBC affiliates carry Universal Sports on a subchannel, and some other stations carry things like Retro Television Network (cheesy old TV!), music video channels, and in the case of my area an extra news/educational channel on the PBS feed. Once Canada switches off the analog TV spectrum[1], I expect to see a few more neato things on the air.

[0] We have an unusually good view in the direction of signal sources around here, so costs would probably run into the low hundreds for a proper roof/mast antenna, rotor, preamp, and coax for most suburbanites. It's still worth it, IMHO.

[1] This assumes the telecom/media cartel up here doesn't cook up an excuse to delay the digital switch even farther into the future. The switchover was supposed to be August of this year, though I half-remember rumours that they may push it back to 2013 or beyond. Part of the problem is that most private OTA stations are owned by media conglomerates that also own cable/satellite/IPTV operations, and they're much more interested in squeezing money out of subscribers. Go ahead, ask me about the kabuki fee-for-carriage "debate" that took place here last year. I'm still brassed off at how everyone in this country fell for it.

Visit spaceweather.com daily for a month or two, and keep an eye on the various Sun images on the left side. One is used to point out coronal holes, and you'll quickly realize how common they are. This may be related to the approaching solar maximum, though don't quote me on that.

I'm much more concerned about flare and mass ejection frequency. With all the satellites and poorly-shielded electrical circuits we rely upon, one or two wicked ejections aimed at Earth could turn a lot of gear into expensive junk.

For most people, all that matters is that a kilogram is a reasonably consistent measure of mass.

For mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists requiring precise mass measurements, this matters quite a bit.

It's not obvious in the video, but a photographer captured a shot of the provocateurs on the ground... wearing the same standard-issue boots as the riot police. Oops.

Incidentally, Montebello's a nice little town. I think I was at the media centre dumping audio at the time this happened.

As for your comment on the interface, I'm curious what computer graphics knowledge you have that makes you think "solid colors, simple text" with advanced animations (such as the ones that happen when you enter or leave the Start screen) are easier to do than the iOS or Android "grid of static icons" with simple translation animation

I didn't realize simple rectangle rotations and transforms with one or two mapped textures/images was "advanced". It looked neat, but it also looked optimized for the available hardware, and the loading speed made me wonder how much of it relies on simply dumping everyhing into RAM on startup and hoping no one runs too much else at any given time.

I noticed the line at the end of the BBC article and couldn't believe what I was reading - does WP7 actually lack copy-n-paste capabilities? Apple took some justified shit for waiting years to include that capability in iPhoneOS. If that's for real, then WP7 deserves its unpopularity.

I had a chance to play with a WP7 device at a big box tech retailer on NYE (oddly, mere moments before getting an iPhone after a spontaneous discussion with my partner about my former piece-o-junk phone[0]). The interface was snappy, but it was pretty obvious why - solid colours, simple text. I have to wonder how well a WP7 device would operate under load with some third-party software installed.

[0] An LG Neon TE365F. Go ahead and laugh, I deserve it for purchasing such a turd.

It's going to suck mightily for them if unlimited data plans go the way that unlimited home broadband plans are, and if the end of network neutrality makes it possible to charge extra for packets exchanged with a site owned by a company that hasn't signed some kind of deal with your ISP. That cloud stuff's not going to seem so neat when a user has to pay extra fees just to use basic features of their devices.