I have a variety of machines, mainly using a powerbook and a desktop PC. The PC is relegated to a few duties and the odd bit of work I can't do on the powerbook, the PC mostly gets used for racing & flight sims. Surveys like this one are pretty irrelevant and misleading: what you use depends a great deal on your relationship to technology. PCs are an easy decision for the bulk of consumers who simply see a less expensive way to get online.

When I was given a Kindle I found it interesting but not truly captivating. I found myself far more concerned with what electronic book distribution means long term and it was not a cheery vision. Governments will find it far easier to control the acquisition and distribution of knowledge in a society where print is inherently subversive. When books can be pulled at will we are in serious danger.

The Liberal Party is notorious for promising things in Opposition that they have no intention of following through with. Ultimately the Liberals will promise cash to the poor Provinces that will come out of the pockets of the rich Provinces, return to power and forget about Net Neutrality.

AT&T owes iPhone customers nothing: they have a monopoly and can price accordingly. Fanboys should know the release cycle of Apple products by now and get their contracts accordingly.

I don't think people really understand what the background is with the language issue. 50 years ago French speakers couldn't shop in their own language in may places: company stores hired Anglos only. Montreal was a great city if you spoke English, Yiddish or even Italian but for a Francophone it was a nightmare until the Quiet Revolution. The majority of the Province was Francophone, yet the economy was strictly managed by Anglos only and education was left to the Catholic Church in a deal designed to keep the population compliant. There were many Quebecois complicit in this, Duplessis being the primary criminal, but it is the Church and the Anglos who did the bulk of the work. What we are experiencing now is the tide of absurdity going the other way as the Government continues to expand the linguistic bigotry that Bill 101 gave us. My Grandmere would probably be happy that the battle now is about something as irrelevant as video games, shows how much things have changed.

65,000 feet is within the engagement envelope of a number of SAMs. The weapons it flies above are the lighter, more portable weapons utilised by lighter forces, the kind the US likes to fight.

Shinyung Oh's email!

Ms. Oh,

while we are sorry for your loss our recent round of layoffs was due to the recent problems with the economy. We took the decision to perform a single lay off en masse to allow the remaining associates and other employees to feel secure in their positions. This decision did not allow us to make special cases for those suffering from recent loss, and to be brutally frank if you wish that we consider situations such as yours while making our decisions it would not be a positive factor: we prefer associates who can produce viable offspring at full term. Good luck finding a new position in this economy, rest assured you will have appropriate references from our firm.

Good points. The Player Piano also gave composers the chance to hear pieces human pianists simply could not play. Conlon Nancarrow wrote many pieces that pushed the limits of the Player Piano, astounding recordings of what the instrument was capable of.

His motivation was nothing to do with protecting the Constitution or citizens of the US. He worked at the FBI and participated in operations that violated the Constitution and law far more egregiously than Nixon and his horde. Mark Felt took this action because the system did not believe he was competent enough to rise up the ladder. The promotion would have moved him up the food chain, satisfying his ego and Woodward would never have met Felt.

Woodward had connections in the intelligence community and was not the eager young reporter so often portrayed. Interestingly enough, whenever his record comes under analysis he has a swarm of lawyers on hand to silence his critics. Felt wasn't the only informant Woodward had, and it is pretty straight forward to figure out whom he knew that had access to the Whitehouse.

Watergate left us with a self-aggrandizing press, led to the Carter malaise and mainstreamed Reagan in the backlash. Hmmm, probably better off if Felt had accepted his own limitations rather than pretending he was outraged.

I am always amazed at the chattering about Chomsky & Hermann when they did not introduce a single new concept in media analysis. Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda" and many other works do far more than a facile anti-capitalist analysis, no wonder there is little mention of such a major work in the area in any of Chomsky's media analysis efforts. I believe this oversight is due to Ellul's broader, and hence more damning, critique of propagating influences: it isn't just the other side that makes propaganda and attempts to influence people. Accepting this would be very difficult for Chomsky, and heresy for his legions of followers eager to parrot his latest opinion.