After creating a hit song, does a team of singer come along and maintain it and add features? Does yet another team build the next version of that song? Or that movie?
It is fairly common to pluralize period-less abbreviations with apostrophes. The New York Times, for example, follows that standard. It is more common still for abbreviations with periods to take an apostrophe.
The New York Times doesn't do a great job of following that standard if indeed they try to. Searching for CDs gives me many more examples of "CDs" than "CD's" -- the only one I saw was a blog post, which is probably copy-edited less strictly than an article in the paper. Similarly, searching for ATMs gives "ATMs" and "A.T.M.'s", but not "ATM's". Others I found: both "GTOs" and "GTO's", "LCDs", "TVs", both "B&Bs" and "B&B's". The phrase "A's and B's", referring to grades, was always written with apostrophes, as was the phrase "P's and Q's".
One of the fun thing of doing these searches is that really old articles are mixed in with the results. Searching for LPs shows that it has been written "LPs" since at least 1955 and also yields this intriguing headline: "DIGITAL COMPACT DISKS - REPLACEMENT FOR LPs?" from 1983.
If a scientist is funded by the petroleum industry and publishes articles saying that climate change isn't happening, is his connection relevant?
If a doctor is funded by a drug company and publishes articles saying that the company's drugs are good, is her connection relevant?
Even the best scientists can be biased, and being aware of the biases can help one decide how much attention to give arguments. If Prashant Deva is biased by his experience and funding against the technology that he is critiquing, then that is relevant information to me and many other people who read his critique. To suppress that information, as you seem to be trying to do, would be a blow against transparency. In my opinion, that would be a bad thing.
This is actually an idea that I've been kicking around for a couple of weeks. My idea is slightly more complicated, but this is the gist.
I would call it a digital media consumer's union, where a person pays in a certain amount per month and then the total is allocated to the copyright holders proportionally to the amount that their media are consumed by the members of the union. Consumption statistics for music are already tracked by things like last.fm (and libre.fm), and it would not be hard to build a tracker for things like movies, books, and possibly websites and computer programs.
The monthly bundle of money would obviously be the carrot, and if one of the companies getting the money decided to sue a member for copyright infringement, then the money would be coverted into a stick in the form of a legal defense fund.
What about free riders? There would obviously be some, but I think a lot of people really do think that digital distribution is terrible and would pay if given the chance.
What about trust? Whoever was doing the collecting would have to have a great reputation and be completely transparent. It should probably be a non-profit and regularly audited.
Would it be be sued into oblivion? IANAL, but it seems like giving people money should not be actionable. The big guys would probably try to get the list of members, so being paranoid about privacy seems like it would be a good idea.
What would it do to the incentives? This is my favorite part. Instead of the publishers attempting to lock everything up, the incentive would be for them to make content that is as consumed as possible. That is, the publishers would want their stuff to get out there so that people see it and give some of their share to the publisher. Things like digital locks would become counterproductive.
Things like flattr provide some precedent for this idea, though they obviously don't go track down people that aren't part of the system.
I'd love to hear critiques of this idea, because if it can't work, then I can stop thinking about it.
As far as I understand it (which isn't too far), quantum bits are physical things. So only the person who has the qubits can see the key exchange. As long as the qubits are physically safe in the hands of the person you want to talk to (admittedly a big if), there can't be a MITM attack.
I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great".
Sure, it's negative advertising, but that doesn't put it on the level of Lyndon Larouche advertising. It might be on the level of the people who called Microsoft M$ on Slashdot 15 years ago, but I don't really think it is. I didn't see the talk, so I don't know if he called it a swindle during the talk but if he did, then I would put the remark in the latter category.
I'm even less sure what the objection to the other sign is. Is it the word "sins"? They want you to go to their website to see the things that they don't like about Windows 7. Mainly, I would guess, in the way that it restricts your freedom. What is a short word that is less incendiary that means things-I-don't-like-about-a-thing-that-restricts-my-freedom?
Finally, "baby steps"? In this day and age? I've used almost exclusively free software for over ten years. It's really not that hard. I prefer it. So start using free software or don't. I don't care. But don't pretend it's a big hassle that someone told you that you should.
(To be clear, I'm not a total apologist for RMS. He has said some distasteful things about women and from what I hear his hygiene isn't the greatest either.)
I don't think an honorary doctorate entitles one to be referred to as Dr. In fact, most people with doctorates that I know would rather not be referred to as Dr. In the case of this article, it seems like the author is trying to be overly-formal in the manner of a Keith Olbermann rant.
You must be careful when comparing the worst to the best. Farhad has been a crummy technology writer since he was at Salon, and this is basically the only site on which I read comments. I would much rather read a great story by a great journalist than any comment by the average Youtube commenter.
Market data may suggest it, but it's not my experience. I've had an ebook reader for about a year now, and I can say that I have read many more books because of it. They were, however, almost all digital. The only times that I have read paper books have been when they were gifts.
I think that having nicely-typeset public-domain books for free is a major advantage of ebook readers that naysayers often overlook. (And while I'm at it, please don't tell me about the smell of books. My ebook reader has a very nice leather cover that smells great.)