Humans clearly do not have the power resources of the entire sun to use to power RF broadcasts. The total amount of power we have at our disposal from all sources is a tiny, tiny fraction of what the sun broadcasts.
GP's comment was about receiving broadcasts, not sending them. IF there were a signal of sufficient, strength, we DO have the technology to receive it. That's what the discussion was about.
but there is also a problem of signal to noise ratio that gives a hard limit on sensitivity due to noise from terrestrial sources and from thermal and quantum noise in the receiving electronics.
But we have the very SAME problem with light. Again: we have the technology to counter it; it's just a matter of not having the resources or budget to tackle it. It's not a matter of not knowing how. In fact you suggested one possible solution yourself.
And again, I will concede that it's not exactly the same problem. But it is pretty similar, and we do have a pretty good idea of what to do.
Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again.
That's an amazing success rate, since Sturgeon's Law pretty much holds here just as it does for so many other things: 90% of them are crap.
66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most purchases happen in the first week of play.
Most paid mobile games I've played haven't lasted more than a few days. They get played, then I move on. What's the point here? Most of them aren't, say, Checkers or Chess or Poker. You play, you figure it out or solve the secrets. You're done.
Amazingly only around two to three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players.
That's because 99.8% of them figured out it's crap before they got suckered into paying. Again: what's the issue here?
This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about "what people want.
Maybe because there wasn't a statistically significant number of games that people actually wanted.
Recent winners in my book: The Room 2, and Catan. I paid for both, and I am glad I did. (The board game Settlers of Catan is in the home, of course, but it's nice to have a mobile version.)
There are some other "free" games that seemed decent, but I round-filed them because they constantly pestered me for money or "social" likes or mentions, or activated "notifications" in the middle of the night, etc.
I really don't mean to be cynical. There are some really good games out there. But with the current state of the "market", you have to wade through a lot of shit to find them.
As someone else pointed out, it's been tried and shot down.
And not just once, either. Just a couple of years ago I read about a more recent case, even though SCOTUS had already decided this. It was like watching a play about an historical event.
Some big directory company came into a town and spent a lot of money creating its own directory, shoving aside the "little guy" who'd always published the local directory.
The little company said to themselves, "We can't beat their advertising and budget, so we'll just use their listings ourselves."
The big company objected, and said, "You can't do that! We put lots of work and money into our listings." Little company said "Pfffft. So what?" Big comany sued on the basis that their work had been "stolen".
The judge put it down pretty quickly. He said (in essence): it does not matter, even a little, whether you put one dollar or a million dollars into your effort: this type of information just isn't copyrightable. No law says the data is 'protected' just because it was a lot of cost and effort to put it together.
If you have some ideological goal unrelated to the security problem being discussed here, maybe.
It's not "unrelated". It might be peripheral, but it's not unrelated.
Both major phone OSes are full of security holes, many of them related to the parent companies gathering information about the users. So far, Apple has remained a pretty benign player in that particular arena. But that is no guarantee they will remain so.
I don't care how many species are going extinct, there are enough unclassified species out there to keep taxonomists busy for the next 300 years.
Beside the fact that this whole "biodiversity crisis" is unfalsifiable. It is based on assumption.
I'm not saying there isn't any evidence to suggest it, but that's all it is: evidence that suggests it.
How can you say with authority that we're facing a crisis of biodiversity when in the same paragraph the writer admits that said biodiversity is not yet discovered?
Assumptions. When I was younger I used to read about these scary things and swallow them whole. Now I am a bit more skeptical. With good reason.
So, if this is true, can someone tell me why the hell we need "bankers" anymore?
The purpose of banks has never been "to keep track" of your money. The purpose of banks has always been to keep your money safe. At least, that is supposed to be the reason for their existence.
The idea of fractional-reserve banking, i.e. making loans and so on with that hoard of money, came later. But that still doesn't mean their purpose is to track your money. If you weren't doing that yourself anyway -- at ANY time in history -- you were likely to lose that money.
Yea, not accepting that offer may be one of the dumbest business decisions I've ever seen. There is essentially 0 intellectually property that is not easily reproducible. Now the only stuff you get by acquiring SnapChat is 20 years of oversight and scrutiny and a bad reputation.
On the other hand, one has to wonder where all this FTC attention came from.
Snapchat was not advertising anything falsely. The original pictures DO disappear forever. The fact that other people can copy them while they exist is really pretty irrelevant... and should be obvious to anyone using the service.
So who does FTC think Snapchat was deceiving? Certainly nobody I know. Instead, why don't they go after companies like DropBox which deliberately lied to their customers about security? A complaint was filed with FTC against DropBox clear back in 2011.
Could it be somehow "politically" motivated (i.e., some kind of inside lobbying effort)? Otherwise I don't see any reason for this at all.
A SETI scientist said in a talk (and I've seen this in articles since) that our deployed SETI listening technology is still nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up signals even from as close as the nearest star (Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away), if a planet there was broadcasting RF at current Earth levels.
It isn't the technology, it's just the hardware. Not the same thing. Saying you don't have a big enough wrench is not the same as saying you don't know how to build a bridge.
In theory, if we can capture coherent pictures in the visible spectrum from many billions of light years away, we should be able to do the same with RF. It's not exactly the same but the basic principles are. It's just that nobody wants to spend the money. That's why we have things like the Very Large Array: nobody has the money to build a telescope that big so we find a cheaper way. That's different from not knowing how.
Then you're in science fiction land...woo hoo! I like scifi as much as the next/.er but your imaginations of the possible existence of a civilization that can fully digitize continuous data is worthless to a **scientific discussion**
That's the problem. Hard AI, "teh singularity", and the "question of consciousness" are so polluted in the literature by non-tech philosophers throughout history that the notion of ***falsifiability*** of computation theory get's tossed aside in favor of TED-talk style bullshit.
Uh... excuse me? Why are you ranting on about something GP never even said?
Here's some "falsifiability" for you: repeatable experiments have been done on these different creatures, and a subset of species DO in fact exhibit self-recognition in controlled studies. Now, it may be only an assumption, but it is a pretty damned good assumption, that self-recognition is a precursor to consciousness. (It is actually more than just an assumption; but we have only one example of a "conscious" brain so it's hard to make comparisons.)
GP was simply saying that we have what appear to be other examples, or at least similar examples, which suggests that there is no reason to believe that what the human brain does is unique in the universe.
What's wrong with that? That's not science fiction. It might be speculation but it's based on falsifiable evidence.
They're only a study indicating a comparative awareness of others within the same environment -- something the French social scientist that created it originally stressed when Americans were redefining its use.
If you can prove this, you will be a rich person.
IQ has been studied intensively for decades. And the result is... nobody really knows.
They know they're measuring something, because it is measurable, and it is fairly consistent for a given individual.
But exactly what it is, few people with any sense claim to know at this time. The likelihood is that it is a combination of factors.
iii. Email Content
iCloud only stores the email a user has elected to maintain in the account while the customerâ(TM)s account remains active. Apple is unable to produce deleted content. Apple will produce customer content, as it exists in the customerâ(TM)s mailbox in response to a search warrant.
Really, this is only normal. They don't have a choice about producing existing emails IF they're presented with a search warrant.
But this brings up the point: because of the Government's current attitude about email (i.e., that it is not protected by 4th Amendment), I will continue to use POP3 rather than IMAP. As soon as that email hits my inbox it is gone from anyone's servers. At least on my end.
Granted, there have been some recent sounds by Congress that they intend to fix this (partly, no doubt, due to the years-long valiant efforts by the EFF), but it hasn't been done yet.
First Law of Oppressive Government: If It Ain't There, They Can't Grab It.
You remind me of the time some years back when I went to visit relatives and they had rented Existenz, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor and The Matrix. I had no idea what they were about in advance, and I saw all 4 of them in one weekend.
I think I was a bit befuddled for a day or so after that.
Anyone denying the U.S. military's measurements which show a ~50% decrease in thickness since ~1970 should at least cite a reference, but either way they'd be staking all their credibility (such as it is) on contradicting the U.S. Navy's records.
Since I denied no such thing (my comments are right there in black and white), why should I give a reference?
Just more straw-man. I am really tired of this BS.
Further, somebody who uses the 70s as a starting point is cherry-picking their data. That is NOT a straw-man; it relates directly to what you wrote.
No, we're still back on you refusing to admit you were wrong to claim "that particular chart still isn't of monthly "anomaly", it is the global mean."
No, we're not, unless you have serious reading comprehension issues. I did admit it when I wrote "okay". What did you think it meant? "Not okay?" Or maybe "Uh, what?"
Maybe you're just really upset that I didn't get down on my knees and say "I AM SO SORRY MASSA! PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME! I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN!" ???
The relevant issue remains that regardless of whether I made a mistake, GP was still incorrectly implying that there was something amiss with what Steve Goddard did.
I don't understand how you guys think you can get away with this.
How "us guys think we can get away" with WHAT? What is it you think I am doing wrong? Please be specific.
The law doesn't like losing, so it is phrased for the win.
"The law" isn't losing, it's winning. THE LAW says an IP address is not probable cause. Many courts, including Federal courts, have clearly said so. One court ruled not long ago that not only does an IP address not equal a person, often it doesn't even equal a house. As I illustrated in my example.
The people who are losing are those who are trying to extort money from others who are "innocent"... or at least who have not committed any crimes. That's a victory for THE LAW, not a loss. The law does not like extortion and intimidation of common citizens.
The account holder paying the bill is responsible for the usage so if you let other people use your connection you are responsible for what they do with it, especially even more so since you purposely failed to secure your connection by providing this "public service" you are even more on the hook for it
Is this what you think I have been doing wrong? I think you misunderstand. *I* am the account holder, and I pay for a premium account. *I* am letting my neighbors use my internet, which *I* pay too much to the cable company for.
But even if it was a misunderstanding of what you meant, you are still wrong. Legally, I am very much NOT responsible for what other people do with it.
If you loaned your rifle to a neighbor who was going hunting, and he killed somebody with it instead, does that mean you are guilty of murder? Of course not.
If somebody "borrowed" or stole the rake I left sitting in the front yard, and used it to kill somebody, would I be guilty of murder? Of course not.
THE LAW says that you are not responsible for what somebody else does with something of yours, unless you were complicit in the act. If you loaned your rifle to him SO THAT he could murder somebody, then yes you are a criminal. Otherwise, no.
In the same way: if somebody uses my internet to do something that isn't kosher, it's their problem, and it very definitely is NOT my problem, under the law. I am not required by law to police my neighbor. That is something that happens in police states.
Why should my home be any different from an "internet cafe"? If you went into one, and did something wrong with the internet, would they be responsible by law? Of course not. If they were, internet cafes would have ceased to exist.
(By the way: the courts have ruled that my home is NOT different from an internet cafe, in that respect.)
I pay very close attention to the law in this regard. I should also mention that (A) some major ISPs are now renting out equipment so their customers can set up the same kind of public networks, and (B) the EFF highly recommends it for everybody.
I understand if that offends your concept of how the law works, but that is the way the law does work, and also how it should work in a free country.
It probably is a mistake to generalize "Alibaba/Aliexpress is usually bad". The bad experiences are as isolated and specific as the good ones. Perhaps it is nothing more than the universal human tendency to generalize.
That said I condemn crooked traders.
Probably. But I wasn't even trying to characterize them as crooked. Just not very responsive.
If I were selling a product in the Czech Republic, or France, or Sweden, I would be willing to pay a couple of bucks to have somebody proofread my ad to make sure it actually made sense there, and especially that there were not things missing or inaccurate.
I am not terribly motivated to buy from sellers who won't bother.
you're insane. the rates were $100 in today's dollars for an average bill
I paid $10 for unlimited local calling. Long distance cost more, of course.
you paid extra for caller ID and lots of other services
At the time, caller ID was new tech and it cost money to implement. Did you expect to get it for free? At the last point at which I had a landline, it was only a couple of bucks a month.
you paid per minute for local calling. higher rates for regional calls and crazy rates for long distance calls
Not anywhere I ever lived, or anybody I know. And I have been on both coasts and in between. I always had a flat rate for unlimited local calls, and various plans for long distance. But a call was always local, long-distance, or international. Nothing in-between.
there wasn't enough capacity for everyone and getting all circuits busy was normal, especially on long distance calls
Very occasionally, I would get a busy circuit. I don't deny that it happened.
and the bells double dipped by selling 800 "free"calling services to businesses
I'm not going to dispute that. But one thing you don't seem to get was that my comment explicitly said BEFORE the breakup. Not after.
You're only reinforcing my point that a "natural monopoly" was a relatively good thing. Private competition after made a mess of things.
No one said the data was wrong. The article explains that this isn't the right data to use. Stop focusing on the date of the data, and focus on what the data is actually telling you.
Stop focusing on trying to prove something wrong by pointing at something else. That's called a "straw man" argument.
While volume is certainly an important measure, in almost all cases sea ice volume is measured indirectly. Secondly, you may be appalled to know that the volume of "old ice" in the north has actually been increasing, at the same time that area has been increasing. Which implies that overall volume is, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Humans clearly do not have the power resources of the entire sun to use to power RF broadcasts. The total amount of power we have at our disposal from all sources is a tiny, tiny fraction of what the sun broadcasts.
GP's comment was about receiving broadcasts, not sending them. IF there were a signal of sufficient, strength, we DO have the technology to receive it. That's what the discussion was about.
but there is also a problem of signal to noise ratio that gives a hard limit on sensitivity due to noise from terrestrial sources and from thermal and quantum noise in the receiving electronics.
But we have the very SAME problem with light. Again: we have the technology to counter it; it's just a matter of not having the resources or budget to tackle it. It's not a matter of not knowing how. In fact you suggested one possible solution yourself.
And again, I will concede that it's not exactly the same problem. But it is pretty similar, and we do have a pretty good idea of what to do.
Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again.
That's an amazing success rate, since Sturgeon's Law pretty much holds here just as it does for so many other things: 90% of them are crap.
66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most purchases happen in the first week of play.
Most paid mobile games I've played haven't lasted more than a few days. They get played, then I move on. What's the point here? Most of them aren't, say, Checkers or Chess or Poker. You play, you figure it out or solve the secrets. You're done.
Amazingly only around two to three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players.
That's because 99.8% of them figured out it's crap before they got suckered into paying. Again: what's the issue here?
This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about "what people want.
Maybe because there wasn't a statistically significant number of games that people actually wanted.
Recent winners in my book: The Room 2, and Catan. I paid for both, and I am glad I did. (The board game Settlers of Catan is in the home, of course, but it's nice to have a mobile version.)
There are some other "free" games that seemed decent, but I round-filed them because they constantly pestered me for money or "social" likes or mentions, or activated "notifications" in the middle of the night, etc.
I really don't mean to be cynical. There are some really good games out there. But with the current state of the "market", you have to wade through a lot of shit to find them.
I think it will settle down, sooner or later.
Qualifier:
You CAN copyright a phonebook. The format, the specific layout, the ads, etc. are all copyrightable.
What are not copyrightable are the actual listings in it.
I can't wait for phone books to be copyrighted.
As someone else pointed out, it's been tried and shot down.
And not just once, either. Just a couple of years ago I read about a more recent case, even though SCOTUS had already decided this. It was like watching a play about an historical event.
Some big directory company came into a town and spent a lot of money creating its own directory, shoving aside the "little guy" who'd always published the local directory.
The little company said to themselves, "We can't beat their advertising and budget, so we'll just use their listings ourselves."
The big company objected, and said, "You can't do that! We put lots of work and money into our listings." Little company said "Pfffft. So what?" Big comany sued on the basis that their work had been "stolen".
The judge put it down pretty quickly. He said (in essence): it does not matter, even a little, whether you put one dollar or a million dollars into your effort: this type of information just isn't copyrightable. No law says the data is 'protected' just because it was a lot of cost and effort to put it together.
I misunderstood GP's comment. I thought he/she was saying that IQ was only "indicating a comparative awareness..."
I see now though that I had misunderstood.
If you have some ideological goal unrelated to the security problem being discussed here, maybe.
It's not "unrelated". It might be peripheral, but it's not unrelated.
Both major phone OSes are full of security holes, many of them related to the parent companies gathering information about the users. So far, Apple has remained a pretty benign player in that particular arena. But that is no guarantee they will remain so.
I don't care how many species are going extinct, there are enough unclassified species out there to keep taxonomists busy for the next 300 years.
Beside the fact that this whole "biodiversity crisis" is unfalsifiable. It is based on assumption.
I'm not saying there isn't any evidence to suggest it, but that's all it is: evidence that suggests it.
How can you say with authority that we're facing a crisis of biodiversity when in the same paragraph the writer admits that said biodiversity is not yet discovered?
Assumptions. When I was younger I used to read about these scary things and swallow them whole. Now I am a bit more skeptical. With good reason.
So, if this is true, can someone tell me why the hell we need "bankers" anymore?
The purpose of banks has never been "to keep track" of your money. The purpose of banks has always been to keep your money safe. At least, that is supposed to be the reason for their existence.
The idea of fractional-reserve banking, i.e. making loans and so on with that hoard of money, came later. But that still doesn't mean their purpose is to track your money. If you weren't doing that yourself anyway -- at ANY time in history -- you were likely to lose that money.
Yea, not accepting that offer may be one of the dumbest business decisions I've ever seen. There is essentially 0 intellectually property that is not easily reproducible. Now the only stuff you get by acquiring SnapChat is 20 years of oversight and scrutiny and a bad reputation.
On the other hand, one has to wonder where all this FTC attention came from.
Snapchat was not advertising anything falsely. The original pictures DO disappear forever. The fact that other people can copy them while they exist is really pretty irrelevant... and should be obvious to anyone using the service.
So who does FTC think Snapchat was deceiving? Certainly nobody I know. Instead, why don't they go after companies like DropBox which deliberately lied to their customers about security? A complaint was filed with FTC against DropBox clear back in 2011.
Could it be somehow "politically" motivated (i.e., some kind of inside lobbying effort)? Otherwise I don't see any reason for this at all.
A SETI scientist said in a talk (and I've seen this in articles since) that our deployed SETI listening technology is still nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up signals even from as close as the nearest star (Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away), if a planet there was broadcasting RF at current Earth levels.
It isn't the technology, it's just the hardware. Not the same thing. Saying you don't have a big enough wrench is not the same as saying you don't know how to build a bridge.
In theory, if we can capture coherent pictures in the visible spectrum from many billions of light years away, we should be able to do the same with RF. It's not exactly the same but the basic principles are. It's just that nobody wants to spend the money. That's why we have things like the Very Large Array: nobody has the money to build a telescope that big so we find a cheaper way. That's different from not knowing how.
Then you're in science fiction land...woo hoo! I like scifi as much as the next /.er but your imaginations of the possible existence of a civilization that can fully digitize continuous data is worthless to a **scientific discussion**
That's the problem. Hard AI, "teh singularity", and the "question of consciousness" are so polluted in the literature by non-tech philosophers throughout history that the notion of ***falsifiability*** of computation theory get's tossed aside in favor of TED-talk style bullshit.
Uh... excuse me? Why are you ranting on about something GP never even said?
Here's some "falsifiability" for you: repeatable experiments have been done on these different creatures, and a subset of species DO in fact exhibit self-recognition in controlled studies. Now, it may be only an assumption, but it is a pretty damned good assumption, that self-recognition is a precursor to consciousness. (It is actually more than just an assumption; but we have only one example of a "conscious" brain so it's hard to make comparisons.)
GP was simply saying that we have what appear to be other examples, or at least similar examples, which suggests that there is no reason to believe that what the human brain does is unique in the universe.
What's wrong with that? That's not science fiction. It might be speculation but it's based on falsifiable evidence.
They're only a study indicating a comparative awareness of others within the same environment -- something the French social scientist that created it originally stressed when Americans were redefining its use.
If you can prove this, you will be a rich person.
IQ has been studied intensively for decades. And the result is... nobody really knows.
They know they're measuring something, because it is measurable, and it is fairly consistent for a given individual.
But exactly what it is, few people with any sense claim to know at this time. The likelihood is that it is a combination of factors.
iii. Email Content iCloud only stores the email a user has elected to maintain in the account while the customerâ(TM)s account remains active. Apple is unable to produce deleted content. Apple will produce customer content, as it exists in the customerâ(TM)s mailbox in response to a search warrant.
Really, this is only normal. They don't have a choice about producing existing emails IF they're presented with a search warrant.
But this brings up the point: because of the Government's current attitude about email (i.e., that it is not protected by 4th Amendment), I will continue to use POP3 rather than IMAP. As soon as that email hits my inbox it is gone from anyone's servers. At least on my end.
Granted, there have been some recent sounds by Congress that they intend to fix this (partly, no doubt, due to the years-long valiant efforts by the EFF), but it hasn't been done yet.
First Law of Oppressive Government: If It Ain't There, They Can't Grab It.
I think the appropriate paranoid step is getting an Android phone, and installing Cyanogenmod over the stock OS.
Just saying.
I like Apple. I like Apple products and Apple software.
However, I don't much care for Apple's snoopy walled garden in regard to their iPhones.
You remind me of the time some years back when I went to visit relatives and they had rented Existenz, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor and The Matrix. I had no idea what they were about in advance, and I saw all 4 of them in one weekend.
I think I was a bit befuddled for a day or so after that.
"regardless of whether I made a mistake"
Right. As opposed to "You managed to climate of your hole, so you can just take yourself right back."
Anyone denying the U.S. military's measurements which show a ~50% decrease in thickness since ~1970 should at least cite a reference, but either way they'd be staking all their credibility (such as it is) on contradicting the U.S. Navy's records.
Since I denied no such thing (my comments are right there in black and white), why should I give a reference?
Just more straw-man. I am really tired of this BS.
Further, somebody who uses the 70s as a starting point is cherry-picking their data. That is NOT a straw-man; it relates directly to what you wrote.
No, we're still back on you refusing to admit you were wrong to claim "that particular chart still isn't of monthly "anomaly", it is the global mean."
No, we're not, unless you have serious reading comprehension issues. I did admit it when I wrote "okay". What did you think it meant? "Not okay?" Or maybe "Uh, what?"
Maybe you're just really upset that I didn't get down on my knees and say "I AM SO SORRY MASSA! PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME! I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN!" ???
The relevant issue remains that regardless of whether I made a mistake, GP was still incorrectly implying that there was something amiss with what Steve Goddard did.
I wonder if they'll start "encouraging" their H1Bs to marry other people they want to hire now?
I'm wondering if the SF in SF Chronicle stands for "Science Fiction".
I don't understand how you guys think you can get away with this.
How "us guys think we can get away" with WHAT? What is it you think I am doing wrong? Please be specific.
The law doesn't like losing, so it is phrased for the win.
"The law" isn't losing, it's winning. THE LAW says an IP address is not probable cause. Many courts, including Federal courts, have clearly said so. One court ruled not long ago that not only does an IP address not equal a person, often it doesn't even equal a house. As I illustrated in my example.
The people who are losing are those who are trying to extort money from others who are "innocent"... or at least who have not committed any crimes. That's a victory for THE LAW, not a loss. The law does not like extortion and intimidation of common citizens.
The account holder paying the bill is responsible for the usage so if you let other people use your connection you are responsible for what they do with it, especially even more so since you purposely failed to secure your connection by providing this "public service" you are even more on the hook for it
Is this what you think I have been doing wrong? I think you misunderstand. *I* am the account holder, and I pay for a premium account. *I* am letting my neighbors use my internet, which *I* pay too much to the cable company for.
But even if it was a misunderstanding of what you meant, you are still wrong. Legally, I am very much NOT responsible for what other people do with it.
If you loaned your rifle to a neighbor who was going hunting, and he killed somebody with it instead, does that mean you are guilty of murder? Of course not.
If somebody "borrowed" or stole the rake I left sitting in the front yard, and used it to kill somebody, would I be guilty of murder? Of course not.
THE LAW says that you are not responsible for what somebody else does with something of yours, unless you were complicit in the act. If you loaned your rifle to him SO THAT he could murder somebody, then yes you are a criminal. Otherwise, no.
In the same way: if somebody uses my internet to do something that isn't kosher, it's their problem, and it very definitely is NOT my problem, under the law. I am not required by law to police my neighbor. That is something that happens in police states.
Why should my home be any different from an "internet cafe"? If you went into one, and did something wrong with the internet, would they be responsible by law? Of course not. If they were, internet cafes would have ceased to exist.
(By the way: the courts have ruled that my home is NOT different from an internet cafe, in that respect.)
I pay very close attention to the law in this regard. I should also mention that (A) some major ISPs are now renting out equipment so their customers can set up the same kind of public networks, and (B) the EFF highly recommends it for everybody.
I understand if that offends your concept of how the law works, but that is the way the law does work, and also how it should work in a free country.
That said they're still good at smaller projects and basic research.
Yes, don't get me wrong. I still love NASA and lots of (but not all) of the things they do.
But I am sad and angry at what it has become, especially since it was unnecessary.
It probably is a mistake to generalize "Alibaba/Aliexpress is usually bad". The bad experiences are as isolated and specific as the good ones. Perhaps it is nothing more than the universal human tendency to generalize.
That said I condemn crooked traders.
Probably. But I wasn't even trying to characterize them as crooked. Just not very responsive.
If I were selling a product in the Czech Republic, or France, or Sweden, I would be willing to pay a couple of bucks to have somebody proofread my ad to make sure it actually made sense there, and especially that there were not things missing or inaccurate.
I am not terribly motivated to buy from sellers who won't bother.
[citation needed]
[History book needed.]
you're insane. the rates were $100 in today's dollars for an average bill
I paid $10 for unlimited local calling. Long distance cost more, of course.
you paid extra for caller ID and lots of other services
At the time, caller ID was new tech and it cost money to implement. Did you expect to get it for free? At the last point at which I had a landline, it was only a couple of bucks a month.
you paid per minute for local calling. higher rates for regional calls and crazy rates for long distance calls
Not anywhere I ever lived, or anybody I know. And I have been on both coasts and in between. I always had a flat rate for unlimited local calls, and various plans for long distance. But a call was always local, long-distance, or international. Nothing in-between.
there wasn't enough capacity for everyone and getting all circuits busy was normal, especially on long distance calls
Very occasionally, I would get a busy circuit. I don't deny that it happened.
and the bells double dipped by selling 800 "free"calling services to businesses
I'm not going to dispute that. But one thing you don't seem to get was that my comment explicitly said BEFORE the breakup. Not after.
You're only reinforcing my point that a "natural monopoly" was a relatively good thing. Private competition after made a mess of things.
No one said the data was wrong. The article explains that this isn't the right data to use. Stop focusing on the date of the data, and focus on what the data is actually telling you.
Stop focusing on trying to prove something wrong by pointing at something else. That's called a "straw man" argument.
While volume is certainly an important measure, in almost all cases sea ice volume is measured indirectly. Secondly, you may be appalled to know that the volume of "old ice" in the north has actually been increasing, at the same time that area has been increasing. Which implies that overall volume is, too.